[Mathematics] is not human and has nothing particular to do with this planet or with the whole accidental universe … like Spinoza's God, it won't love us in return. -- Bertrand Russell.
They make Bishop just after the sun goes down; Jesse brings the truck to a stop outside a motel without prompting. They haven't said two words to each other since Ellison and the kid left, Hijo padding behind. Everything seems empty and silent, but Sarah finds that somehow comfortable just the same.
Two. Not the right two, but two, and that's a number Sarah knows.
She checks the motel out perfunctorily and gives Jesse the nod from the door. It will do.
The woman - girl - behind the desk has corn rowed hair pulled back in intricate loops and swirls, silver clips here and there, and dramatic eye shadow that doesn't belong in this little place at all. She reads some kind of textbook and pops her gum, ignoring Sarah until Jesse appears behind her.
Her eyes flick from Sarah to Jesse, then back; whatever she sees softens her expression with a smile. "Long trip?"
"Yeah," agrees Sarah, returning some of the smile. "Long trip. You got a room? Ground floor. Two, maybe three nights."
"One bed or two?" the girl asks without any particular inflection, but Sarah hears Jesse's so-quiet laugh.
"Two," she says firmly, amused.
"Uh huh, name?"
"Connor. Sarah Connor." It's a random thing, the desire to use her own name for once, but the girl's eyes widen with recognition. Sarah backs up warily and Jesse's hand dips down towards her gun.
The girl doesn't seem to notice, she's too busy rifling through the piles of paper beside her. "We're holding a message for you. Man, Sol's going to flip he missed this."
She digs out a key for a filing cabinet and begins searching the drawers.
"There's this old man comes in, says he wants to leave a message for a guest. Sol asks which guest, and this guy says the guest isn't here yet. He says she'll be there in a couple years, and this'll be the only motel this side of town. He was right though, that's kind've – got it!"
The girl fishes an envelope out of the bottom drawer and grins, "Sarah Jeanette Connor, right? You guys have a reunion or something?"
Sarah shrugs holds her hand out for the letter.
The glue on the envelope is tight, it doesn't look like anyone's tried to get in; even if they had, she doesn't know it would matter. A Polaroid and a folded note tip out onto her palm. She opens the note, scans it and then hands it over to Jesse.
While Jesse's reading, Sarah asks, "Owen's Valley?"
"Oh sure," she girl nods, but her face falls sympathetically.
"H-B" Jesse says as they walk back to the truck. "Know who that is?"
Sarah shakes her head and holds up the brightly colored but faded photo of a little girl on roller-skates, beaming gap-toothed at the camera. "But they know me."
-o-
"Wondered when you'd get here," the old man wheezes.
Sarah knows him, but the years haven't been kind. He was maybe sixty, then. He's in his eighties now. She sits in the plastic visitor's chair next to his bed. "Mr. Beasley? Hal?"
He pats her hand with arthritic care and then lifts trembling fingers to her face. "Look at you."
She takes his hand and gently lowers it to the sheet. "You're a long way from Nebraska, Hal."
"And you're a long way from Redlands." Milky eyes sharpen and he smiles that same smile. "Even further from Santa Ana."
"You were the one who told Jesse where to find us," she says with a rush of relief.
"I did, that." He nods, pleased. "What else did I do? Back in sixty-three, say."
"The bank," she smiles, plays along. "You set up the bank so we could jump forward."
"There were two of us. Mike was the Tech and I did his math. Except he wasn't Mike here, he was Mitchell."
"Your name really Hal?"
The old man smiles, "Don't I look like a Hal? Everyone says I look like a Hal. Good Old Hal. They know me here." He gives her a more meaningful look. "And I know them."
"Where the bodies are buried, huh?" Hal nods and Sarah says, "You saved me from the car." She doesn't know where the thought comes from, but she knows she's right.
He gives a rusted over laugh. "That was a day. Hell of a day."
"Was it the machines?"
