Chapter One
Some days are better left never leaving one's bed. For the Connors, Sarah and her son, John, the last year had seen too many of those days, but it seemed that the battle with Skynet was nearing a critical juncture.
It was now April, 2009. Sarah's personal fight with the ubiquitous, unrelenting, self-aware, uber-cyber intelligence of the future had consumed her life for the past 25 years. Defeated by human armies led by John Connor in 2027, in a desperation move, Skynet had sent terminators, cyborg assassins that had very human-like appearance, characteristics and behavior, back through time in efforts to eliminate John's entire existence. For each terminator propelled through time, the humans, who had captured Skynet's time displacement equipment as part of their victory, had also sent a warrior back to battle the assassin and aid the unsuspecting victims.
The first target was Sarah in 1984, at the time just a young woman looking to find her way in life as a student-waitress in the sprawling community of Van Nuys, a thriving section of the Los Angeles metropolitan area. Skynet's assassin in this case was a CSM 101 model 800, looking like a very muscular, 25- to 30-year old, white male, something the AI reasoned would be a normal, non-threatening sight in 1980s LA.
John had sent one of his best soldiers to protect his unsuspecting mother. Sergeant Kyle Reese and Sarah defeated the terminator, but the battle cost Kyle his life. Kyle and Sarah fell in love during the terminator's lengthy and bloody pursuit, and John was the product of that union. Ironically, Skynet's gambit sowed the seeds for its own destruction.
The second target was 11-year-old John in 1995. Skynet's assassin this time was an advanced prototype, the T-1000, a liquid-metal cyborg which could mimic any item of the same size that it came into contact with. John's protector, re-programmed by his older self, was a CSM 101 model 800 that was identical to the assassin sent to kill his mother in 1984.
Although this mission was also successful for the humans, their terminator guardian was also destroyed, mostly due to its own insistence, which was just another set of instructions pre-programmed by older John. Sarah, seeing the big picture for many years at that point, managed to glean quite a bit of information from the 800 during some quieter moments of the battle.
One of these facts was that a third and final terminator would be arriving sometime in 1999. This was a T-888, more advanced than the model 800, but no match for the T-1000. The Connors would come to know this terminator as "Cromartie," the first alias it assumed upon arrival.
Again, future John assigned a protector for his younger self. This time, another prototype, a TOK 715, in the guise of a beautiful young woman. Future John knew, of course, that his younger self could not help but be drawn to the TOK 715, known as "Cameron."
Sarah, John and Cameron were able to defeat the T-888, but only after Cameron helped them to construct and operate another time machine, which had been secretly hidden in a bank vault by other members of the resistance. They used this equipment to time-leap to September of 2007.
The leap shaved 8 years off the ages of Sarah and John. They were still in Los Angeles, and used the last name "Baum" to settle in and battle Skynet from there.
The defeat of the T-888 should have ended the threat, but more visitors from the future and additional information from Cameron indicated otherwise. First, the new day for Judgment Day, the day Skynet becomes self-aware and initiates its war with humankind by starting a nuclear holocaust, is April 21, 2011. Its apparent inevitability seemed inescapable, although the Connors were ready to fight against it until the last possible moment.
Secondly, the Connors needed to somehow keep the Serrano Point nuclear reactor operational, as it will be a key base for the resistance in the war.
In their travels, they have been joined by Derek Reese, Kyle's older brother and another of John's best soldiers. Kyle is desperately searching for any answers on his brother's whereabouts. He is also very committed to keeping the world Skynet-free as opposed to returning to the hellhole that is post-nuclear Earth.
Another character the Connors crossed paths with frequently was James Ellison, who formerly headed the FBI's task force on the Connors. After a series of personal crises, however, he found himself employed as the head of security for the Zeira Corporation, led by an impressive woman named Catherine Weaver.
Jessie Flores and Riley Dawson were two women sent from the future by unknown entities, but clearly working against the Connors' agenda. Jessie was Derek's lover and their unborn child had been lost during one of the many battles with Skynet. Riley was briefly John's girlfriend; Jessie was forcing her to try to turn John against Cameron. Eventually, this led to a scuffle between Jessie and Riley, forcing Flores to murder Dawson.
Jessie had hoped John would pin the blame on Cameron, but John ultimately reasoned that the cyborg could not have been responsible. Especially after he had investigated the corpse.
One of the Connor's leads placed them on the trail of Caliba, a company apparently collaborating with Skynet. The Connors had saved Savannah Weaver, the 6-year-old daughter of Catherine, from being killed or taken hostage by a terminator working for Caliba, although to the outside world it appeared she had been kidnapped by the Connors. This mission cost Derek his life.
