Warning!
This chapter is rated M and there will be zero tolerance for flames so you have been warned!
Tales from the Mad House, Part II
"We need to find Mom and Derek!"
John and Cameron jogged back the way they came, ignoring the racket and screaming of the criminals that had so deeply affected them before.
"The last time we made contact they where in Mother's office." Cameron spoke almost distractedly as they rushed to get back to their adult counter parts.
Flinching at the word "mother", John slid to a stop and looked at Cameron who also stopped on a dime.
"Is there a problem John?" she asked hoping that she hadn't missed anything that could put him at risk.
"You said mother …" John looked at Cameron poignantly with a look of interest married with disgust.
"Did I?" she commented with fax innocence that was making it easier and easier to catch his protector's tell.
"You said "Mother's office" Cam … what do you mean by mother?" he asked.
John was becoming more and more freaked out by the idea that his protector had someone or something that she considered parents. He had always considered Skynet Cameron's father which he appreciated as Shakespearian irony of his love, but for some reason when he put in prospective that Cameron had her own Sarah Connor out there that she cared enough for to call mother, it became so very deeply twisted for him.
Cameron opened her mouth to speak when she was cut off.
BEEP!
BEEP!
BEEP!
Sirens wailed in the white emotionless halls of the building, while down the hallway both watched the young nurse that had been so rude to them before take off in a sprint for the elevators.
"What's going on?" John looked at Cameron who looked back at him just as puzzled at the unfamiliar situation they were both in.
There were suddenly several large bangs followed by an almost deafening sound of metallic clanking.
"Oh shit!" was all John could say as he turned away from Cameron toward the end of the hall where a mass of greasy and unkept men and woman in white scrubs stood opposite them watching with contempt and a crazed rage.
John looked down at his black fatigues as did Cameron, before both exchanged looks.
"We're so not dressed for this kind of party …"
Sarah stood in front of the mirror in her cell, the day light streamed into her room as she combed her hair in the mirror. She had been waiting for this day for two and a half years.
Today she was going to see John again.
As she ran a the comb through her long locks of hair and applied some make up given to her by the warden to cover her bruises that Dougy had given to her, the last thing Sharp wanted was for one of her guests to report abuse from the guards and the state board to go looking up his guards asses with a fine brush.
However despite that Sarah was going to use it on her face to make herself look pretty, the last thing she wanted her baby to see her look like after all these years was some waste of humanity, sweaty, greasy, and smelling rotten. When John sees her today he's going to see what he remembers most about her.
That she was always beautiful no matter where she was.
As she fiddled with her hair the sound of her cell door opened and a fat and ugly blond man in all white stood at the door.
"Hey baby … it's time."
Sarah and Derek followed a path of stairs down into the bawls of the mental hospital. The sound of dripping water from the dehumidifier of the facility worked on Sarah's nerves, making the warrioress grip the handle of her pistol tucked into the waist band of her scrub pants tightly.
Derek led the way taking cautious, but easy steps down the metal maintenance staircase. He had spent fifteen years of his life living in dank and musty subterranean tunnels, so the darkness of the building basement was an unwelcoming homecoming for the soldier.
Mindful that Sarah wasn't use to wandering around in the dark as much as he was; Derek slowed his pace to help ease her transition from light to dark. When she placed and rested a hand on his shoulder he wasn't sure if it was because she was afraid of what they might find down there or if she just wasn't sure of her footing.
When the two made it to the bottom they saw that there was a large open space like any storage basement, but there was a heavy metal door in the back leading to another room.
"That's got to be it." Derek muttered taking a knee and unzipping the duffle bag. He quickly handed Sarah the Remington tactical shotgun she was fond of, while he pulled out his grenade launcher, checking the round inside.
Both took a deep breath to calm their nerves and gain control of the adrenaline that was flowing through their veins. The two partners traded looks and with a swift nod from Sarah they moved toward the door. Both took opposite sides of the entrance, backs pressed flat to the wall.
With a rustle Sarah removed her key card from her lab coat.
"If this doesn't work, then we're going to have to breach the door." Sarah whispered to Derek who was cradling his weapon. He nodded in agreement turning into a ready position, looking to storm the room the minute the door slid open.
Holding her breath, Sarah took her card and was moving to slid it in.
BEEP!
BEEP!
BEEP!
An emergency siren began wailing above Sarah's head causing her to jump back to watch the green light strobe above the door.
"What the hell is going on?" Derek yelled over the loud wailing of an alarm. "Our they on to us?" Derek asked watching the woman look horrified.
"No!" Sarah shook her head. "That's the alarm for a prisoner escape!" she called.
Suddenly the room began to fill with steam, fogging the already dark basement. Both partners moved close to each other subconsciously.
"We need to get out of here!" Derek yelled over to Sarah.
Just as they were about to go the metal door began to creak with loud thudding pounds, then after a pause the door flew off its hinges sending it air borne and straight for the couple. At the last moment Derek pushed Sarah out of the way while the door made contact with the soldier sending him barreling into the side of the metal staircase.
On the floor Sarah rolled to her back and looked up at the shadow standing in the lab door frame.
It was a large naked male shadow with a body builder's physic and wispy brown hair. Sarah had a look of shock and fear on her face as she stared up at the ghost who had haunted her dreams for the last half of her teenage years and all of her adult life.
The T-800 looked down at her with a cold emotionless analytical stare, as if searching its database for her. Suddenly its eyes glowed red.
"Sarah Connor?"
The Austrian accent brought flashes of Kyle's death and the chase through the computer factory filled her head as she stared into merciless brown eyes of the thing that took her soldier from her, her innocence, and her life.
