A/N: Sorry for the extremely long delay in posting this chapter; I've been doing insane amounts of overtime to pay for my holiday to Miami at the end of August, and had little time or energy for writing. TSCC may be cancelled, but I won't stop writing fanfics. The show's not truly dead as long as we still pay homage to the characters through fanfiction, fanvids, etc.

I've also had some posters created for this fic and my others. So if you'd like to check them out, the links are on my profile page. Posters are done by TerminatorWiki member ClaudeFTW, so all credit for the artwork goes to him.

I'm not too confident on this chapter, so I hope it's not too bad. Please do let me know your thoughts on it.

Also, I've had a review already, informing me of a parallel with Terminator Salvation. I've not actually seen it yet - going to see it in a few hours, actually - so any similarities with the new movie are coincidential.

"METAL BITCH!" Sarah Connor yelled out in pain as Cameron poked and probed at her wounds – already bleeding profusely – with various instruments, cold metal touched ragged flesh and Sarah bellowed out again in agony.

The Connor kitchen was a scene of barely contained chaos and muffled screams of pain pierced the air. Sarah lay on the kitchen table, bleeding profusely from the gunshots Cromartie had inflicted on her. She'd covered their retreat from another hellish battle with the cyborg and been shot in the back by the machine as she'd turned to get into their jeep and escape.

"Where the hell's Derek?" John growled. Derek had gone to Charlie Dixon's house to enlist his help as soon as they'd lost Cromartie. He'd been gone for over half an hour and they'd heard nothing since.

"This will help," Cameron held out a scrunched up towel and passed it to Sarah, who placed it into her mouth and bit down hard, muffling her cries of pain as Cameron resumed trying to treat her wounds. More blood poured out onto the table and her cries were suddenly cut off into silence as Sarah's eyes rolled to the back of her head.

"Mom..." John leaned over, pushing Cameron to the side roughly. Cameron grabbed Sarah's wrist and scanned for a pulse... nothing.

"She's lost too much blood," Cameron said blankly as she put down the surgical tools she'd been using a moment ago in a valiant but vain effort to save Sarah Connor's life. Cameron – like all Terminators – had detailed files on human anatomy; extensive enough to make effective killing machines for Skynet, and equally as effective in treating wounds for the resistance. Countless human lives had been saved by reprogrammed cyborgs in the human camps – though many professed they'd rather die than be saved by metal.

"NO!" John snapped harshly at Cameron, tears rolling down his face as he turned to face her. He couldn't lose her; all his life he'd been used to moving, being torn away from everything and everyone he'd been attached to. The single constant in his life – barring three years at Pescadero – had been his mother. He had nothing without her, was naked without her. She'd trained him for years but he couldn't do this without her; she, Cameron, and Derek had said he'd grown a lot in the last couple of years, but he still felt like a little kid; still needed his mom as much as ever. "Dosomething!"

"We don't have a defibrillator; the chances of reviving Sarah without one are less than..."

"I don't care!" John snapped back at Cameron, his anger melting away into helplessness. "Please, Cameron."

Cameron looked at John's pleading eyes; she felt uncomfortable seeing him upset or angry, especially with her; although she wasn't sure why. She pushed John aside and turned back to John's mother. Cameron placed one of her hands on top of the other, just above Sarah's breastbone, and pressed down repeatedly on her chest, careful to not exert too much pressure and break her ribs.

"John, form a seal around Sarah's lips and breathe into her mouth," Cameron instructed. John knew why she was telling him to do it; she could mimic the actions of breathing she had no lungs and couldn't exhale. Cameron pushed down on Sarah's still chest five times then instructed John to breathe into Sarah's mouth. John pushed aside the oddness of performing mouth to mouth on his own mother and complied. He'd do whatever it took to save her. He'd given blood to save his uncle; he'd give anything, everything, to save his mother.

"Stop," Cameron commanded, pulling him back as she resumed her chest compressions. They carried on, Cameron pressing down on her chest for what seemed like an eternity, to no avail. Cameron stopped her chest compressions and stepped away from Sarah. John looked at her in horror.

"What are you doing?" John stared angrily at her. "She's dying!"

"Her heart stopped ten minutes ago," Cameron replied. "She's dead, John."

"No!" John glared at her before turning back to his mother. He desperately pushed down on her chest, breathed into her mouth, and returned to her chest, becoming more frenzied in his actions, unwilling to accept she was gone.

