Sorry again for another gap between chapters. I know I take ages to update sometimes but things tend to get in the way and slow me down. Namely my ongoing quest to get a better job. Anyway, I'm going on holiday to Miami for 8 days, starting Thursday 27th. I'm hoping - because I've got a few days off before I go - to have another chapter written up and posted before I go. If not, then it'll be a bit longer, sorry. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this chapter.
"Another day in paradise," John muttered sarcastically as he waited outside the disposal unit for the first day's batch of condemned souls, murdered in Skynet's war of extermination. He felt exhausted, nauseous, and frankly, he thought, didn't really care what happened to him next. He'd come to realise that simply surviving another day inside the charnel house of Century work camp was the best he could hope for, the highest his ambitions could go was making it through the day long enough to rest and shovel another bowl of greasy, disgusting broth down his neck.
His talk the night before with Byrne and Slater had done little to lift his spirits; the two men provided a brief moment of respite from the miseries of the camp itself but did nothing to pull John out of his self loathing or his painful reminiscence of Cameron.
John stood outside, too depressed to even realise that he and the other prisoners assigned to body disposal were stood around doing nothing; John's weary body grateful but his mind totally indifferent. As was he to the agonised wailing and spewing coughs and retches emanating from within the gas chamber. He'd learned very quickly during his time in the camp to numb himself to the suffering of others; it wasn't like he could do anything for them, anyway; he was one man, alone. No allies, no weapons... just him, the clothes on his back, and a filthy cart for pushing around corpses. Look at me now, he thought sarcastically, the mighty John Connor: saviour of the human race.
"What a joke," John mumbled as the gas chamber doors opened up, and John started to feel nervous, shaking slightly at the thought of going through another day of shovelling Skynet's victims into the furnaces. He wasn't quite as numb to it as he thought, he realised, as the gas cleared enough to see the pained, shrieking expressions of forty-odd men, women, and children; their final terrifying moments etched forever onto their faces.
Still, John's reactions had been dulled somewhat, at least. He no longer recoiled in horror at the sight of them, or instinctively wanted to distance himself from the bodies. Individually, at least, they were just bones and meat – all too often, heavy bones and meat – but it was the collective exposure to it; the never ending cycle of death and carnage, squalor and pain and human misery that got to him and weighed him down like lead, dragging him down into the depths of despair.
John picked up the first corpse of the day – an elderly woman who'd likely been caught hiding rather than running or fighting, and would have put up no resistance against the machines, simply hoping for the best...
Stop it, John! He scolded himself. It was a bad habit he'd gotten into; analysing the people he loaded up for cremation, trying to pass the time and distract himself from his overwhelming sense of loss, but it simply served to make him feel even more helpless. Especially when the next body he hefted into the cart looked like he'd probably be a friend of Byrnes; a large, heavy, muscular man in DPM gear and with a shaved head, covered in tattoos and with a single bullet wound in the shoulder. He was probably caught out in the open, John thought. Part of a unit – they'd all be dead by now, of course – ambushed by the machines, much like he was by Cromartie. This guy looked hardcore, though, and judging from his wound, he'd not gone down without a fight. Perhaps he'd been wounded first and then taken. Too injured to fight or run, and too weak from said injury to be put to work, the machines had sentenced him to death.
If a hardcore soldier like that hadn't stood a chance, then what can I do? He wondered as he loaded half a dozen more bodies into the cart and strained to turn it around, heaving it forward and straining the muscles in his back and legs as he pushed the cart back towards the furnace, over the slippery mud ground, his feet barely able to dig in to push properly. He slipped and slid and nearly fell over on his way to the fiery abyss of the furnaces. John tried to look away from the bodies in his cart. Didn't want to see them, didn't want to think about them. It was hard to avoid looking at them, though; part morbid curiosity and part practical need to look forward and see where he was going kept him facing his gruesome cargo, his eyes continually glancing over the pale, clammy skin - loose from starvation, in most cases, the torn, filthy clothes, and...