"No. Not that time - just some stupid son of a bitch. Some stupid son of a bitch, going too fast. Should've seen Mike go off." His eyes darken into memory and Sarah doesn't ask what happened to the stupid son of a bitch.
She says, "There were machines other times?"
"A few. Remember when the school bus didn't make it?"
Sarah does, but she has a better question now. "Where were you when Kyle Reese came? Why didn't you help us?" She leans closer and tries to keep her voice steady, "He didn't have to die."
Hal doesn't flinch, but he folds in like man who's had a long time to live with his regrets. "I liked Kyle, he was a good kid. Good man. I'm truly sorry." His gaze flicks away. "We had orders."
"John ordered you to let Kyle die?"
Hal shakes his head. "He told us to let it play out, however it played out."
"Why?" Sarah tries, she tries, but she can't keep the tremor from her voice and she hates it.
Off a long sigh, Hal says, "He never said, but I'd guess because his mom couldn't teach him to be John Reese."
Sarah swallows and looks down. When she looks up, the tremor is gone. "But you were there afterwards. In Nebraska. You gave me enough tips I could make rent. Money for the doctor."
"Hard to stop watching over someone. You can be ordered to keep them safe, but you care on your own time. And I didn't really know what to do with myself. Mike died. Heart attack took him, of all things. We were stocking up a safe house and he just went. Better that way, maybe."
"You said your wife died," she accuses him gently.
He snorts. "Well, you try explaining things in small town Nebraska back then. After that, I just wanted to watch over you right. Then when I saw how it was with Charley, I knew it was time to let you go. See what it was like living in the real world for a while."
"How did you even find me? I thought all the records got wiped out in the war?"
The low, gravelly laugh is half way towards wicked, even now. "Most of them. We made sure, though - torched the records office back in the seventies. By the time everything went digital you had no past to lose and machines can't hunt what they don't know exists. But you told Connor where you grew up. About your mother. We knew where to look; the machines were just working probabilities.
The tapes. Sarah closes her eyes and can't believe the tapes helped – will help - after all. "Can you …" she hesitates, how does she ask this man for one more thing?
Hal nods his encouragement. "Go on."
"Can you tell me what we're walking into?"
He shakes his head regretfully. "I can't."
"Orders again?"
"I watched you grow, Sarah Jeanette Connor. After all this time, do you think I give a damn about orders?"
She touches his hand lightly in apology and he goes on, mollified. "He didn't tell me. But I got in good when they were building the place, I can tell you what to look for. There's an underground tunnel between the DreiFirma complex and Crystal Peak. They built the place smack over the entrance, that's your way in."
Sarah nods, hesitates and asks quietly. "Tell me about him. Please? Was he – was John -"
"I didn't know him that well."
She nods her head and tries not to look disappointed. Hal smiles. "But, I remember when he came to us."
"With an army of robots?" Her smile is weak, but he returns it.
"No, that was later. After Century. First time was when the Reese boys found him. Naked, except for Kyle Reese's coat, way I heard it - we didn't know what that meant back then, of course.
"They brought him Below, and I gave him some food. He passed it on to a little boy when he thought I wasn't looking, he was like that. You know, he made me a teacher again. He gave us light and power. Weapons. Food - medicine. All stuff you left for him to find, I'd guess. However it happened, it was a miracle. A real, honest to God miracle.
"When he was looking for people to come back and watch over you, he wanted anyone old enough to remember what the world was like. So they could blend in, not get distracted. I was the first one he asked. First one. And it was an honor. It's been an honor.
"Now you go do what it is you got to do. You need help, you let me know - don't think I'm much up to storming any gates anymore, but I still have friends."
She leans over carefully and kisses his cheek. "Thank you, Hal."
He pats her shoulder and whispers hoarsely. "Call me Henry."
-o-
Jesse brings herself up from a slouch against the wall as Sarah lets the door swing behind her. "He's Resistance?"
"Yeah. I think my John sent him."
