Riley calculated three escape routes from the mall as she walked through the doors, mostly out of habit. She was only meeting John here, but given how often trouble found that boy she had to pay extra attention to things like how to get out of a crowded shopping center when the shooting started. The terminator that had been hounding him had been dealt with permanently in Mexico, but there was no stopping SkyNet from just sending back more of those things.

Still, she had a little extra spring in her step as she made her way toward the food court, where John had suggested they meet. Even with Cameron watching the two of them instead of the movie the night before, it was all things considered a pretty good date, and now they would have some time to themselves away from that cyborg bodyguard she wasn't supposed to know about.

She was finally getting John to trust her, and she hoped that he would open up to her soon so she didn't have to pretend anymore. And she might have actually succeeded at it by now if Cameron didn't keep getting between them. Maybe it would happen today.

Riley arrived at the food court and considered getting a smoothie while she waited. A voice from behind her dashed that plan.

"Riley Dawson."

She nearly froze, but forced her mind to come up with escape strategies. The first one was blocked when a large black man stepped in front of her. "Do you know who I am?"

Of course she did. He was wearing a tie now, but the man had a distinctive presence that she would recognize anywhere. Besides, he'd said his name right after he opened the trunk of a car containing John's mom. "You're the guy from the jail in Mexico."

He nodded. "Very astute of you."

She glanced around, looking for other exits. "How did you find me?"

"Easier than you might think," he replied. "You're the only one of John Connor's associates who's listed in the foster care database. A database that includes your current address and contact information."

"Which is how you tapped my phone and knew John was going to meet me here," she surmised, kicking herself for not being more cautious.

The man nodded. "James Ellison. I'm not here to hurt you. Why don't you have a seat?"

Riley weighed her options. She could try running for it, but this man seemed like he could catch her easily if she tried that. Should she make a scene? No, because she would have to make a statement to the police, and that would draw too much attention to her, which could lead back to Jesse. Since she wasn't in immediate physical danger, she figured that playing along was the best course of action for now. She sat down in one of the hard plastic seats, doing her best to avoid the dried smoothie stains.

He slid easily into the seat across from her.

"Why did you even bother looking me up?"

"Do you know what brought me to Mexico?"

"I overheard a few things in the hotel room," she said. "But I couldn't piece most of it together."

"I used to work for the FBI," he revealed. "Eight years ago, I was working a case involving a woman named Sarah Connor, a domestic terrorist who was involved in an explosion at Cyberdyne Systems, which resulted in the death of a computer scientist named Miles Dyson."

"What does that have to do with me?"

"I'm getting there," he told her. "Now, the official word is that Sarah Connor blew up herself, her son John, and an unidentified girl in a bank vault in 1999 as one last act of crazy. But a few months ago, I started experiencing things that made me doubt that."

He glanced down, but quickly returned his gaze to her. "That series of events led me to quit the FBI after an entire team of mine got killed. But I still have a few contacts in the Bureau, and one of them told me that the name John Connor got pinged on several international databases when Mexican police ran his prints the night you two got arrested."

"So that's why you were at the jail?"

"Uh-huh. I got my hands on the arrest report, and it states that you attempted to wrestle a camera away from a man who took a photo of John. And just a couple minutes ago, you didn't correct me when I said John Connor instead of John Baum."

Riley resisted the urge to slap her forehead. "Shit."

"In addition to that, your Birth Certificate and Social Security Card were both issued within the last year, and a little further digging on my part revealed them to be forgeries that somehow ended up being put in the system. Prior to that there's no record of you existing anywhere, and I couldn't find any other identities you've been known by. It's almost like you just… dropped out of the sky."

Jesse had covered the paperwork. It was supposed to be good enough that nobody would think to look too closely. Evidently it hadn't fooled the man in front of her.

"You know more about John than you let on," he continued. "You might even be hiding it from him. But right now, that's exactly what I need."

She glared daggers at him. "So what do you want?"

"I have a confession to make," he said. "That wasn't John you spoke to on the phone. I work for a tech company called Zeira Corp now, and I was able to get my hands on hardware that can make me sound like anybody in the world, as long as there's a recording of them to use as reference."

