Chapter Fourteen
Pripyat, Ukraine
Saturday 1415 Local Time [0415 PST]
The loading yard at the rear of the dilapidated-looking factory was completely still, with not a soul in sight. It was a large space, over two thousand square metres in area, surrounded by four metre high walls that were topped with razor wire. The only access into the yard was through a heavy, wrought-iron gate that appeared to be rusted with age and neglect, apart from the hinges. On the outside of the gate was an intercom system that again looked like it hadn't been used for over twenty years. A pair of CCTV cameras positioned above the loading bays were the only things that were out of place: they were far too clean and new; several generations ahead of the former-Soviet tech that should have been there instead.
That fact didn't go unnoticed by a small silver worm peeking up over the top of the wall, camouflaged by the razor wire that was a similar colour to it. The rest of Shirley was clinging flat against the wall, invisible to anyone without advanced thermal imaging hardware. She'd moved so slowly towards this point that even motion sensors wouldn't have spotted her. From her current position she could see both inside the yard and also behind her; if there were any external patrols she'd see them.
Watching the cameras, she calculated the angles they were covering. Inside the yard, two metres from the wall and running parallel to it, was one of two semi-trucks. The other was at a right angle to it, flush against the rear wall, where it had reversed to await the departure of the first transport before it backed into the loading bay. The second truck didn't interest her but she estimated that the first would conceal her entry over the wall from the cameras' view. She took the opportunity and crawled over the top, elongating herself into a silver snake and weaving between the gaps in the razor wire.
Once she was inside she maintained her serpentine shape and slithered underneath the truck's trailer, crawling forward and using the vehicle to keep her out of any possible view. She reached the loading bay and flattened herself again, taking on the colour of the ground as she made herself practically invisible and slowly edged forward. The loading bay was unoccupied. There was a pallet truck next to the wall to her left, presently unattended by whoever would be loading or unloading cargo into or out of the waiting truck.
"I'm inside," she communicated to Ronin via the piece of her she'd left with him. Finding the loading bay still empty she continued on her way, carefully watching her surroundings until she reached a large open space bisected by a blue line on the floor. To the left of the line was just empty floor but to the right there were large wooden crates neatly arranged in lines, with two metres between each row. It seemed to be a staging area where they moved cargo to get it out of the way so that loading and unloading could continue, before it was moved to another location.
She heard voices speaking in what she assumed was Ukrainian and remained still as they approached. They stepped on her as they walked through the warehouse towards the loading bay she'd just come from. She was concerned for a moment that she had been detected as one of them paused to pull out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter as they passed over her but they moved on and disappeared into the bay.
With the loading bay behind her there were two wide entrances, both without doors and with signs above them that she couldn't read. They'd been in such a hurry to leave Chihuahua that there hadn't been time to learn the language.
Straight ahead or left? Anyone else – cyborg or human – would have been faced with a choice, but not her. Shirley turned chrome again, resembling a silver puddle on the floor. She then split herself in half and both segments then rose up and took on the respective appearances of the two men who'd walked on her en route to their cigarette breaks. In order to maintain their exact dimensions she had to create a cavity inside each torso, so as she walked through the two corridors, both Shirleys were actually hollow.
The two T-1001 halves marched quickly through the factory: the right-hand one entering a large warehouse that ran the length of the building while the other one walked into a packing area full of tall boxes that looked similar to coffins: she assumed these would be used to store each completed machine individually.
The Shirleys marched even faster, wanting to complete their reconnaissance as quickly as possible before the two humans she was impersonating returned to work. If someone saw the copy and then the real thing moments later in the direction she'd just come from, she'd be compromised. The T-888s knew what T-1001s were and were probably all aware that at least one had been involved in the ZeiraCorp ambush. She continued with an increased sense of urgency.
Six T-888s had spread out in an all-round defence, weapons taken from Chihuahua held at the ready as they scanned the area for signs of movement while their commander and his two lieutenants knelt over a silver puddle on the ground. Ronin, Caesar and Icarus watched closely as the puddle's edges straightened into a rectangle. Parts of the mass then raised slightly, forming straight lines and boxes inside the perimeter until it formed a three dimensional floorplan of the factory. Very clever, Ronin thought. He'd expected the piece of Shirley to have just described what she saw to them, but she'd gone one better.
