The older woman continued to load only the bare essentials - which meant guns and ammunition - and empty the house of anything that might either incriminate them, or give a clue as to where they were heading. Having convinced John to go on ahead with Derek under the belief that she was giving Cameron a little longer to reappear, Sarah glanced at the Terminator sat in the passenger seat.
Climbing into the car and gunning the engine which roared to life after a few moments of cycling, Sarah reached into the back-seat and produced a pair of faded pink ballet shoes, dropping them into her passenger's lap and pulling the seatbelt across her shoulders. Shifting the car into gear and beginning to roll over the crunching stones of the driveway, she spared a last glance at their "home" through the rear-view mirror.
The word was almost ridiculous to apply to anywhere for the Connors; in the conventional sense a home was your permanent retreat from the world, where you felt safe and felt in total control of everything within the four walls. Where you would retreat but no further. Constantly on the move, constantly on the run Sarah had come to regard any four walls as a chance to box her in and make it that little bit easier for Skynet or its agents to find her, or John, and kill them.
From a military point of view a home was only a base of operations and in that definition, perhaps, the house that rapidly disappeared from view could be home.
Cameron placed her hands on top of the shoes in her lap. "You don't like lying to John. Sometimes you have to lie."
"I don't like lying to my son," Sarah replied with a tinge of irritation. "But you're right, sometimes we have to and this time, we have to." The car's engine roared as the accelerator pushed down towards the floor to match the speed of the traffic hurtling along the highway which led towards the coast. Rolling brown hills stretching for miles across featureless terrain left little to stare at, and even less to interest.
Cameron glanced across at Sarah, watching the older woman focus on the road ahead. She opened her window slightly, and slowly, very gingerly raised her hand so that her fingers pushed outside into the air stream which thundered past the speeding vehicle. Her eyes closed as she felt the cold wind tickle her flesh and chill it.
"You can feel that?" Sarah asked as she pulled a pair of black sunglasses from the glove box and slipped them on.
Cameron didn't open her eyes, instead feeling her Chip delegate the damage control and system repair to a lesser unit and devote itself fully to the moment. Pulling her hand inside, she ran the fingers of her other hand across the goosebumps and studied the rosy-red hue of the chilled skin. "I can feel. I wouldn't be much use if I couldn't feel."
Sarah spared a glance at the hand and felt the truth of the fundamental change of the Terminator's existence. It was so obvious to the older woman now, so undeniable and what more proof could be needed than flesh that turned red when cold, or prickled with goosebumps?
"How long has it been?" She asked, earning a cock of the head from her passenger. "How long has it been since you stopped emulating and started replicating emotions?" She clarified. "I'm not just imagining it, Am I? Or are you just doing an amazing job of being very awkwardly Human?"
Cameron flexed her hand as the skin regained its pale pallor. "I'm broken," She said simply. "Things aren't working properly."
"Seems to me Skynet did a little too good a job," Sarah countered with a shake of her head. "All the other Terminators were designed to look Human to some degree. Some were better than others, but none of them could pass as one of us for very long. Too stiff, too programmed. They certainly wouldn't enjoy Ballet …
Sarah glanced at the ballet shoes Cameron had now gripped with her hands, "You enjoy Ballet, right? It's not just a way to serve the mission?"
The Terminator nodded, as if beginning to understand. "I dance because I want to."
"And when I cut you? You felt pain. Not some skin feedback sensor, but real honest-to-god pain. It's important for us - reminds us we're fragile and we can hurt but it doesn't make any sense for a machine. It's not logical. And you operate on ones and zeroes, back or white …"
Cameron flexed her fingers, staring at her palms. "Not any more. I'm grey."
"You're a machine that was designed to imitate a human more closely than anything that came before you," Sarah added. "You were given the most sophisticated tools - skin that sweats, that bleeds and turns red when you're cold and anything else. It stands to reason that the more able you are to act human the closer you might come to being human."
Cameron tucked a lock of dark brown hair behind her ear, watching through her window as a dark blue sports car abruptly pulled out into the other lane with a roar of its high-tuned engine, accelerating past them and swinging back into the right-hand lane with the slightest squeal of rubber. "Derek doesn't agree. He doesn't see me any differently to Cromartie."