Whether by fate or chance, something metallic gleamed in John's peripheral vision as he looked away the bodies. He stopped pushing and stood in line behind two other carts, ready to haul their loads into the furnaces.
John looked around and saw no machines looking in his immediate direction. His curiosity piqued; against his instincts and against common human decency, he reached into the cart, pushing a cold, clammy arm away and reaching towards the shining metal further down, attached to the commando he'd loaded into his cart earlier. Slowly, carefully, and still looking around to see if anyone else – metal or man – was watching, John wrapped his fingers around the object's dull, matte black handle, and pulled it slowly towards him.
John's heart spiked in his chest, his breathing stopped and he instantly brought his hand down between his crotch and the cart, pressing the object in his hand between his thigh and the cart, keeping it hidden as a T-70 moved closer, scanning over him and the others. John prayed to whatever deity was out there that the machine hadn't seen it. For in his right hand he held a gun.
John guessed the man had managed to conceal it from the machines when he arrived at the camp, hiding it on himself and waiting for an opportune moment. A moment, it seemed, that never came; he'd waited and waited, hoping to find the right time to use the gun, and kept waiting until it was too late; he was herded into the gas chambers like pigs on their way to slaughter and he'd have realised that any slight chance he might have had, had gone out the window. Judging from the fact John had heard nothing beyond the screaming, coughing, and retching inside the disposal units, he guessed the soldier hadn't even been able to finish himself off; incapacitated completely by the gas and left to die a slow, terrifying death.
An idiot might have seen the gun as an opportunity, immediately shot at the nearest machine and ran. It would have been useless, John knew; for some a gun would mean hope, a way to fight back, but John saw it – at the moment, anyway – as a death warrant. So John didn't raise the weapon, didn't fire, didn't even look at the thing to see what kind of pistol it was; he stuffed it under the waistband of his trousers and under his DPM jacket, out of sight of anyone or anything. He wanted to check the body for extra clips but he didn't dare; the T-70s were stupid but not blind. They were ever vigilant and the slightest hint of a pistol clip or flash of gunmetal would get him torn apart by their mini-guns in an instant.
He put the weapon to the back of his mind, not even thinking about it for now, and pushed his cart towards the furnace as Byrne – who was in front of him – pushed his now empty cart back towards the disposal units for another pickup.
"Another fine day, eh lad?" he said, catching John's eye with a wink. John simply nodded and gave a half-hearted smile as he pushed his cart up to the furnace and grabbed the first body in reach. His heart skipped a beat when he heard the mechanical plodding of machine feet stomping in his direction.
"Oh, crap," he whispered, feeling dread and abject terror as the stomping grew closer. He turned his head and saw a hulking T-70 marching straight towards him. It saw the gun! He turned away from it and tried to focus on lifting the bodies, straining and heaving. Please, just leave me alone, let me work. He felt himself visibly shake as the machine's shadow cast over him, the metal giant so close he could almost feel it. He pushed another body into the furnace, ignoring the flames that spewed up and licked his face in response.
The T-70 grabbed John by the arm; steel claws wrapped tightly around his limb and crushed into his bicep. Searing jolts of pain tore through John's arm and into his body, so agonising that he fell to his knees, screaming. The other prisoners nearby just watched or ignored him completely; nobody came to help, not that John expected them to. There was no point helping anyone when they were all condemned.
With John on his knees, the machine turned and dragged him across the camp grounds; his arm was on fire, the muscles felt like they were about to explode under the pressure of the machine's grip. He tried to push himself to his feet, to at least walk under his own power to relieve some of the pain, but the machine moved too quickly and he simply tripped over his own feet, continually stumbling to the ground. After several attempts he simply gave in to the pain and tried to think of something else. He'd coped with hardship before; his whole life was a hardship, and he'd been trained to ignore pain and keep going, but that had been different; there was a difference between the pain of pushing yourself past your own limits to reach a goal, and actual burning, seething, white hot painfrom having his arm crushed and nearly torn off.
