Third Chance.
A Terminator: Salvation fan fiction by xahra99
Chapter Three:
In which Marcus escapes the Terminators and finds the object of his mission...
Three days later Marcus crouched in the shadow of a fallen oak with a knife in his hand and listened to bullets ripping through the underbrush around him. He thought he was somewhere in the vicinity of the camp, but he couldn't be sure. He knew that a T-600 had followed him.
The Terminator's gun stuttered into silence. Marcus waited for a few minutes before he cautiously raised his head. The grim grinning skull of the T-600 was only metres away. Marcus ducked quickly back into shelter. He knew it hadn't seen him. He was still alive, after all.
Marcus flattened himself against the tree trunk. He held his breath as the T-600 passed, closely enough that he could have reached out and wiped dew from its shining metal exoskeleton. Dead branches crumpled into powder under its feet. Its cybernetics whined.
Marcus leapt from the tree trunk onto the Terminator's shoulders and locked one arm around the T-600's neck. He used the tip of his knife to lever the metal plate from the back of its skull. The movement activated one of the machine's defence protocols. It spun in circles as it attempted to dislodge Marcus, firing the vulcan cannon mounted in its arm wildly into the underbrush. As long as Marcus did not move, the Terminator couldn't bring the cannon to bear on him.
Marcus twisted the knife. The Terminator lurched sideways and the knifepoint scored a white trail across its metal housing.
"Stay still." Marcus cursed.
The Terminator jolted backwards and slammed Marcus against a tree. The blow would have crushed a human's ribs. It had little effect upon Marcus. The T-600 noticed this. It altered its strategy. With a complete disregard for self-preservation, it raised its right arm and aimed blindly at its own shoulder. In the split second before the T-600 fired, Marcus jammed his knife into the Terminator's shoulder joint. The shot went wild. Marcus slashed through cable and mesh and the Terminator's right arm fell away.
He brought the knife up for another try at the sweet spot at the back of the T-600's skull.
The T-600 locked its left hand behind Marcus's knee and ripped him from its back. His knife went flying as the T-600 threw him to the ground.
Marcus hit hard but he recovered quickly. He rose for a crouch and waited for the T-600's next move. The machine paused for a few seconds, as if considering its options. Its red eyes gleamed and it lurched towards Marcus.
He saw a stealthy movement behind the machine.
A little girl crouched in the vegetation behind a pair of slim birch trees. She looked about nine or ten years old. She examined the ground between her feet intently for a moment before she pounced and held up the wicked blade of Marcus's knife.
"Run!" Marcus yelled.
His warning had the opposite effect to what he had intended. The T-600's head snapped around. The child looked up and froze.
"Run!" Marcus shouted again.
The girl bolted.
Like a human, the T-600's vision was keyed to movement. It turned its back on Marcus and spun to follow the girl. Marcus cursed. He raced after the T-600. The robot didn't even bother to look around. It flailed backwards with its remaining arm. Its fist caught Marcus across the cheek and snapped his head around. He dropped to his knees as the T-600 gathered speed. In front of the machine, he glimpsed the kid's brown coat flicking in and out of the trees as she ran for her life.
Marcus dragged himself to his feet and followed the child.
He emerged on a wide track. It was the first sign of habitation Marcus had seen since leaving his camp three days previously. The T-600 was nowhere in sight. The girl raced along the path, head down and arms pumping wildly.
"Stop!" Marcus shouted. "I'm here to help you!"
The girl did not listen. If anything, Marcus's voice seemed to spur her to greater effort. Half way down the path she left the track and sprinted off into the undergrowth. Her route looked like it would intersect with the path up ahead, so Marcus followed the track.
The girl turned her head. "Not that way!" she called as the T-600 lurched out of the bushes just behind Marcus. It was close enough that Marcus could hear its hydraulics creak as it gathered pace. He accelerated, wringing every last drop of adrenaline-fuelled energy from his battered body. The T-600 followed. It's fast, Marcus thought. I didn't think a T-600 could be so fast.
And then the path dropped away beneath his feet and he stopped thinking at all.
Marcus's momentum was the only thing that saved him. He stretched out his arms instinctively as the earth below him crumbled. His hands dug into the earth at the other side of the pit and he jerked to a halt.
The T-600 wasn't so lucky. Marcus heard a whine as the machine's motors tried and failed to adjust to its change in velocity, followed by and a loud and very final thud.
He looked down.
The pit was only about ten feet deep. The T-600 could probably have climbed or dug its way out without too much trouble if there hadn't been stakes wedged in the floor. One of the stakes had neatly severed the Terminator's head from its body. Its fingers twitched spastically but stilled as Marcus watched.
