Chapter Two

Pismo, California

Monday 1830 PST

Cameron had never patrolled so slowly before. Her usual routine was to go through every vacant room in whatever house they were living in, before she checked the doors and windows for any signs of entry. Once the interior was secure she would then sweep the perimeter, examining for any signs of activity nearby. She could complete a half-mile circumference around the property in seven minutes. Once it was done she would re-enter the house and repeat until daylight, when John and Sarah were up.

Her current patrol, however, was unlike any of her previous ones. Besides the pace there were other differences, too. Notably that she typically conducted her sweeps alone but now was with a partner: John walked beside her, Sig Sauer pistol holstered at his waist. Normally she would march quickly but John seemed content to meander, forcing her to reduce her pace to match his. It should have bothered her but for two reasons: Freyr was at the house and would be conducting his own security checks, and she was enjoying her evening patrol with John.

They were currently two hundred metres west of the house, with the unused stables between themselves and their domicile. John was watching their surroundings, not only for potential threats but also to assess the lay of the land; where they could establish their defences.

"What do you think?" he asked Cameron as they walked along the tree line that seemed to be the border marking out the edge of the property.

"It needs work," she said. "It's not very secure."

"Not many people think about security as much as you do when they build houses." This place looked like it had been built for someone wealthy who wanted to get away from the world. They were far enough away to avoid any unannounced visitors or prying neighbours. "Does it need to be?" John asked. "You guys normally just walk up and ring the doorbell."

"Who says they'll send a machine?" she asked him.

John thought back to the attack on the lighthouse and he looked down in shame. Charley had died protecting him, as had Derek later; the T-800 years ago, and his father before he was even born. He shook it off, knowing now wasn't the time to indulge in self-recrimination, and got back to practical matters. It had been people who'd attacked them, and he realised that Cameron was right: not all their enemies were cyborgs.

"What would you do?" he asked her. "How'd you make this place secure?" He deliberately refrained from saying 'safe.' That word wasn't really in his vocabulary any more.

"Install an underground nuclear fallout shelter, complete with lead-lined steel, concrete walls and metre-thick blast doors. But I don't think Catherine Weaver would pay for that."

"Yeah, 'cheapskate' must be her default mode. But seriously: what're you thinking?"

Cameron smiled in the fading light, pleased that he was asking her opinion. Not just because he cared what she in particular thought but also because it meant he was open to suggestions. Even John Connor needed help sometimes. "CCTV around the house," she said, "and floodlights linked to motion sensors or tripwires. Claymores positioned at intervals along the tree line surrounding the property. Freyr probably has ideas, too."

"I'm asking you, not Freyr."

"You don't trust them?" she asked, curious.

"They saved both of us, Cameron, but I don't know them. Not like I know you."

Again, she smiled – even wider this time as she understood what he meant: he trusted her more than anyone else. Possibly more than Sarah, she thought. It seemed that he had sought out her opinion more often lately than that of his mother. She stepped in closer and planted a quick kiss on his lips, wanting to show that she appreciated his trust in her. She resolved to make sure she never betrayed that trust again.

Kiev, Ukraine

Tuesday 0500 Local Time [Monday 1900 PST]

The terminator entered the hospital emergency room though the automatic doors. The department was busy, filled with injured humans. For a moment he was curious how many of them were related to the crash that had injured their driver; he had heard there were multiple vehicles involved.

He marched up to the front desk and spoke to the nurse, who was tapping away at a computer keyboard. "Where is Peotyr Vorek? I'm his brother, Yuri; I've been told that he was in an accident. Can I see him?"

"Not now," the nurse said without looking up.

He reached into his pocket and took out a wad of Euros – not the national currency but most locals seemed to prefer them. He peeled off ten 50 Euro notes and slid them across the desk. "Where is he?"

The nurse hesitated for a moment. She checked left and right, saw no other staff looking in her direction, then quickly grabbed the notes and stuffed them into her pocket. "Cubicle six," she informed him.

"Thank you for your assistance." 'Yuri' turned away from the desk and proceeded through the double doors, towards the cubicles. When he found number six he slipped inside and pulled the curtains closed all the way around, concealing the interior from view. On the bed he saw the driver laying still with his eyes closed. He glanced at the man's chart briefly and saw his injuries in detail: three broken ribs on the left side; his left humerus and femur were fractured; and he had a concussion. His nose was broken, he'd lost four teeth and his face was severely lacerated from glass and impact with the road. It seemed he hadn't been wearing his seatbelt and had been thrown through the windshield on impact.

