The sound of Courtney's scream tore Cameron's attention from observing the oil derrick and airfield below, and in a flash she was out the room and tearing down the corridor towards Courtney's voice, convinced her new companion was in immediate danger. She needed an ally to help her, and she preferred having her company to being alone. She burst into the classroom with her rifle at the ready, expecting to see a machine attacking her helpless new friend.
Instead she found Courtney on the floor, crying out in anguish, tears streaming down her face, her arms wrapped around the body of a man, whom Cameron deduced was her father, clutching a shotgun in one hand. Humans didn't normally cry over the deaths of people they didn't know. John did, she knew, but that was different. She wasn't sure how or why exactly. Courtney shifted slightly and Cameron saw the man's face. It was her father; he was an exact match to the photographs in her house.
Cameron stood motionless for a moment, taking in the scene before her. Courtney's father was dead. Shot in the chest twice and once in the head. Another man sat dead in the corner, the top right-hand side of his head had been shattered, likely from the shotgun Courtney's father was holding. The men outside had been killed in a similar fashion and Cameron had seen shell casings outside in the parking lot that seemed to match the ones on the floor. Courtney's father had killed them before this one killed him.
Something about the dead man looked very familiar to Cameron. She knelt down and turned his head to face her, ignoring Courtney's sobs. A large section of his face had been shattered and blown away by the shotgun, but Cameron still recognised the corpse on the floor.
Not long after Sarah Connor had died, she and John had been watching television together when she saw him again on the news, with another man she also recognised; James Knight: the CEO of Kaliba Group, alongside two other men,; one of whom was this man. They'd publicly announced, alongside an air force general, the creation of the Skynet defence system, claiming it would make the world a safer place. It had also been the point when she, John, and Derek had realised they'd failed to stop Judgement Day, that preventing the war was impossible and they had to defer to 'Plan B' – surviving to try and win the war. If not for the mysterious Kaliba Group they might have been able to stop Skynet before it killed three billion people, and given John the life he'd wanted to lead.
Cameron let go of the man's head and turned her attention to his wrist, spotting the barcode tattoo etched deep into the skin. She dropped his wrist, realising the extent of what had been going on in Cactus Springs.
The men downstairs hadn't been trying to stop Skynet or spying on the machines, she realised; they were from the future, and they'd actually been helping them. They were likely the ones who'd set up the oil derrick in the first place. What else were they doing? She wondered.
"He's dead," Courtney sobbed, looking up at Cameron and hugging her father's body tightly, unwilling to let it go. Cameron said nothing but instead knelt down before the other body, inspecting it. The man's position wasn't right for someone who'd been killed in a gunfight. With such extreme trauma to his head and brain he should have died instantly or at least have lost all motor control over his body and fallen to the floor. He wouldn't have simply sat down and died, nor would Courtney's father have died from the gunshot to the head if he'd been the victor of their fight, which he appeared to be. Cameron calculated only two possible scenarios that could explain it; the extremely unlikely possibility that they'd shot each other at the same time, or there had been a third person involved. Neither seemed likely, but she couldn't think of any other possibilities.
"He's dead," Courtney repeated, looking at Cameron and bursting into a fresh wave of tears. "They killed him!"
"Yes," Cameron replied simply, not turning to look at her, intent on the body in front of her.
"Why? Why him? Why my dad? He never hurt anyone."
"I don't know," Cameron said quietly. She thought she knew. Courtney's father had been spying on the machines. He'd told her he was going to take a closer look, and must have discovered their operation. They'd either discovered him, or he'd attacked them, and he'd killed several of them before this last one had gained the upper hand and shot him dead. Neither explained how the Kaliba man had seemed to have sat down and died, with half his head missing.
"What are you doing with him?" Courtney snapped, gently lowering her dad's head back to the floor from where it had been cradled in her arms and standing up to walk towards Cameron and the dead body. "He killed my dad."
"I know," Cameron replied without a trace of emotion; she felt nothing for Courtney's father, she'd never met the man. Though his loss was regrettable; he was ex-military and would have been useful.
"What's wrong with you? Don't you care about anything at all?" Courtney was incredulous that Cameron seemed so cold, the dead man on the ground was nothing more than a curiosity to her, and Cameron hadn't looked twice at her father. He wasn't her father, she guessed, so she didn't care. The girl didn't seem to have a single compassionate bone in her body.