Marcus turned his attention back to the rather more pressing problem of extracting himself from the trap. He raised his head to a level with the top of the pit, only to have the earth beneath him crumble. As he tried a second time, he noticed the little girl peering at him from between the trees.
"Hey!" Marcus roared, then, louder, "Hey!"
The girl turned around and fled down the path. Marcus's hands slipped again.
Well, he thought as he fell back; the good news is that I know where the camp is. The bad news is that it's going to be a bitch to get to.
He dragged himself up to the lip of the pit for a third time, and this time the earth did not crumble away.
Marcus thought about Terminators as he limped towards the base.
Yeah. The day they come up with something that looks like a little kid will be the day when we all finally lose it.
He knew that he scared people precisely because he looked so human. But Marcus had seen inside the Skynet, and he knew that it had taken Cyberdyne a good long time to come up with him. He hoped that little-girl-Terminators were a long way down their list.
He caught sight of the roof of a cabin through the trees. There were a few more pits, all obviously marked if you weren't running for your life. Marcus stayed away from them. He kept an eye out for the flat-topped molehills that marked magnetic bombs, but saw none. He climbed a wire-mesh fence edged with razor wire and dropped inside the camp. The camp's original low wooden fence edged the central compound. It was in poor condition. The front gate was an open, ranch-style arch.
If this is their security, Marcus thought as he approached, then I'm surprised they're all still here.
He entered the camp through the gate, because it seemed like something a Terminator wouldn't do.
The base seemed deserted.
Marcus explored the buildings. Trees grew through the cabin roofs. Most of the buildings were in poor condition. They sprawled up the slopes of a small hill. The roofs of the cabins at the crest of the hill looked better maintained, so he headed in that direction. A campfire circle had been dug out half way up the hill. It was lined with stone benches. Marcus stopped at the fire-pit and sifted through the ashes. He hoped for clues, or maybe a hint of warmth, but the cinders were cold.
Marcus shivered.
There was something eerie about the deserted camp. It reminded Marcus of exploring abandoned buildings with his brother many years ago. They'd dare each other to jump over gaping holes in the floorboards or creep into blacked out rooms. There was always something spooky about a building that had been abandoned.
As he dug through the embers, he caught the sound of someone breathing.
Marcus tracked the noise to the closed door of a cabin. He picked up a heavy branch before he kicked the door open. Just because the programmers were on the side of the Resistance didn't necessarily mean that they were nice people. Humans could be just as bad as the robots, sometimes. Terminators didn't steal, and they didn't hurt people for the fun of it.
The first room-if a room with half the ceiling strewn across the floor was even still a room- was empty.
A shard of shattered mirror-glass hung on one wall. Marcus checked his reflection as he passed. He looked terrible, but at least he looked human. The kid hadn't run from him because she thought he was a robot.
The next room was larger. It looked like it had been used as a dormitory. A stack of folding bunk beds leaned against one wall. The girl crouched behind the pile. She squealed as Marcus walked in. It was a thin, wavering sound, as if she knew she had to be quiet but she was so damn terrified she couldn't help herself. The hem of her tatty cardigan dragged on the ground. His knife lay at her feet.
Marcus dropped the branch. He crouched down, ducked his head so he looked less of a threat, and stretched out one hand. "Kid?"
The girl whimpered.
"Listen. I need to talk to your mom. Or your dad. Whoever runs this place. It's kind of important."
"Then you can talk to me," a feminine and very cold voice said from behind Marcus. There was a click which Marcus recognized as a gun's safety catch disengaging. He sighed and raised his hands.
"Is that your mom?"
The child nodded.
Marcus spoke to the kid rather than to the woman he couldn't see. "Then you better tell your mom to make you move, 'cause if she shoots me the bullets are going to go right through. And then where're they gonna go?"
"Naomi!" the woman said hurriedly.
"Naomi? That you?"
The kid nodded.
"I think your mom wants you to go over there." Marcus said. The kid nodded again and got up, wiping tears and snot across her face with a dirty hand. She gave Marcus a wide berth.
"Naomi, go find your dad," the woman said. The shotgun barrel wedged against Marcus's skull did not waver.
"But I-"
"Now!"
Marcus heard footsteps running off. He studied the opposite wall and sighed. "Ma'am, I'm not what you think." And isn't that God's honest truth, he thought even as the words left his mouth.
"Don't move," the woman repeated. She sounded a bit more uncertain now that the kid had left the building. Marcus could have disarmed her easily, but he chose not to. He didn't want to start off negotiations by injuring somebody.
"You're the programmers, right?" he asked.
