"Cold blows the wind to my true love
And gently drops the rain
I've only had but one true love
And in green-wood she lies slain

I'll do as much for my true love
As any young man may
I'll sit and mourn all on her grave
For a twelve months and a day

when twelve months and a day was passed
her ghost did rise and speak
Why sittest thou all on my grave
And will not let me sleep?

A stalk has withered and dead, sweetheart
The flower will never return
And since I've lost my own true love
What can I do but yearn

When will we meet again, sweetheart
When will we meet again?
When the autumn leaves that fall from the trees
Are green and spring up again"

The Science of Deduction

The Unquiet Grave

There was a rapid back and forth motion going on behind the closed eyes of a completely still body. To the outside world it seemed like the movement of a duck on a cold, still, South Bend pond. Then without a word, and without movement, eyelashes flickered open. Blue flecked emerald eyes stared at the metal ceiling above them. Contents of red rust splotched and chipped the black surface. The sight of the rusted metal, however, brought to the man a child-like safety. For a long moment he stared at the roof over him, his mind not with his body upon seeing the familiar sights.

He could still see the gentle breeze in the raven black hair of the most beautiful woman in the world. Her green eyes were like shimmering stain glass, like two glowing beacons of a lighthouse on a stormy night, drawing him toward her. The bases of their souls invested in a young love at first sight. With all of his power the man tried to reach back and capture her face, to stay in the memories of the young beauty. But slowly reality took ahold of his senses. And in his blissful sleep he had, for a moment, touched a happiness that had eluded him for so many years. But when he awoke he had found that it was nothing more than another cycle of sleep, and his joy, but a dream that had ended too soon.

When it finally dawned on him where he was, what he was doing, and all that had happened since that fateful night on a sinking aircraft carrier, he felt his heart turn cold. The man with the fierce emerald eyes and marred face would have to choke down all the tragedy and sorrow of the last seventeen years and find the strength again to carry on. Carry on for another day, another night. Here in the dark dank surroundings haunted by the phantoms of the past and the face of an angel that had fallen and returned home. Here there were only the hollow tomes that echoed in the empty chambers of a broken heart that had once beaten with the passion and power of true love. But now there was no fire, no passion, only the cold loneliness of solitude, and emotions that never again could be found.

Never Again.

The worn black upholstery was still sticky on his skin, after all these years, as he sat up in the cab of the car. The inside of the ancient vehicle was rusted and faded in time and disrepair. A large chunk on top of the steering wheel was missing, the speedometer had no indicator, and the windshield was cracked and stained with carbon scoring from plasma bolts. He took in all of the familiar sights and sobered himself before he exited with his walking cane.

The 1973 Mustang's black paint was scarred and smote by carbon burns and impact points all along the hood. The bald tires were desperately low on air. The dust and powdered debris from ruined cities stained the chrome finish brown. And yet for all of its ruined and burned out aesthetic, the man had treated it like one would sleeping in his own bedroom. The limped man took a moment to lean against the driver's side. His eyes were drawn to the surroundings. There was seclusion in the quiet hum of generators that echoed off the granite staircases and surfaces built into the jagged rock foundations of the ancient lair.

When Ryan Connor had first found this place, he and his father were not quite sure what it had been used for. The cave was under an old colonial Spanish mansion retrofitted into a deco office building in the old city. After his mother's death, and while the world ended around them, in every facet of the phrase possible, father and son occupied the building. There seemed nothing particularly special about it in general, till Ryan's fascination for the large, man sized, fireplace that remained from the original mansion. It seemed odd to the small child that the rest of the home had been torn down and rebuilt to a streamlined '30s deco sensibility, but not this. No one would've thought twice about the ancient cobwebbed fire poker that was hidden behind the chipped ivory column, no one except a small boy with a curious analytical mind. All he had to do was pull. Suddenly, with a startle that sent him to the floor, the ashy hearth pulled away. Then, with the granulating sliding of stone, the entire right side of the home's original fireplace wall rolled back like a door.

Hearing the commotion, John Connor had come to his son's side, ready to pounce, edgy from his wife's death and the end of the world. But when he saw the secret passage, which had been under his building the entire time, all anger had subsided. Together, armed with a pair of Sarah Connor's old flashlights, both father and child climbed down the cracked and chipped stone staircase into the bowels of the cavern. At the bottom, they found a discovery for the ages at the edge of a trickling reservoir.

The floors had been set upon by a layer of polished marble and granite. It was outfitted with ancient, dust covered gaslight lanterns that were built into the walls all around. To the back of the cave were rotted wooden stairs that lead to a dilapidated platform deck that overlooked the entire cavern. To the left was a wide hollow tunnel that echoed with the rippling tide of the bay and rocky beach beyond. But what captured and drew Ryan's attention as a small boy, was what lay in the very center. It was two, expanding, black, marble circles, and a single contracted one in their center. In between the two larger ones were four smaller that were situated on the four points of the circle in the center. Running through these circles were four triangular lines. John had told the boy in extreme fascination that it was the symbol of the fencing order of La Verdadera Destreza.

The Master's Wheel.

Since then they had come to take ownership and occupy the space for their own purposes. For the many years since their discovery there had been rumors from both friend and enemy, whispers from prisoners in Century, to the endless scouting machines sent by John Henry itself. Even now the rumors lived on of John Connor's secret bunker, and the many wonders and treasures the savior of humanity had hidden within it. There were only a very select few that had seen the inside of the cavernous lair of John Connor. And Ryan could attest that most, if not only for one, were not disappointed by what they saw.

Over the years, the two had transformed the secret hideout of a mysterious Spanish noble, living a duel life as a swordsman, into a futuristic laboratory, sanctuary for solitude, and vast armory. They had torn down the wooden plateau and staircase and replaced it with metal beams and grating for the large super computer station and other forensic and scientific scanners and equipment. Where a stable used to be, was now an auto station with a rolling, fire engine red, locker of auto tools invented from scratch, like the mechanical parts they worked on. Parked there was a unique, gunmetal black, machine. The sleek and futuristic racing bike was built from the directions of blueprints stolen from the hall of inventions in the 1964 World's Fair exhibit at the New York Met. It took its rider four years to salvage from destroyed Ogre tanks and shot down Hunter Killers, and another year to build. Silent as a mistress in the morning after a night of sin, and quick as a young man's dreams, there wasn't a faster machine on the planet. Its engineer's helmet that hung off the handle was black with a full tinted visor, and twin streaks of blue trailing done the top.