The puddle then came together, receding from its previous shape and rising up. As it did so, Caesar noticed the ground was indented in the exact pattern the liquid metal had formed, imprinting it perfectly onto the mud. The liquid metal then morphed into a miniature version of Shirley and looked up at them. She pointed at one edge of the building. "This is the ground floor," she said. She pointed to different sections and named them. The largest section was the factory floor itself. "They have one production line operational, one spare, and another under construction." She went on to detail the layout; how in another room just off the factory floor she'd seen a machine walking around, picking up and manipulating objects, jumping up and down, and throwing and catching a ball with a human.
"Testing their motor functions," Icarus surmised.
She continued to describe the factory and how it operated. The factory itself was actually an assembly plant: shipments of pre-built parts arrived, were sorted and placed on the factory floor to be assembled by a combination of automated machinery and human manual labour.
"There are two kinds of cyborgs," she told them. "The standard T-888 and the new ones we saw in the memory files. They're designated T-Triple-Eight Combat Variant; T-TECs for short."
"T-TEC," Ronin repeated. "I like it."
"Eight of the T-TECs are active: four work on the production line and four are acting as security detail. They're armed with belt-fed machine guns and grenade launchers."
Icarus frowned. "They're expecting us?"
"They know we're targeting them so they've increased their security detail," Caesar said. "Most Kaliba installations have probably done the same. If they expected us imminently there'd be sixty active T-TECs, not eight."
Ronin agreed with his lieutenant's opinion. "They're expecting us to attack but they don't know where. They've spread themselves thin."
"How many T-TECs do they have in total?" Ronin asked the mini-Shirley.
"Sixty deactivated and packed in crates; three are going through post-production testing."
"Plenty," he said.
"Plenty of reinforcements they can activate and send against us," Icarus said.
"Plenty of bodies for our comrades to inhabit," Ronin corrected him.
Caesar knew exactly what he meant. "With that many inactive in storage we don't need to worry about preserving any of the active ones."
"We'll need to be quick," Ronin said. He turned to Icarus. "Position the others on a rooftop overlooking here." He pointed to the south wall of the building, which according to Shirley's floorplan ran parallel to the production lines. "Open fire on the wall. Blast it open and draw their fire. Caesar and I will infiltrate from here." He pointed to the section that represented the loading bay on the north end. He glanced up at Icarus. "Shoot to kill, and keep yourselves behind cover. I don't want any more casualties. Keep them distracted."
"What are you going to do?" Icarus asked him.
Ronin's answer was immediate and absolute. "I'm going to kill them all."
Minutes later Ronin and Caesar waited around the corner from the yard at the rear of the factory, out of the building's direct line-of-sight. They were in position, ready to infiltrate, but were waiting to hear the sounds of a firefight.
"As soon as we're inside proceed to the warehouse and prevent anyone from activating the T-TECs," Ronin told Caesar.
"Understood," the T-900 replied. Caesar was heavily armed with a rocket launcher slung over his back, a belt-fed machine gun hanging from a strap on his side and an M-32 grenade launcher in his right hand. Ronin, on the other hand, carried no weapons at all. He activated his plasma cannons, once again tearing apart the skin that had barely regrown from the last time. Armed and ready, now they just had to wait.
Icarus lay prone on the flat roof of the long-derelict four-storey building that overlooked the factory, holding Caesar's M200 sniper rifle while the T-888s under his command spread out with their weapons; a mixture of machine guns, grenades and rocket launchers. Two of them were on the roof with him while the other two pairs were in ground-level flanking positions wide out to the left and right, providing multiple angles of fire those inside would have to contend with.
At their distance from the target he didn't need to look through the scope; they were less than a hundred metres away and it didn't matter where on the wall he hit. He pointed the weapon at the centre of the wall, behind which would be the main floor of the factory, containing the production line, and squeezed the trigger.
The shot blasted out of the rifle with the noise and force of a cannon and enough recoil to have painfully smacked his shoulder, had he been human. The .408 round punched a hole in the concrete the size of a dinner plate, allowing him to see inside the factory. In the space of a moment he saw men standing at an automated line, glancing at the hole he'd made, staring in silent confusion.
The silence didn't last. Once Icarus had loosed the first shot the others in his squad opened fire too. Two rockets and a volley of grenades widened the hole he'd made until a truck could've been driven right through without touching the sides. Icarus this time used the scope and selected a target; a figure wielding an AK. He fired and the round took his head clean off. More men and even some machines wilted under the withering fire. A few individuals – probably cyborgs – fired back but the enemy was concealed and elevated, so their shots were ineffective.