"How'd you know that?"
"I'm from New York." Marcus said.
"Who are you?"
"I'm from the Resistance, ma'am. Put down the gun."
Marcus heard a thud as the shotgun hit the floor. He twisted around. The woman leant forwards and embraced him.
It was the last thing Marcus had expected. He held still, figuring she'd get over it eventually and after a few seconds the woman pulled back. She had long dark hair and an Asian cast to her face. She was also short enough to hug Marcus without too much difficulty despite the fact that he was kneeling down and she was standing. "Thank God! We thought you'd forgotten all about us!"
"Leah?" a worried voice called outside.
The woman took hold of Marcus's hand and pulled him out of the building. "William! William, it's all right!"
A man with concerned eyes and a beard that wouldn't have looked out of place on an eighteenth century fur trapper stood outside the cabin. He carried a shotgun and looked less than delighted to find his wife dragging along a strange man by the arm. "Leah? What's all right?"
"He's from the Resistance! They've come to save us!"
The man's face split into a grin. "I said I said they wouldn't abandon us! We were right!" He hugged the woman. "We were right all along."
"Not exactly," Marcus said.
There was a long silence.
"What do you mean?" William asked cautiously.
Marcus glanced warily around the camp. Its meagre security measures made him nervous. "I'll tell you later," he said. "Can we get inside?"
The couple exchanged glances. Leah nodded. Together they led Marcus to their cabin. The building occupied a vantage point at the summit of the hill. The programmers had reinforced its roof with concrete and dug cellars into the earth below. A clutch of chickens scratched in the soil outside, and a goat tied to a picket bleated mournfully at Marcus as he walked past.
William interpreted Marcus's silence as contempt. "We use most of our electricity for the computers," he said as he gestured for Marcus to precede him through the door.
The interior of the cabin was a little homelier. Layers of rag rugs covered the floor and blankets had been nailed over the wooden walls for insulation. Naomi looked up from the sofa as Leah raised the lid of a pot that hung over the fire. She pushed her hair back behind her ears. "You hungry?"
Marcus nodded.
Leah ladled some stew into a bowl. "Eat. We've got time. William will go get the others. We ca talk once you've finished." She set the bowl and a spoon down in front of Marcus.
William nodded and vanished out the door.
Marcus dug in. The food was good, better than anything he'd eaten in New York. Marcus finished his plate, but he refused another bowl. These people hadn't got much.
"How've you survived for so long?" he asked as he pushed the bowl away.
Leah drew back a curtain. "See for yourself," she said and pointed out through the grimy glass. "We haven't."
Marcus blinked. He'd noticed the avenue of tall stones set to one side of the path as he had followed the couple in. What he'd taken for decoration was a graveyard. He counted fifteen headstones before Leah dropped the curtain. She sat down across the table from Marcus and rolled up the sleeves of her woollen sweater. "We came up here after Judgement Day," she said. "There was a bunch of us. We all worked at Cisco Systems in Raleigh. We were working when it happened. As soon as we realized, we filled the car up with equipment from the labs and just left. Wasn't a thing left for us there." She glanced around the dingy cabin. "I used to come to this camp when I was a kid. It's changed since then. But it's home."
"It's good enough," Marcus said. "Seems pretty cosy to me. But you need better security. I walked right in here."
"Did you?" Leah said. She seemed amused. "Did you really?"
"Had a bit of pit trouble." Marcus admitted.
Leah's smile broadened. "I'll bet." She seemed about to add more, but they were interrupted by William's entrance.
"Everyone, this is Marcus," William said by way of introduction as he kicked mud from his boots."Marcus, this is everyone."
Everyone turned out to be a scruffy man a few years older than Marcus. He took a seat next to Leah and stared at Marcus with the suspicious eyes of a survivor.
"This is it?" Marcus said. "Four of you?"
William cleared his throat. "Five." He stabbed a finger at his chest. "But Ada's working. Anyway, let me introduce ourselves. My name is William Pallot. This lovely lady is Leah Nakatomi, and on the couch over there is our daughter Naomi. Our newcomer is Gabe, and Ada is in the lab. You'll meet her later."
"Did you tell her?" asked Leah. "This is kind of important."
"Sure." Gabe said. "But she says she's busy. I'll fill her in later." He leaned back in his chair and studied Marcus. "So. What's your story?"
"My name is Marcus Wright." Marcus said. "I'm from the Resistance. They sent me to fetch your program." He looked from one face to another and wished he was a better diplomat. "They said you can reprogram Terminators."
The programmers looked at each other and smiled.
"Did I say something funny?"
"No." Leah shook her head, "I'm sorry. But you made it sound so easy."