"Derek's from a different time," Sarah ignored the irony of the double-meaning. "He's fought a brutal war in the most simple terms for decades - if it sweats and breathes it's one of yours, and if it doesn't you kill it. Metal versus Skin, Machine against Man. He's still fighting the war, he's still a soldier and all the training and experience of his life urges him to kill anything that's not human."
"I've had my fair share of run-ins with Skynet," She continued. "I've also had my life saved directly or indirectly by a machine more times than I'd like to remember. If it wasn't for a Terminator given a new lease of life I'd be long dead, and John would either never have been born, or would never have lived to see sixteen."
Cameron nodded, her eyes fixed on the road ahead. "Is that why you won't terminate me?"
"I'm not a big fan of digging inside anyone's head, man or machine," She shrugged. "But if it's really possible for your kind to become self-aware it could be more devastating to Skynet than any normal weapon."
Neither women were much willing to consider the more immediate question of just how fugitives from the law, and the future itself, could remain on the run with a paralysed Terminator in tow - Sarah because she was still trying to work out how she would explain her passenger's reappearance to her son, and Cameron because the same phrase repeated throughout her consciousness.
She was replicating, not emulating.
Turning away from the main highway to follow a narrow road cracked with tarmac stretching in the summer and contracting in the winter, they left the bustling traffic behind. Peeking above the rolling hills as a ribbon of blue above the brown, the water was barely visible against the horizon, somewhere against its coast the Lighthouse where John and Derek were already waiting.
Sarah gunned the car's engine, taking advantage of the considerable gap behind the blue sports car barrelling over the crest of a hill ahead towards the sea. The needle of the speedometer crept above sixty, every imperfection and dent in the road transmitting through the suspension to rock the car up and down.
She glanced across at Cameron, and the ballet shoes still being cradled in her lap. When her eyes moved back to the road it was only just in time to see the harsh red glare of braking lights and the rear of the blue sports car rapidly filling the windscreen. Sarah's foot drove the brake pedal to the floor with a thump that couldn't be heard above the screeching of the tyres as she wrenched the steering wheel hard left.
Sarah was conscious of the horizon tipping sideways towards the vertical, as the right-side tyres left the cracked tarmac and span uselessly in the air. Front wheels still steering to the side the car passed its tipping point and crashed onto its side; the scream of metal grating against the road fighting the sound of the fracturing drive shaft in a deafening cacophony.
Teeth gritted together as her centre of gravity moved from her legs to her head, Sarah could feel the blood quickly pooling and sweeping her consciousness with a debilitating ache. The seatbelt cut into her chest and stomach as it tightened and kept her body in the seat which was rapidly being crushed against her back. Her skull smashed against the headrest and for a moment her vision blurred.
Windows shattering under the impact, it took all of Sarah's remaining energy to keep her arms and body away from the smoking tarmac which sparked and screeched a few inches from her shoulder. Still travelling at speed and twisting the car rolled once again so that it skidded upon its roof, careening off the side of the road before ploughing into a grassy bank - a plume of dirt and stones thrown high into the air as the roar of the engine died to a spluttering, whirring grumble as components snapped or hit each other and failed.
A thick pall of smoke coiled upwards lazily into the clear blue sky above.
…
…
Sarah grunted, her eyes opening and immediately closing, as something hot and slick blinded them. Lifting her arms weakly she wiped them clear, glancing at her blood-smeared palms and then at the devastation surrounding her. Seatbelt still pinning her to the seat, her head only a few inches from the caved-in roof of the upturned car, she was conscious of a half-dozen aches and pains radiating through her body.
Craning her neck to the side she made out the form of Cameron crumpled on the roof - her seatbelt sheared in two having not been designed to restrict loads as heavy as the Terminator in high-speed crashes. Her entire body was bent at the waist so that she was almost folded in half - a position that no Human Being could survive. From her position, Sarah was not sure it was a position a Terminator could survive either.
"Cameron?" She groaned, feeling a thumping pain spread through her head. Bracing herself with a hand against the roof Sarah groped for the release catch of her seatbelt, but found no amount of pressure on the button would release the lock. She guessed the belt being under torsion was pulling the catch in such a way that it could not slip free.
As she shifted position to take some of her weight off of the seatbelt, her eyes drifted to the wing mirror, and the shattered panes of glass that now resembled the compound eye of a fly. Sarah's eyes widened as each of the shards reflected a pair of legs methodically walking towards the car.