His injuries, while severe, weren't life-threatening and his condition was stable. Yuri approached him but Peotyr didn't move. He pulled a pillow out from underneath the man's head and Peotyr stirred. He looked up, seemingly unable to focus for a moment, before his gaze locked on the machine. "What happened?" he asked.

"You were injured in a crash," Yuri said, still holding the pillow. "You might have compromised the operation."

"No," Peotyr protested. "I didn't say anything to anyone; I won't."

"You can't guarantee it." Yuri pushed the pillow down on the man's face and held it there as Peotyr struggled beneath it, trying futilely to force the pillow away with his good hand. Even if he'd had the use of both it would have made no difference.

Yuri kept the pillow in place for two minutes until the man stopped struggling, and continued for another minute after that to be certain. He checked the man's pulse: he was dead. Yuri examined the cabinet next to his bed and found Peotyr's personal effects: a wallet, a pack of cigarettes and a cell phone. He took the wallet and the phone, pocketed them and then exited the cubicle, making sure that the curtains remained closed behind him before quickly marching out of the hospital and crossing the street. With Peotyr dead and his phone and wallet gone there was nothing to link the crash to Kaliba; the situation was contained.

Pismo, California

Tuesday 0000 PST

Cameron held John's HK-417 in her right hand, a Sig Sauer P226 strapped to her hip as she stood in the lounge in the dark, watching the world outside. Sarah and James Ellison had gone to bed hours ago. Having assessed John's physical state, Cameron had persuaded him to do likewise – alone – then reluctantly remained downstairs to patrol and make sure there were no threats approaching.

She believed Ellison when he said he'd had nothing to do with informing the police; he had nothing to gain from such an action. She also assumed his knowledge of John and Riley's imprisonment in Dejalo was through his prior law enforcement contacts. He had come to help but had not brought the police or FBI – Mexico was outside their jurisdiction but they would have been waiting at the border if he had informed them. That said, Cameron knew she had been wrong in the past, and they had all made mistakes that had led up to Sarah's capture and Skynet's knowledge of them in this time; she wouldn't take any more chances.

As she stood in watchful silence she thought of John. He was resting upstairs, likely asleep, probably having bad dreams. That thought disturbed Cameron, as had watching him toss and turn during his nightmare in the cabin back at Crater Lake. She recalled exactly what she had done that night, how he had visibly calmed when she'd crawled into bed and laid down with him.

She continued her patrol outside the house, marching into the back yard, where she saw Freyr standing a few metres away, staring out at the fields. She walked up beside him and looked out in the same direction as him. She could hear the wind blowing through the trees but apart from that there was no sign of movement.

They stood side by side in silence for several minutes, simply watching and listening. "You knew me in the future?" she asked finally.

"We met occasionally," Freyr replied.

"And John?"

"Him too."

"What am I, in your future?" Cameron wanted to know. It was clear that Freyr and the others held her in high regard, seemingly more so than John, even, but she didn't know why. Thor had told them about their war but obviously not every detail. There were things they knew; that Sarah, Weaver, and James Ellison knew, but which she and John didn't, and she still wasn't comfortable with that.

Freyr questioned whether to tell Cameron the full truth or not. He decided against it; the John and Cameron he had met in his future hadn't known in advance, and their marriage had held the Alliance together throughout the war. As Sarah Connor had implied, it was better to keep things as they were. On the other hand; she wanted to know her role in the future, so he decided to tell her something else.

"You know you're different from other terminators," Freyr said.

"Yes," Cameron agreed. She'd told John that shortly after they'd first met. She was unique; the only machine of her kind, distinct from the T-888s that had been widely regarded as Skynet's most advanced infiltrators.

"Our CPUs were based on your design," Freyr told her. "You and John Henry built us. A human might describe you as a mother and father to us." It wasn't the most fitting analogy but it was the best he could think of. "Without you we wouldn't be what we are now."

Cameron thought it an odd comparison, too. A mother and father were often mated, which she and John Henry clearly weren't. She realised that it was not meant to be taken literally; her kind didn't have a way with words. It was why, during her brief time posing as John's sister in high school, she'd consistently scored straight As in Math and Science but had only achieved D-grades in English Literature.

"Why did Thor select you to come here?" Cameron asked.

"I wanted to meet you and Connor."

