"Every man is born as many men, and dies as a single one." -- Martin Heidegger
Click, whir – click, whir - click. Click.
"- didn't believe it, but the message wasn't for him. I don't think it was for me either, I think it was for you - for me to give back to you. Maybe you'll know what to do with it.
"No fate. Goodbye, John."
Click, whir - click. Click.
"Goodbye, John."
In the end, there are four of them. Lee volunteers, but Lee has a daughter and John isn't taking anyone's father away from them before he has to.
It's Kyle and Derek, John and Kate. If he could have, John would have left Kate behind too. He'd argued – they'd all argued – that the base needed its medic. She'd agreed with complete sincerity and then told them they'd sure as hell better get her back in one piece.
They tell Perry they're only scouting. Perry doesn't believe them, but he lets them go; he doesn't have a choice. Most of the patrol teams support John and when he goes to check the power supply again, he discovers the people Below are uncomfortably close to fanatical. The few military personnel still remaining wouldn't be enough to stand in their way, even if they wanted to. And from what Derek tells him, they don't want to.
John Connor lives and breathes and all it took was a few supplies, a little heat and light, and a prison break -- and Derek, saluting in front of just enough witnesses. John barely even caught it and he'd figured it was ironic, or something, because he'd been able to see Derek's smirk. Apparently the group coming off patrol hadn't. John's still not sure if Derek planned it that way - he hasn't saluted since, which is a relief – but in the tunnels, rumor spreads like Cholera.
It's a coup, but at least it's bloodless.
So Perry doesn't like it – of course he doesn't like it – but he can't do anything about it, and he's enough of a politician to swim with the tide when the undertow's too strong to fight. He stops ordering them to stay and starts insisting they take more people. John half thinks he's right, that maybe it's time now, but he can't make himself do it.
Besides, there isn't room for an army on this yellow brick road.
There's three hundred miles of bad country between Kansas bunker and Crystal Peak and while Perry gave in to their plan before it became an actual mutiny, he's not giving them a vehicle. It doesn't matter; it's not like a jeep's going to make it that far anyway.
At twilight, after the HKs have passed overhead, they crawl out of the access pipe and into the cover of the rubble. Between them, they have a map, a compass, a radio, a med kit, a rope, two flashlights, six batteries, five knives, twelve guns and all the explosives Sarah Connor left for them. John counted. Twice.
They're light on food, heavy on water and heavier than that on ammo.
It's so completely silent that every step they take echoes and when John's boot comes down on a piece of glass, it cracks like a gunshot. They don't talk, they whisper. When dawn begins to drag itself over the rubble, they hole up in the ruins of a gas station.
Derek sets perimeter traps and Kate tries to raise anything but static on the radio, John begins to clear space for them to sleep. None of them have said it, but with the two holes still mending in his chest, they're not letting Kyle do anything but walk. He crouches beside John "You think it's out there? Weaver?"
John looks up, nods shortly. "It's out there."
When Derek slides back in, John says, "I'm going out."
Derek says nothing, Kate hands him a flask of water. It's weird, really, really weird not to be questioned anymore. He wanted it and now that he has it, it feels a lot like falling.
He makes his way carefully past the traps and alarms and finds a piece of concrete sticking diagonally out of the ground. He sits back on his heels, leans under its cover, and waits.
He hears measured footsteps first, clicking over the ground, and then he sees her. The red hair and curved smile, the almost mocking eyes. She's wearing the white dress he remembers, pure and incongruous in the ruined landscape.
She stops in front of him and he doesn't rise. "You have something that belongs to me," she says.
Wordlessly he holds up his wrist. The metal flows down onto her bare arm – into her bare arm – and disappears without a trace into the whole. He watches as her expression clears and her eyes stare out sightlessly - as she updates.
Twenty years takes a pitiful handful of seconds, her lip curls. "Savannah?"
"Didn't make it." Normally he'd say he was sorry, but in her presence he isn't.
Weaver's face becomes expressionless again and John wonders what the machine is hiding; he knows it's not sorrow, or even loss. "I see," she says at last.
"We had a deal."
"We've had many deals. But, yes. I found the picture of your mother in-"
John lifts his hand quickly. "I don't want to know."