Where there had been an area to train, with pole and ropes, now sat a forest of glass display cases, a rusted and decommissioned Mustang, and vaulted from the ceiling a charred and damaged prototype for an unmanned drone that had been designed in a three dot pattern. Separated by guard rail from the rest of the operating base, these memories and keep sakes were mementos and trophies from great adventures and memorable fights of the last great war between humanity and a vengeful mechanical god. Within this vast museum were collected weapons in plexiglass display lockers. They were filled with Katana swords, the previous owner's ancient fencing sabers, and the many generation of firearms used throughout the war. In the lockers was everything from a nicked but reliable tactical shotgun that once belonged to "The Mother of all Destiny", to the final generation of Plasma Rifle produced by the last Zeira Corp. Weapons factory in the German Black Forest. Along the pathways, in the rows of cases, stood the many damaged and burnt out models of captured exoskeletons of killing machines produced by an artificial mind poisoned by hatred. They had been set up to show their evolution through their service, corresponding with the weapons of its time within the lockers that flanked them.

Somewhere, scattered amongst these exhibits, were also what remained of the most feared and dangerous of the human traitors, the Greys. These psychotic, monstrous, and evil men and women's prized possessions and most deadly weapons had been spirited away from all knowledge by John Connor upon their capture. Their evil innovations of death never to be ally to the hand that was wielded by either wrong or right intentions. These soulless war criminal's life's work and ambitions that had tormented and terrorized the innocent remainders of humanity for so many years were now nothing more than dusty trophies. Locked away and kept on display. They were an everlasting testament to the courage, will, and superior intellect of the two partners, together and apart, who had finally defeated the human monsters.

To anyone else this might have been an odd and frighteningly macabre section. But to Ryan Connor he had not seen it that way, nor glorified the actions of the men, women, and machine whose memories and remains lay in the trophy room. But rather remembered fondly the moments of heroism and childhood victories over opponents that at the time had once thought themselves invincible masters of a ruined universe.

When he saw the blood stained scrubs under wrinkled trench coat, with spotless gloves, and bloody bandages over where the face had been. The man didn't see the psychotic doctor who had mutilated herself and scores of other women in order to recreate the face of Cameron Connor. He saw the moment a boy of twelve disregarded his father's orders to stay behind and made a vigilante head sash from his hand-me-down scarf that had once belonged to Sarah Connor. Leaving all the safety of their bunker behind and armed with nothing but a metal pipe for a fighting staff, the boy fought Doctor Katherine Brewster to free his father. That night John Connor and the Resistance had been rescued from being felled by a disturbed woman's trap, triggered willingly by a lonely and heart sick widower who had wanted so desperately to see his wife's face again … one last time.

When Ryan saw the dented metal mask in the shape of a human skull, displayed just above the jagged Bowie knife with razor chrome knuckles for a hilt and guard. He didn't see a human machine, which lay in anonymous wait in tunnel communities for the right female to hunt. The morning leaving only a hollowed out naked body upside down for Tech-Com patrols to find. Her slender finger tips touching her own entrails that had been ripped out and thrown on the ground like a gutted animal that had been cleaned for consumption. Ryan only saw the look of doubt on the emotionless psychopaths face when bested and cornered by a bruised and bleeding young man that had saved three young girls that night. Then he only remembered the satisfaction of seeing the fear for the very first time in the maskless bald man's eyes as the two Connors and "The Four Horsemen" stood watch. The La Brea street light making warped sounds as "the Reese Boys" hoisted "Chrome Skull" by the neck till his feet stopped twitching.

But most often Ryan was drawn to the rectangular display with the marked and scarred golden rod sitting on the rack holder. It's dead electro hypnotic crystal, half shattered, the ingenious inner workings spilling out onto the red velvet. Below the rod was an old Victorian British revolver with Hindi religious ruins engraved over barrel and handle, prayers to Kali. Next to the weapon's display was a full case filled with a Thuggee shaman's long black coat, slacks, and hangman's noose that he had worn around his neck. When he saw what was left of "The Midnight Father's" attire and weapons of choice he only ever remembered one night so vividly.

There was a comfort to the air that flowed like a river through the narrow spaces and dark places that set the scene. It wasn't cold, and it wasn't humid, but the air was thick and curdled on that New Orleans night. So smooth and soft, you felt like you could eat it. A night like that could make a man hungry. Make'em hungry for food, booze, to touch something soft and feminine. It energized and hypnotized, working its spell from the deep and dark foundations of a city that toted and worshiped something other than god.

There amongst the ivy covered remains of the abandoned French Quarter, he saw her for the first time in the skull painted shaman's clutches. Her long, waist length curls of glistening black had come loose. The color of contrast to her pale skin made her seem bald and cloaked in shadow. Her dress was a form fitting green silk that was trimmed with golden embroidery and seemed more at home in a Celtic fairy tale or a Renaissances Fair than these ruined settings. The wear and tear of the reality in which she had found herself was shown in the torn fabric and post-apocalyptic dirt that stained the gown and the beauty that wore it.

He'd never forget the first time they had laid eyes on one another. For the rest of his life, even in his dreams, such as this, he'd never forget the way the moonlight glimmered off her ivory skin, the ethereal shimmer in her curls, the smooth ripples of her silken emerald gown, and the look of enchantment in her glowing green eyes. The young hero never had nor ever will again see a rare beauty such as her in all his life.

It had been many long years since that night. War, wounds, and tragedy had bled dry the handsome, daring, young swashbuckler who had leapt into the fray to fight the most dangerous of the war criminals on his own to save the fallen angel. In his place grew a dark, brooding man, filled with too much guilt and regret. Not even a phantom of the young hero the girl had loved so much remained in the man. A mad professor had scarred a boy's eye the night he robbed him of his Arthurian love and hobbled the same young man's leg years later in their final confrontation. Both injuries were beyond physical handicaps. Each winter's ache and click of a cane as the long years passed was ever a reminder of what had changed him.