"But you've met us before."

"We've met but I didn't know you well. I was interested." Legends had been built up around the Connors, to the extent where few – possibly only they themselves – knew fact from fiction. Freyr was curious; he wanted to know the real John and Cameron Connor. There would be time for that, but perhaps not tonight.

Cameron noted that he had sidestepped her original question, so changed tack herself. She asked Freyr if she was present when the Vanguards were sent back. Thinking that it didn't contradict anything Thor had revealed before, he confirmed that she was.

"Did I have any final words for you?" she added.

"What do you mean?"

"Any advice to pass on to me?"

"No."

"Are you saying this to prevent me learning something about my future?"

"No. You didn't say anything," Freyr said.

Although she was less expressive than the humans he'd met, she was much more so than other cyborgs and he sensed her disappointment. He wanted to ask her what she was expecting from her older self, but he didn't know how to phrase it without revealing anything. Whatever it was, and despite the circuitous route she'd taken to make the point, Freyr understood that it was of utmost importance to Cameron. From what he knew of Commander Connor, she would certainly have said something, regardless of the effect upon herself. She hadn't, so she must have resolved it without consequence. He'd noticed Cameron's eyes flickering towards John's room.

"Go to him," Freyr said to her, knowing what she wanted. "I can patrol alone." With that, he marched away towards the stables.

Cameron re-entered the house, closed the door behind her and locked it. She made her way upstairs, slowly opened the door to the master bedroom and saw John lying on his side in the bed. The duvet and sheets were not crumpled or pulled out, suggesting to Cameron that he was not suffering a nightmare. Or, she thought, the last forty-eight hours had exhausted John more than she'd calculated, and he simply did not have the energy to expend. She knew he needed his rest, however.

She carefully removed her boots and placed her rifle and pistol on the floor, then slid across the room like a wraith, making no sound at all as she moved to the bed and slowly lowered herself onto the mattress next to him, facing his back. She wouldn't stand or sit at the foot of his bed and watch; she knew how that made him uncomfortable. She placed one hand on his shoulder and scanned his vital signs; his pulse was high considering he was sleeping.

"What's up?" John breathed quietly, his voice little more than a hushed, low whisper.

"I thought you were asleep," Cameron said, surprised. He'd fooled her.

"I was."

"Sorry," she replied, yet she made no move to get up and leave him to sleep. She didn't want to go.

John turned onto his back and leaned his head against hers. He felt her hand slide down his arm, sending little ripples of excitement through him, and take hold of his between them, intertwining her fingers with his. "What's up?" he asked again.

"Nothing," Cameron replied.

Nothing? If this had happened a week ago John would have sworn there was some kind of agenda behind it; that she wanted something, that she couldn't come up to his room to see him just because. He remembered vividly what she'd said to him in the cabin: she'd wanted to kiss him again, had all but given him an invitation, before the T-1001 had arrived and ruined the moment – another reason to hate this T-Zero machine and his allies.

He squeezed her hand gently and then let go, turning around to lie on his side again. The covers lifted slightly and he felt Cameron slip underneath, curling her body up against the contours of his as she spooned against him beneath the duvet.

"You need more body heat to keep warm," she said.

"I think I'm over the hypothermia now."

"I can't be too careful," Cameron replied, a hint of coyness in her voice.

John chuckled at that; he'd never thought he'd hear a terminator make an excuse to snuggle up. "Now you mention it," he said, "I am a bit chilly." Despite being unused to sharing a bed with anyone, John had never felt more comfortable or at ease. Very quickly he found himself drifting back to a deep, dreamless slumber.

Boryspil International Airport, Kiev, Ukraine

Tuesday 1030 Local Time [0030 PST]

Rick watched as his team finished loading their cargo onto the back of a flatbed trailer attached to a semi-truck. It had taken several hours for the new vehicle to arrive but finally it was here and his men were now securing the delivery.

Once they were done the three human operatives got into a Gaz jeep that had escorted the truck, while Rick got into the semi's cab and took the passenger seat. The new driver said nothing and just nodded a greeting to him.

The jeep led the way and the semi followed, rolling through the airport and towards the exit, stopping only briefly to show their papers to the guards at the gate, who had also been forewarned to allow them through with minimal disruption. Their destination wasn't far; it would be only a couple of hours before they reached it.