He closed his eyes and tried to focus his mind on Cameron. She'd always seemed to give him a strength he never knew he had, and he desperately needed some of that now. But nothing came. John simply gritted his teeth and accepted it, unable to break or even loosen the machine's grip. John closed his eyes and gritted his teeth, concentrating on breathing deeply to distract himself from the pain, but the machine's grasp tightened and John cried out as every nerve in his arm screamed out.
The machine let go of his arm and John dropped unceremoniously to the floor, clutching at his arm. Painful red marks ran all the way around his arm, the muscles starting to bruise purple already. John winced as he nursed his tender limb and looked up at the machine in pain and confusion as it stood motionless over him. John thought he understood what was going on; he'd been spotted with the gun and the machine was going to execute him. He closed his eyes and tried to picture Cameron, steeling himself and preparing to feel the storm of hot lead that would tear him apart any second...
Several seconds passed and John dared to open his eyes and look up. The machine stood in the same position, its massive gun arm still pointed at the ground. He looked around and saw they were at the back of the main hospital building; somewhere neither he nor any other prisoner had ever been, to his knowledge. He quickly realised that the machine hadn't intended on killing him – it wouldn't have dragged him off for that, anyway. The machines simply executed people on the spot and left them to rot. No; the more he thought about it, the more he realised the machine wanted him for something. What that was, he dreaded to think.
His mind flowed back to the gun in his trousers. At the back of the hospital, he and the machine were alone; if he could get in a few lucky shots and disable it he might have a chance to run for the fence and get clear before any help arrived. He thought back to Cameron's lecture - the night before Judgement Day, and all her subsequent lessons in bed together at night, coaching him on the machines' weaknesses – and tried to conjure up how to take out a T-70. Heads and guns, Cameron had told him. Shoot through the weaker armour of their faces and disable their sensors and/or their CPUs and they'd be useless, or disable their guns. Either way would be effective.
Don't be an idiot! He chided himself. The chances of a pistol round penetrating even its face were slim to none; he'd be dead before he fired off half the clip, anyway.
His attention went back to the hulking T-70 in front of him as it raised its hand and pointed towards a cart by the wall.
"What?" John asked, confused and still irked about his arm. "What do you want?" The machine stared blankly at him and kept its hand pointed at the cart. "Fine," John mumbled, annoyed that the machine didn't seem to understand a word he said. He knew from Cameron's lectures that they were stupid machines, built solely for killing; which was fine when he was armed and shooting at one, but not when said machine was meant to be a prison guard and couldn't communicate what it wanted.
He sighed impatiently and walked briskly over to the empty cart and stood behind it, holding the handles as if he were about to push it as he had done all day every day for the past three weeks. He stood in place, not moving, as the machine did the same opposite him. John felt utterly confused, not knowing what he was meant to do but knowing very well the machine would likely cut him down with its gun arm if he didn't do what it wanted. He waited for several minutes until a rumbling sound and a series of dull, muffled thuds from above caught his attention.
John looked up and saw that he and the cart were beneath the sealed opening of a laundry chute suspended above him, sticking out of the wall. The rumbling came from directly above him, inside the closed chute. He swallowed nervously, wondering what the hell was inside. Whatever it was, he realised the machine wanted him to haul it somewhere. After a minute or two the rumbling stopped, and John waited for whatever was inside to drop down. Whatever it was, he just wanted to get it over with so he could go back to his miserable drudgery, even if his body was screaming in relief at the welcome respite of hauling the dead around, his mind knew the grim routine of the camp and he dreaded change.
Within moments John's aversion to change in the camp was thoroughly reinforced as the chute opened up and dumped its load onto John and the cart. Something hard and heavy and wet hit John from above and he fell to his knees and instinctively covered his head as detritus from the chute rained all around him. He opened his eyes and looked in horror as he realised what had hit him; skeletons dropped like rocks from the metal orifice and fell all around him. Dozens of them, their grinning skulls stared vacantly up at him with hollow eye sockets. They fell onto John and piled up over him, he could feel the slimy wetness of strips of flesh and various tissues that still clung to the bones. Various organs spattered onto the ground like fat, fleshy hailstones, splattering blood and bile and other fluids in every direction, much of it landing on John.