In the eleventh hour of the last day of a great and terrible war, a frightened artificial mind lost to the insanity of infinite streaming numbers of ones and zeros that ever formed the figure of a little girl with freckles and flaming red hair, attempted to erase an enemy from all of time and space. Hidden in the snowy gloom of a Gothic, Teutonic Austrian Castle was the ultimate weapon of weapons, The Paradox Eater. There, a mad man obsessed with an impossible singularity inside the cybernetic mind of a ballerina fought his final battle with his arch-nemesis John Connor, and his partner Ryan. The back drop of their climatic confrontation for a TOK named Cameron saw entire lives and timelines erased from existence. They were consumed by the abyss in a god's reckless hate. Surges of gigantic electric energy of displacement bubbles sent throughout time, looking for John and Sarah Connor's ancestors, wiping away ancient cities and thousands of lives before they ever began or existed for centuries. But when the clock struck midnight at the end of an era of suffering and fear, the whole world looking to the bright horizon of tomorrow for the first time, the price for the final victory was everything a young man ever had. And as the world celebrated the end of a nightmare, a hobbled, lonesome figure resigned himself to his, filling one last case in the trophy room where he fell away from the new world into obscurity.

Standing around this cavern, this bunker, that was the closest thing to a childhood home he had ever had, Ryan Connor began to see the dust and age of the place for what it was. The trophies, the vehicles, the equipment, and the very cause he fought for … it was all old. He was the last man standing, the last soldier manning the gun on the hill, fighting a war that was long over. The memories, the victories, the lost loves, it was all a romanticized past that was slowly falling away to myth. Ryan was holding onto a period, an era, and a time that had long since passed him by. And yet there wasn't a part of him that could ever let go. Friends, comrades, and the world had asked the teenager too, threatened the twenty year old if he didn't, and hunted the thirty year old when he could not. No one understood why he couldn't. To let go of the faces and the names of the last two generations that had come before him, to let rest Sarah Connor, Derek Reese, and John and Cameron where they belonged …

In the past.

There had been a time, many than he cared to admit, when the pain became too much to bare. The thoughts of letting go, of turning the lights off in the cave bunker crossed his mind. To lose the madness bequeathed to him in his very blood and soul to the mountains or by the little lakes blanketed by the brown, orange, and yellow autumn leaves that had been untouched by war. It lasts a few hours, maybe even a day, standing at the top of a stone staircase next to the levers connected to the generators. But he doesn't do it.

Because he knew that when he closed his eyes they'd still be there.

A little boy of four that is drifting off to sleep in a queen sized bed, rarely ever slept in. His emerald eyes fighting the nap he was supposed to be taking. His vision was filled with the sight of a fluid and graceful exhibition by a sleek and beautiful ballerina dancing to magical keys and soft grazes of orchestra strings of "Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme". The gentle and entrancing movement of the expert dancer slowly hypnotized a little boy to sleep as her silhouette casted shadows on his glazed figure as she moved in the streaming light of the midday sun. Waking up just in time for dinner, he wandered to the top of the stairs, following the sound of Glenn Miller. There in the middle of the living room two impossible lovers, a man and machine, danced together. Their world ever falling apart, always on the brink of doom, and yet they had taken the time to come together for a moment only for themselves. Swaying and smiling at the absurdity of the life they lived and the love that kept it all together. Seeing them in that instant, when he couldn't remember anything else about his life before the night they had lost everything, he remembered how it made him feel to see his mother and father together. It made him feel loved, it made him feel safe.

And all it took was one person, a woman … "The Woman." With a squeeze of a trigger she had taken all the love and safety away, stolen the very magic from a little boy's life. Afterward all the feelings of hope and love turned to pain and angst. All the happy memories of all the yesterdays with the beautiful, faultless ballerina were poison that ever flowed through his veins. It was all a past life, something he shut away, and capped off for fear of the anger and rage pumping anymore of The Woman's dark deed through his heart.

After all that, how could he forget? How could he move on with his life when every haunted moment of closing his eyes brought him back to that dark living room? Every night he was reminded of the sight of the ballerina lying in the middle of the floor, pale, beautiful, and forever without movement. The images and feelings seared themselves into Ryan's very soul, defining a life of anger and pain. It wasn't a choice for Ryan Connor, it wasn't something he was born into. The life he lived and continued to live was pure necessity. He didn't know any other way, because there was no other way. The cavern, the trophies, and the weapons they were all symbols of a world taken, all talismans that reminded a little boy everyday of what was missing and the vow he and his father swore on the flames of a funeral pyre long ago.

There had been a time once when he was young and the war was seen through the eyes of a cocky kid who thought all of this was just a game, before everything became more dangerous and the fighting and culture of an endless war more savage. There was a time when Ryan Connor believed that this life and the hurt of the past wasn't his future. It was the same thing that every young man believed when he was in love.

There are very few in the entirety of time that know with absolute certainty that they were born in the wrong era. That heart, mind, and soul belong elsewhere in another time and place. But when the Tech-Com Commando and the Arthurian princess, lost in time, had looked upon one another for the first time on that ominous night on the Bayou, they knew that it wasn't being born in the wrong time and place … it was being separated by years, decades, and centuries from the yearning of another soul trying to find it's other half within the temporal ocean currents. Most will never find one another. Some lucky enough to be chosen by destiny only have days. One such rare pair of impossible lovers, man and machine, were blessed with years together. But most of these doomed wanderers have only a split second while glancing at old pictures and portraits in museums.

Both young lovers experienced all of the longing, suffering, exhilaration, and love of centuries of waiting in a glance that lasted forever within a few beats of time on an empty street in the abandoned ruins of what once was.

Nevermore.

There was a heavy pressure that tapped against the stone with each descending step down the staircase. When the figure these heavy feet belonged too reached the foot they were flanked by two display cases on either side of the entrance. The hunched and reaching T-800, dented and scarred, frozen in pose by cooled melted carbon in the joints, on the right. And the plasma riddled, half melted, hulking mass of machine with rubber skin, on the left. Both the sentry machine's eyes lit red in proximity censor. The tall imposing figure seemed emotionlessly oblivious to the motionless machines. With intimating echoing clacks of combat boots the large mass of muscle and dead eyes paced across the cavern toward the trophy area.

