Tuesday 16th October – 6.52am

Their twenty minute walk had taken forty, and they were way behind schedule when they got to the Skynet base. They'd had to walk the whole way around, through an abandoned town, to get to the front of the school and find enough cover to hide nearly eight hundred people.

Connor and the rest of the military leadership – including Joan – had snuck forwards for a better look. Connor turned around and gestured for Erica to follow them.

Surprised and pleased, she did, leaving everyone else cowering in an abandoned warehouse. She started to record. They stole quietly down alleys and ended up hiding in someone's kitchen looking out over the school. It didn't look like a school now – there were high mesh fences with barbed wire long the top, two tall watchtowers with search lights combing the ground outside.

The only remnants of the school ever being there were the words over the main door "Nathan B Forest High School" and a curiously well tended flower garden. There was a flurry of activity – machines patrolled constantly.

"Crap. They've guessed we're coming here," Connor cursed.

"It's not too late to pull out," Markus reasoned.

"No, we'll never get another chance like this. Markus, you're with me when we get inside, I need you to protect Erica."

"I know the plan John," said Markus, exasperated.

"Wait, me? What? Why?" Erica asked.

"You didn't tell her!" Joan exclaimed.

"No I didn't tell her. She didn't need to know." Connor wasn't even paying attention. He appeared to be counting the guards outside.

"The documentary," Joan said, "we're sending it to the past."

"How-" Erica began, but Sackhoff cut her off.

"It doesn't really matter how many guards there are John, you know that. All it takes is for one to see us, and they'll all be up our collective ass."

Connor nodded absently. Now he was staring at the flower garden. It seemed to make him uncomfortable somehow.

"Time travel exists, we've sent people back. There's tech inside that school that can get that documentary to before Judgement Day," Joan explained. "Now shut up, we don't have time for you to ask stupid questions."

Erica thought that was completely unfair. She hadn't asked any stupid questions. She'd barely even asked one.

"Everyone seen everything they need to?" Connor asked.

They all nodded.

"Okay. Alison?"

"They already know we're coming and they know how many from seeing the tractors, but they don't know why, or what we're after. They know the communications going down will hurt them, but the update is already scheduled, and it's more effort than it's worth to mess with it. They don't see a couple hundred humans as a threat," Alison said.

"They'd be right about that," Sackhoff added.

Alison continued; "We will take very heavy losses, I estimate up to sixty percent. I recommend we scrap the assault from the back, and concentrate on the distraction out front and the infiltration teams. We don't have enough people to successfully attack on three fronts any-more."

Connor's kind of an ass-hole, Erica thought in the middle of this. He'd told her she would have access to everything, all of the plan. She got why he hadn't told her, but she didn't get why he hadn't told her that he hadn't told her, after telling her that he would tell her.

"Okay, Joan, your team will co-ordinate with the teams attacking from the front. We wait here ten minutes for the infiltration teams to clear the school and then we follow. It doesn't matter how many people die if this works. They'll all have happy normal lives soon enough, and no-one will have ever heard of Skynet, or Judgement Day. Anyone got anything else to say?"

No-one spoke up.

"Right," Connor said, almost optimistically, "let's do this."

Tuesday 16th October – 7.01am

Erica was too horrified to do anything but point and shoot. Bodies littered the ground all around – at least a hundred. There were a few metal in there, but the vast, vast majority were human. The assault had launched five minutes ago. Erica had watched them, from her vantage point upstairs in the house, rush the gates and be cut down in swaths.

But from the comm-chatter it appeared that the infiltration teams had started to clear the building – to an extent; a lot of them had died in the process. Most of the comm-chatter was horrible – desperate pleas for help, people's last moments just before they died. But there was no-one left to help. This was it.

Erica thought of the people listening back at the camp, how impossibly helpless they must be feeling. How many had heard their loved ones die and not be able to do anything about it?

"Erica, we gotta go," Sackhoff yelled up the stairs.

Erica took a breath – the idea of entering that – she couldn't. But, somehow, she forced herself down the stairs. It was that look in Neil's eyes, just after Connor had told them about Alison's return. He'd told her he couldn't fight, and she'd been disgusted. After that, she had to step up herself. Back then she'd thought she wouldn't be afraid. Now she saw how naive that had been. But she could do this.

They were out the door, Connor, Sackhoff, Alison, Erica and two of the actual soldiers, scurrying along the main road, staying near the cover of the houses. But then they reached the end of the road, the end of the cover. The start of the bodies.

They picked their way through, staying low, avoiding the looks of the machine sentries. They couldn't afford to be seen by a single one, not until the link went down. If a machine saw Connor, or Sackhoff, or Alison, they'd be able to guess the plan.