"Cameron!" She whispered urgently but had barely the time to look in the Terminator's direction, before the shearing of metal and rubber saw the driver's side door torn from its hinges effortlessly, thrown up into the air and down onto the grassy bank with a soft thud. A strong hand thrust into the car, taking a hold of the seatbelt and tearing it from its mounting. Sarah fell to the roof of the car, elbows banging against the metal painfully before she felt a strong grip on her back, hauling her out of the car in a single fluid motion.
Sarah rolled on to her back, her legs suddenly turning to rubber and her vision spinning as her blood rushed back below her waist. She pushed herself to sit up with a grunt and almost drove her nose into the muzzle of a pistol pointed in the dead centre of her face. Following the hand, the arm and the shoulder of the wielder her heart sank as she took in the features of her saviour turned hostage-taker.
Cromartie cocked his head to the side, glancing at the car and then the woman on the roadside. "Are you injured, Sarah Connor?"
"Why the hell does that matter!" She snarled, pushing herself up to standing and cradling the pit of her stomach where the seatbelt had cut particularly hard across it. "Nothing's changed - I'm not going to help you. I said I'd die before I'd help you, and I will. You'd be better off shooting me now."
The T-888's eyes studied the raven-haired woman carefully, before moving to the car and back again. His thumb crept up the gun and flicked the safety on, before lowering his arm and the aim of the weapon on Sarah's face. "That will not be necessary. I need your assistance in another matter, Sarah Connor."
Her lips split apart in a grin of absurdity, rather than humour. She threw her hands upwards, shrugging her shoulders. "You've been chasing my family relentlessly for months - you've tried to kidnap me twice, and having just run me off the road all in the name of killing my son so he doesn't grow up to kill you … You need my help?"
"Correct," He replied, striding around the side of the car and promptly tearing the passenger door from its mounting and discarding it casually. With a single powerful pull he dragged Cameron clear of the wreckage and placed her down on the roadside, his brow furrowing in confusion. "She is damaged - this will complicate matters."
Cameron's HUD fizzled into life from the blackness of cybernetic oblivion; the picture monochrome, unstable and scrolling. She did not need colours or stability to identify Cromartie as he hovered over her and her hand thrust upwards towards the larger Terminator's throat.
Cromartie's superior reflexes seized the hand before it had travelled halfway towards its objective, holding it in place easily and ignoring the whine of her actuators being pushed beyond their limits. Reasoning that it would do their situation no good for Cameron to lose her arm, Sarah limped around the car, feeling her stomach becoming tender and bruised with every passing minute.
She stooped to the road carefully, wincing. The strain of the smaller Terminator trying to fight the larger T-888's grip could be heard as a high-pitched whine which filled the air and hurt the ear. "Give it up Cameron … I think he's got our attention."
The whine died as Cameron withdrew her arm, her head cocking to face Sarah with a questioning glance. The older woman shrugged her shoulders, "You can't walk, I can't run and he has a gun."
"Thank you for explaining," She replied, arms by her side and prostrate as if she had just been lifted from an Egyptian sarcophagus.
"Skynet is here," Cromartie interrupted from his tall vantage point, his eyes scanning the featureless terrain surrounding and tracking any and all perceived threats. His blank, neutral look was a stark contrast to the tight jaw and creased forehead that marred Sarah's face as she climbed to her feet. A million questions poured forth from her mind; How? Why? When? And a multitude in-between.
"The future is no longer certain," The T-888 continued as if pre-empting Sarah's questions. "There are too many variables, too many agents both for and against Skynet that are making it impossible to predict the course of things. The Human Element has grown stronger, if limited in numbers and is now in a position to foil further temporal excursions.
"Skynet now believes it is highly unlikely that it will succeed in Terminating John Connor. The level of protection both now, in the present, and in the future make it virtually impossible. Skynet has therefore devised a new tactic."
Sarah felt the pain in her abdomen double, as the pit of her stomach twisted in anticipation of what was to come.
"Skynet had ordered that you, Sarah Connor, be terminated. It believes that with your death, John Connor will suffer an emotional breakdown and will either be far easier to locate, and terminate, or will never grow to become the threat he is to Skynet in the future."
Sarah sank down to the road, glancing up at the pistol still held at Cromartie's side. Realisation dawned on her that she had finally failed. She had spent so much of her time - so much of her life - making sure John was safe from harm, that she had never truly paused to think about the damage that could be done to her son through her. He might never see another gun until Judgement Day, but still be wounded as truly as if a bullet had struck him in the heart if something happened to her.