Caesar pulled up the rolling doors to one of the two loading bays and held it open as Ronin entered, before he went through himself and let it drop behind him. Inside they saw everything exactly as Shirley had described it to them: there was a pallet truck to one side and ahead of them they saw the sorting area, with crates on the right-hand side.
"Secure the T-TECs," Ronin ordered Caesar. The T-900 immediately complied and ran through the sorting area, disappearing from view. He then spoke to the piece of liquid metal stuck on his shoulder. "Search and clear the first and second floors." He didn't want any surprises to come from upstairs.
Ronin moved forward as well, past the crates of machine parts and through the Goods Out section. He passed two rooms and glanced inside. Both were devoid of inhabitants. The first was approximately twenty metres long. At the far end were paper targets stuck to the wall with bullet holes in them, all in and around the middle, indicating whoever had fired them was a very accurate shot. On a desk to one side at the near end was a table with various objects: a 9mm pistol, a soccer ball, a forty-kilogram dumbbell and a stress ball among other items.
There was also a clipboard with sheets of writing that he didn't understand, but he knew what this room was. When he'd first came online he'd undergone the same procedures. His cognitive and physical functions had been tested to ensure there were no defects. The items were for the newly-built machines to manipulate. Every single machine had to undergo the tests upon initial activation.
The second room was square and held two glass tanks filled with liquid. Inside each was the likeness of a man, but the skin was translucent. Primitive versions of the machines Skynet used in the future to grow human flesh to cover terminators.
He ignored the two rooms and continued through the corridor, past a series of storerooms, restrooms, and other places that were irrelevant. He saw that production was done in three stages, and it was at the first stage, at the opposite end of the building, where the sounds of gunfire were coming from.
He heard shouting and footsteps approaching. Ronin held his plasma weapons forward and scanned the immediate area: no movement or heat signatures in sight but he could hear activity close by; heavy and multiple footsteps accompanied by someone shouting orders.
Four figures emerged in the passageway, all carrying AK-47s with grenade launchers. Ronin reacted immediately, pointing both his plasma cannons at the nearest two and firing a burst from each. Blue-white plasma streaked across the loading bay and struck the two defenders before they managed to fire even a single shot. The volley from his left weapon struck one in the face and reduced his skull into a mess of boiled skin, burning hair and shattered metal. He dropped instantly. Ronin's second burst hit another in the chest, penetrating through the hyper-alloy breastplate and striking his power cell. Smoke plumed from the gaping hole in the T-888's chest and also out of his open mouth. His eyes flashed red before the machine fell backwards to the ground, AK clattering on the concrete.
The other two machines responded in kind, unleashing a storm of lead from their Kalashnikovs that shredded through Ronin's skin. One round struck him in the bridge of his nose and immediately fragmented, tearing his right eyeball to shreds and obscuring his vision as the jelly smeared over his cybernetic eye. It didn't matter; his left was still intact. He pointed his plasma cannons at them and fired two more volleys. Plasma pierced their tough armoured hides and they shook from the impact of each hit before finally dropping to the ground.
He stepped over each of them to examine their remains and make sure they were completely dead, and as he did so he realised one still functioned. His plasma fire had blown it almost in half but still it continued to resist. The terminator looked up at him with one glowing red, exposed eye. An arm with no hand reached for an AK on the floor. Ronin stood over the broken machine with his plasma cannon pointing at its face. Undeterred, the Triple-Eight turned its attention from the rifle and reached for Ronin's leg in an attempt to bring him down. He easily stepped out of range, keeping the barrel of his plasma weapon pointed at its face. One shot finished it off, then he reformed one of his cannons back into a hand, reached up and tore the damaged eye out from his socket, revealing the glowing green orb within. With his vision now fully restored, he advanced through the factory.
Pripyat, Ukraine
Saturday 1515 Local Time [0515 PST]
"Mother of God," Alex Timis blurted out as he ran for his life. His friend Andriy had been shot in the back as they'd fled but Alex had carried on, not daring to look behind. He was on his own now; apparently they weren't interested in him because he was alone, having gone after other prey. One small mercy, though he didn't know how long it would last.