"But you want me to call him here, don't you?"

"Not just him," Ellison corrected. "I want you to tell him to bring everybody. Sarah. Derek." He paused. "Cameron. Tell them all to come meet you here. You can even tell him I'm the one who said so."

"Why?" She didn't sound as hostile as she wanted. She was too confused. "Are you trying to get yourself killed?"

He laughed. "I don't intend to harm John. He's not even the one I've been hired to find. It's just that you're my only point of contact." He turned very serious. "Now we can do this one of two ways. Either you can call John and tell him and his family to meet us here, or I can take your phone and the people I work for can triangulate his location based on his phone number. The first way is a lot less messy."

"That's why you picked a public place, isn't it?" she realized. "So they can't come in guns blazing."

He nodded. "What's it going to be, Riley?"

She stared at her phone. John might very well kill her for this. If not John, then Cameron for sure. But she got the feeling that if she resisted this man's wishes, she would only succeed in slowing him down until he got what he wanted anyway. It wasn't that different from facing down a terminator.

Squeezing her eyes shut, Riley hit her speed dial.

Chapter Two
Don't Shoot The Messenger

"Palmdale," was the first word Sarah heard as she walked into the kitchen.

"Good morning," Sarah greeted, forcing a smile. "I don't remember giving you permission to change back."

"John told me the deal was that Cameron was in charge until the end of the day yesterday," Allison replied. "Today is supposed to be my day."

"I see. Have you worked out a schedule, then?"

"Cameron gets the body on missions and nightly guard duty," she said. "I get Saturdays and every other weekday. Anything other than that is up to me if I feel like it."

"Mm," muttered Sarah as she poured herself a cup of coffee, which somebody had thoughtfully prepared. "Where is John, by the way?"

"He got a phone call a couple minutes ago," she answered, gesturing to the back porch. "Wanted to take it in private. He's the one who made the coffee."

"Ah." She nodded. "You don't know how?"

"No working coffee machines after Judgment Day," said Derek as he glided into the room. "Only reason I know how is because my parents started me early."

"I only wish they'd taught you how to make good coffee," she said. "The last pot you made smelled like burnt manure."

"Oh, like yours is any better," he riposted. "You make it too hot. I almost got second degree burns inside my mouth."

"Because you're impatient. If you'd slow down and wait for the coffee to reach a normal temperature, you wouldn't have to waste all our milk."

"I know how to make it."

Derek's response died in his throat and they both turned to look at Allison.

"You do?" asked Sarah.

Allison nodded.

"How?"

"Because Cameron knows." She tapped her knuckles against the machine's head. "The program used to create me piggybacks on the chip's base programming so it doesn't have to be as detailed. Anything Cameron knows how to do, I can do it too."

"That makes things less complicated," Sarah decided. "How much do you know about this program?"

Allison shrugged. "Not a whole lot. Apparently SkyNet had a Russian equivalent called MIR, and in addition to being at war with humanity, they were at war with each other. MIR developed the Stealth Infiltrator Personality tech to create better infiltrators. They had ceramic endoskeletons instead of metal, they had special pheromones to fool dogs, and they were designed to think they actually were whatever person they replaced, until they were activated once they completed infiltration."

"So they were sleeper agents," Derek translated. "And future John used that tech on the real Allison?"

She nodded. "That's all he told her before running the program and creating me."

"He must have had a reason for sealing you off, though," said Sarah. "Was it because the program didn't finish?"

"I'm not sure. Could be he just had a last minute change of heart. I think he wanted to erase me from the chip entirely, but since I'm wired into the base programming that would be impossible to do without completely wiping the chip and making it totally useless."

It struck Sarah how utterly candid Allison was being. Most of the personalities she interacted with on a daily basis tended to guard their secrets, but this newcomer was laying them bare without a second thought. It would take some getting used to.

"So," she said, changing the subject. "You wanna tell me more about why you completely trashed the house last night?"