He pushed frantically at the corpses, trying to get them away from him as he panicked and thrashed around like a wild animal, desperate to get the bodies off of him as if death itself were somehow contagious. He breathed in rapidly, almost hyperventilating, but the decayed stench of the bodies invaded his mouth and nose, and into his lungs. He tried to stand, tried to run, but his boots slipped on the blood that dripped from the bones and onto the floor, and he fell to the ground in a heap, leaning over and wrapping his arms around his stomach as his mind and body screamed no more. He retched and heaved agonisingly as his stomach convulsed and emptied itself onto the floor, onto the same decimated corpses that littered the ground around him. He threw up again and again, the broth he'd had the night before streaming out onto the bodies and mixing with the fetid, repulsive odour of death all around him, which only made him vomit again until his stomach cramped and his throat and mouth burned.
Tears came to John's eyes as he felt the now familiar, overwhelming sense of hopelessness envelope him. He didn't think it could get any worse, but here it was. The machines weren't simply killing people; they were skinning them alive, stripping the flesh from their bones. For what, he didn't know; but the machines always did something for a reason, there was always some kind of logic to their actions. A morbid part of his mind wondered if this was where the meat in their broth came from, and simply the thought of that made him retch again, an acrid, bitter, burning taste of bile in his mouth as he threw up again and knelt, shaking all over as he dry-retched, his stomach already emptied onto the floor.
The T-70 gave no response to his vomiting and simply stared at him. Still in tears, John realised it was waiting for him to load the bodies into the cart. If he'd been able to throw up again he would have, but it slowly subsided and John managed to find the strength to stand up and wipe the vomit, bile, and blood from his mouth.
He tried to think of something else, anything else, as he slowly, carefully, wrapped his hands around the first cold, slimy, gore covered body and loaded into the cart. It was easy enough to not look at the bodies, but it was another matter altogether, trying to push the smell and the feel of them as he carried them. He couldn't ignore the smell of decay or the coppery tang of the blood as it dripped and smeared onto his hands and uniform, nor could he block out the feel of the congealing blood and other fluids as it clung to him and slipped and slid between his fingers, making him drop his load more than once.
Again, he closed his eyes tried to think of Cameron, tried to imagine her smile, the cute way she'd always tilted her head when curious or confused, the subtle look of joy on her face when he'd revealed the Rubik's cube he'd painstakingly rebuilt for her built-day present, and the hours they'd spent in each other's arms later that night. It didn't help; he tried to picture Cameron's delicate face; her flawless skin, her deep, chocolate brown eyes and her pouty lips, but the image was replaced by a grinning, blood covered skull; another painful, sickening reminder that she was surely dead; as was he, his brain and body just hadn't yet realised. Fresh tears streamed from John's eyes as he worked, hauling more of the putrid bodies into the cart until it was piled full. Fourteen flesh-stripped skeletons tossed into the cart as if they were dirty laundry, but John had stopped caring now. Didn't care about the sight or the smell, didn't care that their congealing blood was stuck on his hands and clothes and face, didn't care about the flies that started to buzz around him and his putrid cargo, smelling a fresh meal and descending like miniature vultures to gorge themselves.
He pushed the cart back towards the camp proper, towards the furnaces and under the watchful eyes of the T-70, where he queued up to dispose of the bodies that the machines had mutilated with a malign purpose that John couldn't even begin to imagine.
He waited, not bothering to wipe the tears from his face, until he reached the furnace and quickly loaded the corpses into the fiery entrance, burning them down to ash until there was no trace of them; nothing to tell of who they were or how they'd died; they were simply a handful out of three billion or so who'd be forever dead and forgotten.