"Yes," Cameron answered. "I care about John."
She hesitated, sobbing. "Well... well... fuck your 'John,' and fuck him too!" she pointed down at the other body and then ran crying out of the classroom and down the hallway. Cameron took one last look at the body, trying to determine what exactly had transpired between him and Courtney's father then approached her dad and knelt down beside his corpse.
His eyes had glazed over and gone pale, where once the irises had been sparkling emerald. Just like Courtney's. She pulled the shotgun from his hands and racked the slide until the gun was empty. Only two rounds remained in the weapon but an unceremonious search of his body revealed twenty more shells. It was better that Courtney had left the room, she thought. She would have objected to her manhandling her father's body like this. She loaded up the shotgun with six more shells and pocketed the rest. A further search of his body and his pack revealed two tins of stew and a three-quarter-full bottle of water. She didn't need the food but Courtney would, and eating would further maintain the illusion she was human. Courtney's reaction would be typical to most humans when they'd realised that she was a machine, and Cameron still needed her to help find John.
Cameron started to stand up when she looked again at Courtney's father's eyes, and she did something she'd seen many resistance fighters do to their friends who'd been brought back to bunkers and tunnels after an engagement but had died later of their injuries; she ran her hands down his face and closed his eyes, then placed his hands together on his stomach. He was just a body to her, but she knew that humans performed certain rituals with their dead. It didn't make sense to her; it didn't benefit the dead in any way, didn't bring them back, so she assumed it was more about helping the survivors to grieve. She knew about grieving; John had dealt with grief and mourning throughout his life, and she knew he'd approve if she'd done the same with Sarah.
That done, Cameron left the room and set out to find Courtney; it was easy to track her, she could hear the girl's faint crying. She followed the sound, stalking silently down the corridor, Courtney's voice growing louder and switching between sobs, whimpers, and screams, as she got closer. She found Courtney in what looked to be a chemistry classroom, huddled up in a corner behind the teacher's desk, under the blackboard that spanned the far wall. She hugged her knees to her chest and was curled up in a ball on her side, still crying loudly. Cameron crossed the room, weaving between seats, and stood over her, looking down.
"We need to go, now."
"No," Courtney replied bitterly. "Why should I?"
"Because the machines will find us," Cameron answered.
"I don't care," Courtney said blankly, not moving or even looking at Cameron. She knew that look; she'd seen it from John enough times to recognise it. Courtney wasn't going to move, she'd have to be dragged out, which would make too much noise and attract the machines, if they hadn't already heard Courtney's cries. The oil derrick was noisy, and could provide them with some cover from any machines outside, but all it would take was one drone patrolling inside the building to hear them and the alarm would be raised.
"Just go away," Courtney begged her. She'd lost everything, now she just wanted to be alone and lie down and die. She didn't care about surviving, or helping Cameron find this 'John' she was searching for. The end of the world hadn't mattered so much to her, because she'd had her dad and he'd had her.
"I understand," Cameron said, standing over her.
"John, right?" Courtney asked, wiping her eyes with her sleeve.
"Yes, I've lost him, too. And he's lost me."
"John's dead," Courtney snapped. "Just like my dad, just like everyone else; killed by those machines. We're all gonna die, so what's the point?"
Cameron frowned at her, the words 'John's dead' causing her to twitch in anger, like she'd done before with Riley. Just hearing those words hurt her; the only thing a person other than John could say to upset her. she had to ignore it for now and push her feelings to the back of her mind and not allow them to interfere. She needed Courtney's help to search for John. Two sets of eyes were better than one, and Cameron would rather have her company than search alone. She preferred not to be alone.
"Just leave me alone," she said without emotion, her voice as blank as Cameron's ever was. Cameron thought about what she could say; 'I'm sorry for your loss,' didn't seem like the right thing to say; John had once told her that it there was nothing that could be said to ease a person's grief, which made no sense to her. She tried to think of something to say, anything to try and relieve her pain.
Just then she heard the steady, regular thudding of heavy feet on the ground, growing louder and closer. A machine was approaching. Cameron knew she could handle it, but where there was one, more would certainly follow.