Allison looked sheepish. "I freaked," she confessed. "What John did to me in the future made me super angry and I took it out on this version. But I apologized for it and he forgave me."

"And what's to say it won't happen again?"

"Well, regardless of what he does in the future, this isn't the same John. I can't see him making the same decisions. Besides, if I kill him that means SkyNet wins."

She narrowed her eyes at the girl, who did not seem the slightest bit intimidated. Sarah had to admit that it would not be the first time they'd gotten back to business as usual after somebody in that body had tried to murder her son. But as cautiously as she dealt with Cameron, Allison merited a whole new level of skepticism.

"That's good to hear," she finally said. "But let me make one thing clear. If you try and kill John again, I will disassemble you piece by piece and melt each one right in front of you."

The look on Allison's face seemed to say 'Good luck with that,' but instead she replied: "Got it."

The back door opened and John entered the kitchen with a look approaching panic in his eyes.

"Hey," she greeted. "Who was that on the phone?"

"Riley," he said after drawing a measured breath. She knew his next words before they left his mouth. "She's in trouble."

"Why are you looking for John anyway?"

Ellison stared at her for several moments. "I'm trying to decide whether I should tell you or not."

"What's stopping you?"

"Well, mostly it hinges on how I think you might react to it," he told her, still maintaining that implacable stare. "You don't strike me as the type of girl who'll make a scene in public and call me crazy. If that was your game you'd have done it by now."

She stared back at him. "I still might."

"I seriously doubt it," he said. "I'm not really after John at all, you see. Like I already told you, I was chasing Sarah Connor for years because she thought robots from the future were out to kill her and her son, and she blew up a computer company to try and stop an artificial intelligence called SkyNet from causing Nuclear Armageddon."

She widened her eyes to hide the fact that this wasn't news to her. He probably didn't buy it, but she had to try anyway. "You didn't tell me that much."

"Yeah, well..." He chuckled. "Anyway, back then I thought she was just another lunatic. But over the last year I've seen things that made me start to believe her."

"What, like, time travel?" she asked, smiling incredulously. "That's insane."

"So you'd think," Ellison replied. "But then you'd know more about that than a lot of people, wouldn't you?"

He knew. There was no way he would say something like that unless he knew. "What do you mean?"

"You know, you're not the first girl I've come across who came out of nowhere. Eight years ago in a little town called Red Sands, New Mexico, there was a shooting incident that caught my attention. A substitute teacher, get this, pulls a gun out of what several witnesses described as 'some kind of robot leg,' and tries to shoot a student named John Reese."

Riley stayed perfectly silent.

"I did a little background check on everybody in that classroom. There was a recent transfer student who'd arrived in Red Sands six months earlier. Her name was Cameron Phillips."

He rested his forearms on the table and continued. "Now, the paperwork on file for Miss Phillips was a complete sham. Even worse than yours. But it fooled the school authorities, and gave her the perfect cover to be in the same classroom as John Connor when an assassin tried to kill him."

"You said his name was John Reese."

"It was an alias. Just like Baum. Which is also what Cameron changed her last name to when the three of them moved from New Mexico down here to LA. Cameron turned out to be a cyborg from the future sent back here to protect John."

He looked her straight in the eyes. "Which brings us back to you. You didn't exist on paper prior to a year ago. Down in Mexico you tried to stop a man from exposing the fact that John Connor is alive and well. And you're taking the story I just told you way more seriously than I would have expected if I didn't already know the truth about you."

She said nothing.

"You're from the future, Riley. There's no use in denying it."

"Fine." She sighed. "You caught me. But I'm not a terminator, if that's what you're gonna say next."

"If I suspected that I wouldn't have met you alone."

Riley chuckled. "I guess not."

"So what's your game?" he asked. "Why come back here to the past?"

"It can't just be that I wanted to live in a world where the sky is still blue?" She glanced around at the throng of mall-goers who obliviously went about their business. "Everyone here… they have no idea how lucky they have it. How soon it could all end. And how much will be lost when it does. Knowing that… it makes you appreciate it more."