Fear gave way to hatred, with gritted teeth she pulled the shotgun to her and blasted the machine in the chest.
It took a step back at the forced of the close blast. She used the traction of her sneakers to push herself away from the Terminator. Once she was farther back she raked the weapon and fired again. The machine once again stumbled back word, its skin shredded with deep holes in its muscled exterior, the endoskeleton showing through the impacted craters of its shredded flesh.
She turned to find Derek flat on his back on the floor, his grenade launcher still entangled in his hand. Slinging the shotgun behind her, Sarah crawled to Derek's fallen form.
"Reese … come on!" Sarah called shaking him. She turned to find the machine recovering. "Reese come on!" she screamed desperately, the fear and shadows surrounding her checked out the warrioress and replaced her with the teenage beauty who had no idea what was going on or why this muscle man was hunting her, only that that she loved the man on the ground and that he was a Reese.
The machine heard the name and stopped a moment and analyzed the fallen man. Seeing the profile of Derek Reese and his rank the machine shifted targets, deeming the lieutenant the imitate threat.
Hearing Sarah's desperate voice, Derek forced his eyes open to find her in fearful tears that he was sure she hadn't noticed or acknowledged. He unconsciously placed a hand on her waist. Seeing something approaching through the mist, he squinted till he could make out the familiar silhouette of the machine he had fought a thousand times before and in that moment it dawned on him that it was the same machine that killed his brother and was once again coming after the woman that Kyle loved.
"Get down!" He yelled and pulled Sarah on top of him. Secured in her his arms Derek lifted his grenade launcher and fired. The round thumped against the machines neck followed by a large explosion sending the endoskeleton flying into the lab. With the flesh of its upper chest, neck, and face cooked off leaving only the wispy brown hair still parted to the side.
Turning back Sarah got up and gave Derek a hand. Once up he keeled with a pained grunt as he cradled his left side.
"I think I broke my one of my ribs." Derek grunted wrapping his arm around Sarah for support wordlessly, to which she accommodated with out a second thought.
"We need to find John and the machine and make a run for it." Sarah advised, while the two made their way up the metal staircase.
Several moments later the T-800 marched up the steps purposefully after its targets.
The sound of fighting echoed down the hallway as inmates were thrown against caged windows and walls.
Back to back John and Cameron fought their way out of the pit of crazed criminals that were grabbing and scratching at them. John had settled on the one two combination, punching a path through, while Cameron flipped and threw inmates lunging at her all around the hall.
When they reached the elevators, John had scratch markers on his cheek and the material of his fatigues had been clawed threadbare by nails. While Cameron's shirt had been ripped open with a collection of scratches on her bare belly, and she had a bit mark on her cheek.
When a woman with ratty hair and pale complexion jumped for Cameron, the girl caught her mid air and lifted her above her head. Then effortlessly, she tossed her into the advancing group of psychopaths, knocking them down like a bowling ball to the pins. She turned and gave a small smug smirk to John who shrugged at her affectionately.
However the small lull was interrupted when the far side elevator's doors dinged open. Instead of finding guards like John and Cameron were expecting they saw more inmates except this time they were armed with military grade weapons and led by a man John could point out from anywhere.
"Silberman …"
The old man turned toward the teens and observed them a moment. Then he looked to Cameron with a fevered madness that made the inmates both John and his protector just fought look like the picture of sanity.
"She's one of them … Demon!" he pointed to the girl with a screech of pure hatred.
The sound of clicking of rifles sent John into survival mode. As if in slow motion, the young hero spotted a stairway entrance. Wrapping his arms around Cameron, he dived shoulder first through the door knocking it open as the sound of loud automatic gun fire riddled the wall outside.
Getting to his feet John cradled his shoulder as the sound of feet approached the doorway.
"Come on …" he motioned to the upper level. "I got a plan." He reassured the cyborg.
"Your shoulder John, it's dislocated." She observed quietly. Then on a dime as shadow's appeared in the doorway Cameron drew John's side arm with one hand, while drawing her's from her own side.
With rapid secession she knocked down three people with her duel pistols. One of the shadows tactical Mossberg's slid to John's feet. Without heisting he picked up the shotgun and pumped it with one hand.
"Let's move …" There was a mature command to his voice that sounded beyond his years that inspired Cameron to move on his every word.
The two ran up the stairs with the sound of more footsteps in pursuit of them. Halfway up John placed his hand on Cameron's belly in a stopping motion.
"John …" Cameron turned to see a mass of shadows about to turn the corner on the landing.
"Jump!" John commanded jumping over the railing back to the second floor. Cameron did so only a millisecond after John. Both teens fell with thuds rolling down the hospital stairwell back to the floor they started on. Cameron ended up rolling on top of John, eliciting a small painful crack on John's bad shoulder.
Despite the pain John and Cameron stayed silent, his face nuzzled into the girl's cheek as the sound of feet thundered up the stairs to the third floor.
"Look at that, dislocated back into place … miracle." John grunted touching his shoulder gingerly. Cameron sat up and looked down at him.
There was a pause that once again seemed to come when John was captivated by Cameron as the moonlight sprinkled over her angelic features making her look like some ethral creature. It also didn't escape John that these moments seem to happen in the most inopportune time.
"Angel …" John cleared his throat nervously and motioned to her mounted on him with her shirt ripped open.
"Oh …" she quickly stood and helped him up, making his shoulder click.
"Thanks" he growled in slight pain picking up the shotgun off the ground. Standing straight again he noticed that Cameron was staring at him weirdly. He flicked his eyes at her a moment while she seemed to be expecting him to say something.
"What?" he shook his head at her.
"You called me Angel … again." She sounded almost amused as interested.