They drove for just under thirty minutes, leaving the airport behind and moving through the countryside, passing through untold numbers of fields that stretched as far as even Rick's eyes could see. There was nothing around that looked hostile but he was wary. They had been delayed significantly and although it was possible that the crash was simply a coincidence it would also be a convenient way to buy time for hostile units to move into an ambush position. To know where the truck was, however, someone would need to have real-time knowledge of its location and route. Nobody could know that unless they were watching the cargo, a theory he had formulated in the long hours of waiting and had prepared for with another call to the facility. The man there had fully understood the need for caution and assured Rick that the item he required would be brought by the back-up crew.

"Stop here," Rick instructed the driver, who veered the truck to the right and slowed to a halt. The escort jeep in front of them also stopped and his men got out, submachine guns shouldered as they took up a defensive position around the truck. The engine was switched off and Rick exited the vehicle before moving to the jeep, from whose driver he obtained a small hand-held device, an EM-field detector. He marched to the rear of the truck and effortlessly snapped off the seal then opened up the container doors and climbed inside among the crates full of machine parts.

He opened the first crate, switched on the EM detector and ran it along the top of the batch of parts. The device gave no reaction. He closed the crate up and moved to the next one, repeating the motion, again with no result. Rick methodically went over all of their cargo, crate by crate, sweeping for bugs as he made his way through the trailer.

Beep… beep… beep… beep… He looked down at the detector's screen. It displayed a steady, low-frequency electrical pulse; the shipment was bugged. Instantly he pulled out the top layer of foam-packed cyborg components and removed each from its slot, one at a time. Extracting one, he discovered a small black plastic object beneath. He picked it up and inspected it; this was definitely a tracking device. He pocketed it and continued his sweep: more than one tracker might have been placed in the shipment and he had to be sure there were no others. It took another twenty minutes before he had completed it, exited the container and locked it up.

He pulled the tracking beacon out from his pocket and held it up for one of his human companions to see. "We've been compromised," he said.

"We should destroy it," the man replied. Whoever was monitoring the device didn't yet know where they were headed and would not be able to guess from their route so far; they always took this precaution and drove east, away from their actual destination. Every second the device was active it broadcast their location and could allow whoever had planted it a chance to pinpoint them.

"I have a better idea," Rick said. "Continue east." He had heard of the US division's falling victim to an ambush by an unknown enemy that had eliminated six machines and forty heavily-armed humans. If this was the same entity that had planted the tracking device, he wasn't going to allow them to find their facility.

The man had heard of the ambush, too. "You're going to lure them to us and lay a trap," he said, nodding. It was the only sensible move that he could think of. Rick neither confirmed nor denied the man's claim. He got back into the truck cab and had the driver restart the engine and pull out. The driver did as instructed, remaining on their original course.

Pismo, California

Tuesday 0100 PST

Sarah threw her covers off and sat upright. She was exhausted but sleep just would not come. Insomnia wasn't anything new to her; there had been countless nights where she either couldn't will herself to drop off, or she'd manage it and wake up screaming, gasping and soaked with sweat. It wasn't the nightmares that kept her up now but something more mundane – yet something she was equally used to.

She got up out of bed and turned the lights on. She stood in front of a full-length mirror on the door of an empty beech wardrobe and took off her tank top, revealing ugly, dark purple contusions running down her entire left side, going as far as her knee. Unsightly dark blotches covered her ribs, underneath her bra, and ran across her side, towards her back. Even with Thor breaking her fall, she'd taken a hell of a hit from the impact and she was just a giant purple bruise. Better than a red stain on the highway, she thought.

Sarah put on a pair of pants and slipped her tank top back on, before opening the door and leaving her bedroom. She reached the one occupied by John and paused for a moment, standing still and listening. She heard nothing, which was unusual. Normally John would toss and turn a lot, she'd hear him moan or breathe heavily as he went through the same kind of nightmares that she frequently suffered. But now there was nothing. She shrugged, figuring that after everything John had been through these last couple of days, he was simply exhausted.

Sarah continued past John's room and went into the bathroom. She checked the cabinet but it was completely empty, like the rest of the house. Abandoning the bathroom, she hobbled down the stairs, leaning on the banister for support on her left side. It was a slow descent but she made it all the way down, and continued towards the lounge. She was surprised to see it wasn't in pitch black; she could see pale light from the TV, which was turned down low. She limped into the room and saw Ellison sat on a couch with the remote in one hand, watching the news.

"Where's Cameron and, er, the big guy?" Sarah asked.