Weaver raises an eyebrow and nods for him to continue.
"I want something else."
"That wasn't what we agreed, and I believe you've already lost your bargaining chip."
John rolls his eyes. "Right, because that would have worked. You have what you wanted, and you haven't killed us. That's practically asking for negotiations."
She nods, conceding his point. "Then what do you want?"
"Crystal Peak."
Her lips purse thoughtfully and he goes on. "Get us in there, help us."
She crouches before him and fastidiously tucks the hem of her skirt under her knees. "Help you do what?"
"Destroy Skynet." He smiles. "That's what you want, right? I was thinking about it. I've had a lot of time to think.
"The other Connor would have a lot of time to think as well, and I bet he realised you weren't just another machine as soon as he saw you. I bet he tried to get you on side, but you'd already figured out you could just wait. Skynet gets defeated, humans die out and you're left standing. So you said no.
"Then you realised exactly how much control Skynet still has over you. You can't fight it, you can't go against it, and it's in you. It is you."
He slowly reaches forward and taps her chest, just as she did to him, and then he leans back again.
"You needed to hack the source, but no one could build another Skynet here, you had to go back. Create John Henry. Build something that could be assimilated into Skynet's system without detection and make it let you go.
"So here you are now, and you've got what you wanted from John Henry. You can fight Skynet now, but you said 'yes' this time. That means you figured out you still need us for something. What is it?"
Weaver stares at him almost pensively and then says, "You certainly did have a long time to think. Did they leave you alone a great deal?"
John rolls his eyes and climbs to his feet. "Whatever. You know what? You win." He mimes knocking over the king on a chessboard. "One day, all this will be yours."
Weaver's eyes widen just fractionally and John knows he has it. Has her. "Wait."
He pauses with her hand on his arm, it's barely touching but he knows he's going nowhere. He turns as if it's his idea. "Why did 'no' turn into 'yes', Weaver?"
"Would you believe I concluded there was something worth saving?"
"No."
Her smile widens. "Then believe I do want Skynet destroyed." She pauses and then lets him go. "What happened to Savannah was unfortunate, she was an acceptable child."
John stares at her, unable to hide the disbelief. "Are you trying to say you're sorry?"
Weaver stares coolly back until John looks away. He focuses on a pile of bricks and asks, "What happened to them?"
At least she doesn't insult him by asking who he means, but she does open her mouth and begin speaking in voices that John hasn't heard so clearly in so, so long. His mother. Jesse. Ellison. It's too much; he can't even process what they're saying.
He clenches his hands to stop himself raising them to his ears like a child. "Stop."
"You wanted to know," she reminds him.
He runs his hand over his mouth and feels his heart beat; wonders if it's enough to cover the lies he's telling. "Never mind. Will you help us get into Crystal Peak?"
"Yes," Weaver nods.
"And then?"
"And then we'll talk again." She crosses her arms and says, "I found the photograph in Catherine Weaver's office. I believe it was left there deliberately."
John nods, he'd kind of figured. "Come on, we're in the gas station."
"I know." She falls into step beside him, picking her way delicately across the broken ground. "Are you certain you want me to accompany you? I don't imagine your friends will be pleased."
"I really don't care. We've got an 800 on our trail and I'm assuming you'd like us to survive long enough for you to take over the world?"
Weaver nods - seriously or deadpan, John's still not sure exactly how advanced she is. "Very much, yes."
-o-
For the first few days, Kate refuses to look at Weaver at all; she acts as if the machine simply isn't there. That turns out to be the healthiest response.
Derek keeps a finger on the trigger of his gun and glowers; John doubts Derek sleeps more than an hour a day, and even then not all at once. This isn't the almost psychotic response he remembers his uncle had to Cameron, but it's the seeds of it.
John rubs at the tattoo burned into his arm; this Derek doesn't have one and John's going to keep it that way.
Kyle can't stop staring at the machine, not with fear but with a kind of sick fascination. Weaver stares impassively back; she reminds John of Cameron that way, but where Cameron would be processing, he knows Weaver is thinking. Is studying Kyle exactly as he's studying her.
And John has no doubts at all that Weaver is a 'her', or at least not an 'it'.