She was going to die, at the hands of Cromartie and the hope of her son, and the Human Race, would die with her.
"Skynet does not have the same faith in you that I do," The T-888 added after a pause long enough for Sarah to accept death with her head lowered, and then to snap up with accusing eyes struggling to hold back hot tears. "I believe it is more likely that your death will spur John Connor on to seek vengeance on Skynet and so make him even more dedicated to the cause of humanity."
"Let me make sure I understand this," Sarah spat, her eyes narrowing and her body tensed dangerously. "Skynet thinks the best way to win is to kill my son. It thinks the best way to do this is to kill me. You think the best way to win is to kill my son, by capturing me so that you can kill John when he exposes himself to rescue me. Is that about the lay of it?"
Cromartie nodded, as if the ridiculousness of the situation was lost on him - which it was. "You are correct, Sarah Connor. My primary mission is still to terminate John Connor however, it is also my prerogative to act against anything that might endanger the success of that mission - I believe Skynet has made an error."
Sarah scoffed, earning a look of confusion from the T-888. "Skynet has never claimed to be perfect - I believe that is the exclusive claim of the Human Race."
"If what you're saying is true," She replied with a shrug, ignoring what almost seemed like sarcasm. "Why do you need me? Surely you're just putting me in the firing line and helping Skynet along."
"Skynet is using a T-X type Termination Unit," Cromartie clarified. "It is a powerful model and I will not be able to defeat it without support."
Sarah gave the larger Terminator an incredulous look, as if he had failed to notice the devastation and chaos surrounding him. "I don't know if you've noticed but we're a little thin on the ground regarding reinforcements. Cameron can barely talk, let alone walk - you threw her against enough concrete walls to know that and I'm not exactly in peak condition either."
"I am capable of repairing a T-2000," Cromartie replied with his eyes glancing towards Cameron who had remained silent since her initial arm wrestling loss. "Skynet is coming for you, Sarah Connor. Your greatest chance of survival is with me. It is the logical choice."
"This is insane," Sarah said aloud to no-one in particular. Feeling nimble fingertips curling around her hand she glanced down to see Cameron's bright blue eyes boring into her own. "He's a security risk," She said in almost a whisper. "Don't trust him."
"I don't trust him," Sarah repeated truthfully. The raw facts of the matter were undeniable. If Skynet had returned in a Terminator model that could not be defeated by a unit like the T-888 designed for mainstream combat, then what chance did she have? As a mother she was always willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for her child but this entire situation stunk of manipulation; anger welling up inside her that a machine like Skynet could pervert the delicate, wonderful link between parent and child into something to help the extermination of Humankind.
Sarah's eyes strayed to Cameron's, and she sighed. Quite apart from the matter at hand if Cromartie could repair her, there could still be a chance they might all survive this. Sarah had a vested interest in it, and had spent many years perfecting the art of avoiding death. She had no compunction to meet it now.
She gave Cameron's hand a squeeze, and stood back up, glancing at Cromartie. "What now then?"
The T-888 pushed his hand into a pocket and produced a mobile phone, punching a three-digit number into the keypad before placing it to his ear.
"Hello 9-1-1 Emergency?" He said in a matter-of-fact, clipped tone. "There has been a car accident. I need an ambulance …"
…
…
Sarah pulled the paramedic's jacket over her shoulders as she pushed the cross-marked peaked cap snugly onto her head, tipping it downwards to shield her eyes. Equipment rattled and shuddered against the walls, as the vehicle rounded a corner sharply and forced her against the backrest stretching opposite the gurney to which Cameron was strapped to. Climbing to her feet unsteadily, Sarah bent over the compact bed, pulling the white cotton sheet upwards and tucking it under the mattress.
Cameron's eyes stared up at the ceiling of the ambulance, glassy and vacant. Sarah glanced down at the floor and spotted a small bloodstain against the double-doors, stepping over and rubbing it with the sole of her boot. The loud bang of Cromartie's gunshots felling the EMTs still rang as loudly in her ears as if they had just happened, his cold, impenetrable logic arguing that they were too dangerous to be allowed to live.
They were dead, she tried to reason to herself only partially successfully. There was no point focusing on what she couldn't change, after all - the future wasn't written. Yet.