Cameron pulled John away from Sarah. "She's gone," she said evenly. John's face turned red and he felt the tears forming in the corner of his eyes, but they refused to spill. He felt an overwhelming sense of anger at Cromartie, at Derek, at himself, and at Cameron. She'd stopped helping; she hadn't cared about her at all; only him, and only then because she was programmed to, because he was her mission.

"You let her die," John said coldly as he glared at her, his eyes brimming with accusation and hate. He didn't see that Cameron had tried for ten minutes to save Sarah; he just saw the machine that let her bleed to death, possibly even on purpose if she saw Sarah as a threat or hindrance to her mission. He stormed past, deliberately shoving her away with his shoulder as he made his way to his room.

Cameron said nothing in reply. She knew his action was a sign of contempt but didn't understand John's anger towards her; she'd tried to help Sarah Connor because John had asked her but she'd known that it was useless; Sarah had lost too much blood and she'd been unable to stabilise her. She felt an irritable sensation whenever John was angry at her – which was often – and this time she felt it more acutely than ever before.

"John..." she started, as John spun round to face her, cold fury and hatred burning in his emerald green eyes. Cameron made no response to his actions and just stood there, passively.

"I don't want to hear it, Cameron," he said, his voice devoid of any emotion. "Mom and Derek were right; you're just a machine."

He saw Cameron's blank features fall slightly; her eyes looked away from him and the corners of her mouth dropped a fraction of a centimetre. But he didn't care; it was all a ploy. None of it was real, just a trick to manipulate him; he saw that now. Cameron opened her mouth to reply but John couldn't make out the words; her voice was drowned out by white noise – a high pitched, deafening mechanical roar filled his ears and grew louder and more intense.

Fire erupted from nowhere and engulfed them; searing Cameron's flesh and burning half her face clean off her skull, one glowing blue eye stared at him with an expression of hurt and something akin to unrequited love. He saw the metal spike through her chest as she fell to her knees, her eyes still locked on to his, almost pleading.

He couldn't hear her above the white noise as she spoke again, but he knew exactly what she said.

"John..."

"Cameron!" John's head shot up as he woke up. He sighed in relief at not seeing Cameron's obliterated form in front of him; it was just a dream. And then he remembered what had happened; the HK that fired on her and the T-2 drone, seeing the explosion blossom outwards like a malicious flower and encompass her. That part had been all too real.

He winced at the memory of the things he'd said to Cameron back then. He'd been a complete dick to her for most of the time he'd known her, even for the last few days, when he'd claimed to love her. Why the hell she loved him, he'd never know. He kept thinking of her deathly still form after the missile attack, and the metal protruding from her chest. Had it hit her power cell? Could she have survived such damage? It wasn't lost on him that a human would never have stood a chance; another reason he was glad Cameron was a cyborg. Still, he wasn't sure even she could have survived. She hadn't moved, hadn't rebooted. Perhaps she couldn't, he thought. Perhaps she was still there, offline, deactivated, in a state of living death? She needed him, and he wasn't there for her.

He snapped himself out of his reverie; Cameron needed him, but if he was going to be any help to her he had to put any emotions aside and concentrate purely on getting the hell out of here – wherever here was. He pushed down all thoughts of Cameron and focused on everything around him.

The white noise he'd dreamt was also real, John realised as he became more aware of his surroundings; a high pitched drone all around him that rattled his bones to the core. He tried to stand up but something pulled taut on his arms and stopped him halfway, so he was half stood, half crouched, and hunched over; he looked down and realised his hands were chained together, and another link of chain ran from his hands to the floor beneath him, preventing him from moving more than a few inches. He noticed something else in the dim light; people. Nearly two dozen other occupants were chained up along with him, slumped on benches that ran the length of the small, cramped, room, to either side, and shackled to the floor. He felt a slight forward momentum, which along with the droning white noise told John that wherever he was, he was in transit.

"Where are we?" John asked aloud, receiving no reply in return.

John ignored his cellmates for now, all of whom seemed to be unconscious, and swivelled his head around, searching for any clue as to where he was, and for any way out. He'd not noticed it at first but there was a dim light pouring in through a slight gap in end of the room, about a foot away to his left. It looked to John like it could be some sort of door or hatch; some kind of way out. His best chance to escape was in transit, he knew. The later he left it, the less likely he'd be able to get away, and this looked to be his best chance. If he could open the door and somehow get free of his chains, he could get out.

He tried to move closer but again his chains stopped him and he pulled up short. His feet weren't shackled, however, and he twisted his body so his feet were facing the hatch and kicked hard. It budged slightly, revealing more light, but didn't open. John kicked out again and again, lashing out as hard as he could until the bottom hatch buckled and then fell partway open.