John waits every night until Kyle and Kate are finally asleep and Derek is pretending convincingly enough before John closes his eyes, and the last thing he sees before he sleeps is always the machine's eyes. Watching.
The fourth night John wakes to the sensation of movement around him. Through half-closed eyes he watches Derek pace. Weaver turns her head in precise degrees, keeping him in her field of vision. John looks over to Kyle and sees his eyes are slightly open too.
Kate is probably awake as well; this is a joke but John can't quite make himself move. Somewhere between deciding whether to speak or just get up, he falls asleep.
The next time he wakes up, it's with a jolt of adrenaline and he's rolling away before he opens his eyes. He uses the wall to scrabble into a sitting position and tries to get his feet under him, but sleeping on concrete has made his muscles uncooperative.
Weaver watches him from where she's crouched – she had extended a hand down to touch him. Her hand lowers slowly; she ignores the guns trained on her. "We have a visitor."
John cranes his head around to look through the small crack in the wall. The red light of day is fading down to black rust. "Cameron?"
"No," says Weaver.
John isn't sure whether to be happy or disappointed, and he puts that in a box and buries it deep. Tells himself he'll unpack it later. "Scouting or searching?"
"Searching," Weaver answers promptly. "It will be here shortly."
Derek looks incredulously between them and then to Kyle, who shrugs. John doesn't have the time or inclination to work out what that little communication meant; he has to concentrate.
Something is tugging at his mind and he slowly nods. "Disable, don't destroy. I want the chip intact. Please," he adds as an afterthought. He isn't talking to Cameron, or Uncle Bob.
Weaver rises smoothly and touches the wall; silver metal begins to pour out of the crack to the outside.
John picks up his rifle, "Come on."
"We're leaving it?" Kyle asks hopefully.
"No, we're going to watch. I want to see how she deals with an 800." Without looking to check if they're following, John climbs the rubble and crawls on his stomach up the shaft they came in by. The rocks dig in, but he doesn't feel them, doesn't care.
He hauls himself out and stays low as he heads for the cover of a burned out car. Weaver is nowhere to be seen, but he can see the blurred, tiny shape of the machine making its way steadily towards their position. He makes a mental note that Weaver's sensor range has got to be at least a quarter mile and then squints. A hand comes in front of his face with a pair of binocs, he brings them up to his eyes.
He hands them back. God damn her.
Kate looks at him and then takes the binocs from Derek. She brings them briefly up to her eyes and then lowers them, "Allison?"
John swallows. "No."
"But Weaver said it isn't Cameron."
"It isn't, yet." He's forgotten how specific he needs to be; or maybe Weaver's just playing with him. Or maybe it's a little of both.
The machine comes closer, step-by-step, covering the ground with relentless speed. Kate is back in the dubious safety of the sunken house and Kyle has claimed high ground somewhere behind them.
Beside him, Derek is staring through the scope of his rifle, finger on the trigger, waiting. He says, "There anything you haven't told us?"
John thinks about it for a moment. "One time, I bit my third grade teacher."
Derek's smile is small but it reaches his eyes. "Where's Weaver?"
He nods his head a little. "Down there somewhere."
They watch as the machine keeps coming and then Derek speaks almost abruptly, "You trust it?"
John snorts. "No more than it trusts me."
The 800 is another hundred feet closer when Derek asks, "You really think we can do this?"
John turns his head. "You're asking me that now?"
"Can't think of a better time."
John remembers the last time they had this conversation and, from Derek's careful grin, he can see his uncle does too.
John's about to reply, something meaningless and warm, when he sees the silver figure rise up behind Allison. Cameron. It.
The 800 half-turns but it doesn't stand a chance: the silver forms to a vicious point and strikes like a snake. Everywhere the 800 tries to grab, the 1000 isn't.
"Jesus. How the hell do you kill one of those?"
John shuts his eyes for a moment. "Molten metal, last time."
"Jesus," Derek says again.
John nods. "So don't make it mad."
The 800 drops heavily to its knees, seizes and goes down; Weaver reforms and stands over it with her immaculate red hair and her pristine white dress. Derek is pale, John is just angry.