"We need to go," Cameron insisted, glaring down at Courtney. "Now." The machine might have simply been performing a set patrol, but it was impossible for it not to have heard their conversation or Courtney's crying. Her scream had probably caught their attention and the machines had been dispatched to search for them.
"No," Courtney pulled away as Cameron tried to grab her hand and pull her up. Leave me alone! I don't care anymore, so..." Courtney trailed off as she heard the thudding of heavy feet on the ground and the giant form of a bipedal machine plodded into view. Courtney stared past Cameron in abject terror as the machine's eight foot frame filled the doorway. She'd survived for weeks in a town overrun with the machines, yet she'd never seen them up close before. Now the machine was only a few feet away and blocking the only way out of the room. She was trapped.
Cameron grabbed Courtney and pushed her behind the heavy wooden desk as the T-70 raised its gun-arm at her. She brought her rifle to bear but was too late; the machine loosed a deafening burst of fire that forced Courtney to cover her ears. She watched as the burst of fire hit Cameron straight in the chest and knocked her to the floor, where she lay unmoving. The T-70 burst through the doorway, taking half the frame with it as it advanced on Cameron, its mini-gun still trained on her inert form.
"Cameron!" Courtney cried out in horror as the brunette lay deathly still on the ground. She stood up and pushed the gun Cameron had given her out in front of her like a fist, pointing it at the machine.
"Hey!" She yelled as she pulled the trigger; the gun sprayed out rounds in another deafening roar and Courtney closed her eyes as she fired; the recoil of full automatic tore the carbine from her grip and she dropped the weapon as the T-70 swung its arm away from Cameron and towards her, so slowly it was as if the machine had all day to kill her at its leisure. Courtney shrieked pathetically as the machine pointed its own weapon right at her; she dropped the gun and ducked down in a panic, just in time to narrowly avoid an incoming hailstorm of machinegun fire. The mechanical roar of the mini-gun was too much for her to bear; so loud her ears rang and she thought her head would explode from the noise alone, and the rounds smacked into the wall behind her, so close that she could feel their impacts only an inch or two above her head as plaster peppered her from above. She opened her mouth and screamed; her voice drowned out by the deafening fire from above.
The next few seconds happened so fast that it was all a blur to Courtney, her senses already overloaded by adrenaline and the deafening roar and brilliant muzzle flash of the machine's weapon: Cameron rolled forward onto her knees, faster than Courtney would have ever thought possible, and brought her SCAR-H to bear once more, her finger tensing on the trigger as she took aim at the T-70's head; Courtney's rifle clattered on the desk and bounced off onto the floor, the trigger jammed and carried on firing a long burst; the machine twitched once, twice, and then fell to the floor, its heavy body crashed to the ground with a dull thud that vibrated through the floorboards beneath them.
Cameron released the trigger and looked at the machine's shattered face. She'd been waiting for the machine to target Courtney and forget about her before she made her move to destroy it, but she'd never got the chance. Courtney had dropped her rifle, the trigger jammed and it had kept firing even after she'd let go. By sheer fluke one of the rounds had struck the T-70's face and penetrated through to its primitive CPU: a one in a million chance that could never be repeated again.
Courtney slowly stood up from behind the desk and stared into space, near catatonic, her eyes wide open and pupils like saucers and she could barely breathe, could barely think. Her eyes darted from one end of the room to the other and she trembled all over in fear and shock. She'd never been attacked before, never been that close to death before, and something had come loose inside her.
Cameron watched her for a few seconds, took in her face, flushed red, and her wild, feral eyes - like a hunted animal - and her rapid, ragged breaths; she was hyperventilating badly. It all became too much for Courtney; her legs gave out from beneath her and she collapsed on her backside to the floor in a quivering, sobbing wreck, burying her head in her hands and screaming out even louder than she'd done before.
"You survived, you should be happy," Cameron said.
"Happy: no," Courtney replied between gritted teeth, not even looking up at Cameron. "My dad's still dead, so why would I be happy?"
Cameron found she couldn't answer that; she still didn't fully appreciate the value of human life yet – only John's. "Because you're still alive," she said. "That's what he'd want."
"And how would you know what my dad would want?" Courtney snapped, not caring as her tears stained her clothes.