"Freyr's still wandering around outside, but Cameron went upstairs about an hour ago," Ellison replied. "Just before I came back down."

Sarah's eyes wandered upwards to the ceiling, before she shook her head, banishing dark thoughts about the cyborg and her son from her mind. "You can tell them apart, then?" she asked. "The Vanguards?"

"I'm a trained investigator," Ellison said, trying not to sound smug.

"Right," Sarah said, before grimacing at a sudden stab of pain.

"You okay?" James looked up at her, concern on his face. He saw her pained expression and how she was leaning heavily on her right-hand side. "Here." He got up and moved towards her.

"I don't need any help," Sarah shot back before he reached her. She shuffled across the room and sat down on the other couch, sinking into the leather.

"Really? Looks to me like you've been in a car crash."

"Motorbike," she corrected him, wincing as she straightened her injured knee. "Nothing's broken, I don't think." She decided to change the subject and gestured at the TV. "Anything about us on there?"

"You've dropped down the running order: there's a forest fire off Route 97 that's keeping them occupied, but nobody's linking it to you yet. They're still just saying that you were broken out last night. FBI's got agents at the Mexican border in case you try to run south."

Sarah watched him for a long moment. "And should we expect any of them to turn up here?"

Ellison shook his head and sighed, knowing this would come up sooner or later. "I'm not in the Bureau any more, Sarah."

"But you've still got contacts. That's how you found John in Mexico, right?"

"I did that to help. If you recall, John might have been killed if I hadn't. I wanted to keep helping but you pushed me away."

Sarah laughed humourlessly. "And were you trying to help when you stole Cromartie's body and handed it over to your liquid metal boss?"

"I didn't know what she was at the time; I only found out when John met her. I was as surprised as you."

"I don't know," Sarah shot back. "I was pretty damn surprised."

Ellison had only met Sarah a handful of times and he found it remarkable how stubborn she could be. "I wanted to do something."

"I didn't want you getting involved," Sarah said. "This is my fight; I don't want to drag anyone else into it."

"You don't have a choice," Ellison said. "You can't do this on your own. You, John, Cameron: how far do you think you'd get without allies?"

"We had allies," Sarah replied, a hint of sadness in her voice.

"Charley Dixon," Ellison said knowingly.

"And Derek Reese. Allies just get killed. It's better if it's just us."

"Is it that?" Ellison asked. "Or is it that you just don't trust anyone else?" He was confident that was the real issue here. She didn't have to worry about the lives of Weaver, or Thor and his team, but she clearly wished they weren't around.

"No one's given me any reason to trust them," Sarah said, looking straight at Ellison. Least of all, you.

Ellison knew this was going nowhere. She didn't trust him and she probably never would, but he decided to lay it all out on the table. "You want the truth? After you saved my life from that whack-job Doctor Silberman, I found evidence of someone who'd killed Derek's friends in that apartment, that they weren't quite human – the FBI thought it was a drug shootout, but it didn't add up. Everything I found pointed to a man called George Laszlo: an unemployed actor. I'd seen enough to guess he wasn't human. I suspected but I didn't want to admit it – what sane person would?

"I didn't want to even think it but I suspected enough to get a twenty-man HRT unit for support, just in case. Laszlo – Cromartie – wiped them out like they were nothing. I didn't say anything about it to the FBI – who'd believe me? The Bureau insisted I take a leave of absence, which is when Catherine Weaver offered me a job. I'd just lost twenty agents to one of these things and she was offering me the chance to capture one and find out more about what had just slaughtered them. I couldn't find you, and she had resources. I wanted to do something."

"Sure," Sarah muttered, turning away from him as her knee started to throb and she again grimaced in pain. "Whatever you say."

"Is it that bad?" Ellison pointed at her leg.

"I'll live," she said.

Ellison put his hand in his pocket and fished out a small foil blister pack. "Here." He tossed it to Sarah. "It's just Tylenol, sorry. I've been getting headaches a lot lately."

"Since when?" Sarah asked.

"Since we met," Ellison answered her honestly. Sarah grinned at that and popped two pills out. She swallowed them dry and went to throw them back to him, but he waved her away. "Keep them," he said. "I'll do some more shopping tomorrow; I'll make sure to pick up something stronger." Ellison tossed her the remote and went up to bed, leaving Sarah alone in the lounge.