Wind tore at John's face as he half stood, half crouched – as much as his shackles would allow him, and looked out. He suddenly realised what the white noise was; engines. He was in an aircraft of some kind, flying low over the Mojave Desert; endless stretches of barren rock and sparse patches of scrub zipped by underneath them and John wondered where the hell they were going. "So much for that plan," John mumbled, slumping back down into his seat in resignation. He'd hoped they'd be on road, at least, so he could jump out the back; there was no way he could survive a drop from this height or this speed.

"Hey, got any water?" A croaking voice asked from behind. John turned round to see another man now awake, slumped on the bench that ran the length of what John figured must be a passenger area of whatever aircraft they were in; in his forties at least, and balding. His clothes – once casual jeans and t-shirt - were tattered and torn and his face was unwashed and covered in cuts and scratches.

"Sorry," John shook his head. "How'd you get here?"

"Same as you, probably," the man answered. "Machines found me - those two legged bastards with the guns on their arms – dragged me out and stunned me in some kind of net."

"You fight back?" John asked.

"Fight back?" The man laughed humourlessly. "You don't fight back against these things, kid. You run and hide, and if they catch you... well, I guess we'll find out soon enough." The man noticed the DPM fatigues John was wearing and figured the kid was military, probably cut off from his unit. He'd heard about the Las Vegas Resistance, but had stayed well clear of them; a large group of well armed soldiers was nothing more than an all you can eat buffet for Skynet's monster machines. No, he'd hidden away with a handful of others and hoped the machines would ignore them, having bigger fish to fry.

"What's your name?" John asked him.

"Sean Clemens," the man answered. "I'd shake your hand but we're a little tied up here," he rattled his chains for emphasis. "You?"

"John Connor."

"Ha!" Clemens laughed bitterly. "Whatever, kid. You've got an imagination on you; I'll give you that." John pulled on his uniform to show Clemens the name 'Connor' stencilled on his uniform. "Okay, maybe you're a Connor, it's a common name; but you're not the Connor, kid. John Connor's got himself an army up in Carson City; they're the ones that led that big offensive a few days back; fat lot of good that did, if you ask me. I was doing okay before that; a few patrols once a day or so, easy to hide from; then the machines showed up in force and here I am now. Anyway, even Connor couldn't help us out of this stinking mess."

"Carson City?" John asked, confused. He'd never been to Carson City before in his life; since Judgement Day he'd been living in Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado Springs for several months before that, and LA for four years before that.

"Yeah, Carson City," Clemens replied, as other people started to stir in their seats. "Let's keep your little 'I'm John Connor' thing between us, okay?" he winked at John condescendingly, as if talking to a child. John stared out the back in silence and ignored the comment; he was used to it by now.

It wasn't long until John saw the ruins of a city beneath them; a vast jungle of twisted, burnt out metal and concrete, the remnants of once tall, proud monuments to human infrastructure, now little more than rubble. They flew over miles of devastated landscape, and John saw the destruction taper off as they flew onwards. John tried to think of where they were; Nevada, still? California? Maybe even Utah, or New Mexico?

The aircraft slowed over a group of relatively intact buildings, and came to a standstill, hovering in place, before slowly descending straight down. The other prisoners inside the aircraft all awoke with a start as the aircraft touched down on the ground. They whispered and murmured among themselves, all scared and confused. John ignored them and kept his eyes on the hatch, which opened suddenly and light burst into the aircraft, silhouetting a pair of bulky T-70s as they entered the aircraft – occasionally scraping their heads against the ceiling – and tore the chains off each wall.

Both machines marched out of the rear compartment and pulled on the chains, roughly dragging the humans off the benches and onto the ground. The pulled again, dragging them forward once again. John struggled to his feet as quickly as he could, knowing what the machines would do to any who resisted. Though he'd been trained to resist and fight back, he knew he had no chance of fighting back and surviving, and his best chance now was to appear compliant.

They were marched out of the aircraft – a V-22 Osprey, John noticed, probably adapted for unmanned flight - and into an open area. John saw tall wire fences lined with razor wire angled inwards at the top. All around, John saw people toiling and lamenting, carrying heavy loads back and forth between buildings, under the watchful eyes of more T-70 units. Even more were herded together like cattle in a separate enclosure at the far end of the camp. John immediately knew what was going on; work camp. He remembered enough from Derek's description to recognise what the place was. The air smelt of chemicals and the acrid stench of burning meat – and John doubted it came from hot dogs. The one thing that was out of place was the buildings at the far end; the tallest structures in sight, with a battered looking sign that read 'Century City Hospital.'

