Chapter Four
The Turn of a Friendly Card
It's the shadows in the night that hazel eyes of a greener tint watch. Sleepless, shifting, and disguised in the shapeless interpretation of the state of mind, they move in mysterious shrouds of darkness that can only be found in light. It was a contradiction of hope in the same philosophy that was taught. Light cannot exist without dark, and dark cannot exist without light. Fears came burrowed in the hopes and dreams and yet cannot exist without there being something to look forward too. These were not the musing of the man, but were always within him, as all humans. It is the will to do good and the shadows that exist within a soul that taint these intentions. Some men revel in the darkness, and are changed by it. Some men know the paths to the shadows at the edges and how to stay in the light. But there are a very few that understand the duality of these things and find somewhere between the right and wrong. The heroism and despicable that comes with the greater good and sacrifice for what is right … or to protect the ones they love.
These were the things that were on Derek Reese's mind tonight as he sat in the cushioned arm chair. He watched the shadows on the queen sized bed in front of him. The moonlight was bright as a lantern tonight and its beams broke through blinds and curtain, creating strange patterns from the forested obscurity that it cut through. Somewhere a clock was ticking, echoing comfort to a tired mind that watched the strange shapes of the night on the peaceful sleeping face of Sarah Connor.
It didn't happen often, but every once in a while, a blue moon, such as tonight, she asked him to do this. It wasn't a straight forward question. In fact it was a very vague, but very dire need for company. It was a late night meeting that was pitched as a conversation about something important. But once inside there was rarely anything said. The raven haired woman would slip under the covers. And he'd watch her turn on her side. Sitting in her chair, he'd wait for her to say something. But the conversation promised never came. She'd snuggle her pillow and stare out her window, sometimes stare back at him and not say a word. She didn't offer him an explanation of why he was there. But somewhere inside her, she was lonely and afraid. Somewhere inside her she needed to talk, needed a friend, and needed someone she could pretend loved her. But she was too afraid to open up, too strong to let anyone know she was weak some nights. So she slept somewhere in the middle.
Derek spent those nights motionless, blinkless, and always vigilant. Her emerald eyes watched him in the dark, wondering when he'd get up and leave, maybe even counting on it. After a lifetime of betrayals of her love and disappointment in the people she did, perhaps these were always tests to see when he'd leave her, like everyone else. There was a part of him that wanted to stick it to her, to rub it in her face that she'd never be able to get rid of him. But for the most part it just wasn't in Derek Reese to ever leave family like that, to leave her in doubt. It was ingrained in his DNA, in his very soul to ever be the hawk in the nest protecting the eggs. Years in hell had made him the protective and dangerous man he was today. So it was in the nights when Sarah asked him to come to her room and shut the door, he did so without hesitation. For long hours he'd sit up with her through the night when she needed him. In the morning when she awoke to find him still there, she seemed surprised only once more. She always looked at him as if she wanted to say something, but she was too strong for that, too scared of the feelings of comfort that it gave her. So she slipped from her sheets and walked into her bathroom, expecting him to be gone by the time she came out of her shower to dress. In the evening she'd set a cup of coffee in front of him and ask what he wanted for dinner. And that would be that.
Maybe that was the way of their relationship, a perpetual test of loyalty for a woman too afraid to say she needed him. But Derek Reese didn't come into this world expecting people, especially the women in his life, to tell him what his role was. He assumed it and waited for them to notice, and if they didn't, there is always a job to do anyway. Unambitious and in love with the simplest pleasures in life, a hot dog in the park, a jog through a nature trail of green trees and colorful flowers, Derek was a worker ant, content with his job. That job being the most fundamental for any man that was worth all he stood for.
To protect his family.
He had tried to be John Connor, tried to play the game the way the machine and the messiah did. He had done some things that kept him up at night and changed the future at the point of the gun. All to do his job the way he thought it should be done, the way he had always done it. But in the end, he realized that he wasn't John Connor, and he wasn't a machine. Each day living with John and Sarah, waking up and talking with the kid with his brother's smile, the more he realized that he wasn't a grand architect or an engineer that could manipulate time and space. It took a hero to see things the way that John saw the world. It was an unbiased and an unselfish prism of foresight that put others before himself. In the end Derek was just a selfish bastard trying to erase his own pain from existence. He was a cheater trying to count cards in destiny's casino, and sooner or later will get caught by security.
He had been out of the business of trying to change time. He couldn't understand the rules and wasn't sure of the consequences. When he looked back at all he had done to change his fortunes, Derek was sure of only one thing … that it was a mistake. But that kind of clarity doesn't happen till the prospective changed, till he found out what it meant to know the secrets of how the world of tomorrow was formed.
It was all a strange clearness that formed the night he found out that Sarah was dying.
For a long time since then he had reflected on all the things that he had done. How he had tried to change his fortunes in this world. Then he thought of John and all the times that the man in the future could've done something to change Sarah's fate, to send some man or machine with a cure, and save his mother. But he hadn't, because the world was more important than solving his own pain. Somehow it didn't shock Derek Reese at thirty-three years old that John Connor was still teaching him how to be a man.
It took that kind of example to shed light on what Derek's job was again, what his role in this family, in this life was. He protected John's blind spot, he protected his family. And not in the way he had been before, based on his own feelings, his own state of mind. He did it because they needed him, his nephew, the closest thing he'd have to his own child needed him to do this, to save his mother. It was what Derek told himself, convinced himself, that John needed him to do this. If he explored all the other avenues, he'd find himself back where he started, when he put two in Andy Goode's head. Any other reason for why he had to save Sarah Connor that came to mind wouldn't make him a hero, wouldn't make him the man that John needed him to be. It would make him selfish. Any other reason that came from his heart would be his own shame to admit, in betrayal of a woman across town that he had once loved and a brother whose memory he tried to honor.
There was a shame all in itself when he stood from his comfortable seat in the corner of the room. There was a fundamental reversion from the part of him that said that he had to go. A voice telling him, screaming, that there were so many other nights that he could do the things he had too. But he knew that next week, even tomorrow could be too late. What he had to do had to be tonight.
As he paced by the foot of Sarah's bed, he paused and looked upon the woman that slept so peacefully under the covers. He looked and let the shame wash over him, the doubt about whatever reasons were in his heart for what events will transpire because of tonight. Derek gazed upon her pale face and regal features haloed in the streaming moonlight and let it punch him in the gut. He let the view of the beautiful woman with all her flaws remind him of the importance of her life, of her role in the future, and the lack of his. A prospect that made him feel okay with it all with each passing second of watching her steady breath and serene look as she slept.
As he stopped at the door, Derek felt the sharpness in his chest when he thought of the face that Sarah would make in a few hours, when she'd find him gone. Would she smile knowingly, would she simply blink in interest, or would her eyes fall and know that there was no one she could rely upon anymore? His only comfort and hope was that someday she'd know that he might not have been there when she woke up, but that she was never far from his mind tonight.