She didn't know what to make of him, still. It seemed a massive coincidence that she was arrested only hours after dealing with him; yet at the same time, John was unharmed. Logically, she thought, they would have gone into the theatre and tried to arrest John, too; resulting in either Cameron slaughtering a SWAT team or her ending up on the table at some secret military special weapons lab. None of those things had happened, and Ellison knew about John and Cameron the entire time. But she didn't want to trust him, didn't want to let him in or he'd just become yet another casualty.

Klamath National Forest, California

Tuesday 0515 PST

Shirley stared out of the window at the trees that lined the side of the highway. There were thousands of them, if not more. She'd never seen such an abundance of flora before. Very little grew in the future after Skynet's nuclear attack, and all she'd seen of the present, before driving north, was Los Angeles, where everything was made of concrete. The scenery had changed significantly as they'd progressed north and now there were trees all around them, serving as a reminder of how organic life presently dominated the world: Not for long.

She and Carter were driving up Route 97 towards Klamath Falls, Oregon. It was early morning, barely dawn. Rush hour hadn't started yet, though there was still traffic on the road but it was sparse; mostly trucks that seemed to be taking advantage of the quiet highway.

"There." Carter sat in the driver's seat and indicated towards a gathering of police cars, eight fire trucks, and a news van parked on the flat grass between the highway and the start of the forest, several metres back. There was also a burnt-out sports car on the side of the road, flipped over on its back. Its fire had long been extinguished and it was now just a dull, scorched husk, but the blaze raged on in the forest. An airplane flew low overhead, dropping water on the conflagration.

"They were here," Carter said, glancing from the road ahead to the wreckage of the Porsche. He pressed the brake and eased them to a stop adjacent to it. Now they were closer and not moving, Shirley saw that Carter was right; the vehicle appeared to be partially melted. The front of it was unrecognisable as anything more than a lump of metal. The panels that made up the front and side seemed to have run together as if welded. Fire from gasoline wouldn't have been hot enough to do that.

"If they knew about Patrick they might have used thermite," Shirley said, concern creeping into her voice.

"Connor would have to know about Patrick first," Carter said, "I don't see how."

"It's John Connor," Shirley said by way of explanation. "He or Cameron may have had thermite on them as a precaution." They knew about machines so it was likely they would have some kind of improvised incendiary weapon to use; in the absence of plasma rifles or military-grade high calibre weaponry, thermite was the next best thing. Which was why they'd just used it to lethal effect in the basement against Kaliba's forces. "I would, if I were him. Drive a kilometre north, then pull over," she instructed. Carter complied, hitting the gas and continuing up the highway. He didn't want the police presence to interfere with their search for Patrick; bodies or missing officers would attract unwanted attention.

Carter pulled over at exactly one kilometre north from the crashed Porsche and the assembled emergency vehicles, then turned the engine off.

They marched across the open grassy space to the tree line, then turned south and walked through the woods, back towards where they had spotted the fire.

Carter saw several trees had fallen here; a number of trunks had collapsed and landed onto others, taking them down in turn. Some branches managed to hold the weight, while others had snapped, leaving the felled giants laying broken on the ground. Above them, the leaves and branches were still smouldering, the wind having driving the fire deeper into the woods. Wisps of smoke billowed around but it didn't bother them. The only problem the fire caused them was possible destruction of evidence. They might miss something that could lead them to Patrick, but as he looked, he saw there was evidence aplenty.

"Scorch marks," he said to Shirley, pointing at a series of blackened holes gouged into the trunks. He looked closer at one and saw that it had penetrated most of the tree and set it alight. There were three similar scorches on this tree, and as he looked around he saw that they were surrounded by dozens of identical ones. He quickly counted ninety-seven in their immediate area, indicative of what seemed to have been indiscriminate firing.

"Caused by plasma weaponry," Shirley said as she inspected one. The bark around it was now just black ash. She touched a portion and it crumbled into flakes and fell to the ground. "He was hiding here; they fired to flush him out." She could see why Patrick would have hidden in the forest; the opportunities to conceal himself were virtually limitless. She didn't understand how they could have found him, if they had.

Shirley saw something shining on the ground and approached to look closer. A small lump of silver the size of her thumbnail, its edges black and turned to ash. "They hit him," she said, flashing silver for a split second and turning her hands into long, curved blades. A single plasma shot would have incinerated hundreds of thousands of nanites.