That made no sense to John; Derek had told him that the camp Kyle and his future self had been imprisoned in had been located at the Century Mall. Why would Skynet build a concentration camp next to a hospital?

Before he could dwell on it any further the T-70s lined them up and stood guard opposite them, ready to react and keep the humans in line. A third machine approached, slightly different from the others, John noticed. It was a T-70 but it had two hands, instead of a mini-gun on one wrist. Cameron had never told him about a machine like this.

This new machine inspected them all, grabbed each prisoner's arms, tore off the shackles, and then held a device over the inside of their right arms. Several of those cried out in fear and pain when it was their turn. John felt a sense of dread as the machine got closer to him. He wished Cameron was there with him; somehow just her being around made him less afraid, more able to cope. He wondered how his future self coped without her.

As it approached, Clemens – standing next to John – elbowed him in the side.

"Kid, when that thing takes our cuffs off, get ready to run," he muttered under his breath."That fence, over there," he nodded his head towards the nearest section of wire fence.

"Don't," John hissed, looking at the spot Clemens was indicating, and then back at the machine releasing the restraints, only three people away from him now. Clemens was crazy if he thought he could make it; it was only thirty feet away but with the machines standing guard the other side of that fence might as well have been on the moon.

"It's ten, twelve feet high at most; we can make it over that and we're home free," Clemens whispered in reply. John simply shook his head no, and hoped Clemens got the message.

When it stood in front of John, he held as still as he could and made no move to resist as the machine held out his arm with one hand, and ran the device over his wrist with the other. John gritted his teeth and hissed in pain as he felt his skin on fire where the device touched, and he tried in vain to pull his arm away. The machine was just too strong, however. It seemed to go on forever until the T-70 pulled the device away and the pain subsided. John clutched at his wrist and looked at what the machine had done to him. On the inside of his wrist was a barcode, just like Derek's. He'd been labelled, branded, whatever. It made him feel sick; they were little more than cattle to the machines. Even though he knew that would be the case; actually experiencing it firsthand was enough to turn his stomach.

Clemens was next to him, next in line to be scanned. Like John, he said nothing and stood stock still, grimacing and grunting in pain as the machine burnt a barcode into his arm. For a moment, John held out hope that Clemens had listened to him as the machine branded him as well. His hope soon faded. As the machine moved on to the next man, Clemens shot forwards and bolted for the perimeter fence. The other prisoners in the line loudly hollered and cheered him on, urging him forward as he ran as fast as he could for the fence. John remained silent, knowing what would come.

Clemens was fast for his age, much faster than John expected him to be; he made it to the fence faster than John probably could have, and quickly started scaling the fence. John forced himself to watch as the pair of T-70s - who strangely just watched for a moment, as if curious – raised their gun arms and fired a long burst at Clemens as he made it halfway up the fence. Even as the rounds hit, Clemens held on to the wire fencing as if it were a lifeline, as if simply holding on would preserve his life. The rounds tore through him and even from a distance John could see blood and bits of flesh fountain up from the impacts as the sustained fire literally tore Clemens to pieces. Clemens fell to the ground, dead; most of him, at least. One dismembered hand still clung to the fence, as if even in death, Clemens refused to give up.

The others in the line stared in horror at the shredded meat that was once a man, and looked back at the machines responsible in fear and grim realisation. John felt it, too. Whether or not the machines had intended it, they'd made Clemens a perfect example of what would happen to those that tried to escape or resist in any way. What horrified John more was that the prisoners already in the camp had barely even blinked as Clemens was diced by the machine gun fire. They'd simply ignored it and carried on working; he couldn't fathom what horrors they'd endured that would have numbed them to that.

As if it had never happened, the machines turned back to branding the remaining prisoners and then herded them into two groups; everyone who looked old, injured, or weak, was forced to the enclosure at the far end of the camp, leaving John and six others where they were. John guessed the machines brought people here for orderly disposal, kept the strongest alive as slave labour – likely worked them to death, and killed those who were deemed too old or sick to be any use. John wondered which group actually had it worse.

John and the others were marched through the camp and John saw what any of the prisoners were hauling human bodies. It hadn't been obvious from a distance, but as John passed a group of prisoner/slaves, he saw they pushed hospital carts piled with corpses from one building towards a large, conical structure with smoke spewing from the top. A furnace, he realised. They were loading bodies for disposal, just as his father – Kyle – had told his mom. All the prisoners from the Osprey who'd been forced into the other enclosure, along with the hundreds of people already there, all awaited the same fate; to be executed and then burnt down into dust. And they knew. John could see their grim, hollow faces on the other side of the fence that split the camp in half. They knew what was happening and they'd already lost hope and resigned themselves to their fate.