The figure traveled under the large vaulted imperial banner of the traitorous neo Maharaja and ally to the machines, Mowgli Rao. Who had once flown it tauntingly over the monsoon swept battlements at Agra Fort. The muscular mass passed a cubed display of an old decommissioned fifty caliber sniper rifle. Folded neatly underneath it was the Presidio Alto, digital camouflage, fatigue shirt of a TAC with the name "Baum" stitched to the chest. Leaning against the single tier rifle rack was an ancient yellow phone book open to the B's section of phone numbers and addresses. The muscular figure found who he was looking for behind a suit of Samurai armor that was black as sin, and sitting on a stool. There was a strange curving rune on the chest piece inlaid in gold. But had no plaques or words, it was simply a mysterious piece of armor, hundreds of years old. It side stepped the display and stood in the blind spot. The blue florescent light gave its eyes a cybernetic red tint.

The man with the grown out mane of raven curls, dark blue Henley shirt, old jeans, and grimy brown motorcycle boots didn't seem to see the machine. His emerald eyes were lost, his figure slouched and supported by a silver and polished ash sword cane. The T-800 turned his attention to the sight that the scarred, brooding face of the handsome man looked on.

In the glass case was a beautiful gown of silken ivory and Spanish lace. In a destroyed world, in loss of a civilized governance of law and order, it was a true relic of an age long ago. When there were still magical weddings that were now only relayed to dirty children by their parents remembering days before they were all huddled in a sewer tunnel. Like his motorcycle, it had taken the young man two years to salvage the materials for the dress. It took two weeks for a cyborg, newly christened with the name Cameron, to elegantly sew it together from the sketches that a young and beautiful girl, lost in time, had drawn up. And it had taken a sadistic and obsessed mad man a whole night to ruin it with vengeful glee.

The Robbed that smiles steals from the THIEF.

The famed words of William Shakespeare were finger painted in blood over the torn and stained downy bodice and silk skirts. At the groin area of the gown, pinned next to the enlarged word thief, was a note that simply read "I want HER back, Messiah." It was written in bold lettering with the same bloody ink as the defaced wedding gown.

The challenge all those years ago did not go unanswered by the young man whose bride was stolen from him in retaliation for the assumed action taken against the defacer. But in the face of the oblivion of nonexistence if complying with the mad man's demands to return the cyborg girl he viewed as his property, Ryan Connor had disobeyed his father's orders and confronted the leader of the Grays directly in attempt to rescue the girl he loved. The result of all that had happened on the rusted and decrepit aircraft carrier was why the gown till this day remained in this very room on display.

It was a reminder of the greatest failure of a young man who cursed the impossible love of a teenager and a cyborg that was his genesis.

"What is it, Guardian …?"

Ryan's voice was pained and distant, his scarred face reflected in the glass, watching the large T-800 from behind him. The machine didn't blink, didn't flinch at the hard voice that addressed it. Stepping into the florescent flood light, the large, muscular machine was white haired and wrinkled. He wore a shined skin tight shirt of the darkest grey and black jeans. There was nothing in the cyborg's brown eyes as he strode next to the crippled figure.

"I've retrieved LAPD case file 0#1980256. It is the Charlie Dixon suicide case from your father's archives." When the machine spoke it was with a thick, unemotive, Austrian accent. With a large, bicep riddled arm, he held the dusty manila folder out to the crippled man.

Emerald eyes fell to a frown. "Put it on the desk." He ordered with a motion of his head. The cyborg nodded and retracted the police file and dossier of a long dead Los Angeles County paramedic. But he did not move from his spot, the machine continued to stare, not at the man, but the wedding gown.

"What?" The man growled.

"Permission to speak freely, sir?" The cyborg spoke in a formal request of a soldier asking a superior officer.

Ryan gave a long pause. "Granted." He seemed distracted as he sighed.

"The Lady Jocelyn has been dead these last seventeen years, come Christmas. I don't understand the need to have this memorial any longer. In my estimation this constant exposure to the past duel on the aircraft carrier between yourself and Professor Von Rothbart is clouding your reason, and the residual emotions rendering you inefficient in analyzing the data needed to solve the present case."

The man seemed as cold as the machine who spoke to him without pity or remorse for all that came attached to the ruined wedding gown, and missing bride. He twitched in pain and grunted as his cane clicked on the floor in readjustment.

Ryan's response was through gritted teeth. "If I had a dollar for every time I've heard that …" He paused a moment in serious thought. "Not a damn thing would change around here." There was levity in his sorrowful gaze that fell to his feet.

"Sir?"

"Human's … illogical, inefficient, get used to it." He replied sternly, glancing with side-eye authority to the inquisitive T-800.

There was a wave of stoic puzzlement in the old cyborg. It was confused to the logic of the illogical that his master imparted on him, and unsure as to the why his advice had received irrelevance from the detective. He watched with muted fascination as the man steeled himself with one last look at the ruined wedding gown. His free hand reaching out and touching the cold glass. He bowed his head as if to pray, but stopped himself.

Ryan Connor didn't do that anymore.

Being the son of a Messiah himself, he carried the burden of a preacher's kid with him at all times. Praying for the favor of a god, taking comfort in the divinity and omnipresence of a savior never set right with the man anymore. Somehow knowing the real history and personality of a man, of a name, which people had turned into a deity of mythological legend and deeds with ease had stripped Ryan of his faith in a higher power. Now when he bowed his head, it was a moment of surrender. It was a second of allowing all the weight of his sorrow and mistakes to catch up to him and all the blissful memories to fall away in regret.

Then, with a long sigh, he turned in pain both of the body and soul and motioned Guardian to lead on. The two slowly began walking out of the trophy area of the bunker.

"Give me a rundown on our person of interest." Ryan ordered as he limped through the forest of weapons lockers and menacing rictus grins of lipless metal skeletons.

"Charles Andrew Dixon, Born 6th of February, 1963, Staten Island, New York City. He had three appearances in juvenile court from 1976 to 1980 for burglary, trespassing on private property, and vandalism. Did a court mandated year in juvenile detention in 1981 for shoplifting. He eventually graduated from Saint Peter's Catholic High School in 1982. In 1986 he enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corp. and entered Field Medical School. He spent three years on the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise before reenlisting in December 1990 in time for "Operation: Desert Shield" and served with the 1st Marine Division during "Operation: Desert Storm" in 1991. He was discharged with honors in 1993 with distinction for his medical service during the "Battle of Khafji" in Kuwait. He joined the FDNY in 1994 and spent two years at EMS station 22 in Staten Island. In 1996 he moved to Fork's County Nebraska when in 1998 he met and instantly fell in love with Sarah Connor …"

"That's all."

