Author's note: Thanks for the reviews. As for Allison's age, I had to make a choice between Mrs. Young answering the phone in "Allison from Palmdale" and Cameron's files on Kyle Reese from "Dungeons and Dragons." Kyle and John escaped from Century City in 2021. My intent was for Allison to be 17 or 18, so I went with Cameron's files.

The rest of the cleanup process proceeded without incident, save for the trouble the prisoners had loading the horse onto the conveyer. Had events not been so tragic, the eight men finally needed to hoist up the poor animal would have made the Three Stooges proud.

The prisoners were then paraded into the center buidling by the terminators. Some expressed fears that they were about to join the dead, but John wasn't so sure.

Once inside, it was clear that earlier arrivals were also toiling for the machines, so death was not immediate, at least not for all. The conveyer led to an enormous metal bin, where detainees were working feverishly to prevent overfilling, spillage and jams.

While some worked to ensure that the bodies passed smoothly to the incinerator, others cleaned the conveyer, floor and bin of blood and entrails. They were also insightful and quick enough to insure that the dreaded horse passed through without further difficulty.

Indeed, Skynet's lone goal in this instance was to guide the new arrivals through the cremation facility on their way to one of the longhouses. Yet another psychological tool..

And while the machines were cruel and heartless, they were also practical. They knew that humans couldn't perform this task endlessly, so some sort of rest period awaited the new detainees. Indeed, captives from elsewhere around the camp were returning as well.

"Women and children left," an automaton said. "Men right."

The prisoners obeyed the order, shuffling off to their assigned longhouses. Again, while machines probably didn't understand humility, they knew it existed and it was therefore practical to separate the males and females.

There was, naturally, some consternation, as husbands and wives, brothers and sisters or friends were separated. Kyle and John watched as Trudy and Ally, along with Pablo, looking shocked and wide-eyed at their male companions, reluctantly retreated to their assigned facility.

John wanted to reassure them, but words were hard to come by. Kyle nodded at them and gestured with both hands, using a quick up-and-down movement with his palms down, essentially signaling for the three to stay calm. He wasn't sure what good it would do, but Ally responded by nodding in turn.

"There will be a rest period of 15 minutes," a terminator said. "Then a 15-minute replenishment period."

So they intend to keep us alive. At least for a little while.

The longhouse was dreary on the exterior, but the inside was no Martha Stewart masterpiece either. There were no windows, only some screened vents near the ceiling. Harsh lighting was provided by fluorescent tubes, whose humming seemed to greet the detainees.

The vents did little to eliminate a smell that was somewhere between vile and repulsive. The toilet area was clearly to blame for the stench, as it was not meticulously maintained, if at all. Still another mind game. The prisoners can rest, but can't forget where they are.

The walls were merely cinder blocks cemented together and the concrete floor was lined with dozens of crude cots. These rapidly filled up as the prisoners piled in. It was quickly evident that there were more bodies than cots.

Kyle managed to secure one and signalled for John to join him. While the other prisoners looked for a quick nap, Kyle was sitting upright, hoping to strategize.

"Is this where you were held before?" Kyle asked, hopefully.

"I must have been mistaken," John answered, as he sat down next to his father. He silently cursed himself for getting caught up in a lie. "I've never seen this before."

Kyle considered it a moment, but was then distracted as terminators slammed the two metal doors shut and locked them.

"I guess it doesn't matter," Kyle lamented, contemplating his feet. "We can't do anything from in here. We'll wait until we're back outside."

John nodded in agreement, but was struggling to conjure up a way to exploit the electrical disturbance he witnessed earlier. Just then, a small boy crashed into John and Kyle after being thrown away from the next cot by a bigger, older prisoner.

John tired to soothe the boy, an Asian, who couldn't have been older than 12, he estimated.

"Hey, it's okay, kid. Lay here," John said, yielding his half of the cot as he sat, legs crossed, on the floor, next to Kyle.

The boy nodded and smiled, gratefully, at John, and then complied with his direction. Even in this wretched hole, there was still a place for humanity, John decided.

Kyle regarded John's gesture with a smile of his own. Connor was a complex individual.