They walk to the truck in silence and then Sarah stops with the hand on the door, turns, says, "You don't have to do this."
Jesse stops just an inch too close, deliberately lowers her shades and stares Sarah in the eye until Sarah has to look away.
She lifts the corner of her mouth, "Want to go get a beer?"
Jesse seems to give it serious thought and then nods. "Could get two."
"Why the hell not?" It's eerie, this feeling of having no one to protect, no one to spend herself worrying over. Having her heart back in her body. Sarah thinks she almost likes it.
-o-
In the morning they park up half a mile up from DreiFirma and watch as the early shift comes in. Cars are searched, personnel are scanned and IDs are checked by two sets of eyes - the checkpoint is as thorough as a military base.
The guards wear civilian security uniforms, but they carry themselves like professional soldiers. So do some of the suits. Then there are the men and women who arrive with escorts: they don't say military to Sarah, but they do say government.
A few people carriers roll in and out, Sarah guesses these are the scientists, maybe the other staff.
Could be something. She says, "We aren't going in the front. But even places like that need support staff. Cleaners. Cooks."
"Probably vet them like they were working at the White House."
Sarah makes a non-committal sound. "They'll come from a company. We get on the list, we get in."
Jesse nods and lowers the map she's been sketching out. "So how do we get on the list?"
"Same as anything else, we know the right people."
-o-
The bar is packed out and between the music and the shrieking laughter the noise level is closing in on painful. Their target isn't difficult to see and he's exactly as Hal described him – up to and including the comb-over.
Morgan King, head of the support staff, is a neat man in a polyester suit with his tie at half-mast and a glass of whiskey sweating in his hand. Jesse looks him up and down with an expression of dismissive disdain, which tells Sarah she'll get to be the one to go in and make nice.
She pulls her hair from its tie and leaves her leather jacket with Jesse. The wife-beater and jeans combination probably isn't the best for giving an impression of a damsel in distress, but it will have to do.
She approaches from the side, leaning forward to make sure he sees her before she moves in fully. She smiles shyly and shouts a little to be heard, "Hi, Mr. King?"
He nods encouragingly and she goes on. "I'm Jeanette Beasley, Uncle Hal called you about me …"
"Jeanette, yeah! You know, he used to talk about you all the time. How is Old Hal? He didn't sound so good …"
"Oh, well as can be expected." She gives a brave little smile and manages not to slap away the hand that pats her. "When we heard how sick he was we had to come and make sure he was comfortable as he could be. But we can't find any work and we'll have to go on back to Nebraska if-"
"Slow down, slow down now." King looks around. "We?"
"My sister and me." Sarah nods over to where Jesse waits, attempting to look distressed. It's probably just as well it's dark. "Do you have any work for us, Mr. King? We'd be so grateful." Sarah doesn't look up between her lashes; she's not going to assume the man is stupid.
King knocks back his whiskey and taps the bar for another. "You got any criminal record? Be honest with me, now."
Sarah darts her eyes at Jesse and then looks back, as if embarrassed. "Nothing since we were kids. Stupid stuff."
He nods as if this was expected; Sarah wonders what Hal told him. "You ever done cleaning work before?"
"Oh sure, both of us. Kitchen work too."
King rubs the back of his neck and then sighs. "Okay, well, we'll need to get you cleared and that'll take a couple of weeks, but we can get you started in the non-secure areas: canteen and such. Pay's not great, but it's better than it might be – and you tell Hal we're even."
"We are so grateful, Mr. King. Thank you so much. God bless you." She wonders if she's overplaying it with the last, but he pats her again.
"You be outside the gate at seven-thirty tomorrow and we'll get you both signed in."
She murmurs her thanks again and then backs up and over to Jesse. "Let's get out of here."
"Were you actually crying?" Jesse raises a finger to the dampness on Sarah's cheek and Sarah ducks back, bats her hand away.