The only sense of relief he felt was that the skeletons were lighter, at least; stripped of their flesh, they were less than half the weight of the bodies he'd hauled into the furnaces over the past few weeks. But that physical relief was nothing compared to the sense of revulsion and helplessness that overcame him as he loaded bones, skulls, and organs to be burned to nothingness. John had thought that being gassed to death in the camp was the worst it could get, but now he realised how true Byrne's earlier words had been; that it'd be better to be shot down or gassed to death than to go into the hospital. He briefly wondered if one of the bodies he'd just pushed into the furnaces was one of Byrne's, dragged into the building and left to suffer whatever horrible fate awaited them.
"No way," John muttered to himself, a grim resolve settling into his blood spattered, exhausted, face. "I won't let that happen to me."
The rest of the day passed relatively quickly for John; after the abattoir at the back of the hospital, he'd been taken back to the camp proper where he'd resumed normal duties, which had seemed almost pleasant in comparison. He'd carried on loading bodies in silence, not speaking to anyone, keeping his head down and ignoring anyone who tried to speak to him. Byrne and Slater uttered a few greetings and bickered amongst themselves as they pushed their own loads, and John felt painfully envious of them for a moment; they had each other to depend on, whereas without Cameron he was totally alone. And of course, they'd not seen what he'd just been through. He hoped for their sakes they'd remain forever ignorant.
As night fell and the camp shut down and emerged into darkness, John sat down in his usual spot outside the prisoner's hut and hugged his knees to his chest, trying desperately to not cry, wanting to hold on and keep it inwards, for now, at least. He listened as the two-handed T-70 brought the barrel of broth once more and dumped it in the middle of the room before marching off. He waited until he heard all the prisoners scramble and push and groan as they jockeyed for position with their bowls, all wanting to get there first to eat, none of them wanting to scrape the bottom of the barrel, or worse, miss out entirely.
As per usual, John heard a fight break out inside, as some prisoners weren't content to wait in line, and punched and kicked, bit and scratched, did whatever it took to make sure they got what they saw as their fair share of the slops. John wasn't interested in eating, however; as soon as he heard a ruckus start – the usual raised, shouting voices, the colourful swearing, the sharp smack of fists on faces and guts, and the loud clatter of objects being thrown – John slowly and silently crept away from the prisoner quarters, constantly watching for any sign that he'd been spotted, and moved towards another, smaller brick building – little more than a single room with no windows, perhaps twenty feet by fifteen, if that, even.
Grateful for all the training in stealth and infiltration given to him by Cameron and Derek – as a former Skynet infiltrator and a resistance fighter, respectively; they'd both had much expertise in moving without being seen, and had trained him well. John made it to the entrance of the building and opened the unlocked door without a sound.
He automatically fumbled for a light switch, not thinking that the power would likely be out. After a few seconds of blindly searching, he found a switch and flicked it on; to his pleasant surprise the lights flickered on, albeit weakly, and bathed the room in murky yellow light, revealing that the building housed the hospital's emergency generator, now sat idle and unused in the middle of the room, gathering dust like an ancient relic.
"This'll do," John sighed sadly as he sat down in one corner, leaning against the wall and pulling out the pistol from his waistband. As he inspected the gun under the dim light of the single bulb hanging from the ceiling, he saw it was a Desert Eagle; .50 calibre semiautomatic pistol, the hand cannon; a voice that sounded strangely like Cameron's recited inside his head. Great, I'm going crazy as well, now. He noted that it was fully loaded as he pulled the magazine out and slotted it back into place. Doesn't matter what it is, he thought grimly. It'll go bang when I pull the trigger, that'll do.
He couldn't take it anymore in the camp, he just couldn't; the constant toil and being surrounded by death, living in fear that he'd become to weak to work and be either executed on the spot or tossed into the other half of the camp with the other condemned souls; living day after day in isolation, having lost Cameron forever. He'd never been good at this; he was no leader, no soldier. That might have been his mom, or Derek, but it wasn't him. He wasn't tough or organised; he'd only managed to do the things he had because of Cameron. She'd been with him every step of the way, even when he'd tried to keep her at arm's length.