He was quiet when he exited Sarah's room. The door did not click, the wooden floor did not creak, and the colder air temperature in the hall did not pop the warmed objects in Sarah's room. He slipped out of the bedroom without a noise and returned it the way it was. He took a moment to adjust to the blinding light of the sterile white upstairs corridor. The moon was visible from the glass pane of the balcony doorway at the end of the hall. The beams caught the large oak tree next to the house and cast strange, twisting silhouettes on the walls and doors. Treacherous and lusty crone's fingers scratching the white halls. Next to the crone's fingers were twisted images of frightening creatures whose spooky limbs were completed exclusively in one's own imaginations. There among all the fantastic and long held terrors of the mind stood an actual figure that was worst then all that Derek could imagine.
She was wordless and motionless, standing in the hallway like some ghostly sentry haunting all of the old horrors that only true darkness knew. Blocking all paths of escape, watching with unblinking emotionless eyes as the man startled in her presence. His heart leapt to his throat, a stinging sensation rand down his scalp, and his blood pressure shot so high that he could hear his heart beating like the tremble of some ancient ceremonial drum that shook every inch of his body in its bass. Derek was silent in his fright, only flinching in her presence. But she did not say anything to the man who quietly panted. His body was heaving silently.
What Derek hated about her, what bothered him the most, was how different she was from all the rest of them. They could make them beautiful, engineer the skin and sculpt the body into an image in the database. But this one, this one wasn't just beautiful, wasn't just some random face in a database. She was haunting, she was supernatural in the way she looked and moved. You knew from the moment you met her that she stood apart from all the rest. And worst of all was that she was not made that way, she had become this way. This lovely creature walked through this world, through these halls with the aurora of a haunting specter, a beautiful phantom that existed in two worlds that should not meet. He hated her because all the rest are made up of ones and zeroes, and this girl, this thing, is not. He hated her because she is not of this world. But most of all, Derek Reese hated her because she represents everything that the enemy had strived to do … replace humanity with a better version of themselves.
Her peach skin shimmered and reflected in the strands of moonlight, whiting out her long locks of glimmering ethereal dark hair. At night she wore a flowing linin nightgown that floated around her knees and trailed her every step of bare feet on the wooden floor. The setting only enhanced the fear in Derek's heart of this ghostly, Woman in White, who haunted the witching hours of the quiet and still house on the hill. The only thing that separated her from his often ghostly mental imagery of this storybook, Victorian phantom he associated with her was the glass of water that was in her hand.
Her golden flecked caramel eyes flicked back and forth between Derek and the door. And he knew that somewhere in that mechanical mind she might be putting together the wrong idea. He'd correct her, or Sarah would if she started asking questions, but for tonight he did not have time, or the patients to instruct the girl on all the intricacies of human emotion. But he didn't have too.
Suddenly, she moved toward him. Without a word or request, a fact later that would irritate Derek, he moved out of her way. This supernatural creature, whose ballerina feet were swallowed by complete darkness, seemed to almost float, like the ghost she seemed. They took her passed the soldier and to the far door on the right. Derek followed her in sudden outrage at the arrogance of the action.
There in front of John's door, the specter halted, gripping the knob. She turned her head to the side as she opened the door. He expected her to go inside, but she didn't. She simply stood in the boy's doorway. She then turned her head fully and stared at Derek. Her eyes betrayed nothing, not displeasure at being followed, nor escalating feelings of entitlement to whatever waited for her inside the darkened room. She waited for him to say something and when he didn't she turned toward something behind him.
When Derek turned back he found that she was staring at Sarah's bedroom door. When he returned she was looking right through him. They didn't have to say anything to know what the implications where. A silent question of if he was bringing comfort to Sarah in her moment of need, did he have any right to rob John, to rob her of that same need of one another? On that level Derek knew that he had to concede to her. But it was the way she looked tonight, the Victorian woman in white, here to steal his nephew's future as he slept. It was the old hatreds, the old atrocities, and a basement in a Professor's southern gothic mansion that played Chopin. It had been one thing to council the angel of Sarah's better nature when concerning whatever was going on between John and the machine, but it was another when he had to confront it on his own.
But then he remembered all of his thoughts earlier. John Connor, the man who had put his happiness, his emotional attachments, and his sanity to the side to save humanity. Who when given the very power to change the fabric of their universe, never thought of himself. Derek Reese might never understand it, he might not like it, but he couldn't be the man who took away that one thing from John Connor. Derek had Kyle, had his family when the world and the war got too much. Maybe all John had, and will have, is this ballerina's specter with her white ghostly nightgown that comes to him in the middle of the night to chase away all his doubts and fears when he couldn't protect himself.
Whatever it was in his eyes, it was enough for Cameron to turn away from Derek Reese. She gave one last look to the man after she slipped inside, the silhouette of a resting figure on a too small bed behind her. Wordlessly the cyborg closed the door quietly till it clicked in place. For a long time Derek waited by John's door, till he heard the creak of springs as another body added to the weight, till the sound of readjusting bodies stopped. Then he knew that Juliet was encircled in Romeo's sleepy, waiting arms.
There were many questions that plagued Derek, fears and concerns for the very safety of the one boy, the one person that could not be spared. But for tonight there was only one person he worried about, whose life and death weighed heavily on the future of everything that went on in that room beyond the door he stood outside of.
There was work to be done tonight.
In the deepest black of the night, in the passing clouds that covered moon and stars in obscurity, the silent and still waves of the sea felt like a long and black chasm. The stillness of the night, the quiet echo of the lapping ocean was torment to a mind far flung in serious thought. On a windless, cloudy evening, there was nothing but darkness and silence that tormented an already tormented mind. Filled with sorrow, doubt, and suspicion there was no quiet chirp of insect, the beep of a security system, or the rattle of an aluminum flag pole to comfort it. There was nothing but the deep melancholy thoughts of a man that had flown too close to the sun and fell away. He had challenged the gods and their wisdom, tried to touch what he was warned not to and his punishment was severe. No matter where he went, what he did, and how he dealt with his grief, he could not escape it. Here in the center of the shaded abyss of nothingness on a cold pacific night, this man still could not find any relief from his thoughts of the life he had before now. In fact, in light of the nothingness and solitude found in the center of the sea, everything he had tried to flee from was relentless and ceaseless. The ocean had provided nothing for his ailments and instead exasperated all that he had brought with him to be healed.