"Stare into a bright light." Or lose a son. Or lose a father. Or lose the world. "It's easy."
-o-
They show up at seven, Sarah wears glasses and keeps her hair loose. It's not much, but she makes sure she keeps her head turned away from the cameras. She thinks – she hopes – that the company may know they're coming, but it may not know when, or how. It's a risk, but everything is now.
King gets them signed in with easy chatter that Sarah replies to absently; Jesse stays silent, even when King pats her a little too familiarly and stands a little too close.
When he's gone and they're standing at the edge of the kitchens, Jesse murmurs, "The machines can have him."
"You can't let a man die for patting you on the ass," Sarah replies with a fast grin. She doesn't know why her mood has lifted, but she's going with it. Maybe it's just enough to have a real goal at last.
They take it in turns to scout, one covering for the other. When she's on cover, Sarah finds the mopping strangely therapeutic; she has the feeling that Jesse really doesn't. At lunch they change into diner-like uniforms and it's disorientating to be back there again.
When their shift ends ten hours later, they have a reasonable idea of the floor plan between them and the abiding wish never to work a shift there again.
Jesse sits on her bed and then falls back with a heartfelt groan and Sarah fights to hide her smile. "Can't be worse than killer robots."
She sits on her own bed and draws over a pad and pencil, mapping out the areas she's found and the ones she suspects. When she's done, she hands it over to Jesse, who does the same.
They sit shoulder to shoulder to study the final version; Sarah taps the paper. "You made it into a lab?"
Jesse shakes her head. "No, but I saw it. There's an elevator back there, goes down right at the center of the building, like you said."
"How did they access it?"
"Key card and an eye scan."
"Then that's how we go in."
It's pathetically easy to get ready; all they have is weapons now. There's no need to dust down the place for prints, it's not like prints will matter. They eat lightly; they drink more. They're out of things to do not long after the sun goes down, and out of things to say before that.
Sarah lies on her bed and doesn't try to sleep; she's pretty sure Jesse's doing the same. At some point she dozes though, because she's not aware of Jesse moving until she opens her eyes and sees the woman standing over her.
She looks up at her and then inches back across the mattress until her back is to the wall; Jesse slips in beside her.
-o-
They rise at four, shower, dress and eat without speaking and close the door behind them at five. It's a short drive to King's house and it's the work of a minute to break into his car. They stow the weapons bag under the spare tire; their car may be searched thoroughly, his probably won't be.
At two, when they have their break, they leave together. Sarah lifts King's car keys when she gives him a grateful hug and the assurance Hal is having a good day. They could just break in again, but the parking area is wide open and the cameras swing back and forth over it in a constant arc.
They bring out the bag and smile to the man at the service door on their way back in.
The coveralls and a cart full of cleaner bring them to the door of the lab with the elevator and then that's it.
It's time.
Jesse reaches under the cart and drags out the bag. Sarah counts to five and then she nods.
Jesse throws her a Beretta and pulls out her sawn off; she slings the bag across her back while Sarah takes a step back and kicks open the door to the lab. They move in fast, covering the roomful of scientists and a couple of guards before most of them have even turned around.
She yells at them to get down on the ground, behind her Jesse fires twice and the two guards fall. Sarah doesn't take the time to see if they're dead.
"You two!" She points to the two youngest looking men. "Pull that across the door." She nods to a long freestanding workbench. They hesitate, but from fear rather than resistance. She repeats the order and this time, they run to obey.
A siren begins to wail in and out and the lights flicker from white to yellow.
Jesse is already dragging a smaller woman towards the elevator, pushing and shoving, keeping her off balance, stopping her from thinking. They need to get in there and they need to do it before the elevator is shut down.
Sarah doesn't hear what Jesse says to the woman, but whatever it is has her eyes blown wide with terror. She enters her keycard with a shaking hand and trembles in front of the eye scanner.
For a moment Sarah's concerned the reader will be thrown by the shaking, but a name flashes on the panel and the elevator opens.