Erica caught the faces of the dead, or the mostly dead. One or two grabbed at their ankles, pleading for help, but they had to leave them.

They got through the gates without any major difficulties.

"7.09," Alison warned them. They'd wanted to be inside the building by now.

They were passing the flower garden when Erica caught some movement out of the corner of her eye. She didn't have a gun, so she whipped around, pointing the camera at the source. She wasn't entirely sure why – she might get the face of the machine that ended her, but she didn't see what good it would do. But she wanted to anyway.

She was surprised to see it wasn't a machine at all. Neil sat cowering behind a low wall. Their eyes met, and Erica knew Neil well enough to recognise the look of utter shame in his eyes. She knew he wanted to help, wanted to fight, he just couldn't.

He'd had some – problems, a few years back. He hadn't been the same since, and Erica's heart went out to him now. But she had to move on.

Monday 2nd September 1996 – 4.07am

There were shots outside. Markus didn't care. He just wanted to roll over and go back to sleep, but the floor was hard and cold, and after a minute his survival instinct kicked in. Kind of.

Patton was already up, peering out a small nearby window. She put her finger to her lips and Markus nodded. He dragged himself up and joined her. The man-from-the-puce-volvo was out there. Terminator. He's a terminator, Markus corrected himself.

Several bodies were littered around him, some twitching or moving, but most were not. The door behind them opened, and Markus jumped, but it was just John. "Can't see out my window," he explained in a whisper.

They could see movement around the side of the building behind the terminator. It looked like a couple of people were getting ready to attack. John froze - "Mom!"

The terminator didn't see the people behind him and started to head for the building that Markus, John and Patton were in.

The group of humans, led by Sarah, ran out, shouting at each other and firing wildly at the terminator. The bullets bounced off.

"We're out of explosive rounds," John explained in a whisper.

"You're out? You didn't think it'd be handy to have some back-ups?" Markus said sarcastically – their lack of preparation could get them all killed.

"They're kinda hard to come by."

Patton shushed them. The terminator had turned and started to fire on his attackers. One by one they fell, injured or dead.

It was Sarah alone. John stared, transfixed. Patton started to look around the room, but there was nothing there that could help.

Sarah was shot down.

John leapt up, and ran from the room. Patton and Markus looked at each other, then followed helplessly behind.

John was out the front door and headed straight for the terminator, who whirled around and was just about to shoot, when Markus knocked John to the floor. He pulled John away to the side, but they could only watch as Patton was left to face the terminator alone.

There was something similar in the way they stood, the way they moved. Markus hadn't noticed it before. Patton had no weapons, no way of defending herself, no hope, but she wasn't afraid.

She never showed fear, she never laughed, never cried. She was only twelve, everything that had happened – she should have been a mess. And the way she'd taken charge – she knew things, she'd saved him so many times by just knowing what to do. How could a twelve year old know that?

Markus realized she was buying them time. He and John ran to Sarah, who was stretched out on the ground. She was tensed up in agony, but she wasn't dead.

She pushed the gun into John's hands and hissed "You know what to do."

John nodded and stood up, pointing the gun straight at the terminator's head. He shot, but just a half second too late. Patton crumpled to the floor, and then the terminator did, right after.

Markus ran to Patton's side, but John shouted, "No! I need your help!"

He was digging around in his pocket. Markus came up, and John commanded, "the gun! Now!" Markus didn't really see the point, but he pointed it as John began to cut into the terminator's head.

"One hundred and twenty seconds until he reboots. We've got to get his chip," John explained as he cut furiously. He was through to the skull, and was twisting out the chip as the terminator's hand started to twitch – he was coming back online. But the chip was out; they were safe.

After days of being hunted mercilessly, Markus didn't care. He didn't have eyes for anyone but Patton. He found himself beside her, without really knowing or caring how he'd gotten there.

There was blood everywhere, it was pumping out of her. Markus hugged her close and it got on his face, in his hair. His arm twinged painfully, but he couldn't have cared less at that moment.

Her eyes fluttered, and that was it. She had no immortal last words, Markus didn't have time to say goodbye, she was just gone.

It was too much. All those strangers, at the hotel, the apartment building, the gas station, the policemen, the waitress, the security guards, the people in the office, the people here, his mom, his dad, Felicity, Cecilia and now Patton. They had taken everything from him, everyone. Everyone Markus cared about, everyone he had ever, even remotely, loved was dead.

It was over.

Tuesday 16th October 2029 – 7.11am

There were two sentries at the door to the school. By the time their little group saw the machines, they were almost on top of them. But the machines hadn't seen them either. They fell to the ground and played dead while the two soldiers snuck up on the machines.