The police finally caught up with Sarah, who had been holding Savannah in exchange for a meeting with her mother. John and Cameron, were forced to rescue Sarah from jail. No easy task, but made much simpler with a cyborg at his side.
Now the world seemed to be moving impossibly fast. Sarah and John arrived at Zeira and were escorted by Ellison to Weaver's penthouse office.
Strangely, Weaver knew about Skynet, knew about Cameron's planned attack in the basement of the building, and, most disturbingly of all, knew who John was—the future leader of humankind.
But before Sarah could get her head around this information, an aircraft, bearing a striking resemblance to the Caliba drone the Connors had seen in the desert a few months ago, appeared in the window behind Weaver and suddenly hurtled itself suicidally at the office.
The four survived, but only because Weaver had transformed into a metal shield at the last moment, protecting the humans. It was a liquid-metal cyborg, just like the assassin sent to kill John in 1997, except this time, the machine was helping the humans.
The group escaped the drone's attack and scurried down the stairs of Zeira, towards the basement.
"We need to get out—they're trying to kill my son!" Sarah said to their terminatrix foe-turned-friend.
"No they're trying to kill my son!" Weaver corrected her. "Just like you are!"
"I'm sure she's done it," Sarah answered, referring to Cameron's planned destruction of Zeira's basement project. Sarah and John's visit with Weaver, after all, had merely been a diversion for Cameron's main assault.
"You better hope not," Weaver said in her peculiar Scottish accent. "Your John might save the world, but he can't do it without mine."
Finally at basement level three, the four quickly moved past the crumpled body of a security guard. He was either dead or unconscious, but there were clearly greater concerns, so they pressed on.
John, in fact, hurried past everyone else. Cameron said she wasn't 100 percent after the damage she had taken in rescuing Sarah from jail, and given her erratic behavior lately, he was understandably concerned.
Beyond that, John sensed closure was approaching. Could this be the defeat of Skynet before Judgment Day? Was this the moment everyone had been hoping for? Could he actually avoid his "destiny?" Would all the death around him finally mean something?
It was all dashed in a heartbeat, however, and confusion reigned instead as he entered the laboratory. John was expecting to find evidence of a massive battle between two killing machines—broken furniture and walls, smashed equipment, and hopefully the shattered hulk of one T-888.
Instead, Cameron's lifeless body sat slumped in a chair, her torso and head still riddled with bullet holes from Sarah's rescue. There was also no sign of John Henry, the former T-888 known to the Connors as Cromartie, which Zeira was now using as the anthropomorphic portion of their AI. In fact, John was so startled by what he saw that the others finally had a chance to catch up to him.
John couldn't tell if Cameron was deactivated or rebooting. To answer his own query, he quickly moved over to inspect her.
"Her chip—it's gone!" John announced, angrily. Glancing around, he then noticed Cameron's switch-blade on the table in front of them, open, with some skin and blood on its tip, presumably from Cameron's head. On the other side of a computer keyboard, was the unattached end of John Henry's interface cord. The implication was clear and John lost his temper.
"Well, where is he? The, the John Henry…" John stammered, yelling at Weaver. "He took her chip. Where did he go?"
Weaver briefly examined Cameron's head. "He didn't take the chip—she gave it to him," she announced, matter-of-factly.
"John," Sarah said, nodding at the computer monitors.
They all read, "I'm sorry John" in a repeating loop.
John's heart sank and he looked blankly at his mother as a dark realization rapidly coalesced in his mind.
"Where is he?" John asked Weaver, this time with considerably more control than the first.
"Not where," Weaver corrected. "When."
Weaver was clearly several steps ahead of the other three in her investigation and was adjusting the controls on a console next to the John Henry AI.
Ellison had finally heard enough, though. Speechless since the elevator ride to Weaver's penthouse, he needed to say something.
"What do you mean, 'When?'" he asked.
Sarah wasn't concerned with John Henry's absence, however. Her eyes had been glued on the AI.
"I know that, I've seen it before," she said to John, referring specifically to a small, black computer tower at the center of the whole contraption.
John turned and saw what she was staring at.
"Is that the Turk?" he asked his mother, but he didn't wait for a reply to the obvious question. "That's Andy Goode's Turk."
"Three dots," Sarah replied, almost apologetically, referring to a triangle of LEDs on the front of the computer. A dying messenger from the future had left the Connors several clues for battling Skynet by writing the clues in his own blood on their basement wall before he died. Most of the clues had panned out into something tangible, but the three dots remained a mystery. Until now.