Jesse pushes the woman in and then follows, Sarah backs up to them and keeps her gun on the room until the doors close. The elevator falls, and keeps falling. The woman squeezes herself so far into the corner her shoulders hunch, Sarah pulls Jesse away and speaks softly. "Daly, right? The scanner said Daly?"
The woman nods jerkily. "Kay. Kay Daly. Biochemistry. I'm not even from that lab. I came to see Zeke, I don't even-"
"It's okay." Sarah smiles and receives a terrified version of a smile back. "We're not going to hurt you, Kay. I promise. Believe it or not, we're trying to keep you safe."
Kay's eyes travel disbelievingly to Jesse and then back. Sarah tries to look apologetic. "Can you tell me what's down there?"
"You don't know?" She seems stunned; Sarah doesn't particularly blame her.
"She asked you what's down there," Jesse says quietly and Kay shrinks back again.
Sarah grits her teeth and nods pointedly from Jesse to the cattycorner of the elevator.
When Jesse's leaning back against the corner, as far away as she can be, Kay says, "Servers. They have to be kept as cold as possible."
It is actually getting colder the lower they go; when the elevator finally stops Sarah can see her breath in the air.
She pulls Kay with her to the side of the doors while Jesse takes the other side; it's minimal cover, but it's all they've got and there's no convenient little hatchway for them to leave by.
The doors open, but without gun fire. Jesse risks a fast look and then ducks back. "Clear."
Sarah pushes Kay back behind her and steps out into a corridor stretching west. It's completely clear. She shoots into the control panel on the elevator and then wedges the door open with a piece of loose metal. Not that she thinks it will make much difference: it's not like there's only going to be one way down here.
She wants to believe they've just been that efficient, that fast, but she's not that good a liar. She looks back. "What's up there?"
"Central server hub, and base access. Guards." Kay still looks too scared to lie, but honestly that's not something Sarah's going to bet on. From Jesse's expression, she agrees.
Jesse swings the butt of the shotgun and the woman drops with blood welling from the gash on her head. Jesse doesn't try to look repentant and Sarah doesn't pretend to care.
The corridor is low-lit and white tiled. It curves back and forth; it's impossible to see what's coming from more than twenty feet, and the incline is just enough that Sarah's knee begins to ache after a few minutes. No doors, no access points, no corridors branching away; just one long tunnel stretching on and on.
After five minutes, when they turn a curve and see the soldiers kneeling with their rifles raised, it's very nearly a relief. They throw themselves back and the first volley of bullets punch past them.
Sarah pulls Jesse to her and digs into the bag on her back, comes out with a grenade. She pulls the pin, waits for three heartbeats and then throws it around the corner, ducking back to the feel of bullets passing too close.
The grenade skitters across the floor; she hears the men shout and the sound of it beginning to roll back down towards their position, and then the world is heat and light and darkness.
They don't wait until their eyes have cleared; they run forward into the smoke-filled corridor firing. Some bullets come their way; she barely even flinches.
They keep running; the lights go from yellow to red.
A hundred feet on is an open door into a guard station. There's rifles clipped to the wall – they take them – and boxes of ammo scattered haphazardly over the side counter. They take those too. Monitors show the corridor behind them – still smoke-filled and the one ahead – more men running down it.
Jesse opens the heavy door and throws another grenade, slams it back fast against the bullets. They slide down with their shoulders braced against the metal and hear a dulled roar before the door thumps back against them. The monitor goes to static and reinforced glass shatters over their heads.
Sarah yells the go over the ringing in her ears and hunches against the sporadic burst from a sprinkler system in distress.
Jesse opens the door again and Sarah dives through, but no gunfire meets her. The white tiles are washed over in red and they glisten in the light. It smells of blood and gore and waste; she's kneeling in something wet and soft. Someone groans and she refuses to look closer.
They slip and slide through the security door beyond and into another elevator. The doors whisper shut and the box jerks, it takes a moment before Sarah realizes they're accelerating vertically.