In the chaos he'd forgotten where he was and tried hard to think about where the nearest exit was. If he could get out of the building he'd just make a run for it, get the hell away and never look back. Then he looked out the window and remembered, Shit, I'm on the second floor!
He crossed a corner and saw Rick – one of the guys in charge – facing him with an assault rifle in his hands. "Here," Rick said, calling him over. Alex complied, stopping when he reached the tall blond man who seemed surprisingly unruffled by the events of the past couple of minutes.
Rick pulled him into the room, closed the door behind them and locked it. Alex leaned over and caught his breath for a moment before taking notice of where he was: the security office. There was a large desk with three flat screens forming a rough arc. There were three other men in the office besides himself and Rick. He knew one of them – Klausener, the site manager – who sat behind the desk, watching the screens while the other two held assault rifles with thick tubes under the barrel.
"Where'd you get those guns?" he asked.
By way of reply, Rick opened up a tall metal cabinet behind the desk and pulled out a rifle and five magazines. He put them on the desk and slid them across to Alex, who reached out and brushed his fingers along the wooden handguard but was reluctant to pick it up. "I haven't used a gun in years," he said. "It's been twenty years since I was conscripted."
"Point and pull the trigger," Rick replied.
"What's happening?" Alex asked.
"Here," Klausener said, pointing at the screen.
Alex looked and saw a scene of absolute chaos on the factory floor. The production lines had been smashed and a handful of people still alive were pinned down. A couple of men tried to make a break for it but were cut down by the gunfire. Who's attacking them? What do they want? A hundred questions filled his head but one was the most prominent: How do I get the hell out of here?
"What is that?" Klausener asked Rick as on the screen a tall, dark-haired man marched towards the defenders and fired white-blue bolts at them from behind, cutting them to shreds. "I've never seen a machine like that before."
"Neither have I," Rick replied.
Machine? Alex glanced at the two managers, confused. He saw a man on screen, not a machine. Yet this 'man' was firing some kind of energy weapon from his hands and shrugging off gunfire like he was some kind of comic-book superhero. He looked closer and saw that his face had been torn. Beneath ripped skin was metal. One of his eyes glowed bright green like an LED. How can a machine look like a man?
The footage changed to show a tall, powerfully-built black man, bald as an egg, standing outside the entrance to the warehouse. Two bodies lay still on the ground in front of him and Alex could see pools of blood spreading out from underneath them.
"We need to activate the T-TECs," Rick said. They were their only chance to successfully repel whatever that machine was.
Alex knew what they were: the combat machines they'd been building. He didn't know who they were planning to sell them to – nobody spoke about that. It didn't matter. "Why don't we just run?" he asked. "Break the windows and find a way to climb down."
"If you run I'll shoot you," Rick said curtly. "We're going to activate the completed units."
"Sixty are currently complete but we don't have CPUs for all of them," Klausener replied. "The Osaka facility is behind schedule."
"We have the drone chips," Rick said. "They'll do for now." They didn't need intelligence for this; just numbers and firepower.
One of the other men who'd remained silent decided to contribute. "Those chips are so new they're still shrink-wrapped; we haven't even programmed them yet. Just basic operating system."
"They'll obey voice commands," Rick replied. He pointed at a floorplan of the factory posted on one of the walls. "The finished units are here," he said, indicating a storage area to one side of Assembly Unit One, on the north side of the building. "The CPUs are in the same room, eighty metres from here."
"With those things out there?" Alex asked, incredulous. "It's suicide."
"If you run I'll shoot you," Rick repeated his earlier threat.
Great, Alex thought. Either die to what's out there or die to the people in here.
"You," Rick said, pointing at the man who'd commented on the CPUs. "Stay here: monitor our progress and tell us if any of them approach."
Rick reopened the door and came face to face with a woman, who stared at him with cold eyes. The woman's colour changed for a split second, skin flashing chrome before returning to normal. In the blink of an eye her hands changed: one into a sledgehammer and the other into a long, curved blade. Rick instantly opened fire and loosed the whole thirty-round magazine into his new opponent, though it did nothing; the bullets simply went straight through her and every wound sealed up again in seconds.
"My turn," Shirley said, a malevolent smile growing on her face as she approached her soon-to-be victims.