John turned red faced in blush as she pointed out his slip of the tongue of his private nickname for her that he often calls her in his head. He had noticed it too and was hoping that he could move on without her commenting on it, but there he was in an awkward moment of choosing.
"So I did …" he cleared his throat making him sound like Derek when he wanted to move on from a subject.
"I like the name." Cameron reassured him when she saw his embarrassment. The young man cleared his throat once more like any Reese would and motioned to the door.
"Let's get the hell out of here." He said choosing to run down the stairs to the first floor.
Cameron couldn't help but feel like it had a double meaning.
The Hallway's of the B floor detention block where littered with dead guards with bullet holes in their chests' and unconscious inmates that looked like they were thrown out of the way like rag dolls.
"Cameron was here …"
Sarah nodded at Derek's comment as they limped past open cell after open cell in search of John and Cameron. Sarah turned her head when she heard the beat of bare feet behind them, in the distance the silhouette of a T-800 with only flesh from the waist down shadowed on the corner wall.
"Well you better hope she's still here, because I think that we're going to need her in a minute." Sarah tightened her hold around Derek's waist trying to get instep with him as they raced as fast as they could from the killing machine.
Turning another corner Sarah saw an abandoned doorway that was missing a door completely. "I think that's it!" She called maneuvering her and Derek toward the doorway.
"John, Cameron!" she called to the door, but there was no answer or the figure of her son running out to meet her. Once she and Derek moved into the room they found no one but the figure of a gangly old man muttering to himself crouched in the corner.
In frustration of the situation and an incessant buzzing noise annoying her, Sarah pointed her shotgun in the air and fired into the ceiling, scaring the old man who took off screaming with his hands covering his ears out the door.
A quick sweep of the room showed that the archives Derek and Sarah were in was indeed the research center they where looking for, but there was no sign of the kids anywhere.
"Where are they?" Derek looked around.
"Derek …" Sarah's voice was caught on the name as she pinpointed the sound that was annoying the hell out of the woman. Strapped to the corner of the wall was a collection of heavy explosives.
"Those don't look like the explosives we brought." There was dryness to Derek's statement that seemed to fit the mood that both adults were feeling.
"I can't agree more." She commented with a half breath.
There was a pause before Sarah and Derek limped out of the room quickly only to be confronted by the T-101 who had the schizophrenic old man that Sarah had scared out of the room by the throat and was chocking the life out of him as it advanced on the couple.
Seeing its target's in close proximity, it flicked its wrist snapping the serial killer's neck and marched forward.
"Stand back!" Derek pushed Sarah behind him as he pointed the grenade launcher at the machine and fired it into its face. The shock of the explosion knocked the machine to its back. But just like a tank, the cyborg got to its feet and advanced again. Sarah stood to the side of the soldier and fired the shotgun into the machines face, the blast tattered the last of the cyborg's hair on its head.
"Back …" Derek called to Sarah pressing her backwards as he loaded another round into the launcher. He squeezed the trigger sending a shot to the terminator's upper chest. However this time the machine braced it's self for the shot, however do to its legs being anchored to the force but not to the rest of the body the shock busted a servo in its leg. Thus as it moved toward the couple it limped after them. "I'm out!" Derek said to Sarah as he checked his pockets for rounds.
With gritted teeth, Sarah pumped and fired again and again till she was out. Each shot pinged against the armor and shielding, though she could tell that they mangled it pretty good.
She let out a deep breath and glanced to Derek as if he had anything else, but the soldier just retuned it to her with the same expression. Both looked around the floor a moment try to find anything. When there was nothing the two traded acceptance of their grim reality.
"I'm glad John got out of here …" Derek commented causally with a shrug. Sarah kept an eye on the advancing machine knowing that there was no way of getting out of this one as Derek seemed to have figured out before her.
"Yeah … me too." She nodded with a half smile standing shoulder to shoulder.
Sarah could have laughed when she thought about how she use to joke that there were only two thing that would kill her, being in Pescadero again and the machines, and some how in her last moments she was in Pescadero about to be killed by a being that they placed her inside these four walls for trying to stop its creation.
"Sarah, I got to tell you about Ryan …" Derek turned to look at her.
"I know" she smiled and nodded.
Derek didn't looked shocked at all at her admission to knowing the truth, he simply accepted the sometimes all knowing Sarah Connor.
"How?" he asked as the machine got closer.
"The way he looks at me, when he thinks I'm not looking, I know love when I see it, plus he's more like his father then he realizes." There was smugness to her despite what was in front of them. It was a quality that made Derek love to hate her when it came to the small things when living together.
"I thought you we're going to say it was the hair …" he snorted grimly.
Both Derek and Sarah traded smiles at more then just the comment, but about the whole idea of the two of them dying together. There was just something right about it, something fitting that made Sarah at ease with things. She reached out and intertwined her fingers with Derek's. The eldest Reese boy shifted closer to her.
Just as the machine was almost in reach the buzzing sound cut off making Sarah's ears ring.
Suddenly she felt Derek envelop her in a hug and take her to the ground as the deafening roar of an explosion surrounded them.
The sound of water dripping from high pipes above the platform of generators was constant and steady almost like clock work. Though in the wake of distant gun fire echoing above and the grunting and slamming from below it was hard to hear as clear as it was normally.
The body of Ryan Connor flew in mid air and slammed into the railing of the outside staircase that led up to the room he was just in.
He grunted painfully a moment, then he took to an alert move before thinking, making a trained back flip off the side of the staircase and onto one of the generators as a petite girl in tight leather and red helmet charged out, her striking fist just missing the officer and almost demolishing the top railing.