Jesse paces the five feet across and then turns, "If we get trapped in this, we're screwed."
Sarah figures she probably doesn't have to point out they're screwed anyway, she just settles back on her heels and tries to breathe normally. "We won't."
"You seen the future, now?" Jesse idly reloads her pistols, the shotgun. There's a smear of blood on her cheek, but Sarah's pretty sure it's not hers.
"Either they knew we were coming and they let us get this far, which means they're not going to end it here. Or, Weaver did something to this place before she left and they can't track us properly, don't know where we are, and can't stop us."
Jesse considers these options for a second and then says, "Or we're trapped and we're going to die in an elevator."
Sarah nods and stands again; she staggers a little as the transport decelerates. "Yeah, or that."
Jesse reseats the bag over her shoulders and then smirks. "Figures I trade one tin can for another."
"Least we can't drown," Sarah grins.
The look Jesse levels at her is sardonic. "Yeah, I'd hate to drown."
They crouch at the side of the doors again, which gives even less cover than the last elevator did, but no one's shooting at them anyway.
"No way they missed this," Jesse murmurs. She's uneasy, Sarah is too; she reflects that there's probably something very wrong when not being shot at is unsettling.
The cold is intense; the tiled walls glitter with ice and underfoot the ground is gritty. Sarah shivers as sweat cools too quickly and, in the unlikely event she lives through this, she knows her muscles will be making her pay in the morning.
"Come on," she answers, just as quietly.
They can see the open mouth of another tunnel; this one is straight and they can see unmanned security doors at the end, not even fifty feet away. Sarah stops and backs up. "Give me the bag."
Jesse complies and Sarah digs through the find the C4 charges. She sticks one in the transport elevator on radio detonation and the other on the inside wall of the tunnel as they pass it.
They won't go off if the radio signal starts, only if it stops. She's always liked a dead man's switch.
When they reach them, the doors slide open almost silently; they stand at the threshold looking into the room.
It's lined with banks of monitors and servers, flickering lights and cables as thick as Sarah's arm. No scientists. No guards. In the center is an enclosed area, something glows within it but the cold mist inside makes it impossible to see more.
"Skynet?" Jesse asks uncertainly.
"Not exactly." A man in a lab coat peers out from behind a shelving stack. Two guns swing his way and he disappears quickly. "Please don't shoot!"
Sarah looks at Jesse, Jesse shrugs. Sarah shakes her head and calls out, "We aren't going to shoot. What's your name?"
"Matt Murch. I used to work at ZeiraCorp. When Catherine Weaver … left, I was … headhunted, I guess." Murch looks out again and then slowly walks towards them, hands held up to his shoulders. He more or less looks like the pictures Sarah's seen; balding, what hair remains closely shaven. Glasses perched on a thin nose.
There's a distant boom; Sarah smiles. They tried to recall the transporter; took it right out of radio range.
Murch jumps at the noise and then lowers his arms a little. "They sent me to talk to you. Can we talk?"
"We can talk." Sarah hesitates and then says, "Is there a kid here? Daniel?"
Murch shakes his head. "I don't know. I don't get out that much. Maybe? There are kids. I've seen kids."
Jesse walks around him; Murch tries to follow her progress. When she's in his blind spot, she asks, "Why isn't anyone attacking us?"
Murch smiles nervously, darting a look at Sarah, who nods encouragingly. "Well, they would be. Except there's a lot of really sensitive equipment in here no one wants blown up."
Sarah frowns, because Murch is saying the words but his eyes jerk to the center of the room and then back to hers; an entirely different message. She's just not sure what she's supposed to do with it, if he even knows he's sending a message at all.
She nods Jesse towards the central container and then looks back to Murch. "You said this isn't the Skynet installation?"