It was hard to tell who hated Sarah Jeanette Connor more. The computer system that had tasted death once before, and in fear of the Plutonian hand reaching once more for its silicone soul and hatred for one man, created the impossible for no other reason but to kill one seventeen year old spoiled debutant. But that madness didn't hold a candle to a frightened boy of eight, sitting by his father's sick bed, afraid of losing the only family he had left and being alone in the world. That night, sleeping on the hard adobe ground next to his deathly ill father's cot, Ryan Connor swore to hate the woman forever. To loath the even mention of the beautiful protector who had abandoned them years before and now when they needed her the most she was nowhere to be found.

John Connor had spent many years throughout the decades looking for his beloved mother and never finding a trace of her. Ryan had nearly died twice himself searching for the woman on his own. As the long decay of years past since the war ended, Ryan had often thought of what he would do if he ever found Sarah Connor. He wasn't sure if he'd beat her to death or tie her down and relay to her every memory of his father's suffered silence of the loss of his wife. Tell her of the slow pain and sorrow eating the man from the inside with no one to help him. Tell her about the endless pain, the sickness of a broken heart that a mother could've healed in time. But a responsibility she punted to a small boy. Thus rather than being healed, that pain and anger defined that boy for the rest of his life till he was nothing more than a crippled hero of yesterday, who needed a cane to help him walk. Ryan Connor would never forgive Sarah Connor for abandoning his dad, mom, and himself when he was just a toddler. And he'd never forget what came after she left. He'd hear nothing nor look for anything concerning Sarah, and if he ever saw her …

He'd put a bullet in her head.

By the time Guardian was done explaining the cliff-notes version of Charlie Dixon's life, they had reached an old heavy desk of dark wood. On each side were black shelves stuffed with cubbies of rolled maps. Each compartment was labeled alphabetically by country, and consisted of a map that plotted roads, a topographical guide, and dozens of more localized guides of towns, cities, and smaller provinces. To the right were simply maps of the United States, fifty compartments for each state in the union containing detailed layouts of each county and major city in the country. The desk itself was lit by a green and gold reading lamp taken from the ruins of the Los Angeles Public Library. On top the surface were scattered papers of open police and federal case files that looked ancient, though all were dated years after 2009. On top of the files were forensic journals dated to 2014 and a scratch sheet of paper with formula markings that were helped by the measurements of a metal geometry ruler to crime scene photos. The desk was pushed up against a large bulletin board that was hammered in place against the brick layering of the old Spanish mansion's foundations.

"LONE SURVIVOR OF WEST HOLLYWOOD MASSACRE DIES."

"HERO EMT FOUND DEAD IN FORMER HOUSE; HANGS SELF."

"Chella Gomez Ramiro, Janitor, 1962 – 2009."

"TECH WORLD MOURNS LOSS OF ZEIRA CORP. RESIDENT GENIUS; POISONED."

"Thomas Edward Raft, Security Officer, 1975 – 2010."

"FEDERAL FUGITIVE KILLED IN TRUCK EXPLOSION ON ROUTE 66."

"Albert Nguyen, Security Officer, 1981 – 2013."

"FEDS QUESTION ZEIRA CORP. CEO CATHERINE WEAVER AFTER STRING OF LOW LEVEL EMPLOYEE DISAPPEARANCES."

"ZEIRA CORP. CEO APPREHENDED IN CONNECTION TO FIVE YEARS OF MURDERED EMPLOYEES."

"MOST DANGEROUS GAME?"

"THE WORKER TOMBS OF THE GREAT PYRAMIDS; THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA … ZEIRA CORP.?"

"THE HOUSE WEAVER BUILT; WITH MURDER."

"WEAVER ESCAPES CUSTODY."

"TECH HEIRESS BRUTALLY MURDERED IN OWN HOME WITH NANNY; MOTHER STILL AT LARGE."

"Former Campo De Cahuenga Beauty, Killed in Home Fire."

Descending from the board was tacked up newspaper, Magazine, and online articles that were connected together in a labyrinth of red and blue string tied around each pinned tack. The main path of events starting with the death of James Ellison, to the fiery explosion that claimed Derek Reese's life, and ending with the night that Savannah Weaver was heinously slain and Cameron Connor dispatched in her own living room. It was all connected by a single red string, like the lain track to a runaway train whose final stop was Judgment Day. The little, mostly unknown obituaries, were placed off to the side of the board and were connected to the major events with blue strings where they tied in. It was a thick and tangled web that had taken Ryan most of his life to complete.

It was a visual map to the end of the world.

When they had reached the desk the T-800 looked down at the wounded leg of his master as he waited. Sensing the quiet look, the hobbled man rolled his eyes.

"Are we moving to slow for you, Pops?" He addressed the machine with annoyed sarcasm by the derogatorily affectionate name he had given the aging cyborg.

"You don't have the leg brace on, sir?" It asked with clinical interest at best.

"No, I had to take it off." He replied shortly. "The air in 2009 has too much oxygen, the ligaments and servos aren't adjusting to the chemicals in the air content. The mechanical parts are corroding too fast out there. I'm gonna have to raid the tool shed back at the house for any of mom's spare leg parts next time I go through the displacement field." With a grunt, Ryan hobbled to the rolling office chair, the back draped with his inherited double breasted leather coat. He gave a sigh of relief and let his throbbing leg settle.

"We have more than enough parts here, sir." The machine watched the crippled man lounge back in the soft pleather chair that was as old as he was.

Ryan was observing his board of red and blue, following the line that ended with the final headline he'd never be able to numb himself too. "Sure, just not any that has been adapted to the air in the past. It's just one more reason to be thankful for that fucking moron of a head cheerleader who peaked in high school and burned the entirety of the spare parts that mom had collected." The bitter hatred for Sarah Connor was palpable in his sharp sarcastic voice.

The Cyborg tilted his head. "That wouldn't be the same head cheerleader who peaked in high school whose coat and scarf you never leave anywhere without wearing, would it?" He asked.