Weaver continued her adjustments, but now it was Sarah's turn to be angry.
"You lying terminator bitch," she hissed at Weaver. "You're building Skynet!"
Weaver turned from the console, which was beginning a countdown, from 25. Puzzled a little, she said, "No, I was building something to fight it. And I'd watch who's calling who a bitch."
Sarah recoiled slightly at the remark, but Weaver clearly had very thick "skin" and was moving on.
"Coming, James?" she asked her security chief.
"Coming?" Ellison said, clearly confused.
"After John Henry," Weaver answered, "Our boy."
"He's not my boy, and you…." Ellison answered. He'd seen the terminators, the AI, the synthetic blood, the robotic parts, and all the death and mayhem they could produce, but Weaver's deception and sudden revelation had his head spinning.
"Do you mind picking up Savannah, then?" Weaver added, almost comically. "Gymnastics ends at 5:30."
Ellison was speechless. He wondered if the child was a machine as well.
The countdown had reached 10 and the telltale signs of a time displacement bubble were beginning to appear. Electrical arcs bounced off a blueish-purple sphere that was suddenly forming around Weaver, John, Sarah and Cameron.
John locked eyes with his mother. They were jumping through time—again.
"John, we can't," Sarah cautioned, as she backed out of the bubble.
"He's got her chip," John pleaded. "He's got her!"
There was something beyond desperation in John's voice. They had been so close to victory and to have it snatched away like this, seemingly at the last second, was infuriating and frustrating.
Moreover, John thought, it was frightening. For the last year, John and Cameron had been nearly inseparable. In that time, the two had learned much about each other's strengths and weaknesses. Could Skynet use that information against them if John Henry was to fall into their hands?
But John was also driven by something else, something beyond his destiny. He had grown very close to Cameron, and even though she wasn't human, he felt he owed it to her to get some answers, even if Cameron was just a machine.
And was she just a machine? John was constantly debating the issue in his own mind, and there had been several near-intimate moments that the two had shared which John could just have written off as the normal hormonal response of a 16-year old boy. But didn't his future self re-program her? What was her agenda? What is his future self's agenda?
Cameron had said that she loved John, but that might have been a machine's desperate attempt to save itself. She was pinned, helpless and about to have her chip extracted in that instance.
How can a machine love? How can a machine be desperate? John's mind was in knots, but if there was one thing he did understand, it was loyalty.
Apart from the major exception when her chip had been compromised, Cameron's loyalty was unquestioned. There were many instances when John had gone out on a limb for her, even though Derek and Sarah both advised against it. The ultimate test of his loyalty was re-activating her after the failed attempt to murder him. Until now.
I'm sorry I doubted you, John had told Cameron apologetically after verifying the true cause of Riley's death. How could he not trust what was, essentially, an extension of himself?
Since her arrival, they had done everything together, from mundane everyday tasks to battling the assorted forces of Skynet. She was definitely more than a bodyguard. Indeed, Cameron was John's best friend. And she had saved his life, so now it was time to return the favor, to go out on a limb for her. Again.
However, John's opinion was not shared by his mother. Sarah wasn't joining them.
So this was it.
Recently, Sarah had come to the bitter realization that she would soon be separated from her son. She knew it at the lighthouse, but luck had interceded there, as the cancer scare was proven false. In jail, she was expecting the worst, either from Skynet or whatever hell the authorities could conjure up. She had even sent a message for John to leave her, but he rescued her instead.
Now it was time to let go. He had grown so much in the last year, especially since the Cromartie incident in Mexico. He had figured out who Riley was, had ordered the death of Jessie, and more importantly, Derek had followed those orders. Although foolhardy, he had organized and executed her rescue, without too much risk to himself. Overall, she saw his slow acceptance of a destiny as humankind's future leader.
And he now had the ultimate protector—a shape-shifting cyborg whose mission clearly included the safety and security of her son. Did she trust Weaver? Trust is earned, but Weaver could have let them all die in the penthouse, so the terminatrix passed with flying colors there.
Adding it all up, Sarah had made her decision: he was ready.
Even still, he couldn't believe she was backing out.
"Mom?" John said, surprised by her move.
"I'll stop it," she said, reassuringly, although how exactly she was to accomplish that was another matter.
The countdown reached zero, and, after a brilliant flash, they were gone. The table, chair, keyboard and switch blade had all vanished as well. John Henry's umbilical cord was severed at the approximate edge of the bubble.