William stifled a grin. "No," he said. "We can't. I'm sorry if you've come all this way for nothing."
"So that's it?" Marcus asked.
"Not entirely. What we have discovered is a subroutine in the machines' programming that allows them to act independently of the central Skynet facilities for a short time. Given enough time and resources, we should be able to take advantage of this. Add some code that would make them behave completely autonomously. And yes, one day, even reprogram them. But that's some way in the future."
Marcus remembered Connor's little speech back in New York. There's a bunch of programmers holed up in a camp in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Intel says they've developed a script that'll allow us to interact with the system more effectively. Maybe even reprogram Terminators.
He sighed. Sometimes he thought that Connor assumed just because he was a machine that he understood them. "I guess Connor told me something like that."
"You're with Connor?" William asked cautiously.
"I'm with Connor," Marcus said.
"John Connor?"
The adoration that filled the programmers' eyes made Marcus profoundly uncomfortable. "Yeah, John Connor," he said roughly.
"He's the only hope we have." Leah replied. The quote came straight from one of Connor's broadcasts.
"If you want hope, stay here." Marcus said. "You seem pretty secure."
"What we have here is an illusion!" Leah retorted. "They could come at any minute."
"The only reason we've survived this long is because we haven't given any reason for them to come after us," said William.
"Yet." Gabe said pointedly.
Marcus looked at his ragged clothes. "Guess that's changed."
"Guess it has." Gabe replied.
"We're dead if you leave us here. Did they tell you they said they'd help us escape?" said Leah.
"They said they'd send aid in exchange for your program." Marcus said. "But things have changed. It's dangerous out there."
"Tell us something we don't know!"
Marcus cursed. It would have been easier to lie, to promise them something the Resistance had no intention of delivering, but he couldn't bring himself to do it. "You don't understand. I can't guarantee your safety."
"Is that a threat?" William said softly.
"It's a fact." Marcus said. "It's death out there. You'll never make it. But the Resistance needs that program. It could save lives."
Leah's set her jaw. "Including ours, if you help us escape." Her face was stony, but her voice was pleading. "You have to save us."
"You'll die."
"We're aware there's some risk involved-"
"It's suicide." Marcus snapped. He pointed to Naomi, desperately thinking of something, anything, to convince them to stay. 'What about your kids? You've got a good life-"
"Have you got a family?" Leah demanded. "Have you got children?"
Marcus sighed. "Kids? No."
"Then maybe you won't understand that I want my daughter to have a real life. A free life, even if it's short. We're not fools here. We know what you do, where you live. We even know it's dangerous. But there used to be thirty people living here." She looked around the room. "Now there's just us. We can't just sit around and pretend everything's okay."
"You'll die out there." Marcus said.
"We'll die in here." Leah said angrily.
Gabe slouched back in his chair. "You didn't die," he pointed out.
"I'm different." Marcus said. And you don't want to know how different, he thought to himself.
"Maybe we will die," William said. "But at least we will have lived,"
The sentence sounded like a quote to Marcus, but he couldn't place it. "That's crazy." He looked around the table. "You're crazy. I'll take you if you insist, but don't say I didn't warn you."
"We can be ready to leave by tomorrow morning." Leah said. "You'll take us all the way to New York?"
"A 'copter'll collect us." Marcus told her. "They won't like it, though. There's a lot of machines round here. Makes it dangerous."
"But they'll come?" Gabe asked.
"They'll come."
"We'll be ready by eight o' clock." Leah said. "You can stay here for the night."
Marcus shook his head. "No. Later. Make it ten. That'll give them enough time for the mist to clear."
"I'll go tell Ada," Gabe said, and left. Naomi went with him but she reappeared in the doorway after a few minutes, clutching Marcus's knife. She placed the weapon on the table in front of Marcus with a certain air of ceremony.
Marcus accepted the weapon gravely. "Thanks." He checked the blade and slid it into its scabbard.
Naomi jammed a thumb into her mouth and resumed her place on the rug near the fire.
"Where do the others live?" Marcus asked her.
Naomi walked to the window and pushed back the curtain. She pointed at a shingled roof just visible behind the graveyard. "There."
"Mind if I go see them?"
Naomi shook her head.
It was cold outside, but it had stopped raining. The trees rustled in the wind around Marcus as he walked to the cabin Naomi had pointed out. He rapped politely on the door. Somebody grunted "Come in."
Marcus pressed the latch down and entered. The room inside was exactly how he had expected a programmer's hideout to look like. It was like the New York base turned up to eleven. Candles, keyboards and monitor screens decorated every available surface. A thin girl with shiny dark hair pulled back in a bun sat at one computer. She did not turn around.