There was nothing that could be said about Charlie Dixon that hadn't been said before. From all the way back to the days of childhood, during those stinking, seagull infested, summers on Staten Island. The first thing that anyone said about Charlie Dixon was that if someone had heard something, seen something, or knew something, Charlie had to know … Charlie Boy had to look. There were many reasons why he had to know things, why he wanted to know the truth. A brother who said that he was the stupid one, a mother who claimed his learning disabilities weren't from her, and a father who left a family of three because he was convinced that the "meat head" wasn't his kid. He'd spend the rest of his life looking and wanting to know. Somewhere deep inside, afraid that he was being kept in the dark, because he was the stupid one. It made him tough fast, made him abrasive toward those who he felt weren't telling him things. Knowledge was power and he wanted to know everything so that he couldn't be surprised, so he couldn't be humiliated.
It's why he loved her, why he dreamed about her long after he shouldn't have. She was just like him. Sarah Connor told him that she was the stupid one in her family. A prom queen, a head cheerleader that had to look, had to know, just like he did. They were two meat heads in a pod, raising a genius. He could've lived like that, been a hell of a life with a hell of a woman. But it was all cut short. One afternoon they were gone and he spent so many years afterward pining for the life he wanted with a family that he could've had. But as the months go by, a year passing, maybe it wasn't the family that he wanted, maybe it was just the answers of the why. Maybe it was the humiliation of the moment that James Ellison strolled into the Fork's Sheriff's Station, threw down that Pescadero file and treated him the way all the kids on Staten Island treated him, the way the parole officer used treat him, like his drill sergeant used to treat him. It was that look of amusement at this "Sad Sack" son of a bitch that was just too dumb to get a clue.
All the years, even after marriage, which he obsessed over her, thought of her and their life. He wanted to say that it was his love for her that kept her alive in his mind, but maybe it was that she had humiliated him, made him feel as stupid as they told him he was. All those years he had wanted to know the truth of why she left him, why she ran out on the life he had wanted since those bloody hospitals in Kuwait.
Charlie Dixon wanted to know. He wanted to know till it was told to him. He wanted to know till he didn't, till he saw what knowing was, and what it cost to all those around him. Twenty dead FBI agents, abandoning a house that was built out of the future dreams of a newly-wed couple, being stalked by machines, and holding the dead corpse of his wife in the every place where they had worked and fell in love together. Knowing had killed his wife, knowing had ruined his life, and knowing was why he sat at the edge of the abyss tonight and found no salvation in it.
But the truth wasn't the pain that he sought to escape, it was the feeling that he had let his wife down. That he had waisted Michelle's life. She was the woman he married, the woman he had vowed to love and protect forever, and yet she had died for a truth that she didn't want to know. Because no matter how hard he tried to ignore it, he needed to be in another woman's life.
The truth that tormented Charlie tonight, at the edge of the world, and at the edge of his sanity was that Sarah Connor was still all he could think about. He had woken from the darkness of hazy dreams in a cold sweat, knowing that it was about her. He spent his day grieving a wife that he might not have ever loved. The prospect of doing that to someone, hurt him, destroyed him deep within. That kind of ugliness, it was an evil that had carved him whole. There was nothing left in Dixon, nothing but sorrow, frustration, and a tormented obsession with a woman. It was a sleepless fascination that turned to malice.
She invaded his dreams, his waking and his absent mind. She wrapped him in her snare so tight that this woman choked the very essence of who he was out of him. In the few moments that he had connected with her in the fires of action and turmoil that was her life, her real life, it was like nothing he had ever felt before. Not even in the deserts of Iraq did he know this kind of fiery baptism of righteousness, of life altering, soul changing involvement in a conflict that had true implications that had an effect on the world's very future. And when the stress and fear had passed, there was something intoxicating about the rush, that realization that in two seconds of conflict, and possible death, was more important than anything that he had ever done before in his life. All it did was make her life, make her, more desirable with each passing memory of those few adrenaline pumping minutes of danger. Wife, no wife, it didn't matter, because he'd chase that rush. He'd chase that beautiful arch-angel with her flaming sword, anywhere. He was obsessed with her and her mission, obsessed with the idea of everything she was trying to do.
Now after the death of Michelle and coming to this solitude, he had tried to detox from that addiction of a life of danger and righteousness. To erase his fantasied ideas of a romanticized existence that exploded with the vivid colors of a new painted world seen through new eyes that had added meaning to each day and night. For some time now he had come to realize the truth of that life, the reality of it. There was no turning back. There was no romanticism in this woman's world. The people who lived this life, day to day, where the people just like him, thrust upon. Without warning it starts, and you lose everything that you clung onto in the previous life.
So what else could Charlie Dixon do but regret? Regret for all the things he had to know that Sarah Connor didn't tell him.
The boat's return was loud and clumsy on its way back to shore. Being a city boy all his life, rigging a boat was a working-progress. Even though he had spent so many years on an aircraft carrier, on a ship with a hundred moving parts operated by a thousand different crew members, he had just been content with patching up the Marines that had too good of a time on shore leave. But three library books later, and some friendly advice from a few guys from the hospital and he was doing okay for himself. The nets caught enough fish to make some money at the local market, and the manager even gave him discounts on the essentials. It wasn't a bad life for someone on their own. It wasn't a bad life for someone off the grid.
But there was still one thing that he hadn't gotten used to.
There were killing machines in the world and they wore human skin like a cheap suit. Walking out your door, you now know that it could be anyone, friend, neighbor, the deli man you got your meats from for the last eight years. It could make you crazy, and it wasn't boding too well for Charlie either. He lost ten pounds and his hair was starting to whiten. The life that he had been so desperate to know was now aging him over night. Time spent on the other things in a previous life, paying bills, mowing the lawn, Sunday brunch at the in-laws. It was now filled with escape plans, booby-traps, and updating the security. So much of Charlie Dixon's life now revolved around escape and protecting him and this lighthouse. He might have been hesitant, might have been more self-aware of his survivalist lifestyle if it wasn't for the images of Michelle bleeding out in the back of a service van. He remembered the questions, the shocked looks from friends that had been at their wedding that now all stood around her chilled corpse on a gurney outside a morgue. Whenever he strayed, whenever he thought seriously about what he was doing out there, all he had to do was remember what just one of "Them" had done to four people in a shed in the desert. Then it was all worth the cost.
The withered man tied down the boat good and tight. He knew the Marine knots that they had drilled in his head during basic would pay off some day. He pulled the unbaited fishing rod and the unused tackle box with him as he dismounted the boat. He was hesitant to light his lantern for the dark walk from the pier to the caretaker's house. But when he stepped off the wooden walkway and nearly twisted his ankle in the moist sand, he thought better.
The home was in complete black out as he walked up the steps. He cursed himself once or twice, not remembering if he had forgotten to turn on the security lights or not. It was these little indecisions and misrememberance that could be the meaning of life and death in this new life. But when the motion sensors came on and blipped, he let out a sigh of relief.