Cameron paused for a moment, unsure of how to answer that. She still didn't get empathy; she found it difficult to relate to anyone other than John. That was it, she thought. That was her answer. "That's what I'd want," she replied. "For John, if I died." She cast her eyes down, the thought of John's death once again causing pain and anguish, and also knowing she'd failed to comfort her new friend. She didn't like failing.
Courtney finally looked up at Cameron, wiping tears from her eyes, and took in her opposite, surprised by her actually showing some emotion and seeming to understand what she was going through. Maybe she'd misjudged Cameron, she thought. She'd saved her life from that thing, after all. How, though, she didn't know.
"How... how did you do that?" Courtney asked quietly as she looked down on the still machine, its face a shattered, smoking ruin.
"You did that," Cameron said plainly. "You shot it in the face; that was effective."
"I... I didn't do anything," Courtney protested. "I just dropped the gun and it went off on its own. But that's not what I meant; that thing shot you. How did you..."
"Flak jacket," Cameron lied flawlessly, smoothing out her clothes for emphasis, knowing Courtney would simply accept it was the only possible explanation.
"Who are you?" Courtney asked, eyeing her strangely. Cameron went around wearing a flak jacket, carrying guns, and knew how to fight the machines. Even without the strange way she acted, seemingly without emotion, she was weird enough. Was she some kind of soldier or spy, or something?
"Not now," Cameron replied, grabbing Courtney's hand and pulling her as the entire airfield and oil platform outside was bathed in brilliant white light. "They know we're here; we have to go, now."
Cameron led Courtney out the room and stepped over the inert hulk of the T-70, before pausing for a moment and turning back towards it. She grabbed the ammunition belt fastened to its arm and yanked hard, tearing it from its anchor points and stuffing the rounds into her pack, before slinging it over her back and running down the corridor.
They ran down the stairs to the ground floor, stealth abandoned for speed now, until Courtney tried to run out the front door. Since she'd found her father dead, all the survival instincts she'd had seemed to have left her. Cameron knew it was the grief; it made people act strangely. She'd started to understand it, but still wasn't sure why. She'd consider it later, she decided. Survival was their priority now.
"Wait!" Courtney dug her heels in and stopped walking, her loss of motion bringing Cameron to a standstill and swinging her round to face her. "My dad's still up there."
"He's dead," Cameron didn't see the issue in leaving a dead man behind; there was nothing they could do to bring him back.
"I know, but we can't just leave him up there."
"There's no time, escape is our priority."
"My dad's a priority to me!" She looked pleadingly at Cameron but her face remained stoic, she wasn't going to budge. "Just leave me and I'll bury him myself," her face hardened and she tried to pull out of Cameron's grip, but like before it was unbreakable. Still, she struggled for several seconds until Cameron tightened her hold on Courtney's arm and yanked her close.
"There's no time," Cameron repeated, her brown eyes boring into Courtney's green. As if to prove her point, jet engines roared overhead as an HK flew over the school building and hovered by the main entrance, waiting for someone to try and escape. "Stay here," Cameron ordered Courtney and slinked into the nearest classroom to peek out the window. T-1s were rolling across the playing field towards the building, accompanied by several more ungainly T-70s. They were being surrounded; the machines would cover all exits and then send in the T-70s to flush them out.
"Don't move," Cameron commanded, glaring at Courtney and placing on hand on her shoulder. She'd seen John do the same thing many times before to Perry, Derek, and other soldiers, and knew how effective it was at emphasising his orders. She handed Courtney her M4 carbine back and placed it on single shot so she wouldn't drop it again. "Shoot anything that comes through the entrance." She left Courtney where she was and sprinted back up the stairs, two steps at a time, and back into the room where Courtney's father lay. Courtney would have been upset again at seeing her father, and would have cried again and been unable or unwilling to move. She'd scanned the girl when she'd touched her, her pulse was over a hundred beats a minute and she was sweating and shaking slightly. Adrenaline was coursing through her, which would heighten her senses and reflexes and make her more effective in an emergency.
Cameron stepped over the body, ignoring it completely, and strode across the room to the window. It offered a good view of the developing Skynet facility below, to look for something she could use as a distraction.