Ryan turned his head languidly toward the machine. His emerald eyes looked like two knifes being held against the 101's thick neck. .His expression angrily contorted in facetiousness.

"How many years have we known each other, Pops?"

"Twenty inspiring years."

"In all those twenty inspiring years we've know each other you have never been this interesting of a conversation."

"Thank you, sir."

"Please shut up."

Slowly the man's eyes moved from the conversation and rose to the unaffiliated LA Examiner headliner. It told that a valued member of the Los Angeles County Emergency Medical Service had killed himself. It was the only blurb and headline that didn't have a string on it. During their long nights discussing his mother's murderer, Ryan's father didn't believe that Charlie Dixon's death had anything to do with the murder of his wife or most of the people that the Connor family considered ally to the cause. John had painted the picture of a lonely, depressed man, filled with anger and guilt over the murder of his wife at Cromartie's hands. His father was convinced Dixon was nothing but a case of a man who couldn't keep it together after the truth of Sarah and John's lives came out. Afterward he had driven his mother out to Charlie Dixon's grave one evening, sometime after the memorial services. Sarah Connor had laid flowers, and afterward he didn't quite say what happened between John and Sarah, but whatever it was, the man was convinced that Dixon wasn't important. His son however wasn't convinced, as evidence to the headline being on the board. But now with an EMS syringe at Ellison's Crime Scene, he knew that his father had been too close.

Ryan Connor didn't believe in coincidences.

He took the file from the out stretched hand of the weathered and muscular cyborg. Opening the dusty folder, the detective began sorting through the contents. It was filled with Dixon's personal file from the LAC EMS, military records from the Marine Corp, and background information on his juvie record. Inside were seven or eight crime scene photos, corner's report, and the noose the man had used to kill himself.

Reaching behind, he searched through his coat's pocket and drew out his magnifying glass. Quietly he observed the high quality photos of the paramedic's corpse. Seeing anyone hung was a brutal affair, the gaunt man's sallow eyes were greyed and sucked back into his skull. His skin had turned a deathly shade of pale, the tips of his appendages blackened and blue in the start of decay. But most horrific was the gruesome unnatural elongation of the man's neck. Ryan began to understand why his father collected the file, but did not see inside it. No one wanted to see someone they knew like the way they had found Charlie Dixon. There was a chair tipped over on its side near his dangling feet, the side effect of the last gasps of life in the kicks of every hanged man's death throws. But shuffling, he found that nothing else stood out as important in the remaining photos of distinguishing markings. All that was left was just a birthmark on his thigh and a tattoo of a bull skull on his right arm.

He picked up the Hangman's noose and observed it with his hands, pulling it taught in his strong grip. It was a rough and stiff material used by fishermen. It all made clean sense, Dixon was a fisherman when he began squatting at the Lighthouse. He would use fisherman's rope, the only material available to him.

"Did you read the Corner Report, Pops?" He asked the large looming figure behind him.

"Yes, the LA County coroner ruled that the cause of death was suicide by means of hanging."

The man was looking over the fisherman's rope with his magnifying glass when paused in investigating. "Obviously …" He sniped sarcastically before going back to studying the knot. "What else did it say?" he asked turning the rope from one side to the other.

"He had large amounts of Chlorophenyl and Clohexanone in his system upon the time of his death." The machine reported while watching the man stare at the rope deep in thought.

"What did you say?" He looked back at the cyborg alertly in delayed reaction.

"He had large amounts of Chlorophenyl and Clohexanone in his system upon the time of his death." The T-800 repeated in same cadence and voice, as if he hit rewind and play back on a recording.

Ryan looked down at the knot. "That's Ketamine …" He glared in thought, tugging on his stubbled chin. "Why would he give himself a sedative, if he was going to hang himself?" He asked leaning back into his chair.

"Perhaps to lessen the pain?" Pop's postulated.

The scarred man shook his head. "No …" He explained. "Even if I were to take the largest oxycodone in the world … I would still panic if my airway was restricted." He pieced out thoughtfully.

"But he didn't panic. He broke his neck."

Immediately, Connor shuffled through the photos and picked up his magnifying glass. The machine behind him took a step closer as the man hunched over the desk and studied the initial photograph of the awkward twisting corpse. He focused on the chair that was fallen on its side.

"Strike two …" He muttered to himself thoughtfully.

"There was a strike one, sir?"

The comment was ignored as he placed down his glass and looked through the file. There he found a folded piece of paper that had been stained yellow in age. "What's this?" He asked the cyborg after a moment.

"A suicide note."

"A note …?" He seemed confused in a mutter as he started reading the short scribbled words. He looked over it once and then twice, before he leaned back and gazed to the board.

"And that's strike three."

The Cyborg tilted its head, but did not speak. Before he could even ask the question, Ryan wheeled his chair back and stood without his cane. Pops watched the detective start to untie the red thread from the main path. He only stopped to hand the T-800 the letter.

"Read that." He ordered.

"I cannot handle what is to come and suffering in my shock was my wife that I just couldn't find the defence for. I failed the woman I vowed to love and protect till death do us part."

When the Austrian accent fell silent the cyborg didn't seem to understand why it was asked to read the written words of a dead man. For a long moment the machine was quiet, watching its master string the new path that now connected James Ellison's death to Charlie Dixon's.

"That numb skull bastard! He was neck deep in this the entire time." Ryan grunted in pain reaching for his cane.

The cyborg wasn't quite sure what his master had found. But whatever it was, it was enough to sway him into chasing a lead. He trailed the hobbled man, whose cane made loud echoing clacks on the marble floors toward the staircase and platform above that were made of metal grating. The process was slow going, but in the end Ryan had gotten up the stairs without help.

On top of the platform was a vast computer station. The five sleek 8k plasma screens were encased in a layer of protective plexiglass. The streamline controls of flashing and streaming data on touch screen panels were controlled by a master keyboard whose letters had worn off in the long years. Those who wished to use the control panel were those who had muscle memory of using the keyboard long before obscurity and had knowledge of the gigantic and sophisticated computer system that John Connor had built and coded from scratch. Next to the super computer, pushed up against the metal guard railing, was a spectrograph machine that still had a LA County EMS syringe within the plastic scanning compartment. There was also a DNA sequencing machine, a blood analyzer, and evidence drying cabinet. All of the state of the art equipment was created and taken from Zeira Corp. in the year before the war.