"Where's Gabe?" Marcus asked.
"Out," the girl said without looking around."You must be Marcus."
Marcus nodded. When she didn't reply he realized that she hadn't seen the gesture. "You're Ada, aren't you?"
"I am."
"Do you want to leave too?"
Ada nodded. "Yeah." She spun around and glanced curiously at Marcus before returning to her computer. Marcus looked away quickly as he caught a glimpse of green code on its screen. .
"Okay," he said. "I'll let myself out. Just checking."
"Do you know anything about computers?" Ada asked him.
"Not a clue." Marcus said. If she'd been Blair or Kate he'd have made some comment about how as being human didn't automatically make you good at medicine, so being a machine didn't automatically make you good at fixing them. As she was neither, he kept his mouth shut.
Ada spun around again. She fixed Marcus with a pair of bird-black eyes. "Gabe said you're from the Resistance. That you're here to help us."
Marcus shrugged. "Seems that way."
"You'll do it?"
"I'll try."
Ada smiled and turned back to her work. "Good."
Marcus waited for a few minutes before he realized that she considered their conversation over. It didn't even occur to him to be insulted. Ada seemed so far detached from reality she appeared less human than Marcus himself.
But I don't have the luxury of being the genuine article, he thought as he closed the door behind her. She doesn't have to pretend.
He walked back to Leah and William's cabin and stayed until sunset. Leah offered a bed on the couch, but Marcus borrowed a blanket and moved outside for the night. He spread the blanket on the bare boards of the cabin's porch. The stars were incredibly vivid, as if somebody had spilled a jar of sugar over the sky.
After a while the door behind him creaked open. Marcus had expected one of the adults, but instead it was Naomi. She sat down beside Marcus without once looking at his face and regarded the stars with the absurd gravity of all small children.
"You're not sleepy?" she asked.
Marcus shook his head.
"Me neither," Naomi said cheerfully. "Did they teach you that in commando training?"
"Did they teach me what?" Marcus said, confused.
"How to do without sleep."
"Who told you I was a commando?"
"Mom and Dad. They said you'd had to be, to get in here."
Marcus sighed. "Well, I hate to break it to ya, kid, but you shouldn't believe everything your parents tell you."
Naomi turned her head. "Are we going to die?"
"Nah." Marcus lied. He was so desperate to change the subject; he said the first thing that came into his mouth. "You remind me of someone."
"Who?" Naomi asked curiously.
"Kid I once knew. Except she doesn't talk."
"Why not?"
Marcus thought of Star. "I don't know."
"Then why-"
The door opened behind them. Leah popped her head out. "Naomi!" She glanced around a little desperately before her gaze finally alighted on her daughter. "Naomi. Thank God! Stop bothering Marcus."
"It's all right." Marcus said.
"She should be in bed." Leah held the door open and beckoned to her daughter. "Go on now. We'll be busy tomorrow."
Naomi returned reluctantly to the warm darkness of the cabin. Marcus expected Leah to follow her daughter inside, but she lingered, saying to Marcus, "Come inside. It's cold out here."
"No, thanks."
Leah closed the door behind her. She leant against the wood, folded her arms and looked up at the stars. "I suppose it is a lovely night."
"Yeah." Marcus replied.
Leah hesitated. She twisted the hem of her cardigan into knots as she waited. After a while Marcus said, "If you've got something to say, just say it."
"I wanted to thank you for saving Naomi." Leah said.
Marcus shrugged. "Turns out she didn't need it." He twisted around and glanced up at Leah. "You waited all that time just to say thanks?"
Leah shook her head. She crouched down on the floor next to Marcus. Her hands clenched into white-knuckled fists. "I need to ask you a favour."
"Ask."
Leah lowered her voice. "I need you to promise you'll look after Naomi. Just in case something happens to me and William. Promise me you'll protect her?"
"Yeah...uh, sure, I guess."
Leah sighed as if a weight had been taken from her. "Thank you," she said, fervently.
Marcus turned away from the gratitude in Leah's eyes. "You know, you could still stay," he said to thin air. "Just because I got in doesn't mean you'll make it out. You don't understand. I'm...different."
"If you got in, we can get out." Leah said quietly. "Either way, we've got to try."
Marcus shrugged. "It's your choice."
"Then we'll leave tommorrow morning." Leah said, "Come inside."
Marcus shook his head.
"Please come inside."
"I'm fine in here."
Leah sighed as she closed the door behind her.
Marcus gazed up at the cold fire of the stars and wondered if he'd made the right decision. He still hadn't decided by the time he fell asleep.
To be continued...