The tanker, she decided. The tanker plane at the far end of the runway was likely full of fuel; that was her distraction. Cameron slotted a grenade into the under-barrel launcher on her weapon and took aim at the tanker. It was in extreme distance, slightly over three-hundred-and-fifty metres; just within the grenade's range. She aimed high and fired, a hollow thump sounding from the tube as the egg shaped projectile shot out of the window, a second later impacting the centre of the tanker's fuselage and exploding in a huge shower of sparks and starting several fires on the plane. Without looking at it again, Cameron ejected the empty casing and loaded another grenade, firing it at the oil derrick this time and shattering the skeletal structure of the platform, which started to list to one side with an audible screech as the metal supports buckled under the strain, and bolts and screws snapped and popped out of place as the structure started to collapse on itself.
As the derrick slowly toppled over and fell apart, the tanker's reserves ignited and secondary explosions erupted into a brilliant flashing fireball that momentarily transformed night into day. The resulting shockwave was so powerful that Cameron felt the ground tremble slightly beneath her. The blast expanded outwards and consumed a pair of grounded HKs that had been refuelling from the tanker and the maintenance drones that had been tending to them whilst they'd fed upon its fuel like infants suckling on their mother's teat; their own fuel adding to the fray and feeding tertiary explosions across the field.
Cameron paused for a few seconds to observe the damage she'd caused; the tanker and oil derrick were obliterated, two HKs had been vaporised along with the tanker plane, and fires had spread all over the school field to a number of maintenance machines and ammunition stores, creating even more carnage as they detonated and incinerated anything nearby. Several airborne HKs hovered over the chaos, searching for the cause of the destruction while others flew out to hunt for attackers. The T-1s and T-70s remained still, their infrared sensors confused by the intense heat from the fires.
Cameron didn't wait for the explosions to die down or for the machines to organise themselves, she tore out of the room and all but leapt down the flight of stairs, grabbing Courtney's hand and pulling her down the hallway.
"Where're we going?" Courtney asked as Cameron half-dragged her down the hall. "The door's that way."
"We're not using the door," Cameron replied as she pushed open a classroom door at the end of the corridor and pulled Courtney towards the window. Even with the explosions distracting them, there would be several machines in line-of-sight with the school's main entrance that would see them if they tried to leave through there. Cameron opened the window and pulled herself up onto the sill and through to the other side, then jumped down onto the ground and watched out for any machine patrols. There were none in sight, they'd not surrounded the school yet and the side of the building was, for the moment, a blind spot. She motioned for Courtney to climb out the window, surprised by the girl's agility as she easily pulled herself through and landed gracefully on the ground like a cat, landing crouched low to the ground and keeping herself close to the wall so she didn't stick out.
Without a word being spoken between them they ran away from the building, crossing the main road that ran in front of the school and down back through several streets, turning numerous corners to put angles as well as distance between themselves and the school. After several hundred metres Cameron slowed to a fast walk, leading the way out of town. After half an hour of silent marching they found themselves on the same stretch of highway that Cameron had followed into Cactus Springs earlier on. Cameron increased their pace and changed direction, walking away from the highway and out into the barren wilderness of the desert.
"I need to stop," Courtney blurted out, the first word either of them had said since leaving the school behind. Cameron looked back in the direction of the town and judged they were far enough away that Skynet's patrols were unlikely to find them. She stared at Courtney and saw the girl was shaking, trembling and in cold sweat. She'd lost a lot of colour from her face and she looked tired and haggard. Cameron knew the cause of it; living alone for weeks and continuously surviving on her own had made her hyper aware and vigilant, never able to relax. That, plus the trauma of seeing her father dead had almost made her catatonic, and being attacked by the T-70 would have created a surge of adrenaline in her system. As it seeped out of her, and she no longer had to maintain her constant vigilance now she was away from the machines, she was succumbing to exhaustion. She'd seen men act similarly in the future; they could keep fighting for days on end, but when the battle was over, they 'crashed', as John had once put it.
Courtney dropped to her knees on the ground, leaning over on all fours, and retched violently, releasing a stream of liquid vomit onto the rocky desert ground, burning her throat red raw and bringing more tears of pain to her eyes. She wiped her bangs of hair out of her face, stuck to her skin in long sweaty tangles. All at once, the enormity of it all hit her like a ton of bricks: everything that had just happened to her, finding her dad dead, being attacked; and she moved away from where she'd been sick and huddled up alone, leaned back on a large rock and screwed her eyes shut to try and stop herself from crying, but she couldn't stop the muffled sobs that escaped her lips.