However when he stepped inside he was met with pitch darkness within the home. Setting his gear down, he flipped the switch for the kitchen lights to find that they did not come on. He grunted, flicking them on and off with no response as he reset the security code. He gave a long sigh of annoyance. This wasn't the first time nor the last that this had happened. With so much security and other electrical traps set around the property, it was becoming increasingly apparent that the grid and the generators were too ill-equipped to handle the power running through the small seaside home.
"Jasper!" The man called the golden retriever.
Sarah had told him that dogs could smell the machines, and bark to warn of their coming. So he had spent most of the lump sum of his cashed in 401K on a well-trained, well-bred guard dog. The golden furred animal was more than just a tool for security. Charlie had found that even the most mundane thing in the day, like feeding him, the long hours of sitting and petting his golden fur, there was therapy to having the golden retriever around. He wasn't sure what he'd do or where he'd be without that K-9. But he frowned when he heard no rustle of fur, or pad of feet down the hallway.
"Jasper I'm home, boy!" He called taking his lantern as he paced through the kitchen area, looking for the dog. But he found no sign of him. He wasn't sure why, but a chill slowly began trailing down his back. He immediately turned into the monitor room and saw each one of his cameras was still operating. But there was something obscuring on the last monitor on the lower right. A piece of paper stuck to the camera located on the backdoor. He pulled the sticky note and read the red pen on it.
"Bedroom"
An old pain suddenly racked the man's body. Mind and soul suddenly were thrown into a chaos of conflicting sensations of regret, guilt, and unadulterated need. There was a Pavlovian response to the request that had him burning in a desire that had been set in low simmer for nine years. But just underneath was the shame of the dark memories that had sent him to this lonesome exile in the first place. Charlie was a man in a conflict with what he wanted, what he needed, and what was right. But all these things were not clear to a man who had been doing everything he could to keep his head above water since the first moment Sarah and John's cyborg had revealed the motionless corpse of the flesh covered killing machine on their own dining room table. But what Dixon did know was that those old romantic notions of what this life could be were taking over him, and his reason was having a hard time fighting those images. All Charlie really wanted was some sort of comfort from this life he had chosen. He needed someone to tell him that it wasn't going to be like this every moment of every day.
Despite his best efforts, he needed her. He needed her like a junkie with nothing to lose needed one last fix before letting it all ride.
He crumbled the sticky note in his fist in utter defeat. It was going to happen again, and he knew there was no escaping it. There was resignation in his shuffled footsteps through the pitch dark home that was occupied by one more and one less than Charlie realized as walked through the hall. When he reached the bedroom he found the door only half open, not the way he had left it.
"Sarah?" He lifted the lantern above his head and pushed the door open.
Suddenly he was acutely aware of a thick and heavy scent in the room. It smelled coppery and faintly decaying as it hung in the air. His stomach dropped as it engaged his senses and made him queasy in an old familiarity. Twelve years as a Paramedic and a year on the battlefields of Kuwait and Iraq had made Charlie Dixon very familiar with the smell of blood.
"Oh god, Sarah!"
Charlie rushed to his bed, tripping and fumbling his way to its side in a panic. But when he shed his lantern on the floral bed spread, made by Michelle's grandmother, he found no body or sign that anyone had been there. However, he turned to find that there was a sheet of paper pinned to the headboard of the bed by his own gutting and cleaning knife.
The blood was still black and fresh as it slowly dripped down the jagged edges and gut hook, splattering deep stains on the white linin pillow cases. It took Charlie a long moment to process what he had found. The security was still online, the alarm code was set, and flood lights would have come on if all else failed. A sight he could've seen from his fishing spot. His hand was shaking as he pulled the bloody knife from the headboard. He looked at the chunks and golden fur still on the blade and whispered the name of the only living thing in the home when Charlie had left.
When he lifted the lantern for better light, he failed to see the extra shadow that was cast on the wall behind him. A shadow that had been behind him since the moment he had entered the house. In the new light he read what was written in blood.
"Behind You"
But it was too late …
Traveling into a forest of concrete, glass, and metal under a dark, blood red, amber sky, you come to realize one thing. There was no such thing as a dark night in the city of angels. Though there was no light from the hazy silver orb and no star to be found above the endless grids of civilization. The only stars in this town where the kind you find on the billboards, and on the maps sold by twelve year old Mexican girls who have uncles and brothers who know a guy. The only light was from the neon signs and zippo lighters in the endless slippery back alleys where foul business bred foul deeds in the cold, trash strewn, palm tree pocked streets with Spanish names.
At night was when the worst of one's self and others come out. Each tormented soul looking to fill that one wonted desire, the illness of self-indulgence, the vice that calls to them when the rest of the normal world sleeps. It's the one thing they can only find here on these dark streets shadowed in the colored neon and the tall empty skyscrapers that stood sentry like opulent towers of some false Camelot. From above it must look like anything was possible, a casual view of a world that looks peaceful from miles above. But from the ground it was a devils playground when the sun went down.
They were darkened faced demons with ill intentions that traveled concrete walkways. Each one of them was suspicious of the other as they pass. Somewhere deep inside they know what they want, what they navigate this dangerous journey for is wrong on some level. But they can't stop themselves. Life makes them this way. The wear and tear of unfulfilled dreams, of joyous plans coming up short, and happiness never found. Now they can only glimpse that little part of their past lives somewhere in that short time that they snort, drink, shoot up or burry inside a hot moist place. For a moment in whatever bliss was their choosing they remember what they were before they got here, before they got to this point, to this low place, to this city. Then when the high is over, they remember everything that came after once more. Some would say after it was all said and done that those disappointments, bad breaks, and poor decisions, all the memories of yesterday is what made them dangerous. Why the nights in the city of angels belonged to the bad men.
The night hummed like the pick of an ominous cord on a fallen angels harp. The air was salty, damp, and had the scent of ocean run off that added to the moldy scene of the old city. Crossing the bridge to where the ancient street lamps blinked on and off in tempo with their own whims, there was a sense of unease when realizing where you were at this time of night. To be in the old city in the dark was not to face your own mortal fears, but to confront an entire city's past sins. In the light of day they try to burry that past, newer generations of residents that do not want to remember what it was like then. They spend the day pretending that it didn't exist and couldn't exist any longer in their progressive new worlds, even as they continue the old ways in private. But when they go to sleep and their brave new world retires, the old sins come alive and plague and gnaw at their fragile minds and armchair convictions with doubt. To go to the old city in these witching hours is to come face to face with the specter of the glamor and glitz of an old world and the rotted chains of decadence, deviancy, and inequity that dragged them all under.
In the shadow of the future just across a bridge, the old city with its deco architecture, abandoned towers, and thirteenth floor gargoyles was like being in a grave yard at night … jumping at the shadows of a long dead yesterday.