Not wasting any time the Red Mask jumped over the railing gracefully and landed on her feet on top of the generator where Ryan had just landed. Both opponents paused a moment before both sent matching kicks from different legs. When both their shins met there was a cloud of dust that lingered from their boots.
Landing his leg gingerly, Ryan loosed a punch at the girl's head which she ducked quickly, countering with an upper cut that the man was already side stepping out of the way from. With another move Ryan sent a horizontal kick for his opponent's head. The Red Mask ducked and swept her feet below trying to take the soldier's out from under him. Ryan Jumped as if anticipating the move.
As the fight progressed it was a blur of unlanded punches and kicks that moved almost inhumanly fast and seemed to flow like water as each fighter seemed to know what each other was going to do before they did it, making every little mistake a dangerous one.
Aiming a jab, the helmeted stranger cut the air like butter. But like before the hero saw it coming and in quick secession learned from studying Wing Chung as a young adult, Ryan moved in and out of the strike and deflected it with his arm, then sent a powerful jab striking the helmet with a blow from his cybernetic hand that sent a tremor to the face covering.
Trying to recover the girl sent a blind right hook which the soldier used the momentum of the force she exerted that could have punched a hole in a brick wall against her, moving out of the way like a bull fighter, and with a push he sent her off the generator and to the ground.
On the high ground, Ryan leapt off the large power source and sent a flying kick to the Red Mask on the ground. Unexpectantly the girl shot her boot in the air kicking him downward while he was redirected with her other boot across the open path between the rows of generators.
He slid on his side and rolled down the platform protected from the metal burns by his faithful leather jacket.
It wasn't lost on both competitors that they got to their feet in the same manner. This made Ryan think that the girl was mocking him openly, while there was an interested smirk covered by her helmet from the assassin.
"You've gone to far this time!" Ryan coughed at the girl.
"Continue …" the assassin tilted her head.
"These psycho's you've unleashed, they're not people … they're monsters! What don't you understand about that?" he growled.
"I'm not ignorant tunnel trash … these killers are but a means to an end. I can't kill every doctor in this hospital, and I can't destroy every Kaliba facility … but they can." There was a pause and Ryan swore he could feel a smile on her. "It's nice to have some help." She finished.
"All you're doing is giving these attack dogs more bloody meat … you're giving them a reason to murder again!" he accused.
"It's a necessary evil for the greater good."
"It's useless death!"
"John Connor's death was a useless death, the death of a Skynet scientist, of a Dyson, of Sarah Connor, those deaths mean something, they're a ticket to a better future, a safer future. You say that you can stop John's death by protecting Sarah? You're a coward who won't protect his family, because he can't pull the trigger on the woman he idolized in photographs. I'm not a coward; I'm doing what you won't. I'm taking them out!" The anger transcended the emotionless cybernetic voice of the automated filter in the helmet. "And I'll use what ever means necessary to protect him!" in her voice there was no room for compromise, driven like a fanatic to her cause.
At the end of her speech there was a lull to the conversation and for a moment the anger gave way to a sadness that was deep and tore at a person's heart like an angry lion.
"That's not what dad would have wanted …" Ryan for a moment sound like a child again as looked at the girl in front of him. "You know that." He nodded to her heartbrokenly as if fighting her was slowly killing him.
"I know that … and I didn't ask to be brought back and to live without him, but it's what has to be done in the interest of the survival of humanity and the survival of the family." There was shame to her tone that wasn't there a minute ago as she searched Ryan's sad eyes, it slowly tempering her a moment. "If you knew what he means to me and what you mean to me … than you would leave and let me press this button and end my sorrow and be done with it." She begged him, under her helmet he knew would probably find tears.
"You know I can't let you do that … Either we go out with a bang together, or you give me that remote and we both live to fight another day." Ryan had no other emotion for her other than one of sadness and duty.
"And you know I can't allow you neither …"
The lull pasted and one another knew that this battle had to be fought. Ryan got into a fighter stance while the Red Mask in hers.
She made the first pass at Ryan, sending a kick at him knocking him backward, as he stumbled she moved on him. Her swings avoided, Ryan countered with sudden sure footing that he could always have gotten but wanted to draw her into his trap. However his swing went wide and the assassin countered to which he spun out of the way.
She blocked a vulnerable area of her neck from a chop and pushed him back to which he landed a body blow to her chest sending him back peddling as if he had kicked a metal wall.
Seeing her opportunity to strike the Red mask took a hold of her opponent's jacket and threw him mid air into a large metal wall of a generator where he slid down and fell onto a control panel with a painful thud.
He groaned as he rolled off and landed face first on the cement. Watching her victim hazily crawl to an undetermined destination, she followed like a mother would a crawling baby that was trying to escape his confinement.
"One day soon, you'll wake up and look around you, and you'll find everything you hold dear gone, the person you love dead, killed by someone they loved more than the world would ever realize and in that moment I hope you remember me, I hope you've taken notes because the only way to live in a life without your soul mate is to become exactly like me." The words coming from her mouth had a strange sense of prophecy to them, Ryan hated her for it.
"You're a murderer, an emotionless killer who only sees the world in black and white!" He growled stopping to look up at her. "I'm nothing like you!" he yelled at her.
The girl tilted her head toward the man.
"No …" she said almost airily. "Not yet …"
A deep rage welled in Ryan that was shown like a sword being drawn in his eyes. He turned and threw a boot viciously into the Red Mask's knee causing a groaning sound of metal under pressure, dropping her to a knee. Then, with the sound of scraping metal, the soldier drew a thin but strong metal pipe from under him and with a follow through swing slammed it into the red helmet of the girl's sending her to the ground.