Pripyat, Ukraine
Saturday 1520 Local Time [0520 PST]
Ronin deactivated his plasma cannons and stepped over the smouldering remains of the final T-888 he'd eliminated. "The second and third levels are clear," the piece of Shirley on his shoulder announced. The firing from outside ceased a moment later; Icarus having heard the same message from the liquid metal portion he had with him.
"We're approaching," Icarus called from the rooftop opposite.
"Do you have any casualties?" Ronin asked.
"None."
That was good news to Ronin. Losing three of their own in Chihuahua had been bad enough, but Patrick was gone, too. They couldn't afford any more losses.
As he waited for Icarus and his squad to arrive Ronin walked through the factory complex towards Caesar's position. He found the T-900 standing sentinel outside the door to one of the warehouses. "The factory is clear," he told Caesar. His lieutenant said nothing but Ronin was certain that he was unhappy at being assigned to guard duty instead of fighting the T-888s. It was what he'd been designed to do, of course, and Ronin knew that he enjoyed doing it. "Next time," he promised him.
Caesar silently opened the door to the warehouse. Inside were a few dozen wooden boxes stood upright and clustered in groups of four, held together by shrink wrap on wooden pallets for ease of transport. Each one was two metres long by seventy-five centimetres wide, by sixty centimetres deep.
Ronin went up to one pallet and tore the shrink wrap off, then grabbed the lid of one of the boxes and pulled it off to reveal what they had flown all the way to Ukraine for. It stood approximately the same height as Caesar and was a matte grey in colour. From the files of the Vassily terminator he'd read they were the same basic design as a standard T-888, but built of denser alloys and with reinforced joints. Unlike the T-888s this model was completely covered in armour; there were no pistons or hydraulic lines exposed that could fall victim to lucky shots. T-888s were difficult for humans to kill but sustained, concentrated fire even with standard assault rifles would cause damage over time. He'd seen T-888s hit in their hydraulic lines, rendering a limb useless and drastically reducing a cyborg's combat effectiveness.
Not so with these. Ronin likened them to a human skeleton: if the Triple-Eights' endos were the basic bones then these had been fleshed out. Ronin reached out and took it by the forearm, raising and turning the limb so he could see its underside. On a standard infiltrator the rods controlling movement in the fingers would be visible in the wrist. On these they were concealed behind a layer of hyper-alloy armour. Every vulnerable point had been covered to provide maximum protection.
He turned to Caesar. "Could you beat one of these?"
"Yes," the T-900 replied without hesitation.
"What about three or four of them armed with the same weapons you're holding now?"
Caesar paused for a split second. "I don't know."
That was what Ronin had expected. He let go of the arm as Shirley arrived from one direction, and Icarus and his squad arrived from another. Ronin took out his cell phone and dialled Carter, still sitting at the plane. Carter answered quickly but didn't say anything, waiting for Ronin to speak.
"The factory is secure," he told Carter. "I'm sending Icarus to collect the thermobaric bomb. Stay with the plane. I'll bring you a new chassis and we'll implant you before we leave." He hung up and turned to Icarus, passing him the keys to the truck they'd driven to the site. "Go with him," he told Shirley. She could pass for one of the men they'd killed and that would get them out of and back into the exclusion zone without incident.
"There's a map in one of the rooms upstairs," Shirley said, as the small silver communications offshoots recombined with the T-1001's body. "We can't use the route we came. I estimate it will take three hours to reach the airport."
Disappointing, Ronin thought. A six hour round trip wasn't what he'd hoped for, but it was still far less than their painfully slow approach. He was rapidly learning that the past wasn't as simple as he'd expected. "So be it," he said.
The T-900 and T-1001 disappeared out of the warehouse towards the hole blasted in the factory wall. Ronin turned to the six cyborgs assembled before him and Caesar. "Remove each other's chips and plant them in one of these," he told them. There were sixty T-TECs and forty-five CPUs, including those they'd already activated and those still waiting in the cylinder they'd brought back with them. Once they were at full force – his current cohort plus the forty-five awaiting activation – Skynet would be helpless. The cybernetic god would soon be his slave.
Premier Palace Hotel, Kiev, Ukraine
Saturday 1700 Local Time [0700 PST]
Seldom had Sarah ever known peace and quiet before. The last time she'd ever truly relaxed had been long before 1984. Even before Kyle and the terminator had shattered the world around her she'd spent many a night up late studying; cramming for exams, writing assignments into the early hours of the morning, and weekends out partying hard with Ginger. Afterwards her world had turned upside down. She'd still been a student but of a different kind: textbooks had been replaced with field manuals and survival guides; nights out partying had been pushed aside for nights in field-stripping and cleaning the weapons she'd bought with her student loan cash. Instead of study sessions for exams she'd been tutored by guerrilla fighters and mercenaries.