On some forgotten avenue with a rarely spoken street number is a crossroads that sits in the very center of the heart of darkness within the city. It's not an easy place to find and no one would bother if they didn't know it. There, tucked in between two old buildings that still had fading and blurry murals for the Elysian Fields housing development project, and an adjoining advertisement lobbying support for the passing of the Servicemen's Readjustment Act through the United States Congress, was a neon sign that was buried deep in a dark alleyway. Above a red door with a greening golden handle, was a buzzing animated sign of an unraveling turban that revealed an old Arabian lamp with the blinking words "The Sultan of Swing" underneath. Its silhouette blazed against the washed out picture of a smiling nuclear family of the late 1940's. The air is colder in the narrow alleyway that leads to the entrance. The shadows of disproportionate light disguise murky puddles in old pot holes and cast odd reflections on the overstuffed dumpster filled with alcohol bottles, napkins, shoes, skirts, and hundreds of other pieces of evidence to a dozen other crimes in and around this city. There was an effect liken to walking through a black hole as you approached the place. Hairs that stand up in the back of the neck, heart goes a little faster, and your focus gets a little sharper. Because anyone who was coming here would find more safety on the beaches of Normandy or the trenches of Khe Sahn, than in the inside of the Sultan of Swing.
There was a time when this joint was in service to a higher class of scum, the kind that photographers and Private Eyes would stake out for weeks just to catch a glimpse of. In the graveyard of dilapidated and decaying concrete marvels built in heated rivalry between Rupert Chandler and Myron Stark that defined three decades of a city's skyline, The Sultan of Swing was the epicenter of everything that the contemporary denizens of Los Angeles tried to forget. Murders, rapes, hate crimes, and mutilations all surrounded and covered by the shine and glimmer of old Hollywood. Some would say that too much happened here. That the old walls had too many secrets, and those whose names and faces were on every critic and film school professors walls were afraid that they would talk about all the sins committed within their confines. So they moved away while the heat was on and stayed away when the heat started heading away from all the old places with the old histories. Whether it was prestige or that the roughest place in town was just too mean to die, somehow it stayed open for the next fifty years. But its walls and halls still carried the taint of the hey-day, the evil spirits of the wrongs that give the place a certain character and color the way old spilled milk attracted cockroaches.
Entering through those front doors, the first thing that anyone feels is the dirt and grime of the wrong kind of atmosphere. It wasn't the first or the last place in this town where you could still see your own reflection in the counter tops and polished floors … and still need a shower. The bar was infected with a kind of sickness that got under your skin and into your very soul. It felt as if the entire building was coded with the sins of the past, the dirty deeds of power mad deviants lay unwashed through the decades, letting the dark history seep through the walls like raw sewage, making everything unclean and the very air breathed toxic with the taint of an old avarice of the basest human nature.
Stepping into this place was like stepping through time. The glass shelves of top shelf liquor, the bar in the back of the room with lit stairs that lead down to an open dance floor made of polished wooden finish and a bandstand stage beyond. The whole place had was old era streamlined covered in turquoise patterns of marble that ran across walls covered with dusty black and whites of beautiful faces whose names were only known on a good day in retirement homes.
A hazy cloud of smoke and bad intentions lingered over the hot, sterile, lights of the barroom, while the shadowed patrons talked amongst themselves. They were too smart to look directly at every new face that came through the double doors, but one eye was always placed on their drink and the other on everyone else. No one who came to a place like this was ever foolish enough to trust the kind of regular that it served. They were all nameless and faceless sphinxes that were alone, and if not, would be soon. It was a dangerous place for dangerous men, who needed a hard drink fast for a hard deed done or will be done by the time the dauntless beauty of a Southern California morning broke the amber stain of civilization above the mountain tops.
From the bandstand there was a sultry sound that echoed off the wall and empty dance floor, sauntering over the lit tables, booths, and polished bar. It was a smooth and chilling kind of music that enraptured and enticed. It was like the soft seductive whisper of a mistress and seductive blow of air from her ruby red lips on your hot ear to cool you down. The piano that accompanied the enticing voice gave everything an ease that lulled you into comfort. But it was the sax work, the bleating undertones and smooth caresses that gave it all the air of dirtiness, of the wrongness that felt so right in the way the Jazz singer on the microphone worked the room. Her blackened auburn hair, sculpted eyebrows, and pale skin that offset and complimented her shiny black dress gave her the look of a woman on the prowl. She looked as dangerous as she sounded, swaying her hips to the sirens call from her accompaniment. Her dark eyes were drawn to the new figure that approached the bar with interest.
From out of the darkness of the alleyway a figure with a thousand yard stare that had a million candle light power stepped inside the smoky bar. He drew the regulars' stares for only a moment, studying the rugged man with cropped hair and brown jacket with dangerously suspicious eyes. But all it took was one gaze at the long hazel stare filled with a lifetimes worth of war, pain, and survival to understand that he was not a man to be trifled with. He was like a wild alpha set loose in a pin of prized fighting dogs. The patrons averted away from the man who checked the exits, and scoped the scene before continuing on.
The man stepped up to the polished and lit bar. Placing a hand on the cool surface, he turned to watch the female singer lose herself in the music once more. He was immediately met with a dark skinned bartender in a white dress shirt and black bowtie. The white haired old timer set a glass in front of him expectantly. There was a meekness of servitude to the plump old man that one might expect from a type of service in a place like this. But when the man looked into the tired eyes he knew that there was something hidden within, dark eyes that had a darker history that lay just underneath the surface. The kind of danger needed to survive serving drinks in a place like this night after night.
"What'll it be, Son?" He asked with a scratchy Lower Delta Mississippi accent.
He motioned to the lowest shelf with his head. "Whatever's on special, Pops." He responded with a distracted glance back toward his surroundings. There was an unflinching motion of immediate service in the way he reached for the rye in the back. Hazel eyes turned to watch the old man poor the cheap whisky before he moved on with the bottle. Obviously it was a popular drink tonight, or the only one the tough old grandpa was willing to serve on a damp cold night like this one.
Without preamble, the man blindly took it all down the chute, savoring the hard burn of the trash drink. Closing his eyes, he listened to the song bird responding and playing off the answering saxophone. Their foreplay set to the tempo of the strum of the upright bass. To hear them in a place like this, it gave him shivers, and their sounds made him feel soiled and dirty, like he was watching a porno in front of loved ones. The music was too hot, filled with an energy that was combusting the already charged atmosphere of the joint. It was as if she was begging for a fight. The Sultan of Swing was that last place that anyone should be looking for trouble.
But then that was why Derek Reese was here wasn't he?
He placed his glass down with a clack and reached into his pocket and pulled out two crisp Benjamin Franklin's worth of diamond money. He placed it on the shiny surface and weighted down the dough with a certain silver coin. The old timer filled Derek up again, before taking his money. As Reese entered the breach one more time, he watched with numbing eyes as the old man seemed surprised at the large tip at first. But that was till he saw the challenge coin in his hand. He examined it a moment longer before he made eye contact with Derek again. He seemed surprised, shocked, and maybe even just a bit afraid. Something in the old man's eyes was waiting for Derek to confirm that this was what he really wanted. The halt in service seemed to attract attention from the sketchy characters at the till, and all eyes fell on the wordless pause between the two men.