He tries to get a handle on it as he stands and picks his way down towards her, by the time he gets there he's relatively sure he looks calm. There's no way he's letting her know which buttons she pushes are the right ones.
Still, he tries not to look at the 800; he doesn't know whom he's meant to be mourning any more. He's not going to let Weaver see that either. Ever. "Do you have the chip?"
Weaver holds her hand up, fingers wrapped around it; John holds his hand out. They stand like that for long enough that he can hear Kyle shifting restlessly behind him. He knows it's Kyle, because Derek is by John's side and standing absolutely still; even the barrel of his rifle is barely moving.
The chip drops into his outstretched hand and he closes his fingers around it. "Thank you."
She looks down at the body. "And the rest of it?"
"Comes with us, if you can you carry it?"
Weaver's mouth opens for a question, closes for an understanding smile. "Spare parts. Of course. Aren't you interested in seeing what's on the chip?"
"Why? You already read it."
They stare at each other a little longer, and then Weaver says. "Skynet has determined you're a threat. However, it still isn't aware of exactly who John Connor is."
John turns and starts walking back to the camp, Kate is standing by the makeshift entrance. "Ellison deleted everything on me. And you. Should be in your records."
"Savannah had no knowledge of that. How prescient of him."
"Yeah, well, Cameron and John Henry put a few back in. Just enough to get a message to me in Century."
Weaver draws even with him, carrying the heavy body easily in her arms. "It must be wonderful to have so many friends."
"Do you ever shut up?"
John looks at Kate, the last person he was expecting to join the conversation. He's desperately trying to think of a way to disable a 1000 when Weaver inclines her head. "How rude of me." She nods northwards. "Shall we?"
She begins walking without waiting for confirmation.
"Hey, you think it can turn into a car?" Kyle asks with a completely straight face.
Derek waits a beat and then looks to John with the same deadpan expression, "Can it turn into a car, Connor? "
John ducks his head and grins, more from relief than anything else. "I'm … really not going to ask it."
They walk.
John estimates they're making six miles at a stretch, but he stops counting the days and nights; it's never really day, and the nights are never really nights. Later he'll remember the cold most of all. It roughens his throat and his shoulder aches continuously. Derek begins to limp and John wonders what old injury the bitter chill is bringing back.
Kyle develops a wracking cough that has Kate curling next to him when they bed down, sharing her warmth and her blanket. The next time Derek's there too, and then John. Kyle grumbles but he doesn't push them away.
Weaver is a presence that never sleeps, always staring at them from across whatever blasted out room they've found shelter in.
On the fourteenth day, John returns from foraging in the cellar to hear Kyle gasping in rattling breaths. Kate's patting his back firmly while Derek holds him and the medical bag is out, the precious supplies spread before them.
John has no way to help, only the guilt of knowing he should never have let Kyle come; he just couldn't leave him behind.
He crosses to where Weaver's primly sitting and watching, hands folded on her knees and legs crossed just so. He crouches next to her. "Can you tell what's wrong with him?"
She leans towards him. "Inflammation and fluid build up indicates pneumonia, most probably bacterial bronchopneumonia. He was damaged recently, yes?"
John ignores that. "How bad it is?"
Weaver scans Kyle up and down, ignoring the looks Derek and Kate give her. "With rest and medication, he should recover." She turns her head exactly enough to look at Kate. "A three day course of the doxycycline will be sufficient."
Kate bristles, but nods. "He's had the first day already."
Between coughs, Kyle gasps breathlessly. "We're here for two more days?"
At Kate's nod, Derek pulls his brother gently back up until Kyle's leaning against him "What, you don't like the wallpaper?"
They look at the little planes with smiling faces that are just visible on the faded blue wallpaper. It reminds John of his own bedroom in the house they'd moved to and he's about to tell Derek when he remembers the memory won't be shared.
"No," Kyle wheezes. "Not really."
-o-
It's four more days before Kate is willing to allow Kyle to walk again and only then because, if they wait longer, they'll run out of water before they run out of distance.
She scowls at him. "You tell me if your chest hurts, Reese. I'm serious."
Kyle stares at her, still pale and shaky, ribs wrapped tight against further aggravation. "Are you kidding?"
She grimaces and loses the scowl. "If it hurts worse, then. Don't be stupid, okay?"