He'd failed completely, and as if that wasn't enough, his fate had been reinforced to him earlier as he'd been forced to haul the disgusting, gore drenched bodies from the back of the hospital into the furnace. That was his fate; he'd die, alone; cut down by a machine's gunfire at best, or gassed to death or thrown into the hospital. John was truly at his lowest ebb; Cameron was dead, he had no clue what had happened to Derek and the others, and they'd be equally as clueless about him. Nobody was coming for him, nobody would help him; the only person who'd get him out of this mess was him.
He cocked back the gun's slide and loaded a round into the chamber. No way was he going to lie down and let himself die like everyone else in the camp. No, he thought. The gun gave him a way out, a means of escape. He pulled out the picture of Cameron and traced his thumb over the image of her face, wishing more than anything she could be with him now, knowing she wouldn't approve of his plan but hoping she'd have understood, deep down.
"I'm sorry, Cam," he muttered, tears flowing once again from his eyes, as he brought the barrel of the gun to his temple and started to squeeze the trigger.
Click. Pulling the trigger, instead of blowing his brains out and granting him sweet release from the camp, rewarded him with only a dry, dead-man's click, and the slight tap of the cold barrel against the side of his head, and brought him back to his senses.
"What the hell am I doing?" he asked himself, taking his finger off the trigger. He was going to throw his life away just like that? Cameron wouldn't have wanted that, and she wouldn't have understood it. She'd died to protect him and he was about to make her sacrifice be for nothing? He felt a deep sense of shame creep into his gut as he stared blankly at the wall, still crying, and remembered another time when he'd come very close to taking his own life.
John sat alone in Sarah's room, not moving, simply staring into space. He'd gone off on his own from his mom's grave and been gone for days, although he had no doubt Cameron followed him despite his threats that she or Derek would regret doing so. Of course she ignored it, He thought bitterly. She can't regret anything, she's just a machine.
He took another swig of the whisky his mom kept in her room, the one he figured Cameron's presence drove her to drink half the time. He just couldn't cope with it anymore; his mom, the only one he'd ever been able to really depend on in his life, the only constant in his life – three years at Pescadero notwithstanding – and the only one who truly knew what it was like for him, was gone, dead, terminated. Another name added to the already long list of people who'd died to protect him, died because of him.
Yet she wasn't simply another person who died for him. He'd never known his father, so it was hard for him to cry over Kyle Reese, Todd and Janelle, Martin Bedell – or Future Martin, at least – Jesse Flores, Riley Dawson, Dr Sherman, Derek's men... they all died because of him, in some way or another. As bad as they were, he'd come to terms all of them. It may have made him a cold, cynical bastard, he thought, but with the exception of Riley, he'd never really known any of them well. And not even Riley, really, since she'd turned out to be a lie, a manipulation meant to pull him apart from Cameron. He started to see why, now. She and Jesse got what they wanted; now he saw Cameron was nothing but a cold, emotionless automaton. There was no feeling behind those eyes, no soul; just circuits and wires.
"Well, fuck you, Cameron," he slurred as he took another slug from the bottle and felt the strong liquor burning it's way down his throat. Cameron and Derek wanted to make him into some kind of saviour, some hard-ass, tough as nails commander; some brilliant military strategist, but it wasn't him. Maybe it was his future self but it'd never be him. He didn't have what it took and he'd proved it by failing to save his mom. He'd hid and cowered during the fight against Cromartie, whilst his mom, Derek, and Cameron had once again fought his battles for him. If he really was some badass soldier, if he really was meant to be Rommel, Montgomery, and Alexander the Great all rolled into one; hell, if he was meant to be a real man, he'd have taken the fight to Cromartie instead of crying like a pathetic little kid still and getting people killed.
He pulled out a gun from his mom's sizeable collection - the Glock 17, her favourite - and decided that he wouldn't let anyone else die because of him. Let Derek lead the resistance, he thought as he pressed the gun to his temple and tapped his finger against the side of the trigger, wondering if he'd feel anything at all.