It lasted till the soldier finally nodded his confirmation of what he was asking for. However, whatever it was in Derek's eyes, it didn't impress the bartender. The man reached a hand under the bar and turned to the last seat on his left. There a big brick of a man sat in a half suit, sleeves rolled up, tie loosened, and a half empty bottle of Jack sitting in front of him. He caught the old timer's eyes, and with just the motion of his head toward the Resistance Fighter, the man stood up to reveal his true size.
Mickey Stanza was six foot two, three hundred pound, 26- 42, wash out that had done twenty years on Friday nights at the Grand Olympic. His flattened nose and sand papered features told a story of an ugly mug that had taken a lot of gloves and a few untethered mitts to a face that not even his mother loved. They used to call him "Mickey Tracks" because of his promoter's pension for putting him up against top ranked opponent's two or three weeks before their bigger fights. They used to say Stanza was a railroad track, because the champs and contenders would steam right over him. He was the Generals to the Globe Trotters, the Philadelphia Eagles to the Dallas Cowboys, and the Glass Joe to Player One. Mickey Stanza had spent his life getting beat on, till he couldn't remember his own name some nights. But what the first generation Italian-American bruiser knew well was how to hit people, how to make them bleed. He also knew how to take a shot or two in the chops from tough guys. And after all the dunderhead beatings he got in every boxing venue from here to San Jose, Mickey Tracks "ain't" afraid of nothing, not even cold blooded killers from a time yet to be and a future that no longer exists.
The minute the olive skinned juggernaut came shuffling around the bar, Derek Reese took a step back. His dangerous eyes fell over the tense old bartender as he reached under jacket. "I don't want any trouble …" He reached out his other arm to halt "Tracks" in place with a stopping motion of his hand. "I'm just here to talk to your Manager." He finished. Suddenly the entire streamlined bar went quiet as every glance now was directed at the escalating tension in the room.
The white haired bartender studied the solider for a long moment. Then quietly he removed his hand from whatever he was holding onto under the bar. With a heavy sigh he cleaned the coin with his waiter's apron and a shake of his head.
"If you ain't lookin for no trouble, you wouldn't want to see him would yea, son?"
With a flick of metal the old man flipped the challenge coin in the air. It landed with a sharp clack and settled with a hard rattle on the bar counter. With a careful swipe, Derek took back the silver disk, placing it in his pocket. There was no air in the room as he and the other occupants waited for whatever came next. But some were disappointed when the bartender gave another long and tired sigh. Then with a nod of his head he pointed Derek toward the dance floor.
Derek parted company with the bar and gave a nod of acknowledgement to the old man. He received it back, with a little something extra for good luck as the rest of the shadowed faces watched the eldest Reese boy get escorted by Stanza across the room and down the steps. Derek felt every eye on him as he entered the open between the lit wood paneled stairs and the bandstand. But he didn't need to know why even the hardiest of patrons here were watching. It was simply because no matter how rough, tough, or deadly the drinkers were here, no one ever even considered talking to the guy who ran the place. No one but a truly desperate man …
No other but Derek Reese.
On the right side of the polished dance floor was a service hallway. Bathrooms, a custodian's closet, maybe even a basement. But at the very end of the hall was an office door with frosted glass. In black lettering starting to fade in the advanced decades since painted, the word "Owner" in cursive was emblazoned on glass. As they turned into the hallway Derek heard the mummer of continued conversation and the low tremble of jazz return with its haunting, sauntering sound. The interest or even concern anyone might have had for him was a thing of the past. Whatever was gonna happen, was gonna happen and the less anyone knew about it, the better. It was, after all, the unspoken rule of The Sultan of Swing.
Tracks opened the door for Derek and allowed him to enter. But when he made room for the Boxer, he found only the door close behind him. Reaching for his Glock under jacket he saw the frosted shadow of the big lumbering mass walk away. Removing his hand from his weapon he checked his surroundings.
The office was surprisingly outdated for 2009. There were dusty filing cabinets, model cars of the fastest vehicles in the early 60's, and a rolodex. It was clear that in fact no one had been running this place in a very long time. As it was outside, there were pictures of headshots of all the best talent of a generation that many considered the greatest. They were somehow much more recognizable to the soldier than any one of the other's outside. As he looked over his windowless surroundings, a brick bunker in the center of the stylized bar, he began to wonder about those faces. He wondered if he checked those dusty cabinets how much dirt he might just find on all of the smirking and smiling faces. How many murders happened in those bathrooms out there, how many beatings for debt collection? The price of stardom bought and paid for by unclean money? How many unwanted pregnancies had happened in this office, or forcefully in that alley? It was enough to turn even Derek Reese's stomach.
But somewhere amongst all those smiling faces of an old glamour of yesterday, one in particular caught his eye. She was a woman in the corner who he had to clean the dust off. She had long tresses of golden blond hair, thick expressive eyebrows, and an old regal beauty. She had on a silky number and a pin up pose as she looked over her shoulder playfully. He could tell that she was the kind of girl that valued a good time than anything serious in life. There was a contradiction to her look of royalty and goofy smiles. But the reason that Derek had stopped everything about what was going through his mind was because Josephine Booker had a hauntingly familiar look. She looked almost exactly like …
"Set a trap for The Great Mouse Detective, and here we get just a plain old sewer rat."
Derek wheeled around at the familiar accented voice that addressed him from the doorway. He was tall with an Outback tan. The man leaning in the door frame had a buzz haircut and muscular physic. There was something generically handsome about his face. The Australian was at his prime in the same age as Derek and Sarah. There was a genuinely easy roguish charm to his devil-may-care attitude, but the soldier knew that it was just a front for a much more intense and angrier individual underneath all the thuggish aesthetic.
The Aussie thought he had Derek were he wanted him, but in truth, there was no intimidating a Reese. Derek hit him with a cocky shit eating grin, the kind that made Sarah Connor always want to punch him in the face. "Come on, Marcus, you were never clever enough to be a Mouse Detective, and you were too dumb to be a sewer rat. But a red eyed lab rat? That sounds just about right, don't you think?" He shot back.
The tall rogue's eyes suddenly narrowed in distaste at the shot. "Funny Derek …" He snipped with a darker growl in his Melbourne brogue. "That's tough talk from the only one of Connor's "Four Horsemen" who actually cracked at the Professor's questioning … or were you just like Connor, a sucker for jailbait cyborg pussy?" He cut at the officer.