Since then she'd almost forgotten what it was to be able to just relax and unwind, as shown by the previous day's frustrations when she'd sought to fill her empty hours. It had been topped by another fruitless endeavour today, so her present situation was something very foreign to her indeed.
Sarah craned her head back as she slid a little more into the hot tub, sighing contentedly as the bubbles blasted out of the underwater jets against her skin. She reached out of the tub with one hand and pulled a glass of champagne to her lips, taking a swig before topping up the glass from the rest of the bottle. The champagne wasn't the only treat she'd afforded herself. A box of imported Swiss chocolates sat on the ledge just next to the tub so she could occasionally reach down and pick one, not far from John's laptop sitting on a chair with her clothes. Duran Duran sang out from the speakers, giving her a little reminder of her life before. She'd laid in the hot tub for half an hour – a phenomenally long time for her to sit still and do nothing.
I need this, she thought as she popped another chocolate into her mouth and chewed slowly, savouring it. With everything that had happened recently: first the three dots, getting shot and that Kaliba guy, Winston; that whole John-Cameron-Riley situation; losing Charley, then Derek; being caught and sent to prison only to be rescued by more machines; being flown halfway around the world on two wild goose chases; the cancer tests and the unbearable wait for the news... She knew she needed to unwind or she'd snap. She'd come dangerously close to it over the past few weeks.
So there she was, mostly immersed in hot water and feeling at ease for the first time in a long while. After coming back from the air show they'd decided that enough was enough; Ukraine was a bust and they had nothing more to go on. Thor had agreed and called John Henry to announce that they intended to return home, and Sarah had said they might as well take the rest of the day off. John and Cameron were out; she hadn't asked where they were going. Both were armed and Cameron would keep him safe if the unlikely were to happen. Though from what she'd seen so far it didn't seem like there was a single machine in the whole country, apart from John's entourage.
When the song finished she reached out and scrolled down the playlist for another one, getting water on the laptop's keyboard in the process. It didn't seem to affect the computer though. If it does break, Weaver just can buy John another one. Sarah couldn't say she was happy – not with everything that had gone wrong – but she was content for now, and in a surprisingly good mood. The war could wait until tomorrow: she had chocolate, champagne, and all the greatest hits of the Eighties on now she would eat, drink and be merry.
A heavy knocking on the door stopped her before she could choose the next song. "Yes?" she called out wearily, wishing she could be left alone for just a few hours. She was alone in the suite apart from one other, and she didn't want to be around him when she was trying to unwind.
Aegir opened the door and stepped out into the balcony, regarding Sarah as she sprawled in the hot tub.
"Since when do you ever knock?" Sarah asked him curiously.
"That was my first," Aegir replied, not realising the question was rhetorical. "We never needed to knock in the future; the guards knew we were coming."
"Not like you guys are hard to miss," Sarah said. "What's up?" she asked, wanting Aegir to get to the point so she could enjoy the hot tub on her own some more.
"Catherine Weaver called again."
"Let me guess: she was in a bad mood?"
"Yes."
"If she knew how much the hotel bill's gonna be she'd be even more pissed."
"Her mood is irrelevant: Thor's in charge. Not her."
"And you reminded her of that, of course?"
"Of course."
"You don't like her very much, do you?" She raised her glass and tilted it slightly towards Aegir. "I guess we do have something in common. Cheers," she said before taking a sip.
Aegir continued, "She's chartered another plane to fly us back. It's due to arrive in seventeen hours. She says if we're not on it twenty-four hours from now it will take off without us; she'll cancel the credit cards and void our passports."
Sarah glanced down and saw her scowling reflection in the water. "She's got us over a barrel," she said to Aegir. "If we don't return, we're on our own. If we go back empty-handed then we're basically saying we can't do this ourselves. She'll end up running the whole show."
Aegir didn't reply. He stared at Sarah as she remained semi-prone, leaning against the inside of the tub, with the bubbles constantly erupting on the surface as if the water were boiling. "What is that?" he asked.