Sarah spread her arms against the wall to brace herself as the ambulance slowed, a two-tone blast from the siren on the roof above presumably clearing the traffic ahead of them. With a shudder the vehicle came to a halt and she quickly leant backwards to open the catch on the doors, releasing the clamps that held the gurney to the floor of the ambulance.
The double-doors swung open, Cromartie climbing into the rear garbed in an Emergency Response uniform and baseball cap. Taking a hold of the end of the gurney and nodding he pulled the bed halfway through the doorway - the spring-tensioned running wheels descending with a loud clang against the concrete of the hospital's parking apron.
"Twenty year old girl, involved in RTA with suspected internal injuries," Sarah chanted under her breath, trying to commit the diagnosis to memory as they rolled towards the front desk. "Saline IV and Morphine administered with vitals stable …"
"Twenty year old girl--" She said aloud trying to look as though she had rolled past the admissions desk for the tenth time that day. The Nurse manning the station - worry and frown lines carved deep into her old features - pursed her lips, glanced at her clipboard and gestured vaguely over her shoulder. "Emergency room four," She interrupted.
Sarah resisted the urge to roll her eyes and instead shrugged her shoulders, leading the gurney and the two Terminators off through a side passage away from the main reception. Passing a dozen marked doors either side of a corridor that seemed to stretch for as far as she could see, Cromartie slowed the gurney to a halt in front of a seemingly random doorway, pushing it open and waiting only long enough to make sure it was empty before nodding.
The room was obviously some sort of surgical suite - a cluster of ten small spotlights mounted to a larger disc that hung from the ceiling on a multi-jointed arm, above a three-segment bed on an adjustable hydraulic base. Various equipment trays and were clustered around the centre of the room, interspersed with gas cylinders and monitors and machines. A partition divided the room into the surgical area and a small area lined with sinks and scrubs.
Opening the thin, Perspex door into the surgical suite Cromartie pushed Cameron into the centre before effortlessly sweeping her up from the gurney and over to lie on the main bed. Waiting for Sarah to follow inside he made his way to the smaller partition separating the hygiene area, pulling the cap from his head and the jacket from his shoulders.
"You must wash your hands and wear suitable clothing," The T-888 ordered in a manner more appropriate to a schoolteacher than an automated killing machine. Sarah frowned, reluctantly pulling her arms from the sleeves of the jacket and letting it drop to the floor.
"We will be repairing integral components," Cromartie explained as he caught sight of the older woman's reluctance. "While the blood substitute that supports the flesh over our endoskeletons has antiseptic qualities, it is not as capable as your White Blood Cells. It is important we avoid large-scale infection."
Sarah nodded, snatching a crumpled set of scrubs from a hook on the wall, and pulling them over her clothes. "It's never been an issue when she's been hurt before, or we've put bullets in you."
"We will be opening a significant amount of her flesh," He said matter-of-factly. Sarah tried to suppress the nausea that twisted her stomach at the thought. Snapping the elastic up around her waist and pulling on the loose top several sizes to big, she gathered her hair up underneath the baby-blue cap and looped the face mask around both ears.
Sarah stood aside Cromartie, as the broad-chested Terminator lathered his hands in antibacterial soap and rinsed them underneath the stainless steel taps. Bending his hands at the elbow he turned towards Sarah and presented them. "You will have to place the gloves on my hands."
The raven-haired woman allowed the pressing needs of the current situation to outweigh her dislike for being in the T-888's presence, let alone having to dress him. Snatching the green latex gloves from their cardboard dispenser she slapped them against the edge of the sink, stretching each one before pushing them over both hands while trying to avoid her flesh on his.
The nausea in the pit of her stomach threatened to move to her throat, and she struggled to keep her focus on her own gloves and not the ridiculousness of preparing to perform surgery with a machine whose sole purpose was to eliminate the Human Race by killing her son, or failing that capturing her and luring him to his destruction.
"Sarah …" A voice called out, bringing the older woman's attention back to the centre of the surgical suite. Pushing through the door that divided them, she crossed over to where Cameron lay to see strong blue eyes gazing up at the ceiling. The machine in the image of a young girl turned her head towards Sarah, her features unreadable but beautiful.