With a hatred so fierce a wolverine paled in comparison, Ryan slammed the pipe to her head, denting the helmet. He paused a moment as the girl hoisted herself into sitting position and drew the detonator from her tight leather waistband. She flipped a switch that armed the detonator.
Seeing the action, Ryan's anger boiled over caused by the girl in front of him. He hated the way she pushed him and pushed him, trying to mold him into something that she deemed acceptable.
Then with gritted teeth he let it all out with every swing as he hacked and beat at the girl's arm with pipe. As her arm bent, so did the pipe. Finally with a pressure release with another moan of metal the remote skidded to the floor. But the beating didn't. He struck the Red Mask across the face over and over from one side to the next till finally the pipe busted in half and flew off the platform.
He painted heavily looking at the damage he had created. The assassin was cradling her arm to her chest and the helmet had dents and splintered with strands of brunet hair that fell out of a tight bun sticking out of the cracks.
With a look of pure hatred he tossed aside the half pipe and collected the remote detonator.
"This ends here." he said and pressed the disarm button.
BOOM!
The ground shook like an earthquake and sound of a cascading wall broke the inhuman silence of the catacomb like setting.
Ryan turned to see that the girl was standing again.
"You didn't think I would have made it that easy did you?" a hauntingly innocent voice asked from the splintered helmet.
Then with a snap a gloved fist that struck Ryan in the face, everything went black.
"Where are they?"
John and Cameron jogged to where the jeep had been parked, with the assumption that when the prisoner release alarm went off that they would find Derek and Sarah there waiting for them or at least be close behind them.
But panic began to build when John saw they weren't.
"They're inside still …" Cameron turned to the mental hospital looming over them like a dark foreboding rain cloud.
There was a real fear that began probing John's defenses as he saw no inmates trying to escape as automatic gunfire cut through the cold mid December night. John and Cameron had escaped the carnage, but they knew that inside it was whole sale slaughter for anyone not wearing prisoner scrubs. Every guard, Doctor, and nurse where being cut down like wheat, sounds of brutal murder and rape echoing from the upper levels still rung in John's ear and he could only hope that one of those screams wasn't his mother, and none of the gun shots where for Derek.
"We should go." Cameron turned to John her hair glimmering in the full blue moonlight.
"No we're going to wait!" John growled flicking his vision across the yard looking for any sign of his Parental figures.
"John …" Cameron protested.
"WE WAIT!" He yelled at her. "I LOST HER ONCE IN THERE AND I'M TELLING YOU THAT IF SHE DOESN'T COME OUT OF THERE, I'M GOING IN AFTER HER!" There was a panicked rage to his roars that could have come from a lion with a more mature voice element.
A pause settled over the teens as John's chest huffed wildly.
"We wait." Cameron repeated with a nod.
"We wait …" he sighed in shame at what he saw as a childish fit.
There was another pause filled with the echoing sound of death. John guilty touched Cameron's chin and turned her head to look at the bite mark on her cheek.
"It's already healing … that good." He cleared his throat in a silent apology.
"I wish yours would." She reached out and let his sticky blood from the nail slashes on his cheek stain her finger, a silent acceptance for the yelling.
"Yeah, me too." John sighed, lightly pushing her back against the Jeep, kneeling. He parted her shirt and examined the grizzly cuts to Cameron's smooth belly. "What happened?" he groaned with a wince gripping her naked sides.
"The woman who attacked me said that she couldn't have babies anymore after she drowned hers and said she wanted mine." Cameron frowned at the comment, still trying to understand the reasoning behind it.
John clicked his teeth in audible anger at the person who let the animals out of their cages as well as the woman who tried to rip his best friend's stomach into ribbons.
Seeing the silent brooding anger in John's face, Cameron acted out of automation burying her hands in his hair a moment as he kneeled in front of her his palms warm against her skin.
"They'll heal, John." She reassured him with a smile, hands stroking without knowing it. John gave a tight smile, worry for Sarah and Derek still fresh on his mind.
BOOM!
The feeling of fireworks exploding near his ear sent John to the ground with Cameron on top of him. The explosion was followed with the sound of collapsing concrete as the front wall of the hospital began to collapse.
Without a word John rolled Cameron under the Jeep with him as debris and chalk white dust filled the night air.
Both John and Cameron watched the land slide of concrete together before turning look at each other in the eye both with the same shocked look they sported together all night.
"This just got worst."
There were butterflies in Sarah's stomach as she was led down the emotionless hallways of the sanitarium.
She didn't know how to feel about all of it as different emotions struck her at different times. In a moment she would feel relieved to know that she would finally see John after all these years, while another part of her didn't want him to see her like this, caged like some circus freak for all the shrink to see. Then there was the thought of seeing John himself, how much he had changed in the last two and a half years, was he still the little boy who called her his best friend and planned sleepovers with her instead of with the friends she could never let him have or was he more grown up and the bitter anger he carried for her still in him so passionately.
Her nerves where starting to make her shake as she approached the VIP visitors room. By the time she had gotten to the doors she had forgotten all her jitters and fears, now all she wanted to do was take the love of her life in her arms and spin him around like she once did. She wanted feel his hand under chin, wanted to smell his hair, and touch his skin.
When the door opened she took a deep breath and walked inside.
In the darkened room sat Silberman at the metal table with their usual cot against the wall. His love struck smile sickened her to no end and she almost gagged audibly at the sight of the cot.
"Where's John …?" she asked looking around the room, she caught the tail end of the dubious smile that crossed Dougy's mouth as he started to whistle innocently and sashayed out of the room twirling his night stick.
"Please, Sarah … take a seat." Silberman motioned to the chair.
She eyed him suspiciously but did so sitting across from him on the metal chair.
"You're quite the beauty tonight …" he said with love in his eyes that made the young woman sick to her stomach.