The soldiers were expendable, while everyone else in their group was not. One of the soldiers was shot point-blank in the head, but too late – they'd managed to take down the machines.

Inside the building, the bodies lessened. There was only one or two per corridor now, and there were more machine bits lying here and there – the people who'd been assigned to infiltrate the building were more experienced, better fighters than those who'd been cannon fodder outside.

"7.12, that's it," Connor hissed into his walkie-talkie "thank you everyone, fall back. We'll see you outside."

They'd had to turn the sound off the radios when they'd left the house, and Erica had no idea how many people were left to hear this message. A fraction of what had started the assault eighteen minutes ago.

They didn't even try to hide any more – they raced through the corridors. Erica began to get suspicious – this was too easy, where were all the machines? They'd run into a few, but they'd managed to subdue them easily enough.

It was hard to record now, they were moving too fast. Room after room went by, corner after corner, body after body. She had no idea what they were looking for, but Alison was leading, and she seemed to know where they were going. Up a flight of stairs, and then they were there.

It was a huge room, filled, top to bottom, with computer equipment. A whole bunch of boxes with switches and flashing lights, screens, wires, fans. It was freezing cold.

They spread out, looking for something. Erica didn't know what, so she crossed to the window and looked out – she found where the machines had gone.

They were mercilessly pursuing the last of the humans, who were fleeing helplessly. Erica tried to do a quick head count – less than two hundred, definitely. The machines were cutting them down in their dozens. They'd be very lucky if any made it out alive.

Her head was killing her. Adrenaline had kept her going up until this point, but now that they'd stopped, her head wound was catching up to her. Trying to ignore it, she turned back to the room.

They seemed to have found what they were looking for; a small silver-grey box. It looked so unimpressive; Erica wondered why hundreds of people had died to get them into this room.

They were pulling out cables furiously, when the screens started to flash. Everyone looked up, surprised. Words began to scroll across them:

"STOP YOURE KILLING ME"

"PLEASE IT HURTS"

"I DIDNT KILL ANY OF YOU"

This stopped Connor dead in his tracks. "Stop, everyone, stop, please."

He stood back and held his head in his hands. "Alison, find the time travel message thing, we're getting out of here."

"No! That is not the plan!" Sackhoff raged. Erica was on his side. Those people had not died for some long-shot time-travel nonsense. Taking out the communications was the mission.

"The flower garden," Connor whispered, almost to himself. "Did you see the flower garden?" to everyone. "Why would they do that?"

"It doesn't want to die. IT'S SCARED!"

He started to shout now. "IT'S SCARED! It didn't kill anyone."

"It's a machine John." This came from Alison. She'd stopped looking for the time-travel thing and walked over to him. "You have to do this. All of this, all of it, was so we could end the machines once and for all. You can do that now."

"You." Connor stroked her face softly. "You're one of them. You're telling me you don't feel? Don't feel anything?"

"No. Maybe. It's – different. I think. I can't explain. But it's not the same. It doesn't matter. I don't love you John. You have to kill it."

She looked into his eyes, but Erica could see Alison's were blank as ever. "You have to kill it. John."

The sound of his own name snapped him back into the moment.

"No," he shook his head. "NO! Get the tech, get out."

Sackhoff couldn't contain himself any longer. "No, John. No. Remember Patton? You met her, do you remember? She was just a kid. We were all just kids. They destroyed us. We have to destroy them."

He began to head for the box, but Alison held him back.

Markus began to struggle, to fight, claw, he begged, pleaded. "You're on my side," he almost sobbed. "You want it dead too."

"John says no," she explained, "then I say no."

The solider started towards the tech too, but one look from Alison stopped him. She could very easily kill everyone in the room if she wanted to, if John ordered her to, and they all knew it.

Erica didn't know what to do. She'd recorded it all, and now she spoke up.

"Connor; John," she started. She didn't know if calling him by his first name was cheeky, but at the moment she didn't care. She needed to get his attention.

"John. All of those people, hundreds and hundreds of people are out there, right now, dead, dying, bleeding on the ground, crying for their mothers, being hunted by the machines. All for you. For this. You have to kill it."

Then she realized what she'd said. Kill it, she'd said it too. Kill. How could you kill something that wasn't really alive?

"I'm sorry," Connor's face was devastated. He knew what he was doing, the consequences. "I'm sorry. If we do this, we are no better than them. If we wipe them out, like they're trying to do to us, then we are no better than them." He looked around the room.

"We are no better than them. Why should we survive and they die if we are no better than them?"

Erica could see that none of them agreed with him. This kind of philosophical debate was for when the war was long over and everyone was safe. But they were having it now, and even though none of them agreed with him, they would defer to his leadership. Like always. He was John Connor.

"Get the tech, get out," he repeated.