"Yeah, sure, but, I mean -- net? There isn't a Skynet installation, that's the beauty of it. It suborns other systems when it needs them; it's in or able to access most of the servers in the world. It's – it's really smart. It makes John Henry look like a child." He considers for a moment and then says, "But if you want think of it like a web? You're at the center of the web. And the bits at the side need that or they, you know …"
Sarah keeps her face expressionless; Murch misinterprets horror for disdain and deflates a little. "You never poked a hole in the middle of a web when you were a kid?"
Jesse finishes her circuit around the container and walks back over to Sarah's side. She leans in close and whispers almost inaudibly into her ear, "There's something moving in there."
Sarah takes the shotgun from Jesse, hands her the rifle in return. She raises the barrel; Murch raises his hands fast and takes a step backwards. Sarah smiles and swings the barrel around until it's unwaveringly pointed at the container. "What's in there?"
"Coolers. Just coolers." Murch is sweating, despite the temperature.
"Try again."
Murch swallows spasmodically and reaches out a hand as she takes a step closer to the glass. "Don't!"
"Three."
"Don't do it, you don't understand-"
"Two."
"You won't believe-"
"One."
"Don't." Murch jumps in front of the gun and closes his eyes. Sarah relaxes the finger on the trigger.
She waits, he cracks open one eye and then the other. "It's not coolers."
"Really?" Jesse says sardonically.
Sarah lowers her gun completely and watches the blue glow in the container. "It's energy, isn't it?"
Murch frowns, but nods. "There are … areas of instability around the country. More and more of them. We tracked the first one back to the twenties, but there could be earlier. They create … pockets, I guess, you could call them. Most are completely harmless, there's residual energy readings and – you know, it doesn't matter.
"The point is, this one? Is the grand-daddy. It showed up in the eighties and it's been getting bigger and less stable ever since; this whole complex was built to contain and study it. It's what's making it so cold."
From the center of the container, a flicker of blue lightning crackles against the glass and then disperses.
Sarah walks closer, fascinated to see the time bubble contained. Latent. "You know what it is? Does Skynet know what it is?"
"No. We have theories, but …"
Sarah glances back at Jesse and lets her gaze stay on the glass. "What happens if you don't figure out what it is? How to contain it? How long until …"
"It keeps growing. It's went from the size of a golf ball to the size of a basketball in ten years, then in the nineties it doubled in size over night. Apparently, around the same time as ZeiraCorp got hit, it doubled its size another two times." He laughs, stutters. "You do the math."
Sarah does the math. "I know what it is."
Murch stares at her, his mouth opens and closes it a few times and then he chokes, "Are you going to tell me?"
Sarah glances at Jesse again, she has no idea if she should tell him or not. What it would mean for the future, for better or for worse.
Jesse shrugs. Helpful.
Sarah says, "It's been reacting to people traveling in time. From the future to here, from here to the future."
Murch squints at her for a few seconds, waiting for the punch line. She doesn't give him one and his expression becomes speculative. "That would – that would be –" he mumbles on but the half-heard words mean nothing to Sarah.
When he turns away he doesn't even seem to register their presence anymore, she gently reminds him with a tap on the shoulder. He jumps.
"Has anyone gone in there? Touched it?"
"Yeah, before it was closed off. They disappeared."
Sarah nods. Of course they did.
Murch seems to have moved past the shock of discovery and onto the question of just how they know. His eyes widen. "Jesus, you're from the future."
"The past," corrects Sarah. "She's from the future."
Jesse waves at Murch's blank stare.
Sarah gently shakes Murch by the shoulder until he's focusing on her again. "Listen to me. You have to stay here, and you have to work this out. The bubble can be controlled, and it can be contained. Somehow you do it, because in the future Skynet will use it to try and kill my son and me. My son will use it to … he'll use it.
"I don't know if I should be telling you to kill the research or make it work, but I'm trusting you."
Murch gapes at her. "Trusting me?"
She leans close and whispers in to his ear, "To know for yourself."