"Where's John?" she said, this time more aggressively ignoring the complement. The doctor gave her one of his signature condescending smiles.
"Let's talk …" he said laying his hands on hers. Her knee jerk reaction was to break every one of his fingers till he brought her son in to the room, but she played along letting him tease and stroke the skin of her slender hand thoughtfully.
"What about?" she tried to ask evenly but her patience was running out and the easy going demeanor that came with her smile looked just as fake as she felt.
"Us …" he smiled softly raising her hand and feather kissing it.
Sarah figured this is the part where he dumps her, saying that he was a man of integrity and that this affair was wrong and he would only do this for her once. She would put on her sad understanding face that said that she respects him and that their passionate nights where what kept her going and that she would always covert him in her heart and all the rest of the bullshit that she figured could get her into a more relaxed security wing of the building, so this time escape would be at hand. She was even willing to fake pregnancy for the next several months just to get into the low security wing.
"You know I love you …" He said sandwiching her hands in his.
"I love you too." Sarah had to rush it out or the lie might have died in her throat.
The older man nodded and patted her hand. Then he sighed and paused for a moment in thought looking at her eyes.
"John's not here, Sarah." He sighed as if it was hard for him to say.
The world came tumbling down around her with his statement. It was the same empty feeling that came from the morning she found out her father left, as well as all those nights in High school lying naked in bed, listening to her mother promise that what she just did to Sarah will never happen again though it would take a T-800 to end it all. But most of all what came to her in that moment was watching the EMS zip shut the body bag over Kyle's face as she lay on a gurney.
"Why not" She sounded absolutely crushed beyond comprehension, shock was glued to her face with the idea of not being able to see and touch the one person who made her who she was.
Silberman sighed and patted her hand some more.
"Sarah, I've been thinking …" he announced. "The reason you were brought in here was because in the future you claim that machines will rise and destroy the human race, but your son will some day lead the resistance against them. You've also claimed that a soldier came to protect you and your unborn son from a machine sent to kill the both of you …" Silberman tilted his head at her unmoving gaze.
"Do you see what the pattern is?" he pushed.
Sarah didn't respond to his question just looked off into space.
"John" she finally responded as if coming to the light. "It's all for John." She looked up at the doctor as if enlightened by some of his words.
The older man smiled lovingly at her.
"Yes, Sarah, John is the pattern, all your destructive qualities in your personality comes from the desire to protect John …" He bore into her eyes as she watched her hands.
"Yes" she nodded in agreement.
"So I think the best way to further your treatment is to separate you from your enabler." He pulled out a document from his lab coat. "I had these documents drawn up for you, they're from DCFS and there about your parental rights to John." He turned the document over and slid it to Sarah.
"No" She shook her head at the document.
"Sarah, Sarah, Sarah …" Silberman sighed at her as if she was a troublesome child refusing to eat her vegetables. "This will be the best for John, you've tried to escape and it didn't work you and if you try again they'll up your sentence … let him start a new life, a better life." He stood as he talked, walking around the table till he was right behind her.
Sarah stared at the document as if the situations and words where being processed in her brain. She felt Silberman's lips start to his her neck while she remained in her waking coma.
"Just think …" he whispered pulling her scrub shirt of her head to reveal a white tank top. "In a year or even in several months you can go free and we can start our life together." The doctor's hand stroked her back, while he whispered in her ear.
"Your story would be an amazing book, I have a small cabin near arrowhead where no one can find us, just the wilderness, and you and me." He cued softly in her hair, lifting her tank top to her chest letting his other hand trace her thoroughly worked abs. "All you have to do is sign the paper Sarah." He pulled her tank top over her head now.
There was a blank look on the beautiful woman's face as she stood topless in front of the man, then she took the chair she was sitting in and turned it to face the man then dutifully she sat, her face near his groin. She looked up at him her arms back like he liked it.
"Oh, you always know how to start right." He traced her lower lip with his thumb and smiled as he began to undo his pants.
Behind her back Sarah unscrewed a pen from the desk.
And when he placed a hand on her head to direct her mouth to begin, Sarah jammed the pen into his knee cap.
"YOU WON'T TAKE ME FROM MY BOY!"
All of Derek's bones hurt and there was a dull ringing in his ear as he awoke. The sound of feet pounding past his ears made him slowly aware of his surroundings.
He slowly remembered hearing the detonator hum and stop. Then that was when instincts took over his first and only reaction was to protect Sarah. Rubble fell on the back of his leg as he covered Sarah with his body.
"Ahh!" Derek yelled when he tried to move his leg from under the rubble.
"It's shattered"
The extreme pain that engulfed him was more than he could ever thought possible. He didn't know what it was like to have a shattered thigh bone, but he figured that this was probably what it felt like.
Panting heavily he looked down to see Sarah lying under him, she was unconscious and her head was lulled to the side with her long raven curls splayed under her. Derek couldn't help but pause at just how beautiful she looked when she slept.
"Attraction to an unconscious woman … that's doesn't strike me as a mental defect at all."
"Sarah …" He wheezed as he loomed over, the pain limiting his speech to weak grunts and whimpered pitches. "Sarah wake up …" he breathed, his hand stroking her hair, fearing to shake her.
"I won't let you take my boy from me …" she moaned, the sound of her voice becoming like angels singing down from heaven to the injured soldier. Relived at the notion that she was alive, he lowered his head down on her chest.
The sound of running feet and automatic rifle fire being shot into the sky out of joy made Derek stay still. He knew that it would be in his best interest to stay down unmoving over Sarah, as to avoid the chaos of the mass exodus taking place.