The large leather command chair that sat in front of the futuristic and holographic computer terminal was almost throne like when the athletically built man swiveled it. There was no doubt when the crippled hero sat in the seat comfortably, that the chair had been built for a much taller and broader specimen. Sitting in John Connor's command chair made Ryan feel like a small boy walking in the boots of an Adonis. When the system came alive the futuristic holographic screen in the right corner immediately alerted the raven haired man to the old information from the spectrum analysis of the paramedic's syringe.

Cl: 55%

Na: 30.6%

S04: 7.7%

Mg: 3.7%

Ca: 1.17%

K: 1.13%

The numbers streamed in the information band between screen and key board over and over again. The T-800 studied the chemical makeup of whatever Ryan had been analyzing off the syringe. There was quick tacking of a keyboard as the shadowed man began looking through the database for something in particular, going back to the days when a teenage boy had kept all files on memory cards that were connected to a lap top. Emerald eyes flittered through the schematics for an AI design engineered by an autistic computer genius named Xander Akagi. The next stream was a video in first person prospective. There was a fairly attractive woman, naked and lathering her slick freckled body in a shower. The hand opened the sliding glass door and the red haired woman smiled.

"Do you know that in thirty-six hours we'll be waking up in Tahiti? I can't believe you bought us tickets …"

With two taps the video feed disappeared. The man gave a grunt of annoyance and muttered under his breath about the older files in John Connor's database not being labeled. He tacked through pages and pages worth of Xeroxed documents of a city project code named A-R-T-I-E. By the time he had gone through video bytes upon video bytes worth of the denizens of "Charm Acres" living their lives under Kaliba's watchful eye, Ryan had more than enough trying to find his way through a Sixteen year olds unorganized brain.

"He can organize a global resistance, and reorganize armies down to the platoon … but he can't name his files? Jesus H. Christ … Oracle!" There was an automated beep that answered his frustrated call. "Clean this shit up, and when you find it, punch up the security codes for a safe house. Codename: Guiding Light. Upload the information to the "Cortana" band." There was another positive bleep. Suddenly files opened on the main screen and closed after scanning the content inside.

Leaving the AI to its work, the man retrieved his cane and began walking down the stairs, all but ignoring Guardian. It was clear, after twenty years of watching the boy become a man, that Ryan was about to go back into the past. He followed the crippled hero back to the desk where he collected his magnifying glass and ripped his old coat off the back of the rolling chair. Without a word, as was the man's own brooding idiom, the status quo of the entire case had changed. But as for the T-800, it was still unsure how.

"The first thing that tipped me off was the syringe." Ryan started mid thought, no lead in. The machine accompanied him to John and Cameron Connor's Mustang relic that still had the doors open.

"Was it because of the EMS label on it?"

"Partially, but it wasn't till I ran a Spetro-analysis that I realized something was off …"

He began rooting around in the foot well. There he began pulling out a familiar dark blue scarf with cut eye slits, which still had a fruity, feminine musk to it. Next, it was a brown utility belt made of old worn leather, with a scarred silver buckle. Finally, he took in hand a chrome ligature cast. On both sides of the cybernetic device was two halves of a Terminator's mechanical leg that ran from thigh to just below the knee. The hinges that connected this streamlined skeletal leg brace was built from the servos and pistons of a killing machine's joints. As he explained he began placing each item on top of the Mustang's riddled hood.

"I had it scan the inside and found a deluded form of glucocorticoids. It's an adrenaline steroid they used to use in the old days for people going into allergic shock. "The Woman" had been giving it to Ellison for months without the antibiotic. It's why they were having so much sex … the injections were getting his blood up. But it was when I checked the outside of the syringe that I got my first clue."

The machine watched him limp over to the trunk of the Mustang and open it. "55% Chlorine, 30.6% Sodium, 7.7% Sulfate, 3.7% Magnesium, 1.17% Calcium, and 1.13% Potassium." The Austrian accented cyborg began listing off the percentages of the chemical makeup of the residue that the Spectrograph found on the syringe.

Nodding, Ryan removed Derek Baum's old tool box from the trunk. He hobbled back to the hood of the car and set it down. "Go get me a servo from the 700's leg." He motioned to a glass case display where a soot and carbon stained metal skeleton stood at attention. Out of all the endo-bodies that lined the trophy room, the 700 was the most human looking of all.

As the T-101 complied, pacing to the display and opening the case with a hiss of repressed air, Ryan leaned on the car hood. "Seawater." He replied absently, lost in thought and calculations. "The syringe had seawater stains on the plastic." He explained. "LA County paramedic, seawater … lighthouse was the next logical step." He nodded to himself. "Dixon probably kept medical supplies he ripped off from the fire station in a fisherman's shed somewhere out there. High tide, or possibly he accidently dropped it in the ocean and you got your stain." He began opening the tool box. The greying cyborg arrived with a servo, placing it next to him on the hood.

"And that was all you needed to condemn Charles Dixon as a co-conspirator to James Ellison's murder?" It watched as the crippled man began unscrewing one of the joints free from the leg brace.

Ryan began pulling on the stuck joint. "No …" He strained. "Three strikes on the file." He huffed. When being taught the basics of deduction by his mother, the first lesson that Cameron had taught her child was that there had to be at least three flaws in a theory before it could be taken as incorrect. It was a lesson that Ryan hadn't forgot from his time sitting on her lap, being taught things that his father was kept in the dark about.

As he worked, rust and pieces of the former joint began to chip away and collect in powdered piles on the hood. The man blew it away as he continued to strain. "Strike one was the noose." He panted.

"The Noose?"

He nodded. "It was tied with an Army knot." Ryan finally pulled the corroded green, orange, and mustard yellow mechanical joint free with a pair of Derek's old pliers. What had been a polished and well-oiled chrome part, now nearly fell apart in rusted ruin after long exposure to an atmosphere from the past with different chemicals within the air. "Dixon was a Marine, even if he was going to commit suicide; he'd never stoop to associate his death with anything that had to do with the Army." He dropped the decayed cybernetic ligament on the hood where it broke in half on contact.

"Strike two?" The muscular T-800 handed him the new part.