The lead T-70 unit – the one with two hands, rather than a gun arm – pointed at the prisoners loading and pushing carts, and in a tinny, strained, metallic voice, spoke a single word: "work." The other's paused, unwilling to go near the bodies, but simultaneously afraid of being executed like Clemens. John seized the initiative and marched towards a large cart full of bodies, and started pushing, heaving the heavy cart and following the line of similar carts towards the furnace. The others quickly understood and started pushing other carts, following John's example.

An evil, vile, foul stench invaded John's nostrils as he pushed the cart. He recognised the smell; he'd smelt it once before; his first mission to Fort Carson – the hundreds of dead soldiers who'd littered the base. It had been bad enough then from afar; up close as he was now, it was a hundred times worse. Bile rose in his throat and he felt nauseous, but carried on pushing. John couldn't avoid looking at the bodies in the cart he was pushing. There were seven or eight of them at least, piled onto the cart as if they were merely trash to be taken out for collection. They were all pale, nearly blue, in some cases, and their faces were all twisted into fearful, agonising expressions.

However Skynet killed them, it wasn't quick and looked far from painless. One of the dead in John's cart was no more than a toddler – a little girl. Her eyes had bulged and face was a grim mask of pain, confusion, and terror. A teddy bear was still clutched tightly in her hands. The poor kid probably had no idea what was going on, even at the very end. He couldn't avoid it anymore; the sight and smell of so much death was too much for him to handle, and John threw up, violently ejecting the contents of his stomach out onto the ground below. He caught sight of a machine watching him, and struggled on. If he stopped he'd be killed. He threw up again and again; on the ground, on his clothes, on the cart, everywhere - but kept pushing; he didn't stop heaving the cart even as his stomach emptied itself and John was left retching thin air. The searing, burning pain in his stomach, throat, and now his head, was tremendous, and he wanted nothing more than to lie down and just black out, but knew he'd never be afforded that luxury. He had to keep going.

He struggled with the heavy cart but finally made it to the furnace, where other prisoners hauled the bodies out of the cart and casually tossed them inside, piling them up like sandbags. John glared at them for their indifference but then realised they'd likely been doing this for weeks, if not longer, and had likely just become numb to it all. Would that happen to him, he wondered. Will I just shut it all out, stop caring about it all? Is that what happened to Future Me?

John felt utterly and completely hopeless as he turned the now empty cart around and pushed it back towards where he'd started. As he pushed the cart he saw yet another grizzly sight; Clemens' head, severed from his body, was placed on a spike at the top of the perimeter fence, facing into the camp. His dead gaze, eyes still open – as was his mouth- pierced into John's soul and he felt a cold shiver run down his spine. Clemens' head wasn't the only one ornamenting the camp's perimeter; John counted fourteen heads along just one stretch of fence. The message was clear; that was the fate of anyone who tried to escape or fight back.

John felt an overwhelming sense of dread, of hopelessness, creep in. He was supposed to be the John Connor, the guy who stormed the wire of the camps and smashed the machines into junk, yet there was nothing he could do; the machines owned the camp, they watched every move they made, and John had already seen how they dealt with those that didn't comply. How the hell can I possibly stand against that? He lamented.

He sorely wished Cameron was with him, not only because he missed her already, nor because she'd annihilate these tin cans without effort, but because she somehow gave him the strength to fight. She always seemed to have faith in him, even when he didn't believe in himself. Faith wasn't part of her programming, she'd once said. That wasn't Skynet's doing, or his future self; it was all her. When he fought, he fought for her; so they could one day have a normal life together. He'd still clung on to that hope, even though it would take years, even decades, for it to come to fruition.

Though now John wondered if she was even still alive, if he'd ever see her again. He'd been captured; he was stuck in the camp, there was no escaping. His future and that of everyone else had been made very clear to him; they'd work and toil, disposing of bodies, until they were too weak to work any more; at which point they'd be thrown in with the other prisoners awaiting execution. That was his fate now. He'd failed everyone, Cameron, his mom, Derek, the resistance. Utterly and completely, he'd failed them all.

A/N: I thought I'd tell you all a little about how the chapters will go. For the time being there will be seperate John and Cameron chapters; I'm exploring their development and how they cope on their own. Each 'John chapter' will have a flashback of the past; showing the development of John and Cameron's relationship, prior to and leading up to the beginning of Jugement's Dawn. Hope you enjoyed, and please do leave me your thoughts.