The rugged man was now incensed as the comment stirred images of the incident outside Sarah's bedroom tonight. "Why don't you drop your pants and let's see if you do anything for me? Assuming you have anything down there … the machines had to have given you something special besides the garbage can bone implants. God knows they didn't make you any smarter, Wright." There was now an unadulterated hatred that came with the soldier's speech.
There was a certain thuggish pride to the man who grew up on the streets with his younger brother. In another world, a better one, he could've been Derek, and maybe that was why they hated each other so much. Two older brothers, on opposite sides of the law and the war, charged with protecting a little brother, and failing at the one job that defined them. Suddenly Marcus Wright took three large steps into the office in response to all the conflicting resentment. He hadn't finished the first before Derek's Glock was out and pointing straight at the man's heart.
"Easy, Joey, I didn't come here for you." Derek explained calmly. "And we all know how that was gonna end." He drew the click of his trigger, motioning to the hybrid's exposed organ.
This somehow amused Wright. "You were out your league the minute you came here, Reese. But if Connor actually thinks you can get over my head than you're off the map for a suicidal, middle management, rebel soldier boy." He seemed very confident despite his weakness.
"Connor didn't send me and I'm not here for your boss."
"Than what do you want with him?"
"To make a deal."
Mid-mornings came through the windows with an acute whiteness that blinded in the unrestricted light. For so many hours in darkness there was no guarding from the coming of day for those that had fallen to sleep in the empty black in the stillness of the night. But the day brought life, sounds, and smells that energized and fired up synapsis for whatever might come during the activities that happen in daylight. There was a certain muscle memory to these things for most in the world. Some so ingrained in their day to day worlds that they didn't even need alarm clocks. Their bodies so in tune with their schedules that they were up when needed and out the door at the right time. It was like clockwork.
So it might have been strange to a sleepless figure to find that in the mid hours of the morning, when everything she did was always on a schedule that she was still in bed. But more to the point and possibly more alarming was the fact that her eyes were closed and had not been operating at all. It was not internal motion sensors, or the sound of pigeons that she had been observing some months. On the quiet summer morning the thing that attracted her attention was the constant of warm, blinding, morning light that had been hitting her face for some hours. If she had been human than this might have bothered her, but since Cameron Baum was a machine, her internal sensors did not register things she could not see. This was chiefly why most cyborgs did not blink. It was however her temperature gage that alerted her that something was starting to heat up past normal body temperature.
With a flutter of eyebrows, Cameron's golden flecked caramel eyes opened to see a white ceiling adorn with plastic stars that glow in the dark due to the chemical reaction of Phosphorescent paint when exposed to light. Her first reaction was to pick her head up. She had found herself under the covers of a child's bed. There was however a sense of completion, of all things being right in the world, when she felt and saw that she was with John.
Cameron lay at a comfortable angle, buried pleasantly underneath one of John's shoulders as he laid the side of his face on their shared pillow. One of his deceptively strong arms was wrapped protectively around her shoulder, his hand pushing off a nightgown strap to expose her silky bare skin, while his other arm dangled off the edge of the too small bed. Both their heads were resting together, her own lying on top of John's forehead, while her arms were wrapped around his broadening shoulders.
Cameron observed that John was getting bigger, taller, and stronger in the almost two years that they had known this version of one another. Even his cheeks were getting scruffier with facial hair. It was still boyish, but even Sarah admitted, all be it grudgingly, that John looked good with facial hair. Though the raven haired mother didn't seem to think it cute for the girl to chime in that John looked good period. She wasn't sure if the comment made Sarah uncomfortable or just disdainful of Cameron's opinions on the physical attractiveness of her son. Someday John would be a larger than life figure, strong and physical, built with incredible hitting power. Till then he still had some endurance issues when lifting Cameron off her feet for extended periods. But she had found that endearing about the boy who would be a hero someday.
There was a part of her that found the little inconsistencies, the working progresses in the boy's life, as markers that made him "her" John. In the future the John she knew was already a man, already in the prime of his life, with baggage and histories that she only knew from files of research and stories told to her when he should've been asleep. She had joined him too late to be any contributing factor to his life. But when she came to 1999 and finally found John in Red Valley, she had been taken back by how young, how unformed, the lion hearted youth had been. And over the years, as they grew closer, relying on one another more and more for the essentials on all aspects of a life, she had found herself more invested in this John. Cameron felt more rewarded in being in his life as he became the man she had betrayed everything she was created for and taught to believe. It was in these quiet mornings as they lay together that she knew without any hint of regret just how right it was to come here, how simply fulfilling it was to be in this young man's embrace and know that he was the very oxygen she breathed and the very power that kept her functioning.
Cameron didn't know what Love was, but she understood it when she watched John sleep while she was in his arms.
For a time the cyborg girl watched John Connor sleep, placing her head against his again, listening to his breath as if it was her own. But sometime later she slowly began to realize that something was amiss. While there was nothing wrong with John, there was something very wrong with her. It occurred to her that she had just come back online. It was that she had been in a standby shut down for most of the night. Her last memories where going to get John some water, before joining him in bed for the duration of the night. Normally she'd stay there with him till five minutes before Sarah Connor awoke. Then she'd give John a sleepy kiss and slip back to her own room before Sarah opened the door to check on her boy. But it was now very much past the time that Sarah Connor was awake and making breakfast.
But it only got worse when the teenage girl tried to bring up internal sensors and find out what was going on and how long her "black out" had lasted. But the problem was that she suddenly had no access to her internal sensors. Her hands on John's skin gave her no readings of his vital information. There was no internal timer, combat scanning, and diagnostic information on herself or her surroundings. Cameron focused her sight on the mundane objects in John's room. But all she could do was watch it, observe it, with no context or extra information from her databanks. Her eyes grew wider.
She shot up into a sitting position and began darting her head around the room, almost desperate to find an object that would scan. The violent action jostled John into a tired awareness of the morning. He groaned in protest nuzzling her ribs with a deep sigh. But meanwhile Cameron slipped out from under the covers, which caused John to curl up even tighter under the covers as his main source of warmth abandoned him.
Cameron darted with a half-step of urgency to the window and began looking out at the sunlit gravel driveway. She focused all her efforts on Sarah Connor's dark blue jeep. But after several moments all she found was that it was a jeep that was dark blue and a pigeon was resting on its roof with some entitlement. The cyborg didn't panic, didn't rattle, but she was disturbed by the new glitch that had neutered and neutralized everything that made her, her.
Turning on her heels sharply she returned to the bed and her lover. "John …" She called to him with no panic. Her slender hands rubbed his arm and ribs in the way that he didn't like as a way to gain his attention. But to this John grunted in half acknowledgement, only shifting over so that he had laid his head on her lap as she knelt on his bed.
"John please, it's an emergency." She didn't raise her voice but she spoke with something that was far from her usual even tone.
It was the way she had said his name and the word emergency that snapped the young man's eyes open. He immediately sat up, maybe still half asleep, but his first instinct was to help and comfort the girl he loved more than life itself. He placed a hand on her lap and the other on her shoulder.