He nodded slowly. "Very true. But Judgment Day is supposed to be in three years. Not exactly giving yourself a lot of time to enjoy life under the blue sky." He leaned forward. "And why here? You could have gone anywhere you wanted and you picked Los Angeles. Why?"

Riley glared at him.

"You know what I think? I think it has something to do with John. And I don't just mean you wanted to date him. If there's one thing I've learned it's that nobody comes back from the future without a mission."

"No, you know what?" She stood up, fury raging behind her blue eyes. "You figured out the rest of it, you're gonna have to figure that out too. I'm keeping whatever secrets I can."

He smirked. "Have a seat, Riley. We both know you're not going anywhere."

"Yeah, well fucking watch me," she snapped, marching off as fast as she could towards the escalators. She was almost there when the last face she wanted to see rose to meet her.

"Cameron," she whispered.

"Wait, who has her?" Sarah demanded, setting her coffee down on the counter.

"Ellison," John repeated. "She said he tricked her into meeting him at the mall and he's using her to flush all of us out."

"What the hell is he thinking?" The James Ellison she had met down in Mexico would be the last person she'd expect to pull a stunt like this. "And for that matter how the hell would he know you and Riley know each other, much less think to track her down?"

"Riley and I got arrested together, remember? She rode in the car with us when Cromartie was chasing me, and he was right there in the hotel room when I told her to go home."

"Oh, well that's great, then." She tossed her arms halfway in the air before letting them drop, slapping her hands against her thighs. "What could he even want from us anyway? Cromartie's body is missing, and even if we never found it I'm still pretty sure he's the one who took it, so what more could he need from us?"

John shrugged. "Only one way to find out."

"No." She slammed her hands down on the counter, then pointed a finger threateningly at him. "We are not playing into whatever stupid plan is at work here. The only reason he's going through Riley is because he doesn't have a direct line to us. I say we keep it that way."

"Yeah, I figured you'd say that." He sighed. "Which is why I should also mention that Riley said if we don't come he's just gonna take her phone and use my number to triangulate our location."

"And you haven't destroyed your phone yet?"

"I'm not stupid," he replied, spreading the disassembled parts of the phone on the counter next to her coffee mug. "But she knows where we live, and Ellison's the kind of guy who could force that out of her if he wanted to. So we either go along with this or we wait for Ellison to show up at our door, and he probably won't be alone."

"Or we can run."

He placed his hands on the counter and leaned forward. "I am done running."

"No offense John, but he couldn't have picked a worse hostage," said Derek. "However you feel about her, she doesn't mean that much to the rest of us."

"She's not a hostage," John corrected. "She's just a messenger. He has other ways of finding us even without her. This is his way of issuing a polite invitation."

"Doesn't mean we should take him up on it," argued Sarah.

"I don't see what other choice we have."

"I'm not getting the body today, am I?" Allison asked disappointedly, and they all turned to look at her.

He shook his head. "Sorry."

"Lovely," she deadpanned. "For the record though, I agree with you. We should see what he wants."

"Well then it's a split," he said. "I say we let Cameron be the deciding vote."

Allison sighed. "I'll go get her for you."

The cyborg's eyes glassed over and a few moments later their gaze had shifted into one with which they were all more familiar.

"Tractors," she said immediately, and John proceeded to bring her up to speed.

"It seems likely that this is a trap," Cameron opined after she had all the details. "But Ellison would not have gone to such extreme lengths without good reason, and he has proven his loyalty to our cause in the past. The potential intelligence to be gained from this is worth whatever risk it might entail. I vote we comply."

"That settles it then," said John. "Three to two."

"Okay, even if this were a democracy, which it isn't, Allison doesn't count as a separate vote," Sarah pointed out. "I still say no way in hell."

"Well I'm going anyway," he replied bluntly. "And I'm taking Cameron. You're welcome to try and stop us."

She sent him a glare that used to make him feel ten inches tall. It was the look she used when she wanted to get across the message that she was his mother and there would be no arguing with her on this. It used to be enough to get him to fall in line.

He met her gaze without flinching.