"It's not too late …" Cameron urged. "His primary function is still to kill John. You shouldn't be around him - you should leave …"
Sarah could swear that the woman she looked at seemed tired, almost as if the world, or its future, weighed on her shoulders - a feeling she knew only too well. "If Skynet really is here, I'm not going to last long on my own. Even if looking at him makes me feel ill every time, he operates by a certain logic and while that logic lets me protect my son, that's how things will be."
Sarah squeezed her eyes shut as a blinding shaft of light turned everything in her field of vision white, the powerful lights above the bed blazing on without warning. Adjusting to the intensity, she saw the T-888 stop at the opposite side of the bed, scalpel held in hand so that the terrifically sharp blade glinted.
"Remove her chip first," She ordered in a tone that brooked no argument even from Cromartie. "The enemy of my enemy might be my friend, but that doesn't mean I have to trust you. I'll take care of it until the repairs are done."
The larger Terminator nodded, strong hands displaying surprising deftness to gently roll Cameron's head to the left so that her face met Sarah's. Carefully gathering up her flowing brown locks, the shining blade disappeared between hair to cut into the flesh. Had Sarah not been studying the lithe girl's face so intently she might have missed the almost imperceptible wince as Cromartie made the first cut.
Sarah had been there while Cameron's chip had been removed before and she had never so much as blinked, even while her scalp was cut away and her most vulnerable, critical system exposed. To see such a reaction, such a painful reaction - such a human reaction - seemed to illustrate everything that made Cameron unique when compared to the T-888, who worked methodically to peel back the flap of flesh.
She placed her hand on the bed for support, resisting the urge to lean forward as the blood-stained fingers of Cromartie worked to remove the access plug which marked the barrier between skin and metal. Her eyes widened in surprise when Cameron's hand jerkily moved up to cover her own, but she did not pull away. Cameron winced again, more obviously, as Cromartie pulled away the plug and dropped it into a stainless steel dish with a loud clang - retrieving a pair of magnetic tweezers and delving into the exposed skull.
Sarah felt the hand squeeze her own, and she offered a reassuring smile. Bright blue eyes lingered on hers, almost glistening as if that were possible. She saw Cromartie's elbow jerk backwards in her peripheral vision, and felt the hand on hers go slack and lax. Blue eyes that had studied her so intently became glassy, and unfocused.
The T-888 offered the stainless steel bowl to Sarah, who fished out the small, insignificant-looking black rectangle and shut her fingers tightly around it. Glancing back down at Cameron, the older woman carefully closed her eyelids with a free hand.
Cromartie slid his arm underneath Cameron's neck, cupping the back of her head at the same time as he pulled her to sit upwards limply. Without pause he began to undo the tiers that kept the loose hospital gown in place and as it billowed upwards and down to the floor Sarah's eyes drifted down to the bed in surprise.
It occurred to Sarah almost as an afterthought that she had never seen Cameron naked. A slender neck sloping to rounded shoulders and surprisingly strong, slight arms. Pert and rounded breasts, pale underneath the soft pink nipples which crowned both sat above a toned stomach, with the slightest hint of definition underneath the taut skin. Narrow hips flared only slightly out over lithe legs that begun in powerful thighs, and tapered down to tiny toes - petite feet that Sarah had seen propel fully grown men into the air and into walls.
Sarah's eyes glanced at Cromartie, and two powerful if totally opposite emotions flooded her being. Anger - almost jealousy - that such intimacy should be shared with a most definitely soulless machine in the shape of the T-888, who regarded privacy and the body with the same regard he held for anything outside of terminating her son. Sarah could also feel an absurd form of gratitude that the one other person who saw the frankly beautiful sight before them, was totally incapable of recognising it or ever acting on it.
Her pondering was abruptly shattered as she watched Cromartie carve a weeping red line from Cameron's shoulder blade down through the crook of the elbow where he paused, cocking his head to the side. Sarah tore her eyes away from the blood that slowly slipped free of the cut skin, down to see the scar that ran from just underneath he palm well beyond the wrist.
The T-888 neatly cut the scar open anew, dropping the bloody scalpel into a holding tray and retrieving a set of surgical clamps, pushing them between the flesh and quickly opening them to reveal the tangle of metal and biology within.
"I did not cause this," Cromartie said with a gesture at the blood-stained actuators revealed by his prodding. "This is pre-existing damage."
"Where did it come from?" Sarah asked with a frown, bile rising in her throat as the sickly sweet smell of blood wafted into her nostrils. The urge to wretch was overpowering and she resorted to breathing through her mouth to contain herself.