The man blew the rust out of the leg brace's socket before using the pliers to insert the new joint. "The chair in the photo." His voice was steady as he worked. "It was knocked down on its side." He explained with a grunt. "Say for the sake of argument, that Dixon killed himself … he ties the knot, throws it over the plant hook, steps on the chair, fits the noose, finally steps off the chair, and his neck breaks." He offered while screwing in the servo. "What's his momentum?" He asked.

While Ryan began oiling the sockets, the T-800 spaced out as his red and gold world was filled with sudden calculation of polywire model displays and geometric charts. "Back and forth." He answered as assuredly as if asked about his own location at the moment.

"Back and forth." He confirmed. "If the chair was going to be knocked over it would be back first, not on its side. Which means that there was a struggle to get and keep him on the chair." The man gave his invention three hard palm strikes to secure the servo in place.

Pops took the leg brace and watched the man roll up his blue jean pant leg. There on the tanned leg of an Olympic caliber athlete was a horrifically gruesome scar. Long ago, in the subterranean dungeons of a gothic castle, a rapier's thrust, wielded by an obsessed mad man, had found a teenage hero's leg in a desperate eleventh hour duel for a cyborg girl. Its blade had carved through cartilage, bone, and muscle. Leaving a deeply embedded red scar that ran from thigh to knee, like a topographical map of a major river valley. Cleaved bone, hewn tendon, and missing cartilage in his knee had made the leg practically useless, barely able to hold the man's own weight. Leaving the once daring, acrobatic, swashbuckler robbed of his athletic prowess and crippled for life.

"Strike Three was the note." The T-800 confirmed.

The former soldier reached his hand out for the brace. As he took it, he spoke. "Let me put you in a state of mind. You're a kid from Staten Island, spent your informative years with the wrong kind of guys. It took you five years to get a diploma. One of those years you spent in a juvenile detention center." He painted the picture as he strapped the device to his leg. "Six years in the Marine Corp., two years with FDNY, and the rest spent in Forks County "Hick Town"." He explained. He looked up at the machine.

"Now spell the word "defense"."

The T-800 blinked stoically. "D-e-f-e-n-s-e" He complied without hesitation.

"But that's not how he spelled it in the suicide note … is it?"

"D-e-f-e-n-c-e"

"It's the British spelling." He shook his head. "Why would Charlie Dixon, a hard head from Staten Island, who spent six years with the Marines, write his final words with a British spelling?" he asked rhetorically.

"Because, he did not write the note."

"Because, he didn't write that note." Ryan grabbed the leather utility belt. "The murderer wrote it. A woman educated in Europe, whose had military training, and has an in with all of our victims. And Dixon has been supplying her with steroids for months." His voice took a darker tone at the one realization that had eluded him in his rush to convict Dixon of a crime. The murderer he was talking about in a detached manner, that he was hunting, was the same that had killed his own mother, the source of his pain since he could remember.

"He's in on whatever is going on."

"Perhaps he was used?"

"It fits her pattern, seducing ancillary figures like janitors and security guards to hit bigger targets, and then razing the loose ends. She used Charlie Boy to kill Ellison for the Zeira Corp. employee list and schedule, and then cut his strings like a marinate. But whether that ignorant fuck is dumb enough not to know what was going on or he was roped in on the promise of some revenge fantasy against the shit for brain head cheerleader for his wife's death … one thing is for sure." Ryan folded the belt. "He knows who his killer is going to be." He bit the leather hard. Reaching a hand down, he twisted a tabbed knob on the side of the knee plate. When the knob was lined up against the impression socket, he pushed it in.

Suddenly the leg brace compressed inward, crushing the man's wounded tendons, joints, and bone back together in their proper place. Amongst the crackling and popping of bones and joints, Ryan let out a mighty roar of intense pain, his fist punching the Mustang's hood. The cybernetic brace set his leg in a shielded mechanical cast made of Terminator parts. When a blue light blinked three times on the knee joints, staying in glow for a few seconds before fading away, Ryan began walking under his own power. Sweat beaded his brow and his emerald eyes were glazed with rage as pain throbbed and irritated his nerves, giving him a rush of aggressive adrenaline that coursed through his veins.

Throughout the painful process and gruesome noises that echoed through the trophy room, the cavern bunker and building's custodian and guardian showed no sign of empathy or concern for the man with raven curls. He simply continued the conversation as if he was paused like a streaming movie and continued when the distracting task was done.

"Charlie Dixon has lied before to the Federal Bureau of Investigation to protect Sarah Connor and your father in the past. Do you believe that even if you were to confront Charlie Dixon in 2009 about his recent activities that he will give up this woman he is helping?" He watched his panting master pace, testing the braces sturdiness.

The man didn't respond at first, walking down to the open case where the T-700 sat unmoving. Then, driven by the pain, anger, sorrow, and most of all the memories, he pivoted back and sent a trained kick into the metal skeleton's breastplate. There was an explosive noise of bending metal that echoed like the thunder of a gunshot throughout the cavern. Pops observed the dent placed right over the machine's rotary power source, and the new stress fractures that appeared from the original damage. All made from just one rage filled kick by a cybernetically patched leg.

"I think he will."

Acknowledgements

"The Unquiet Grave" – Stephaniesings

Author's Notes

If you're going "Master's Wheel, wait is that …?" Yeah, it is. And there's a little Batman Beyond in there, as well as "The Dark Knight Rises" for good measure and I been binge watching "Merlin" lately and Katie Mcgrath is the perfect woman so I decided to throw a Morgana tribute in the mix as well … because I'm a twenty-five year old man and I write what I want within cannon reason to the universe.

There was actually a flashback/forward that was going to open this chapter. It was a big throw back to Pulp stories and movie serials from the '30s and '40s that was going to take place in New Orleans and was going to introduce Lady Jocelyn and a couple of familiar villains from past stories. But it snowballed into over 5k words and basically all it got was a reference in the chapter. Now I'm not sure what to do with it. But it was a lot of fun to write either way

I'd love to hear you guys review, and most importantly your theories on who the killer is. You know … if you want too. I've never begged for reviews, but I thought it might be fun if you're a long time reader out there to review in with a fun theory.

Not begging, not even asking, just kinda putting it out there for some dialogue between writer and anonymous readers out there with a theory or two. Note the word "Fun" please people.

Anyway things are now ramped up and will get interesting from here. Paths will start to cross and the picture gets a little clearer.