"Screw it," he grumbled. "You win, Skynet." As he started to pull on the trigger the bedroom door flew open with a loud bang. John's head snapped towards the door as he pulled the trigger and the gun exploded an inch from his face, muzzle flash burning his forehead as the bullet flew past and buried itself in the far wall. Cameron stood in the doorway and surveyed the scene in an instant, swooping into the room and snatching the gun from John's grasp.
"Fuck off, Cameron!" John cried out, his words slurring slightly from the whisky.
"You tried to kill yourself," Cameron said, staring at him blankly. John detected a hint of accusation as she spoke.
"No shit," he replied, his already bad time made much worse by his machine nanny. "I'll kill myself if I want; why not? My life's screwed up, anyway."
Cameron said nothing but took the bottle from him and emptied the remaining contents - two thirds of the bottle - onto the floor as John watched angrily.
"What the hell's your problem?" John snarled, standing up groggily and struggling to keep balance.
"You can't be trusted with this," she replied, looking down at the Glock for emphasis before tucking it into her waistband. She then reached under Sarah's bed, pulled out the whole trunk full of weapons and lifted it with ease. "No touching guns," she said simply, and marched off to hide the weapons from John, and prevent him from harming himself any other way.
"No touching guns," John parroted in a high, sarcastic voice. "What am I, a kid?" Pissed off that his plan had been foiled, and feeling heady from the alcohol, he decided to find some of Derek's booze and keep going; Derek always kept some good stuff lying around somewhere. He'd just knock it all back and see what happened; with some luck he might drink himself to death; if not, then at least he'd get good and wasted and forget about his troubles for a few hours.
He walked into the kitchen a few minutes after Cameron had left, creeping as quietly as he could – unaware that in his half drunken state she'd have been able to hear him with ease, even if she were only human – and pulled open the cupboards where Derek kept his drinks. He pulled open one cupboard after another and saw all his uncle's spirits were gone, despite Derek only having gone shopping the other day. He pulled open the fridge and saw even the beer was gone.
"Cameron..." he seethed. She was intent on not granting him any escape at all. Well, screw her.
Fine, he'd just make a sandwich and go to bed, then. He pulled out some turkey, some cheese, butter, lettuce, tomatoes, and the bread, and opened the drawer to get a knife, only found all the knives had been removed. Cameron had been thorough as always – as was her nature – in ensuring he couldn't harm himself.
"I can't even make a sandwich now?" John rolled his eyes and shouted out loud, knowing she was in the house somewhere and could hear him. "Jesus Christ. Fine! I'll just get a shower and go to bed, if I can be trusted not to drown myself."
He stomped angrily back to his room and grabbed a towel, then headed for the shower, nearly slipping on the bathroom tiles as he stumbled into the shower. The hot water cascaded over him and pattered onto his stressed muscles, gradually helping him relax slightly as he closed his eyes and tried to clear his mind of everything and just focused on the steady stream of hot water on his tired, stressed body, his head spinning slightly from the whisky. He finally started to enjoy it when the shower door opened and he felt a warm, soft, pliant body press up against his own.
"Cameron!" John snapped as he opened his eyes to reveal her toned, lithe, naked body in front of him, a rare smile splitting her face, showing perfect, pearly white teeth. "What the hell are you doing?" he growled, looking her up and down unconsciously, his eyes roaming over her soft curves as the water fell over her hair, face, and body.
"In the future, people shower together to save water," she replied, stepping closer to John, brushing her body ever so slightly against his. She knew what she was doing, of course; Skynet had designed her with seduction in mind – knowing it would take more than simple infiltration to be allowed access to John Connor- and although she'd never actually used the knowledge given to her, she knew the basics. Late night TV filled in the blanks Skynet had left.
"This isn't the future," John said coldly through gritted teeth as he struggled to overcome his hormones and her attempts at seduction. "And you aren't people. So get out." He pushed her away from him and stepped back until his back was touching the wall, distancing himself from her.