"What is it?" He asked with an edgy voice. He didn't know what was going on, but he did know that he had never heard Cameron say his name the way she had just done.
"I'm blind." She replied with no better word to describe the phenomenon.
The admission sent John closer to her. "What?!" he asked in sudden alarm. His hands immediately cupped her temples, his thumbs rubbing her eyebrows. "You can't see?" He asked running one of his hands in front of her vision.
"No I can see, John. But my internal and external sensors have been disabled." She reached out and took his waving hand to halt it.
"Your what?" He was still in shock and in his morning confusion.
The girl tightened her cheek. "My HUD, my combat scanning, my internal sensors that monitor my functions, my night vision, my inferred vision, my scanning … it's all gone John. I'm blind." There was something vaguely sounding like panic in her voice.
Whatever the ghost of emotion that had been portrayed in her voice, John was immediate in coming to her aid. He cupped her cheeks this time. "It's going to be okay, Angel." He said calmly. But Cameron shook her head.
"You don't understand, John." She separated herself from his touch. "I'm not like you." She explained. "I'm not human." The girl continued in a cold voice.
"Surely you can't be serious? And I was picking out rings!" John tried lighthearted sarcasm. But it had no effect on Cameron.
"Your body is organic. It is built to repair itself when you are sick, when you are hurt. This body, this mind, it is not. When I'm broken, I'm broken, and I cannot fix myself in matters such as these." She took a step away from him. But before she could take another John snatched her arm back and pulled her toward him.
"No …" John said forcefully. It took Cameron by surprise as he wrapped her in a restraining hug.
"You must believe me." She searched his eyes in confusion. It seemed that he hadn't heard her at all, or that he hadn't grasped the seriousness of the situation as she had presented it to him.
But John shook his head. "I know you …" He said with accusation. "You were gonna use this as an excuse to take a step backward from us." He replied stiffly.
The looked that crossed the cyborg girl's face was one of guilt, like a fox with a chicken in its mouth. "You don't understand, John." She fought back. "This software is designed to kill humans, the hardware is designed to kill humans, and it is only through my own will that I have any control over this body. If I lose even a function … I could lose myself and control. I could hurt you, kill you even." She lay cradled in his arms, dauntlessly piercing through John Connor's emerald eyes to the very soul that the two shared.
"You won't." He said with a conviction that would someday be law in most circles of the world.
The girl blinked deliberately. "I might someday." She said softly.
"Not today, not tomorrow, not next year, not me, not ever." His eyes had a wild intensity and assurance that she had never seen before, or anyone else.
"I'm not a human girl, John. I wasn't sent here to be your girlfriend or to be your wife, I was sent here to protect you. Even from myself if the case need be." She protested with a cold voice.
A year ago, this might have worked. It was the hard bluntness, the cold attitude, and the chastising words. A year ago, even three months ago, John Connor would have dropped her, would've snarled, took a deep breath and walked away the way she knew she could make him. But today her hard words and cold attitude only made him smirk. It was the kind of smirk she had seen Derek Reese give a hundred times. The kind that told the person that was on the receiving end that he knew something they didn't want him to know.
"You weren't sent here to be my girlfriend?" He asked.
"No."
"You weren't sent here to be my wife?"
"No."
John nodded in fax understanding of her position. "Yeah, well I didn't want to get shot at by a substitute teacher in a classroom, I didn't want to move to Red Valley, and I wasn't born to be a guy with a thing for brunette ballerinas that don't age. But guess what? It did, and I do. You might not have come here to be my girlfriend, wife, friend … I really don't give a damn, because you are. There's no going back now. We are who we are. Do you understand me?" He gave her an uncompromising look.
Cameron tightened her cheek at the unmaneuverable position John had placed her. "My vision and scanners …" She started.
For a long moment John was thoughtful. In his eyes Cameron saw just how much he understood her predicament. Somehow she should've known that John Connor wasn't stupid, nor underestimated his understanding of her and how she worked. As she lay in his arms she watched his mind go a thousand miles a minute, looking to his computer and then the half cracked door.
He gave a long sigh before looking down at her. "Well forever is a long time …" he said thoughtfully. "If you can't fix yourself, than I better start learning how." He shrugged. "Do you trust me?" He asked suddenly.
"Yes …" She was stoic faced as she answered him.
"Then we'll fix this." He nodded.
"Yes we will." She said before she knew she had spoken. The girl was unsure if it was part of a glitch or the way he was looking at her at her most vulnerable. Like she had nothing to worry about as long as she was here with him in the bed they shared most night.
John leaned down and captured her lips. It was a passionate and searing kiss for this time of morning, but Cameron couldn't help but wrap her arms around his neck. There was something reassuring, something perfect in the way they had touched each other. It was only proving beyond any reason and possibility that the cyborg and the man were meant for each other. That out of all the infinite possibilities of the universe that a cyborg made to combat a man such as him would somehow dominate his destiny in a way that no one, not creator, cyborg, or man could fathom.
When they broke apart, John rubbed a thumb on the mole of her eyebrow lovingly. "I'll be back …" He promised with a tinier kiss to each eye. She nodded as the young man departed his room to fetch a couple of tools, wires, and parts to begin diagnosing the girl's mechanical issues.
When he was gone Cameron sat up, hand slipping under pillow as she pushed her weight to sit and wait. There she felt something brush up against her skin. It was leathery and hard, the kind of object that one didn't find under people's pillows. With a hard frown, the girl reached under and pulled out the object.
Placing in the lap of her nightgown clad legs was a leather bound folder. She didn't have access to her scanners or sensors, but she knew intuitively that it was the kind of folders carried by Parisian painters and artists who had carried out a special commission for a customer. She looked back to the open door wondering if it was something that belonged to John that he hadn't wanted anyone to see. With a tilt of her head she opened the folder and looked inside.
Her eyes widened as she came face to face with the picture. It was a beige sheet of drawing paper with a charcoal sketch of John and Cameron lying in bed together, in the same pose that she had woken up in. The lines were perfect. The artistic rendering of Cameron in particular had an idealized beauty to her. In fact there was an air of whimsical, romanticism to the drawing of the two sleeping lovers. But it was only made worse by the knowledge that Cameron knew from the moment she saw it that someone had been in John's room for a long enough time to create a detailed sketch of them throughout the night while John slept and his cyborg protector experienced an involuntary stand bye.
All the comfort Cameron had been given by the non-compromising tone of John's love was taken away in a cold wind of a past that she no longer thought would plague her. It was taken from her when she turned the commissioned page over in the folder. Only when she read the ugly writing did her malfunction make sense and yet not at all.
The Deepest Circle of Hell are Reserved for BETRAYERS
Acknowledgments
"The Turn of a Friendly Card" – The Alan Parson's Project