"Hot tub," Sarah replied. "It's meant to be relaxing. Not that you guys would know what that's like."
"We should get one for the safe house when we return."
"Why'd you say that?" Sarah asked.
"The Alliance depends on Cameron's and Connor's relationship."
And? Sarah thought, waiting for the Vanguard to elaborate. When he didn't she decided to bite. "What's that have to do with a hot tub?"
"They had intercourse in there last night. If we buy one they can continue, which aids the relationship and secures the Alliance."
Sarah's jaw dropped suddenly and she stared at Aegir with an open mouth and wide eyes. "You're saying John and Cameron had sex… in this hot tub… that I'm sitting in right now?"
"Correct." He'd been watching TV in the lounge but he had heard them, as had Thor on the roof.
Water exploded out of the tub in a miniature tsunami that washed over the balcony tiles and soaked Aegir's boots and jeans as Sarah leapt out of the tub higher and faster than Aegir had thought any human was capable of. She stood there glaring at him in her swimsuit before she grabbed a towel. "You didn't think to tell me about that before I sat soaking in here for over half an hour?"
"I don't see how it's relevant."
"You wouldn't!" Sarah grabbed her towel and marched back into John and Cameron's bedroom. She glanced at the large queen-sized bed. It was perfectly made without a single crease in the sheets. Why couldn't they have just done it there like a normal couple? She'd only just accepted their relationship, even if grudgingly so, but she wanted to put it out of her mind and not think about it. A lot of things in her life had been taken from her, and now her son and his tin girlfriend had just ruined hot tubs for her forever. "Where are they?" she growled.
"On the roof."
"Get them back here! Get everyone: meeting in thirty minutes. Until then, don't disturb me," she said to Aegir. "I'm going to take a shower." A very hot shower.
She left the room and went back to hers. Despite her feelings toward Cameron she wanted to be happy for her son. She wanted to but it still made her skin crawl. Even more so after realising she'd been sitting in a pool of what John and Cameron – and probably countless other couples before – had gotten up to; all she could think of was what would be floating around in the water. She had a feeling that there wasn't enough soap in the world to make her feel clean again.
John leaned back, ignoring the chill of the night air as he looked out over the city and took a sip of his beer. Cameron, ever cautious with his safety, had insisted that alcohol and heights were a bad combination when he'd suggested checking out the roof. He found it funny how paranoid she could be about protecting him. He'd had half a bottle of beer. Granted, he thought, it was a local brew – he couldn't even read the label – and it was strong, but it was only the one. Still, she'd reluctantly agreed to come up to the roof. He was sitting on the ledge of the building, his legs dangling over the end. Cameron sat next to him, a beer of her own at her side, mostly full. She held his hand with hers and kept her other hand on the ledge. John figured it was in case he fell; she could hold onto the roof and pull him up.
He'd wanted to come out here to be alone with her, away from anyone else. Thor was still up on the roof, on overwatch, but he was at the other end of the hotel and out of sight. John still didn't know how they'd managed to spend so long up here without being caught. The roof was off-limits to guests.
"Are you okay?" he asked her. "You're pretty quiet, even for you."
"I've been thinking," she said.
John chuckled. "Do you ever stop thinking?"
"No."
"What're you thinking?" he asked.
"About us. What we are."
John frowned, concerned. "What do you mean?"
"Am I your girlfriend?"
"Do you want to be?" John asked.
"Yes." Cameron's answer came immediately, no hesitation at all. They were already sat so close together that they appeared almost joined at the hip and shoulder. John wrapped his arm around her shoulder to pull her even closer. "The others are hiding something from us," she said to John.
"Like what?"
"In Serrano Point and the safe house they spoke about the future but were vague about us. I asked Freyr for more detail but he refused to say."
"I guess they don't want to spoil things," John said. He'd noticed the same thing as Cameron and he had a pretty good idea what it was they were hiding. The way his mom had told him, vaguely, how he had to make his own decision. He'd made it, and feeling her in his arms, he knew he'd made the right one. Down deep he knew that he would always have chosen her. Current events had definitely helped things along but he knew that in the end he would have opted to be with Cameron. He couldn't imagine being with anyone else.
"About us," Cameron said, catching on. "What if they don't want to tell us because it's bad?"
"How can it be bad?" John asked. "You heard Thor's story: we were both there at the end. Together. A couple." That was the only part Thor had left out.