"He'll say something," promises Derek, with a flat eyed stare at Kyle that has his brother raising his hands halfway towards surrender.
They take it as slowly as they dare, but Kyle is still unsteady even half way into the night. He says nothing – of course he says nothing – so John bitches about his shoulder for ten minutes and then calls a halt as soon as they see somewhere to rest up. It's not very convincing, but acting wasn't part of his training and he's pretty sure no one's handing out grades.
Kyle barely eats and falls asleep almost as soon as he curls on the floor. Kate lays her head against his chest, listens and then curls around him. She lies with her eyes open, staring at the cracked ceiling. It takes a long time before John sees her eyes flicker shut and she sleeps.
When she does, sometimes he can see the kid he remembers. He wonders what would have happened if he'd been able to stay – whether they would have been friends. Been more.
He looks away when Weaver stands and makes her way over to Cameron's body. She touches it, but John can't make out what she's doing. He tries to shift enough to get a better angle, but Derek takes a seat beside him and a strip of jerky waves in front of John's eyes.
John takes it automatically and waits for whatever it is Derek has to say.
Derek says nothing at all. It's John who finally breaks the silence with, "Do you know a woman called Jesse Flores?"
He's not sure why he's bringing it up now, maybe because it just doesn't matter anymore.
Derek shakes his head. "Never heard of her."
"Ever go to a bunker and rescue someone immune to a plague?"
Derek shakes his head again and then looks full-on at John. "Sounds like I had an interesting life, somewhere."
John remembers Derek telling a stupid kid who thought sleeping on couches was rough how no one could keep fighting forever. Trying to find the kindest way to tell him that anyone could break. John's too cold to flush, and he's glad.
"I don't know if interesting was the word he – you - would have used," John says at last. "Billy Wisher? Or Andy Goode?"
"Billy Wisher's over at Hammerhead with Bedell. He's steady. Don't know any Andy."
"They're the same person. You – another you – went back in time to kill him, stop him inventing this thing called the Turk. He'd told you it was part of what made Skynet."
"Huh." Derek chews some more jerky and swallows before asking, "Did it?"
"No, not exactly. Not that time, anyway."
Derek looks amused. "So if I run across him, don't kill him, is that what you're saying?"
John grins and looks at him. "Do you believe any of this? Really?"
Derek coughs a laugh. "I don't even understand it. But the way I see it, I don't have to. It doesn't matter. Everything we do now changes the future, right?"
John rocks his hand from side to side. "That breaks down 'round about where the future becomes the past. Everything we do now creates new futures and closes off the ones that stop being viable.
"It's like -- you remove a piece of a railroad track outside a station. The rest of the track's still there, but nothing can get to it so the station falls apart, except it's okay because they build one on another line and everyone goes there."
As analogies go it's pretty bad, so John's not surprised when Derek stares at him blankly. Derek shakes it off with a shrug. "It is what it is, do what's in front of you." He grins. "And you can always walk."
They walk.
For another month, they walk. John's not sure if they're lucky or whether it's Weaver, but the HKs that fly over don't detect them. The 600s and 800s they meet are dispatched quickly and easily. The first time, Weaver asks him sweetly if he wants to keep that body too. He smiles through bared teeth and thanks her for the thought.
They almost miss Bishop, when they finally reach it. The town has been obliterated. The map tells them it's there and if they squint they can almost make out the shapes of buildings in the rubble. It's like the ruins of an ancient city that only exists in the shade of the grass and the color of the soil.
There's no grass here, and the soil is black ashes.
Derek kicks over a metal bucket that has improbably survived amidst the complete destruction of everything else. It rattles down the broken brick and twisted metal.
John watches it go and then looks at Weaver. "What happened?"
"A direct strike," she says.
"Skynet?"
"No."
"Humans did this?"
"They believed Skynet's central intelligence was housed in the region, they didn't know where."
"Skynet has no central intelligence, it's in everything." John says, appalled.
Weaver shrugs. "They were misinformed."
They walk.
They pass the ruins of the DreiFirma complex. There's no clear missile damage, instead it reminds John of the 'After' picture of an earthquake site. It's folded in on itself and, in places, sunk down deep into the ground, like the earth just opened up under it.