Derek sighed. "Look, I was against it at first too, but I say we go do this anyway." He gestured to Cameron. "Can't go that wrong if we've got her there with us."

"It's. A. Trap," she insisted. "And I am not going to fall for it."

"Well then we'll see you later," said John, turning to leave. Cameron stood up and began to follow him.

"John, don't you walk out on me!" she shouted. "John!"

He ignored her. Derek started to follow after them.

"Don't tell me you're going too."

Derek shrugged. "Someone has to keep an eye on him." With that, he left.

"Yeah, well fuck you too!"

After five minutes, it finally registered with Sarah that they really were going. Well to hell with them. She had other leads to pursue, ones that didn't involve walking into an obvious trap. Walking over to the table, her eyes fell upon a pamphlet advertising a UFO convention. It looked promising, and there had been word of recent sightings of three dots in the sky. She sighed when she realized that it wasn't for another week.

"Well, now what am I supposed to do?"

Riley stood transfixed as Cameron moved towards her with a steady, implacable gait. She had a sinking feeling that the cyborg was eventually going to kill her for this, and she could only hope that she wouldn't do so publicly.

The terminator stopped roughly ten feet in front of her, then turned her head from side to side, gazing around the food court. She appeared to briefly register Ellison, who remained seated at the table. After a few moments, she pulled out her phone, sending a quick text. Thirty seconds later, John and another man appeared.

She had been scouting ahead for threats. It was a smart strategy, even if it was largely unnecessary given that this wasn't even a trap, as if anything could trap an unstoppable killing machine from the future.

"Riley!" John called, rushing forward.

"John!" she shouted back, taking care not to actually run into his arms so as not to cause a scene. They still embraced as soon as they were close enough.

"He didn't hurt you?"

Riley shook her head. "He just wanted me to call you."

"Going along with him was the smart choice," he reassured her, though she had her doubts about that.

After speaking with Ellison up close, she knew that he had no intention of harming the Connors, but he was a threat to her own plan. Well, Jesse's plan really. But it was one that she was sworn to carry out to repay her for bringing her back to a time when the sky wasn't filled with ash.

Behind her, Ellison stood and walked over to the group, standing confidently in front of them. "Thank you for coming." He glanced around. "Where's Sarah?"

"Not coming," said John.

"That's a shame," he replied, sighing. "Considering she's the one I was contracted to find."

"I guess you'll just have to make do with me."

"I suppose I will."

"What exactly is it you want?"

Ellison chuckled. "I only asked you all here to extend an invitation to meet with my employer. She has some interesting answers to old questions."

"Like what?" the other man asked.

"Like what happened to the Turk."

Their eyes widened.

Ellison smiled. "See, I knew that would get your attention," he said. "You didn't think that little chess computer just disappeared, did you? The company I now work for acquired it a few months back."

"You're damn right you have our attention," said John. "Were you involved?"

He shook his head. "It was before they brought me on. If you want to hear the rest of the story, call your mother down here and we can set up a meeting with my boss."

"Like I said, my mother isn't coming." He straightened, sticking his chest out further. "You're dealing with me."

Ellison's smile grew wider. "I suppose I am. Does this mean you're accepting my invitation?"

He glanced at Riley. "Only if you let her go."

The man shrugged. "She was never a hostage. Just a messenger. She's been free to go since she got here."

"Good." He turned to her. "Go home. We'll talk later."

"Actually," said Riley, looking at Ellison. "We can talk now."

That appeared to catch everyone present off guard. The situation had been rapidly spiraling out of Riley's control ever since Ellison revealed that he had uncovered her little secret. Ironically enough, he had provided her the perfect opportunity to snatch it back.

"What do you mean?"

"He didn't just tell me that he wanted to get you and your family here," she told him, lying more smoothly than she had ever dared to before. "He also told me why."

John squinted at her, confused. Ellison seemed to understand almost immediately, and smirked. Cameron glared just a little bit, and the other man with them raised an eyebrow suspiciously.

"Is it all true?" she asked, keeping her voice low. "The bombs, SkyNet, travelling through time?" She looked at Cameron, and whispered: "Is she really not human?"