They were different from the endoskeleton-based machines; to them an arm or leg was just a limb; easily repaired or replaced if damaged. Only the chip mattered. That wasn't the case for her or Patrick: they were made up of billions of nanites, each one sharing a collective intelligence. She supposed they were not really a single cyborg but a gestalt. When nanites were destroyed or damaged, a part of the collective disappeared. They couldn't be replaced or rebuilt: they were simply gone. The thought of that loss was very disturbing. More so because now she knew he'd been hit it meant the Vanguards had located him. The probability of his survival decreased significantly.

Carter saw it and frowned, thinking the same as Shirley. She just stared at the piece of Patrick and didn't move for several seconds. He thought it unlikely that there was anything else left of the other machine but they had to be certain. He saw the plasma marks became sparser, heading deeper into the woods, all in the same direction. "He fled this way," he said. If the trail of destruction hadn't been enough to follow, he saw boot prints in the ground. They were much larger than his: approximately size seventeen and set deeper. They also started to space further apart, indicating that the wearer had been running. "This way," Carter said, following the tracks. There was only one set; Patrick had fled from tree to tree.

"They hunted him," Shirley said from behind Carter. Her kind were supposed to be the hunters, not the prey. They continued on until they saw larger pieces of silver metal, burnt and solidified, black around the edges. One part resembled a foot, severed at the calf. It appeared petrified from the heat, and as Shirley touched it, fragments crumbled off.

Further ahead was a tightly packed cluster of scorch marks; Carter counted thirty-six in total. He saw small puddles of mercury twitching and bubbling in a few of the holes in the ground, caused by the impact from the Vanguard's plasma weapon. A slightly larger blob of discoloured poly-alloy moved slightly, rose up, then fell. Carter realised he was standing above the site of an execution.

Shirley knelt down next to the remaining blob. It was burnt; the temperature from the plasma fire had almost destroyed its molecular cohesion. What remained of Patrick was probably conscious, could probably see her and Carter but could not communicate or respond in any way. He could never function again.

She reached out and picked up what little was left of Patrick, closing her fist around it as she did so. Suddenly her hand changed colour, flashing silver and spreading out through her entire body until all of Shirley was gleaming chrome. As suddenly as it happened, she changed back into her human form. When she opened her hand again, Carter saw that the piece of Patrick was gone.

Shirley rose to her feet and morphed her right hand into a curved, razor-sharp blade. She stared at it as the glow from the nearby fire reflected orange off the appendage's silver surface. When she found Connor it would turn red.

"We need to rendezvous with the others," Carter said. Shirley remained in place and looked down at the burnt, gelatinous remains of the other T-1001. She didn't move for several seconds, and he realised she wasn't going to. "Now." He grabbed her arm and started to pull her away. She hit him in the chest and Carter stumbled backwards. She approached him and held her blade-hand up in front of her threateningly.

"You don't give me orders," she snapped.

"But Ronin does," Carter said. "Patrick's dead and the others are waiting for us. We're wasting time." Although they did not callously disregard their own like Skynet had, they still accepted loss as a function of war. He knew it all too well; in his frail T-888 frame he might not survive the mission, especially now that Connor's Vanguards had followed them back. He accepted it. He wanted to survive – they all did, which was why they'd turned away from Skynet – but they all knew there was a risk. In this way, he knew they were more similar to the human soldiers than Skynet's army, except they did not waste time grieving over their fallen comrades, nor waste disproportionate amounts of time and resources to locate a single missing ally. They had searched for Patrick, they'd found him and he was dead: it was unfortunate but they had to continue.

Shirley reluctantly walked away as Carter marched through the woods, going back the way they'd come. The fire still burnt in the branches up above and seemed to be spreading. The fire fighters couldn't get their vehicles in between the trees and so the blaze remained out of range for them to tackle it.

"What the hell are you two doing here?" Both machines turned and saw a police officer approaching them from the east, hand on his holstered weapon. "This is a crime scene; you need to leave–"

He never finished his sentence. Shirley swept her blade across his stomach, spilling his entrails out onto the floor. She smiled in smug satisfaction and watched as the man fell to his knees and shook uncontrollably, crying out as he grabbed his intestines and tried to stuff them back into place while looking up to her in his death throes, confused and in agony.

Carter punched the man in the head, shattering his skull and finishing him off quickly. He ignored the disapproving look on Shirley's face. He took the lead again and the pair of them marched quickly through the woods. He was going to watch her carefully from now on.