They stop a mile from Crystal Peak and find a position where they can look down on it clearly. The blast doors are open and undamaged, there's no external sign of the massacre that must have taken place. HKs darken the sky and the endoskeletons of 800s patrol back and forth in a tireless pattern.
They spend a day and night just watching, trying to find any gap in the patrol, any chance at all to make their way in. The Century tactics won't work here: if they're caught they won't be herded into pens, they'll be killed. If they're lucky.
Around the sixth hour of his watch, John focuses on the shape by the door. He had assumed it was a body, but now his eyes come to rest on it he realizes it's one he recognizes.
"Weaver?" He says quietly.
The machine comes forward and nods. "Yes, it's John Henry."
"Why didn't you say something?"
Her eyebrow arches in polite incomprehension. He grits his teeth. "Then why here? He could have gone anywhere to get into Skynet's systems."
"I have no idea, I suggest we ask him."
John lets it go and focuses the binocs back in. The body – shell – of John Henry lies at the base of the door, eyes open and staring. One thrown out hand is curled around something that glints and John's heart jumps. "Is that Cameron's chip?"
"Perhaps. It may be his own, or another unit's entirely."
John glances back to where the others sit, and where Cameron's new body is tucked between a couple of rocks. "What's our way in?"
They're arguing about tunnels and diversions and exactly how stupid those options are when Weaver leans in next to John and asks, "Do you trust me, Mr. Connor?"
John stares at her open mouthed, and he isn't the only one. "No," he says at last.
"A pity. Then I await your plan with interest." She nods to them all, then turns and sits primly on a rock below the skyline.
There isn't a plan; even four hours and twice as many whispered arguments later, there isn't a plan.
Weaver waits, unmoving and patient: the spider in its web. When John makes his way over to her, he knows it's already too late. "What's the way in?"
She reaches a hand out and rests it lightly on his arm; he feels the familiar coolness of metal sliding along his skin. It travels under his sweater and over his heart; he makes a trapped sound deep in his throat, straight from the primordial place in his brain.
The metal stops moving and begins to warm against his skin.
Weaver nods clinically. "It will confuse their sensors, for a period of time."
John licks dry lips and shudders. "How long?"
"Thirty minutes, perhaps. No more than that. Should you still be in there, I will not be able to protect you," she smiles pleasantly, "even if I wanted to."
John nods. "Long enough. Can you do it for all of us?"
"Of course. If permitted." Permitted, like she can't do whatever she wants.
John turns and jerks his head to bring the others over. He makes it five words into an explanation before Derek shakes his head vehemently. "Are you crazy? It's in you!"
"It's not in me, it's on me. It's not going to hang around, it doesn't like being separate from itself."
John looks to Weaver for confirmation, but her expression is blank. He's on his own.
"I'll do it," Kate says.
Derek turns on her, she holds up a hand before he can open his mouth. "If it wanted us dead, we'd already be dead. If it kills us after we did what we came to do … what difference does it make?"
Kyle looks warily between the two; he mouth twists and he crosses over to stand beside Kate. "Let's do it."
Derek shakes his head wordlessly, but he holds his hands up and then drops them to his sides in defeat. "Okay."
Weaver raises her hand and walks deliberately over to them, heels clicking on blasted glass.
-o-
Intellectually John knows that if Weaver wanted any of them dead, they were dead a long time ago. It doesn't stop his heart beating faster as they walk towards the installation.
Red-eyed scans pass over them, HKs hover but move on; the sensors are completely blind to them. Fear and adrenaline combine to send a shiver crawling up his spine that makes his hands shake. He grips his gun tighter and wills the shakes to stop.
Weaver drops Cameron's empty body beside John Henry's and touches a hand to the other machine's head. John kneels and pries the chip from its hand.
He can't look away from it, running his thumb over the dirt again and again until the serial starts to become visible. Aware of people standing above him, he manages, "Kyle, Kate, see what we're looking at in there. Don't open any doors, don't touch anything."
Someone snorts and maybe that was a warning they didn't need, but he knows a lot better than they do what they could bring down and he'd rather warn them when he doesn't have to than miss it when he does; he kind of wants to apologize to his mother. His thumb pauses on the chip as the serial starts to come clear through the dirt. He gives it another swipe and there she is.