Suddenly, another figure plopped down on the cot, opposite of John and Kyle.

"Captain?" a surprised Kyle intoned. "How'd you get caught?"

John turned to inspect the new arrival and eyes went wide in instant recognition. His features were battered and his face was drawn long from the hopelessness of the situation, but if John didn't recognize the face, surely the army fatigues and the name inscribed above his left breast pocket would more than clue him in.

Martin Bedell.

"Metal abushed us on our way back to HQ," Bedell regretfully responded. "Everyone else in the squad was killed. I guess I was the lucky one."

John and Kyle exchanged doubtful glances. They didn't miss the irony dripping from Bedell's answer.

"I was beginning to wonder when you would show up Connor," Bedell continued. "Nice of you to finally join the war."

John contemplated his new headache, painfully aware that Kyle was staring at him. Now's not the time, Bedell! Damn it all!

"We were in school together," John replied to Kyle's unasked question. "Before the war."

John also twisted his head ever-so slightly and rolled his eyes almost imperceptibly at Bedell. Miraculously, the captain detected the small gesture and decided to drop the matter. For now.

"Any brilliant ideas for getting outta here?" Bedell asked, switching his focus.

"The power they've electrified the fence with—we have to use it against them," John replied dryly.

"Okay, but how?" Kyle asked.

The three sat in silence for a while. Occasionally, one would speak about charging the fence, pushing a T-600 into it or some other hairbrained scheme, but the other two would quickly argue against it with common sense. Finally, the metal doors were abruptly opened again.

"Replenishment period," a terminator announced. It then methodically marched around the room and insured no one ignored its orders.

The group was herded into yet another longhouse. It was practically a duplicate of the other, save for the fact that tables and benches replaced the cots. Instead of a toilet, there was a crude kitchen with a cafeteria-style distribution system. The smell, John noted, was remarkably similar.

John, Kyle and Bedell acquired plastic trays and spoons and joined the others waiting in line. Several human workers were doling out a vile concoction that looked to be a cross between gruel and vomit.

"What's for dessert?" John asked rhetorically. The worker never even flinched at the insult, but at least Kyle chuckled a bit.

Somehow the boys were able to find the girls and Pablo, who came in just prior to the men. Except John, the group ate in silence. He didn't care if it was his last meal or not, he was determined to battle the machines at every pass.

"We're gonna get out of here," John whispered to the group. "I promise."

The others glanced at one another and then looked to John, doubtfully. He merely nodded and walked toward the corner to gather his thoughts.

While there, yet another terminator approached him. John looked up, expecting some sort of automated disciplinary command. Instead, he saw a familiar face.

Weaver.

Cleverly, the terminatrix had her back to everyone but John, including the other terminators. Only her face was altered so that John would recognize the former head of Zeira. Everyone else saw a T-600.

"Once out of this hall, I'll help facilitate your escape," Weaver said quietly in her unmistakeable Scottish brogue.

"How?" John whispered.

"Just follow my lead," Weaver answered.

Then she took John by the arm and threw him back toward the table, not too agressively, but enough to satisfy the other terminators.

"Get back to your table," she growled, perfectly immitating the synthesized voice boxes of the terminators.

John scrambled back and pretended to spoon the slop into his mouth. He smiled knowingly and awaited their departure.

Once back outside, the prisoners noted that Skynet had assembled a fresh batch of corpses for disposal. They were nothing if not punctual.

John settled into position with Ally, helping her hoist the body of an old man onto the conveyer. He was so spellbound about looking for Weaver's signal that he didn't even realize he was working with her.

For once, she didn't object to his presence either. It wasn't until she started sobbing that John came out of his preoccupation.

"Hey, come on! It'll be all right!" John said, trying to reassure her.

"Shut up, you fool!" she responded, angry and embarassed. She tried wiping her tears away, but ended up smearing the filth already on her face.

"We're all gonna die!" she added. "I don't even know why we're doing this!"

"Don't say that!" John chided. "Don't even think that! We're still alive! When there's life there's a chance! There's hope!"

Ally looked at him, but dropped the feet of the body she and John were carrying.

"This is so awful, I'm not doing it anymore," she yelled. "I gotta get out of here!"