Cameron saw her sitting alone and thought back to all the times John had done the same, sitting alone and being upset. She still didn't understand why people did that; people didn't like being upset, and being with other people helped remedy their sadness. Yet John had often opted to sit alone and sulk – or 'reflect' as he'd called it – and remain sad. It didn't make sense to her. Watching her alone, sad, trying not to cry, reminded her of John; too much of John. She approached and stood over her, pulling out her water bottle and holding it out to Courtney.
"You vomited, you should drink some water; it'll rehydrate you."
Wordlessly, Courtney took the bottle and gulped down a long mouthful, swilling it around her mouth and spitting it out to get the taste of sick out her mouth, and took another couple of gulps, swigging it down.
"Thanks," she said automatically, staring out into the desert.
Cameron sat down opposite Courtney, seeing her shivering – and not just from the adrenaline withdrawal. The desert at night was cold, especially after Judgement Day. They couldn't make a fire without risking it being seen by any patrolling machines.
"You're cold," Cameron said, pointing out the obvious. Courtney said nothing in reply and continued to stare at nothing, her expression a vacant, emotionless mask, but for the tears welling up in her eyes.
"I left him back there," she said guiltily, looking up at Cameron. "Dad went out there to keep me safe, and I just left him. I could have done... something. I could have gone to help him. Maybe he'd still be alive if I hadn't just sat there in my basement."
"You couldn't have helped him," Cameron said, taking her bottle back from Courtney and slowly sipping the water inside, helping to keep her power cell cool and maintaining the illusion she was human.
"You should sleep," Cameron said several minutes later. "We'll leave in the morning."
"And go where?" Courtney asked.
"Find John, take him home."
"You really think he's alive?"
"Yes," Cameron said. "And I can't let anything happen to him," she sighed, a small spark of emotion emanating from her eyes before she turned her head to stare out into the desert. Courtney just barely noticed it as she spoke of him; the only time she'd displayed any feeling at all. He must be something special, she thought, to be seemingly the only thing that evoked any feeling from the stoic Cameron.
"Who is he?" Courtney asked, suddenly feeling curious about this 'John.' Why was she so adamant about finding him? "Why's he so important to you?"
"John teaches me things, he helps me. Without John I'm nothing."
"Is he your boyfriend, or something?" Courtney asked. It didn't sound like the healthiest relationship to her, if that's what it was. If she thought that without him she had nothing, then how was he treating her? Not that she'd had much to compare that to, really.
"Yes," Cameron admitted, feeling something well up inside her as she told Courtney about her relationship with John, even if she didn't know her true nature.
"I've never had a real boyfriend before," Courtney said. "Had a couple of dates, but Dad was... he was really protective of me; I'm all he had. My mom died when I was born, I never knew her. Dad left the Army and raised me on his own, gave up everything for me." Cameron instantly drew more parallels between Courtney and John; her life with her father sounded a lot like John and Sarah's. Courtney's father certainly sounded similar to Sarah Connor in some ways.
"We were really close, y'know," Courtney continued, a sad smile on her face as she spoke. "He took me camping every summer, just the two of us in the middle of nowhere. He taught me all the outdoors stuff he learned in the Army; how to make camp, how to make traps and catch animals and stuff. He taught me to fish," she smiled sadly at Cameron. "I loved going fishing with him. I sucked at it, but it was just us, miles from anywhere. I really liked it." Cameron noticed Courtney wiping tears from her eyes with the back of her hand but said nothing, simply sat silently while Courtney reminisced about her father. She was grieving. She'd suggest Courtney wrote a note but she didn't have a pen or paper on her, and she didn't know what else to say to help relieve it. She knew how to with John, but nobody else.
"Tell me about John," Courtney said after a few terse minutes of silence, wanting to distract herself from her own grief. "What's he like?"
"He thinks he's weak, he doesn't have faith in himself, he's afraid." Cameron said.
"Sounds like quite a guy," Courtney let out a sharp, humourless laugh and rolled her eyes.
"He fights Skynet, people follow him. He's stronger than he thinks he is but he's inefficient."
"How'd you mean," Courtney asked. She'd never heard of a person being described as inefficient before. She could see Cameron struggling for words. It was clear she wasn't much of a talker.