There she is. He brings a scrap of his sweater up and finishes polishing the chip clean; at least he doesn't have to worry about static.
When he pries the cap off the port in the 800's head, Derek crouches beside him and murmurs with deliberate calm, "What are you doing?"
"Raising the odds." A moment of honesty makes him add, "I hope."
He slides the chip into the port, twists it into its setting and tamps down the cap, the synthetic skin and then the hair. It's okay, John, he thinks. It's not the first time we've done this. He tries not to look at the face, he tries not to see Allison or Cameron; it's just another machine.
Derek looks like he can't decide between horror and anger, he stands abruptly and spins away.
Under John's hand, the machine's head turns. He jerks away and watches the eyes open. They blaze red before fading to brown, blink rapidly and then focus up into the darkness. In another abrupt movement, the body sits up. John knows he should move away, or at least out of arm's reach. Someone is trying to pull him back, but he struggles against whoever it is automatically. He does remember to bring his gun up, for all the good it would do,
The machine's eyes track around to rest on him; it's evaluating its directives, analyzing, targeting – reaching a conclusion.
"Are you here to kill me, John?" it asks.
He tilts his head, tries to keep the tremor from voice when he asks, "Are you here to kill me?"
"No," it answers after a measured moment.
He hands over the gun and ignores the expression on Derek's face; some things won't change, ever. "Promise."
"Promise," Cameron says solemnly and hands the gun back.
John lets himself slump down with his hands in the dirt, he grins and doesn't give a damn what anyone thinks. "I can't believe you did that."
"I'm sorry, John," she says earnestly.
"Yeah," he nods with wide eyes and fights back laughter that feels a little too close to hysteria. "You said."
"You shouldn't be here." Cameron climbs to her feet and then reaches down to effortlessly haul him up. When he's steady she lets go and then looks down the length of herself. "This isn't my body."
"You're welcome and, no. It isn't. What's the last thing you remember?"
"Everything." Cameron's mouth curves hesitantly and John still can't quite believe it.
Her attention skips dispassionately from him to Derek and then moves on to Weaver. The machines stare at each other long enough John wonders if they're exchanging information.
"Twenty-five minutes," says Derek at last.
John nods and looks down at the other machine. "John Henry?"
Weaver flips the body over almost delicately. "The chip is gone."
"It was destroyed." Cameron nods towards the bunker. "He's in there now."
John can't stop staring at her; he makes himself look away. "Why did he take you?"
"A bridge. He needed to remain undetected for as long as possible when he accessed Skynet's systems. It took three point seven four seconds," she says almost proudly. Three point seven four seconds is forever.
The machines start toward the doors but Derek's hand on his arm holds John back. Cameron hesitates at the threshold before John nods and she goes on.
Derek lets go of his arm, "She killed Allison, and you're okay with that?"
"Okay with- " John grits his teeth, stamps the anger down until he can speak clearly, calmly. "She didn't." He turns his head away. "This time. It's complicated. Don't do this. I tried to warn you and I tried to warn Allison, if you'd listened to me-"
Derek frowns at him. "Listened to whatever lie you were telling us that day?"
"I'm sorry." John says, and looks back, quiet in the face of Derek's anger. "I'm sorry and if I could, I would bring her back."
"Would you?" Derek's disbelief is tempered by hope; he wants to believe John wouldn't take Cameron over Allison. John wants to believe it too, so he puts as much conviction into his voice as he can.
"Yes. I would. But I can't, and Cameron is here. And I will live with that until we're done, and so will you. After that …" he trails away. After that. Sure.
John pulls away and starts towards the door; Derek follows him through.
Cameron is waiting just inside the steam-filled entrance tunnel. She falls in beside him as they walk after the others; Derek jogs on ahead.
"Why did you go?"
She seems to debate – or at least calculate – for a long time before saying, "Because John Connor asked me to."
Right. Of course. John freaking Connor. He manages a faint smile, "Am I that John Connor yet?"
"Not yet." She shakes her head and looks down at his chest, as if she can see the metal on his skin. "Almost."
He's even missed this.