Cromartie left a red smear across the bed as he opened a box appropriated from the remains of his destroyed car, and selected a handful of tools. "The T-2000 was not built to fight other Termination Units, accumulated damage was inevitable."
Having seen Cameron in action, having seen the raw power and survivability the Terminator displayed, it was easy for Sarah to forget that while no Human could hope to stand up and defeat her in combat as far as the ranks of her kin went, she was easy pickings for models purposely designed to kill and destroy.
A loud hiss splashed red drops against Sarah's sleeves and gloves, as Cromartie pulled one of the damaged actuators out of the arm with considerable force. As she wiped her hands ineffectually against her scrubs she could taste the tang of metal even through the face mask; the taste, the smell and the sight of the T-888 making another pan-body cut all combining to tip her over the edge.
"I need some air," Sarah muttered as she span and retreated from the room, fists clenched. Cromartie did not even look up as he pulled another bloody component from its mountings and examined it closely.
He wiped the blood from his gloves only when the metal became too slippery in his hands.
…
…
Sarah kept her head down as she followed one of the hundreds of twisting corridors that made up the sprawling hospital complex, the majority empty now that she had passed beyond the point where most patients were allowed to wander. Her nose wrinkled at the strong smell of disinfectant and chemicals which hung in the air, her desire for fresh air still unfulfilled.
Glancing up at a stack of signs pointing to various departments with words she could barely pronounce, her eyes travelled to a door marked Doctor's Lounge. Opening the door a few inches as if crossing the threshold might set an alarm blaring, Sarah slipped through the doorway and inside.
The room was several degrees too warm for her liking, filled with sofas, recliners, hard plastic chairs and beanbags. Running along three of the walls chipped worktops sported dozens of ring-marks, coffee makers, stacks of dog-eared magazines and the occasional forgotten stethoscope. Stretched across one of the couches a Doctor slumbered loudly, his snores interrupted by the occasional grunt as he scratched at himself.
Snatching up a mug from the washboard beside the sink in the corner, Sarah pushed it underneath the peculator and allowed herself the luxury of a sigh, rubbing the back of her neck as the bitter aroma of the strong, black coffee drifted upwards from the worktop.
Bringing the hot drink to her lips, she washed away the stale taste in her mouth and turned towards the sliding doors opposite the way she had entered. Straining her arm slightly against the badly oiled runner, she pulled one handle far enough to slip between and step out on to a long balcony a single floor up from the ground, looking out on to the Emergency Arrivals apron they had arrived in originally.
Her loose scrubs flapped against the cool evening air, turning the sheen of sweat across her forehead cold and sending a shiver done her spine. Mug held in both hands she took another long gulp, her nostrils flaring with the invigorating, bitter aroma. The cityscape stretched across her entire vision - sky-scraping towers, single-storey homes and everything in-between; a thousand lights blinking and joined every few moments by another as the city transited from day to dusk for the coming night.
The thud of a door opening and closing, followed by the ringing of a spoon against a cup filtered outside to the balcony, though Sarah kept her eyes on the view instead. She rarely had the time to simply look without really watching, to glance at something without having to evaluate it as a threat or not, or to consider a hidden meaning or agenda.
"The view's really something, huh?" A voice questioned.
Sarah nodded, turning her head to glance at the company. The man sported a white coat that seemed a little too large for his slightly portly frame, and scrubs a little too tight for his comfort. Stubble dotted itself around his chin, past his ears and all over a shaved head that made him seem younger than the frown lines carved into his brow, and the wrinkles around his mouth might suggest. In one hand he clutched a steaming cup, in the other a cigarette.
"Do you mind?" He asked, gesturing to the cigarette. When Sarah shook her head he pulled a metal lighter from his pocket that might once have been polished silver, but was now a worn grey. Lighting the cigarette he brought it to his lips and took a long drag, his shoulders slumping in relaxation as he blew the wispy grey smoke out over the railings.
He brought his cup to his lips, and gulped thirstily. "Your first day?" He asked non-nonchalantly.
As good an idea as anything else she might think of, Sarah nodded, her eyes travelling back to the cityscape as she sipped from her own mug. "What gave it away?"
"Other than the blood on your scrubs?" He laughed, taking another drag of his cigarette. "You've got that Deer-caught-in-headlights look about you.