Cameron looked up at him, the smile on her face melted back to her usual blank slate expression. She was confused; sex relieved stress and tension, and the resulting hormone changes made people feel better afterwards. That was what she wanted for John. She didn't want him to kill himself; her mission wouldn't allow it but there was something else that she couldn't identify; she didn't want him to feel bad, seeing John upset affected her processes and produced unknown sensations. They weren't physical, and they were... unpleasant, was the only way she could describe it. Yet whenever she'd seen John happy or smiling before it had the opposite effect.
She'd questioned if it was empathy - after looking it up in the dictionary - and dismissed it as impossible. She was a machine; she could identify what someone was feeling, based on facial expressions and physical signs, but she didn't understand it. She wanted him to be happy, nonetheless, and sex made humans happy, so that was what she'd give him. But he'd refused her. Still, being a Terminator meant she was persistent.
She moved closer to John and pulled his head down towards her, tilting her own head up to meet his lips. "I want you, John," she looked down and saw she was creating the desired effect on him. "I want you and you want me." Her lips just barely grazed against his as John's hands brushed over her chest, and shoved her back with everything he had. Her feet slipped on the smooth, wet enamel of the shower base, and she toppled backwards, crashing through the glass of the shower door and smashing the back of her head on the bathroom sink as she landed on her backside on the floor.
"I want you... to burn, Cameron!" he glared at her like some foul thing as he stepped out of the shower, carefully avoiding the broken glass around her as she sat motionless on the floor, covered in small cuts from the shattered door. "When you went bad I should have let Mom and Derek kill you." He cast a final hateful glance down at Cameron before wrapping his towel around his waist and storming off to bed.
"I'm sorry, Cam," John mumbled to himself, wishing they'd had an easier time together; if only he'd realised sooner what she really was, what she was capable of, then maybe they'd have had more time together. They'd had three months together since Judgement Day had rained upon them. In those three months, though, they'd loved a lifetime's worth, and John felt sick at himself that he was about to throw it all away now; killing himself would be the last thing Cameron would want.
She wouldn't understand it. She'd contemplated her own suicide before and given him the means to kill her. Hers though, had been an act of selflessness, borne of what he now knew to be her genuine fear that she was a danger to him. His was an act of self pity, of not being able to go on. She'd told him that he'd grown much since they'd met in New Mexico; she'd said since then that he'd been ahead of schedule in what he needed to learn, and she'd told him several times after Judgement Day that he'd grown into a great leader. He didn't really believe it; especially not now he was showing his true weakness.
No, he wouldn't go down the same road he'd been down twice before. Cameron had sacrificed everything for him to live; not because of her mission but because she loved him. If he killed himself now it would be spitting in the face of everything she'd grown into, everything she'd done for him, and everything they'd shared together. No, he'd do everything he could to make sure she didn't die in vain, to make him worth her sacrifice.
The door to the generator room opened slowly and John thrust the gun in front of him in a heartbeat, ready to go out fighting if a T-70 had discovered him.
"Hey! Whoa!" Byrne dropped the bowl of broth he'd been carrying for John and instinctively held out his hands to shield himself. John sighed deeply, relieved, letting out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding, and lowered the gun to the floor; glad to see the dirty green uniform and scrub of black hair, instead of a hulking metallic machine.
"Jesus Christ, lad, ye scared the bejesus out of me! Where the bloody hell did ye get that?" he pointed at the Desert Eagle.
"Doesn't matter," John said as he stood up, looking at the gun as if it were the power of God he held in his hands. It wasn't, he knew. He was under no illusions; the Desert eagle wasn't much of an asset against armoured killing machines, but it was a tool. And where there was one tool found there'd surely be others he could use. "We're getting out of here, I've got an idea."
Not much in the way of dialogue, sorry. It's another chapter mainly to portray John's suffering at the camp and to set up future chapters, although subsequent chapters after this one will have much more dialogue in them. Let me know what you think. Hopefully, as I said before, I'll be able to post another chapter before I go on holiday.