"We were both there. Not necessarily a couple."
John smiled. "Well, we're a couple now. Unless you dump me at some point. I wouldn't blame you; I know I can be a dick sometimes."
Cameron looked him in the eye with a piercing gaze. "I'd never dump you," she said, resolute. John had saved her on his birthday when his mother and Derek wanted to burn her. She recalled Weaver's offer to John: "Will you join us?" He'd stopped her from becoming a vessel for John Henry, saving her again. He'd saved her a third time when the other T-1001 had pinned her and was about to remove her chip. It had been reckless of him and he should have run, but he'd cared enough about her to risk his own life. No one else had ever cared. Sarah saw her as a useful, albeit untrustworthy tool. Derek saw her as the enemy. Catherine Weaver saw her as spare parts. Only John cared about her.
"I'll never leave you," she repeated. "Do you think if I tell Freyr that I know, he'll tell me more about us in the future? He wouldn't when I spoke to him at the safe house after we patrolled together."
"Why'd you leave?" he asked her. He remembered going to sleep and she'd been right there with him.
"To let you sleep. You needed the rest."
"I didn't really sleep well though; I'm kinda getting used to you being there."
"I've noticed," Cameron said. "It will make night patrols challenging."
"Challenges are there to be overcome," John said, using one of his mom's mantras. "Besides; do you even need to patrol now? We've got three Vanguards."
"What would I do?" she asked. The Vanguards had proven themselves both trustworthy and extremely capable, but she wasn't comfortable with leaving any aspect of John's safety to someone else.
"Be my girlfriend," John said. "And their…" He pointed in the general direction of Thor, "commander. They said you're a leader in the future. We can start leading together." He drank some more of his beer and Cameron did the same with hers. He knew that she could eat and drink; he still didn't really know why she did.
"I'd like that," Cameron said, flattered. She gently squeezed his hand.
"What did you and Freyr talk about?" John asked.
"I asked him about my future self."
"And?"
"He declined to elaborate on what Thor had said, other than that the design of the Vanguard CPU is based on mine."
"That's interesting," John said. "Anything else?"
"I asked him if Future-Cameron had passed on any advice for me."
John chuckled at her use of the term 'Future-Cameron.' They'd all become used to separating him from Future-John, but had never had to distinguish between her and a future self. "And did she?" he asked.
"No."
"You think he was lying?"
"No."
"What did you think she'd say?"
"She'd tell me how to stop myself from killing you. If she was still there, she must have found a way. She'd know it would be the first question I'd ask."
John knew he shouldn't have been surprised, but he was: it really was the most important thing to her. But if it was now, it surely would always be. Future-Cameron would be aware of the consequences of changing past events; the one sitting beside him had proved that with her carefully chosen revelations and abundance of secrets. Also, she wouldn't care about the personal cost to herself if she revealed something: his safety, his future, were all that mattered. Yet she had said nothing, which was revealing in itself.
"Maybe you already know the answer?" he suggested. In Freyr's future they'd been together for over twenty-five years and she hadn't killed him. He wasn't worried about it. John dipped his head down to hers and kissed her. Cameron slid back off the ledge, away from the edge of the building, and led John with her to stand at a safe distance before she kissed him back.
They remained in place, pressed together in each other's arms, locked at the lips and lost in each other. Cameron heard a commotion from their suite below but made no reaction. She didn't want to stop.
"Your mother's called a meeting," Thor said as he approached, interrupting them. "Thirty minutes."
"Why?" John asked, but Thor had already disappeared, quickly marching to the fire escape that led back into the hotel. He turned to Cameron, who was still in his embrace. "What's that about?" he asked her, confused.
Cameron had heard Sarah's and Aegir's exchange while she and John had been kissing, so she told him. "Aegir told your mother that we had coitus in the hot tub. While she was sitting in it. She's upset."
"What?" John protested. "But we didn't!"
Cameron nodded. Sarah Connor made up rules as she went along, while John broke them when it suited. Neither was easy to predict, but she knew whose side she would be on if it came to a fight. "Time to go," she said, taking his hand.
He was still grumbling as they took the stairs down to the Presidential Suite. "Who the hell says 'coitus' these days anyway?" She ignored it; she was more interested in what Sarah might have in store for them. Unfortunately, whatever John's mother was muttering to herself was drowned out by the shower working at maximum.