He stared at her for a long time, and she knew exactly what was going through his mind. He was weighing the pros and cons of being honest with her. Well, she'd waited for him to do it on his own long enough. Time to force his hand.

"I just want to say, if it is all true, your secret's safe with me," she continued. "In fact I... I want to help you."

That seemed to do it. The reaction that statement got from him sealed it.

"Yes," he finally said. "It's true."

She lunged forward and enveloped him in a hug, laying it on as thick as she possibly could. "I knew there was something special about you," she whispered. "From the first moment I saw you, I knew."

The other man stared at them, but said nothing. Cameron had narrowed her eyes as if this would somehow set her on fire. They separated after a few moments, and John glanced at the crowd around them.

"Maybe we'd better move somewhere more private."

The thing about malls was that, as crowded as they were, there were certain places where one could disappear without fear of being disturbed. There were several empty hallways and storage rooms where only janitors tread, and they had waited for the last one to leave before claiming one of them as an impromptu meeting room.

"How much did he tell you?" was the first question out of John's mouth.

"Just the highlights," she answered. "SkyNet blows up the world with nuclear bombs, sends back a robot assassin to kill your mom before you were born, then another one when you were ten. Your substitute teacher tried to kill you in 1999 and she saved you." She pointed to Cameron. "And then somehow you survived being blown up in a bank vault."

"There was a time machine in the vault," said John. "And yeah, that's about the long and short of it."

She looked at the other man that had accompanied them. "He didn't tell me who you were."

"He's my uncle," John answered. "Derek."

Riley nodded. "Nice to meet you."

"Mm."

"Why did you tell her?" asked Cameron.

Ellison gave her a sidelong glance before answering. "I couldn't think of any other way to get her to call you here willingly," he finally said. "And besides, after what she saw in Mexico, it was only a matter of time before she figured it out herself."

Cameron turned her gaze to Riley, who shrugged and decided to run with that. "When a guy shoots up a police station in broad daylight, a girl starts to have questions."

"I should never have gotten you involved in that," John said guiltily, looking at the floor.

"Hey, it wasn't your fault," she told him. "I'm the one who got us arrested."

"Trying to protect me," he said. "That guy knew who I was. I shouldn't have brought you there."

"Well, you can't change the..." She trailed off. "Okay, bad choice of words. My point is, it's done, I know your secret now, and I'm onboard. Where do we go from here?"

"My offer's still open," said Ellison. "She can even come with if she wants."

Riley nodded. "I do want."

"Who exactly are you working for?" asked John. "I'm not going into this meeting blind."

"Her name is Catherine Weaver," he answered. "She's the CEO of Zeira Corp, an industry leader in cutting edge technology. She acquired the Turk and gave it some additional hardware so it could have some room to grow. It's a full-fledged AI now."

"You mean she's building SkyNet?" Derek asked like he was a breath away from pulling out a gun and shooting him.

"No, we're building an AI to counter SkyNet," corrected Ellison. "Teaching it right from wrong. Trying to undo the mistakes that lead to nuclear war before they ever happen."

"Oh, that's a great plan. Because computers can totally tell the difference between right and wrong."

"I can," said Cameron.

"One, no you can't, and two, what's to say you don't just end up making SkyNet by accident anyway?"

"Because someone else is already making SkyNet," he answered. "And we need your help to stop it."

John crossed his arms. "We'll consider it." He wrote something down on a small sheet of paper and handed it to Ellison. "This is my number. Don't use Riley to get to me again."

"Understood."

"Let's go," he told the rest of them, and Derek bit his tongue, saving what he wanted to say for later. Cameron followed silently, and Riley joined them.

Ellison's smile remained even after they had left.

Author's Notes: Sorry that update took so long. I got distracted by a bunch of other things.

This chapter has more of a laser-focus than the last, which will probably be the norm for this story. I haven't really decided yet. I wanted to give Riley a bigger role than she had in the show, so this is what I came up with.

It'll probably be a while until the next update. I've got a few other irons on the fire that I need to pay attention to.

Let me know what you think!