However an aggressive clinking caught the lieutenant's ear. He lifted his hazel green eyes up to see the upper body of the T-101 crawling after him, its eyes buzzing a blinking red, making slow progress plowing through chalk white cement.
"Damn …" He wheezed again and looked down on the woman bellow him. "Sarah get up." He called, but she didn't move at all. Breathing heavily he blinked back pain filled tears that fell on Sarah's face.
Leg shattered and unable to move, Derek bit his lip and continued to look down at Sarah, as if sensing his urgency her eyes opened to foggy slits. She said nothing just looked at him.
"There your responsibility baby, it's your job to Protect them."
The sound of Catelyn Reese's youthful and sweet southern accent called into Derek's mind, as always his mom reminded him of what he was there for when things seemed confused.
"You know I will …" Derek replied out loud with the same easy tone that his eleven year old self had when she first told him that when concerning Kyle when he began to teach him baseball. But now the blond youth was reminding him that it was now his job to look out for Kyle's family, his family.
Derek coughed and looked up to see the machine moving ever so closer to him.
There were very little regrets that ran through his mind as he got to a knee and looked to fight the Machine hand to hand if he had too in order to protect a dazed Sarah who lay flat on the ground.
Just as it was in reaching distance the sound of rubble crunching paused the machine. The soldier heard it as well and purposeful black combat boots crunched next to Derek. The machine immediately turned to engage the shadow standing next to the officer.
The boots walked with a small jump of building force, then the shadow unleashed a heavy kick to the machines head, making a metallic ring at the force. The machine twisted on its back. The figure pressed his male sized boot the Terminator's torso to pin it to the ground.
SHEEK, SHEEK
BOOM!
The figure smashed the barrel of Sarah's tactical shotgun through the ever smiling endoskeleton's teeth and with a pull of the trigger he obliterated the chip area of the machine putting it down for good.
Derek collapsed to his hands in weakened relief his pain fogging his vision, so much so that he couldn't catch just who it was that ended the killing machines worthless life. All he saw was a familiar figure in black whose face was shadowed.
"John …?" Derek called knowing that there was only one person who could strike a heroic stance of his boot standing on the torso of a wasted machine that he conquered and that was John Connor.
As he faded he could hear his guess gratified.
"Cam … Over here!"
The sound of dripping water returned to its normal claim as the only thing that broke the eerie silence of the underground tunnel power room for the facility.
In the field of generators several rows powered down in light of the fact that there services were no longer required with the fall of the entire front wall of the Hospital destroying rooms and cells alike.
Clinking down out of the control room the Red Mask had removed her badly damaged helmet revealing the face of angel marred by an eye patch. Her single brown orb sought out Ryan still lying face down on the cold concrete floor where she had left him. He was unconscious and a massive bruise would appear on his Jaw where she had hit him.
Cameron was sad as she walked toward her fallen son who looked unpeaceful in his slumber. She kneeled next to him and gently she turned him over.
With her one good hand she unzipped her leather jacket and shrugged it off, reveling a threadbare white tank top. She placed it on her leather clad lap and with one hand, Cameron dragged Ryan over to her, placing his head on her highs. The mother observed her child's face hard pressed to see the shaggy baby boy she knew to the man whose back of the head was buried in her lap.
He had deep black circles of sleeplessness under his eyes and the stubble on his chin was neither designer nor sculpted like Derek's, but coarse and unhealthy making him look used up and worn down. Her finger ran across the facial scar across his right eye, her slender fingers tracing his scar perfectly, knowing that it was her that gave it to him.
"Someday …" she said with a strange pensive voice watching his left cybernetic hand spasm in malfunction. "Someday …" she repeated raising her own left hand to stare at the twisted and deformed limb that Ryan had beaten into a mess with a metal pipe.
She looked from his arm to his eye and back to her arm.
"Someday I hope you'll forgive me for I've turned you into."
"He's more machine now than a man …"
The sound of Ben Kenobi echoed through the living room of the Connor Household.
The two teens who sat on the couch with a box of doughnuts in between them seemed to welcome the lull in the evening.
Since John and Cameron had driven home it had been one problem to the next, needing to find a splint for Derek's shattered right thigh, to keeping Sarah awake for her mild concussion, and then back to finding his uncle some painkillers for his grizzly injury that was testing his vow not to scream in pain.
But after drugging his uncle into a coma and his mother off to take a shower, Cameron had insisted on finishing the final movie of the Star Wars series. John had been showing her a movie a night leading up to the breach of Pescadero.
He had smiled when she seemed to be looking forward to the movies, mostly because it was just the two of them watching them. Derek had claimed that watching them with the machine would ruin the movies for him forever while Sarah often spent more and more of her time stealing Ryan's Intel which was making John concerned at his mother's fascination with the man that barely was around. He had even caught her trying to take his journal once which she passionately denied.
John's amused memory turned to a snort when he turned to Cameron to find her changed into her night gown, engrossed in the movie with a layer of sugar powder around her mouth where she had eaten one of the doughnuts that John forced her to consume on the claim that if he was going to sit on the couch and eat pastries like a brooding twilight fan because of the nights events that she was going to eat with him.
He had to admit he hadn't seen anything cuter since he came to his motel room one day when he was seven to find his mother crying on his bed, because Robert and Anna Scorpio were killed on General Hospital, at dinner she made him swear he would never tell a soul about it.
"What …?" Cameron was looking at him from across the couch, the picture of innocence.
"You got powder all over your mouth." John laughed at her reaching over and brushing some off with his thumb. After a moment and a private look of intimacy from Cameron, while he traced her lips with his wandering thumb. John removed his hand and cleared his throat.
"I'm going to go check on mom and Derek … then I'll get a paper towel." John stood as if the couch was made of hot metal.