And then she bolted toward the fence, seemingly contemptuous of what she saw before. John was about to follow, when the body held him back. He was puzzled and a little freaked, but looked down and once again saw Weaver's face.

"No, let her go," Weaver explained. "We need her as a diversion. Besides, I'll protect her."

John was baffled for a moment, but then understood when bullets from the guard tower deflected harmlessly off her. Part of Weaver was perfectly mimicking Ally's body and acting as a shield as she ran.

"Now listen," Weaver said. "I'll eliminate the towers, but you must take down one terminator and remove its chip. I've deflected enough of the bullets to make a hole in the fence and cut the electric line."

Part of the "corpse" morphed into what John thought was an oven mitt.

"Use this insulated glove to protect yourself from the power surge when you short it against the T-600's data port on its neck," Weaver added. "Do you understand?"

John nodded his comprehension, but couldn't help but wonder how many pieces Weaver could divide into. Then he remembered the T-1000 that had been blown into thousands of fragments at the steel mill, so three shouldn't pose any difficulties.

Weaver slithered off the body and merged with the ground first, and then the conveyer. So quick was her movement, he lost sight of her after that. With this kind of ally, anything was possible.

John panned back right and saw an incredible sight: Ally doing some incredible broken field running, apparently—impossibly—dodging bullets from all directions. She nearly cleared the last longhouse, when she was knocked off her feet by a T-600 that was waiting for her around the corner.

She scrambled up and continued running, but the terminator closed and struck her again and again, continuing to knock her down. One purposeful punch to her abdomen literally took her breath away. What Ally didn't know was that the T-1000 "shield" was absorbing most of the blow, protecting her from lethal strikes, and purposely deflecting bullets at the fence.

So Ally wouldn't waiver, and her dogged determination carried her within a few meters of the fence, where she saw that a tantalizing meter-wide hole had been somehow been neatly created.

The whole camp was focused on her efforts and began surging in that direction. Terminators began randomly shooting prisoners, but were overwhelmed by the sheer numbers. More importantly, Weaver's unseen but systematic liquidation of the guard towers eliminated their principal advantages—height and firepower.

John took off on a dead run toward Ally, hoping she could hold on until his arrival. He wasn't sure how he was going to upset the T-600 and it hurt him deeply to see her being beaten without mercy. But he also knew that she had to draw it closer to the perimeter or all was lost.

Finally, the terminator had diminished her momentum enough that she was reduced to a crawl. The T-600 raised its right fist to deliver the death blow when John arrived at last, crashing full force into the machine, sending it headlong into the fence. Ally, expecting the worst, stole a last glance at the proceedings and passed out.

There was no fireworks display this time because the wire had already been neatly cut, just as Weaver had promised, but John didn't give the terminator a chance to recover. He quickly advanced to the fence, found the wire, yanked it free of the restaints and, using his gloved hand, jammed the exposed leads into the T-600's neck port.

John held the wire there as the machine spasmed from the surge. Lights all over the camp exploded from the overload and feedback. Finally, the red glow of the terminator's eyes faded.

Working fast, John turned the machine's head on its side. Cameron had said 120 seconds would elapse before a reboot would occur.

Without a word, the glove changed into a screwdriver, so he could remove the cover for chip extraction. In a heartbeat, the cover was off and John used his free hand to turn the chip counter-clockwise and pull it out.

The characteristic pop-hiss, like opening a soda bottle, confirmed the kill. The terminator was done.

John looked up to see Kyleand Bedell at the head of the swarming crowd advancing toward him.

"Holy crap!" he screamed. "You did it! How?"

The crowd wasn't interested in the details. They began pouring through the hole.

"Got its chip," John boasted, kicking the hulk. "Now it's a toaster! But what about the others?"

"They're all down," Bedell said, gesturing around.

Indeed, the other T-600s were either knocked over by the crowd or standing like statues.

And the towers were silent, just as Weaver promised.

"I must have overloaded some communications relay," John conjectured. Or Weaver did.

"Alright, get them back to camp," John said. "I'll get her."

"Absolutely," Kyle said, rushing through the hole enthusiastically. "Everyone follow me!"