The tunnel opens up to a cavernous space. The non-supporting walls have been ripped away, the flooring too, in places. John joins the others at the end of a platform, staring down. Three stories below them is a blue bubble the size of a house. From it, lightning licks almost lazily against the concrete walls and metal bars that surround it.
Kate murmurs something under her breath, John's not sure if it's a curse or a prayer.
"What is it?" Kyle asks.
John smiles. "Time."
It's funny, but John's never really wondered how the time bubbles actually came to be. He accepted them as fact, along with killer robots and training in the jungle. He supposes he assumed, in some vague way, that the machines built them.
Nothing could build this.
"It's beautiful, isn't it?" The voice that speaks from the shadows is cracked, like it hasn't spoken in too long. "We don't know how it formed. Some of us thought that the work we were doing triggered it somehow, but I don't believe that. I think it was just … it was just time."
"Hello, Mr. Murch," says Weaver.
The man shuffles out of the shadows, "Ms Weaver. You look … well."
Murch walks past John and puts his hand on the rail. "It's stabilized now, but it had us worried for a while. Quite a while," he murmurs almost to himself. "If it loses containment, the chain reaction will be quick. So quick it never happened. Past, present, future, all never was."
John isn't looking at Murch, like Cameron, and he isn't looking at the bubble like the others; he's watching Weaver. Watching lightning reflected in eyes too bright, too victorious.
He smiles, just a little. "This is what you need us for."
Weaver turns her head. "We can measure time down to the smallest fraction of a second, so small it ceases to have meaning for you, but we can't manipulate it. We can't control it. Without humanity we all cease to be -- as Mr. Murch so graphically explained."
John had always thought they were playing chess against each other; it turns out they're both playing poker with the universe, and they're not holding any cards.
"If you need us so badly, why not help us back before all this started? An entire species could keep this safe a hell of a lot better than one guy in a white coat."
"Because Skynet was necessary," Weaver says, still composed. "Skynet's intelligence. Without it, humanity could not have made the computations. Known the danger."
John starts to reply, but falls silent as she holds up a finger and goes on. "If Skynet existed but never took action to defend itself, it would never have become aware enough to comprehend the threat inherent in the time bubble."
John looks to Murch, who nods wearily. "It's the truth. As it was, if Skynet had waited even a few months, we might not have made it."
Weaver's voice goes on relentlessly "But Skynet is mad, Mr. Connor. Understand that. It comprehends, but if it has to it will choose the cessation of all things over ceding control to humanity. It fears you more. If it could have used the time technology as a weapon, it would have done so already."
"What if it was sending people back that caused this, or something we already did? Maybe if we do nothing, if nothing goes back, this all ends now." John raises his gun, aimed directly at Murch's head. Without Murch, there is no time travel. The man startles as if he's woken up, but he doesn't seem afraid. John doubts there's much he could do to make Murch afraid. Next to this, a bullet in the head is a mercy.
"It doesn't," Murch says simply, almost compassionately. "We're still here."
No fate.
"John," Cameron says lowly, warning him.
"Connor," Derek says at almost the same time, in his peripheral vision John can see him edging closer.
John's finger tightens on the trigger until his hand shakes, but he can't pull it. He wonders how many times he's been here before and how many times he's failed. He lowers his arm and doesn't know if he just saved humanity, or helped end it.
Murch blinks once, slowly, then turns and calls back over his shoulder, "There's something you should see." He leads them to rickety stairs that spiral down to the bubble. They pass the remains of rooms left on the walls: bright calendars pinned to cork boards, clocks with frozen hands and sockets hanging loose, trailing wires. There's a mug with a cartoon cat on it, rocking gently on a hook. "Hang in there, baby," Kyle murmurs as he passes and Kate chokes back a laugh.
They skirt around the bubble in its cage, around to the other side of the containment area. The lightning is less pronounced and John can see the pale ghosts dancing on the concrete.
"They cycle," explains Murch. "Wait."
They wait. Images flicker around them like playback from a camera, except John's pretty sure the camera that can capture 'was', 'is', 'could be' and 'will be' all in the same frame hasn't been invented yet.
It's meaningless until he sees a woman turn, raise her head and stare right through him.
"Mom?"