"Okay …" Cameron blinked at his strange reaction, then as if it never happened she went back the movie.
John stepped quickly out of the room and felt awkward at the strange need these days to touch his protector in those ways. It was like the more he was aware of not being able to have her the more his brain caused him to touch her in quiet moments. With a sigh John pushed it out of his mind and walked up the stairs to Sarah's room where they had placed Derek.
He was laying on top of the bed with a make shift splint and an IV of painkillers running in his arm. The soldier's face was pale and devoid of color from the pain that at times rendered him unconscious on the ride home.
There was a pang of sadness that hurt John when Cameron had mentioned that Derek might not be able to walk without a cane for the rest of his life. It was hard for John imagine his uncle one of the fiercest men he had ever known being crippled.
Leaning against the door frame, John heard the sound of a sob come from Sarah's bathroom. The young man frowned at the sound, he knew that his mom had gone to take a shower and he heard the sound of the shower head, but he when he heard a whimper a little louder he turned and made his way to the bathroom.
He knocked to announce himself, but when he got no answer he bit his lip and slowly pushed the door open and found Sarah dripping wet wrapped in a towel sitting on the tile floor as the shower continued to run over her head.
She was crying quietly her legs tucked to her chest to which she was hugging, a patient bracelet was gripped tightly in her hand as she rocked back and forth, her face buried in her knees.
John was expecting this to happen. What Pescadero had done to Sarah's head was still effecting her three years later and to be back there again just for John alone who will always saw it as a place that took the woman he loved from him and transformed her into someone he sometimes didn't recognize. When that happened all he wanted to do was tear the building stone for stone.
But seeing her in that moment he never thought about how in the three years he was separated from her, how much he must have changed and how sometimes she didn't recognize him the same way he hadn't her. And in those times maybe she felt like that place stole a piece of him from her like he felt it had him.
Wordlessly John walked to Sarah's crying form. She looked up at the sound of footfalls and when she saw John she shuddered uncontrollably.
"John …" Was all she could muster in the whirlwind of emotions raining down on her like the water.
A tear fell from John's eyes as well and with a half breathe he turned and grabbed another clean towel. He walked back and turned off the shower and knelt sweeping Sarah into his arms and carrying her out of the shower and to the space between the tub and sink. There he slid back against the wall to the floor sitting Sarah in his lap. He took the spare towel and wiped her face with it as she looked into his eyes.
He wasn't aware of his tears till she was tracing them on his cheek.
"I'm sorry …" she whispered in a shaky whimper.
"I know." He replied.
"I'm so sorry for leaving you … for everything." she sobbed suddenly. John tucked her into an embrace, her crying face buried into his black t-shirt.
"I know … god I know." He shushed stroking her wet locks and kissing the top of her head.
The sound of sporadic gunfire and sirens wailing in the distance seemed to complement the devastation that surrounded Ryan as he staggered through the ruins of the mental hospital. The night was cold and the sent of death and concrete choked the air around him.
His breath was a smoky and visible as he wandered around the abandoned building. The Red Mask's broken left behind helmet clutched in his grip.
In the ruins lay burned and buried bodies of inmates caught in the explosion. Among them bullet riddled mix of doctors and nurses, cut down in a hail of gun fire from angry prisoners.
He staggered across a young pretty redheaded nurse completely naked with a bullet hole in her head and a bleeding vagina. Ryan squeezed his eyes shut and kneeled taking a discarded lab coat in hand. When he opened his eyes again he laid it over her dead body and closed her eyes.
He let his hand linger on her cold lifeless cheek for a moment in apology before he stood and moved on.
Past the rubble stood a SWAT van, which had also been riddled by bullets. A row of bodies also littered the area in front of it, some where inmates others where men in riot gear with shattered shields.
Crimson writing overlaid the top of bullet holes and LAPD insignia on the van.
JOHN CONNOR WILLS IT TO BE DONE
The words caused Ryan to clench his fist. Suddenly all the dead doctors, nurses, and guards that were killed in the name of a man that none of them knew at all sent him into a blinding rage.
The bodies and name on the van tore at him as did the knowledge that there was an army of killers unleashed on the population degrading his fathers name in there misguided fanaticism.
He couldn't hold in his emotion in any longer, with hatred he threw the red helmet at the words on the van making a dent on his father's name.
Then he unleashed a rage enticed painful roar to the star field above dropping to his knees wearily and looked down at the dust, panting.
In the shadows from a distance a monster in a metal opera mask observed the hero with binoculars.
"If I didn't want to feed his flesh to my beloved on our wedding day I would almost feel sorry for him …"
A twisted sound of wet rancid meat squishing echoed lightly from under the mask.
"Almost …"
Author's Notes
So this chapter was pretty intense and I hope that it won't make you stop reading.
Now I've gotten several E-mails asking "if Ryan burned Cameron's body along with John's then how can she be the red mask?" well I can go about this two ways.
1.) You can wait for the answer to come in the story because I am going to address it.
2.) You can go to Purpose chapter 18 "Bargain at the Crossroads" and reread the final section where John and Cameron make a deal with Weaver!Sarah. I would say pay attention to what John says Skynet wants from Cameron. Think flash drive.
I've always disliked the unlimited amount of Machines that seem to appear out of no where in FFs of this fandom. So I've intentionally holding back on them so that when a Terminator appears I want there to be a "oh shit!" moment.
If you didn't know, yes, Cameron is the one who cut off Ryan's arm and gauged his eye out when he arrived to rescue Alison.
I like the idea that Sarah without any help just knows who Ryan is from the feeling in her heart. As well as Ryan eventually figuring out who the red mask is through her movements.