"He cares too much, sometimes he does stupid things." Cameron thought back to all the times John had risked his life to protect her: against Vick; when she went bad and tried to kill him; against Derek, against Perry and his own men, against Cromartie. John should have abandoned her every single time, though she was glad he didn't; they wouldn't have had what they had together. She'd be dead and he would have become like Future John. "I'd die for John Connor," she added.
"John Connor?" Courtney repeated, taken aback. "Your boyfriend is the John Connor?"
"Yes, I need to find him." She tilted her head in confusion when Courtney started chuckling. "You don't believe me," Cameron said.
"It's not that, Cameron," Courtney reached into her bag and pulled out a small battery powered radio. "I know where he is. Everyone does."
"Where?" Cameron demanded, her eyes narrowing. If Courtney knew where John was then she wanted to go there. Now.
"Listen," she said, switching on the radio. Static crackled harshly through the air, but after a few seconds someone started speaking, barely recognisable as a human voice.
"... You're not alone... we're at the brink... They pack a lot of firepower, but the T-70s are... and primitive. If you can't outrun them, aim for their faces... the armour is weaker.... The T-2s are powerful and heavily armoured, but... heads are vulnerable, and they're confused by heat and fire. Most of all, don't... up hope.
My name is John Connor, and I have a plan to defeat Skynet... find us in Carson City, we have food... and we can protect you. We can beat Skyn... if you're listening to this, you are the resistance...."
"It just keeps repeating itself, over and over," Courtney said, turning the radio off and putting it back into her pack.
"It's a recording," Cameron stated the obvious. She'd tried to compare the voice in the transmission to her flawless memories of John, but it was so garbled and full of static that it was impossible for her to determine. He knew things about the machines, things she'd taught him. It was possible John had gotten away and met with other soldiers or militia in Carson City. Why he hadn't tried to contact her, she didn't know, but it hurt. She'd be happy to know he was safe, but more so if she was by his side, where she belonged.
"We were gonna try and go there, me and Dad," Courtney said. "Right after he got back from the school and found out what was going on. Said our best chance was with John Connor. He... he just wanted me to be safe," she sniffed and wiped her eyes as she spoke, and stifled a yawn, covering her mouth with her hands. She felt completely drained, more lethargic than she'd ever done in her life, and numb, detached from all that had happened during the night.
"Go to sleep," Cameron ordered, nodding at the compacted, rolled up sleeping bag in Courtney's open pack. She could see Courtney was in shock and needed her to recover from the trauma of the day – at least physically recover; she knew people took time to mentally and emotionally recover from grief; they were inefficient that way. "We'll head north at dawn, towards Carson City."
Courtney did as she was told and rolled out her sleeping back and crawled into it, curling up into a ball against the biting cold of the post-Judgement Day - night-time desert.
"What about you?" Courtney asked wearily as she settled down, struggling to keep her eyes open as she spoke to Cameron. Cameron thought about saying she didn't need to sleep, or she'd slept earlier in the day before she met Courtney. She couldn't power down her systems into standby mode, either. With her damaged power conduits, and what had happened before, the odds of her failing to reboot were too high. She decided to combine the two: Cameron lay down on the ground, her rifle on the ground next to her within easy reach, and closed her eyes, reducing the power flow to her limbs and all unnecessary systems, leaving simply her conscious thought, memory, and all sensors online.
She lay there on the ground, her eyes closed, listening to Courtney's breathing gradually slow as shock and exhaustion took their toll on the girl and she fell into a deep asleep.
Dawn was in five hours and forty-eight minutes; an eternity to Cameron, who had nothing to do but lay on the ground, pretending to be asleep for her companion's benefit and trying to conserve energy.
Cameron tried replaying memories of her and John together. Her built day – their day together out on the mountain, the cake John made her, and spending the night making sweet love to each other – was her favourite, and she couldn't suppress a smile as she replayed the flawless and very vivid memory over and over.
Even as she played back her memories for her enjoyment, Cameron found her ability to multitask so efficiently was extremely annoying as it prevented her from fully losing herself in her precious memories of John, and she wondered what John was doing in Carson City, how he'd escaped from Las Vegas, what his plan to defeat Skynet was, and why he hadn't come for or sent for her. Did he still love her? Had he forgotten about her? Five hours, forty six minutes. It was going to be a long night.