"Don't take offence," He said with a smirk, shrugging his shoulders. "Everyone goes through it, hell even I did back when dinosaurs were still stomping around and patients drank moonshine to knock them out before every procedure."
He puffed his cheeks out, trying to form a ring with the smoke but failing miserably. "We all started the same though; sure that we'd read everything that'd ever been written on medicine. Positive we'd cut up corpses and put them back together every way you could and certain that five years spent in classrooms drawing beards on the sperms in the biology textbooks, and having raging summer parties meant we were ready to make the difference. We'd make the real difference.
"But nothing ever changes, right?" He asked rhetorically, sipping his coffee. "Day-in, and day-out I see people who never deserved to get sick die, and I see the dregs of the earth who are here but for the grace of a pretty fickle God walk away from injuries that should've sent them to Hell where they belong. No matter how hard you try, no matter how much of yourself you give, you can't fight the system - the way it was meant to be."
Sarah felt her mug begin to cool in the cold outside air, the feeling of helplessness and repetition that threatened to crush the soul painfully familiar to her. "That's a pretty grim outlook. I'm not sure I could get up every morning if I believed that … Even if it were true."
"I treated this old man last week," He shrugged while leaning against the railing, drawing the last of the nicotine from his rapidly shrinking cigarette. "He'd been smoking these things for fifty years and hadn't ever had as much as a cough. Was in for a general check-up and took no interest in quitting no matter how much the Duty Nurse harassed him.
"Turned out he had lung cancer - pretty advanced, not much we'll be able to do other than try to prolong the time he's got left I reckon. As soon as he found out his attitude changed totally; he took all the literature on quitting smoking he could fit in his bags and he joined a self-help group. He started doing all the things that would have made a difference if he'd done them decades ago. It wasn't that he was in total denial of the facts - he just wanted to make a change. I expected him to fall apart, fill himself with rage for not doing something about it when he could."
Sarah fixed her gaze on the portly Doctor, her brow creased in confusion.
"Another patient of mine, a real self-proclaimed gansta', he is. He's barely twenty, from the south side of the city; pretty grimy and dirty and full of the hopeless. He'd been in what, four or five times with every kind of violent injury you can imagine - stab wounds, gunshot wounds, broken bones and lacerations. All he seemed to do was fight; kept blabbering on about how the only way to get respect on the streets was to beat it out of people."
He finished the dregs of his coffee and pursed his lips. "I was sure he wouldn't see the month out alive. I was certain I'd see his cold, dead face wheeled past me on the way to the morgue. Found out from the Ward Councillor that he's just been awarded a Young Persons' Achievement Grant - he's off to study Social Sciences at University. He's left the ghetto behind.
"Point is that life likes to grind you down with the unfair, and the inevitable. If there is a God he gets some sick pleasure out of putting us all through an endless stream of shit - disappointment, hurt and sadness so we all become full of bitterness and hatred and then just when we've reached our capacity; just when we've had enough of the bullshit, life throws us a curve ball."
He pulled the collar of his coat around his neck. "You get a situation and you're so sure of how you think it's going to turn out - you just know it'll blow up in your face like everything else has, or it'll turn out exactly like the rest of them do. Damned if they don't just surprise you in a way you thought you'd never see again - Dancing in the rain, running on a beach with your dog and your girl, that sort of thing."
"Hope," He said simply. "There's always just enough to stop you giving up. If you run out, something'll come along with just enough to get you through the day."
Sarah unclenched her palm as the Doctor's words struck a chord. Her eyes settled on the Chip she had been carrying tightly all the way from its grisly removal before, scarcely believable that so much could be contained in something so little. She rested her upturned palm over the railings as if to present the tiny component on a platform to the wider city beyond.
The stranger scratched at the stubble around his chin, "What's that?"
"A little bit of hope," Sarah said after a few moments silence, her fingers curling back around the Chip tightly.
"Time to save the world," He chuckled with a glance at his watch and realising there was no more explanation forthcoming. "The name's Doctor James Harrison," He added with an outstretched hand. Sarah took the proffered hand and shook it, offering the slightest smile as the portly man stepped back through the sliding doors and towards the greater Hospital. "I'll see you around Doctor."
"No you won't - but thanks," The older woman replied abashedly, sucking in a lungful of the cold city air and taking a final glance at the urban metropolis filling her view.