An explosion rocks them back and the short tunnel to the lab throws in dust and debris and screams. Sarah keeps her feet and helps Murch keep his, spins him around to face the other way. "What's back there?"
"The mainframe. When they realised how cold it got in here, it made sense."
Sarah grins and starts forward, arrested after a step by Jesse grabbing her shoulder and hauling her back around. "No."
"What?" Sarah lifts her gun, but she's not sure what she'll do with it and Jesse has her hands half raised now.
She yells in Sarah's face, over the noise behind them. "You heard what he said; it's already in the system. You attack it, what do you think it's going to do? Are you ready to bring down Judgment Day?"
Sarah pushes her away, but Jesse's right. God damn her, she's right.
"There's-" Murch looks between them. "There's other ways to slow it down. It isn't self-sufficient. Yet. There's scientists and military, everyone here -- it takes a village to raise a child and all of that."
Jesse nods rapidly, but Sarah shakes her head. "We are not killing all these people."
"In about two minutes, they're going to try and kill us and I will damn well be trying to kill them back." Jesse snarls.
Sarah rounds on Murch, "What else are they building here? Endoskeletons? Synthetic skin, maybe? Processors?"
Murch jumps but nods quickly. "Yeah, they're working on those. I don't know where they got the technology, it's years ahead of - oh."
Sarah stares down at the floor and doesn't see it. "We can destroy them, destroy the work – take those years back again. Make sure John isn't walking into the machines as soon as he gets there."
There's a light touch on her shoulder and Sarah looks up; Jesse smiles. "Go. I'll keep the door closed."
Sarah studies her for a moment and then slips the bag from her shoulders and slings it over her own. She pulls Murch close and around, and puts her gun to the side of his head. He goes rigid and then relaxes and lets her push him towards the next door.
She reaches past him and opens it awkwardly, isn't surprised to find herself staring down at a nest of rifle barrels. They won't risk Murch. She hopes they won't risk Murch. "Back up."
"Ms Connor, we can talk about this." A man steps forward, he could be Elias' brother: skeletons still moving in the desert. He even has the same way of speaking, as if he's relaying the words, not saying them. She squints; there's a bug in his ear.
"Nothing to talk about. I said back up."
She nudges Murch to get him moving and hopes he'll lead her where they need to go; the longer the men think she's just looking for an exit the better. She twists around so her back is to the wall and Murch is covering her almost completely.
There's gunfire from the containment room; she ignores it.
"Please, Ms Connor," Elias' twin tries again.
Murch gives her a subtle nudge at the second door they reach, she kicks back to open it and then pulls him in and around, kicking it shut behind them.
It's not a room, it's a warehouse and she can barely see the end of it. There's bench after bench of shining metal parts in the middle and lining the walls, more computers. It looks like a lot of the components have been laid down in a hurry; this room has been cleared. That's useful.
Sarah lets Murch go; he moves quickly to block the door while she digs the remaining C4 packs from the bag and sets the charges. "When we go out, I'm going to push you into them and run. You go down as quickly as you can and you stay down until the shooting stops, understand?"
"Someone will have to make sure they go off," Murch starts, but she hears Miles Dyson all over again.
"No," she says more harshly than she means. Tries softer. "No. I'll set them off as soon as I'm back in the container room, they won't have time. That means you have to run as soon as you can. Stay alive. No matter what."
He nods unhappily and she pats his shoulder.
-o-
A bullet stings her hip and staggers her forward as she runs, her back feels like a free target zone, but nothing else hits. From the shouting and swearing, she guesses Murch is running what interference he can.
When she throws herself around the corner, she can only pray he's made it far enough away. She rolls, boots the door shut behind her and hits the detonator.
The walls shake and men scream, but she barely hears them because when she rolls to her feet she sees the containment area; the doorway is mostly caved in. Four soldiers who managed to make it through lie on the floor and Jesse lies over one of them, hand on her knife, knife in the man's neck; neither is moving.
Sarah touches her arm.