Cheyenne Mountain's command centre was a hive of activity; twenty men sat at computer screens, radar consoles, and communications equipment. Nineteen of them pored over digital and paper maps, spoke via radio and satellite communications to resistance units worldwide, and coordinated their allies as well as directing their own troops in the field, and painting a complex picture of the war with Skynet.

The twentieth man sat separate from the rest, hunched forward in his chair, leaning into a radio console. He pressed one of the headphones closer to his ear as he tried to listen and tune out the organised chaos all around him. Unlike the others in the command centre, he didn't focus on directing troop movements or coordinating with friendly forces. Nor did he even glance at map or a computer screen. He was a fighting man and left intelligence work to those who were less accustomed to getting their hands dirty. It seemed he was doing nothing at all to do with fighting the machines. In reality, his self-appointed task was more important than everyone else's put together.

"North Las Vegas, come in. Is anyone there?" For the umpteenth time that day alone his only reply was static. He switched a dial to a preset frequency on the radio and tried another. "Area 51, respond." He tried again and again, with no luck as always. He leaned back into his padded leather seat and sighed in frustration, rubbing his temple.

Days after they'd lost contact with John, Derek had one of the Skynet satellites John had usurped take a photo of North Las Vegas and Area 51 as it had orbited overhead above the atmosphere. Despite the satellite being out in space the pictures were of remarkable quality revealed the fate of both bases with disturbing clarity.

Area 51 had gone down swinging; there was no doubt about it in Derek's mind. The entire base had been obliterated; buildings had been shattered, hangars torn to shreds by heavy weapons fire. The runway was littered with bomb craters and Derek had been able to make out the wrecks of tanks and machines that had been strewed across the battlefield. It had been a last stand, and at some point the guys in Area 51 would have known it. Still, from what he'd been able to tell of the birds-eye footage, they'd fought just as hard, even knowing the battle was a lost cause. He just hoped the dickhead major running the place had destroyed the Turk-like computer controlling the base and the satellites before they'd been overrun completely. The last thing they needed was Skynet getting hold of that one again and undoing whatever the Tin Can had done to wrench the satellites from the AI's control.

North Las Vegas hadn't fared any better, either. Both bases were wiped out and Derek was simply holding out on the slim hope that maybe someone had gotten away or managed to hide from the machines. He was pissing into the wind, he knew; if anyone had survived they'd have made contact by now.

"Screw it," Derek breathed tersely as he slowly, agonisingly pushed himself up off his chair and stood upright, wincing slightly at the pain in his injured leg as he put weight on it. Keeping his bad leg off the ground he hobbled out of the command centre, ignoring the men who stared at him on his way out, and made his way through the corridors and towards the armoury.

John was gone; missing, in hiding – whatever. Tin Can must have been toast as she'd have kept John safe at all costs, which meant that if anyone was going to help John, it would be him.

Once inside the armoury, Derek looked at the wide array of weapons inside like a kid in a candy store; over a hundred M4A1 carbines were stacked on racks, but they weren't what he wanted. M4s were okay but they didn't have the stopping power of some of the heavier weapons they'd liberated from the 10th Special Forces' armoury in Fort Carson.

His eyes scanned the room, looking for the weapons he'd need. He glanced over the carbines and most of the assault rifles; they could drop a T-70 with a few rounds to the face or disarm it with some lucky shots to the working parts on their mounted guns, but standard issue 5.56mm bounced like rainwater off any other part of their bodies. He paid closer attention to the larger assault rifles and machine guns: various Kalashnikovs from their non-attributable weapons stocks, SCAR-H rifles with grenade launchers, M-240 machine guns... anything 7.62 or bigger, he thought, would actually do some damage to the T-70s and T-1s, given enough firepower. But very little short of a rocket launcher would realistically take out a T-2. He picked out a Javelin launcher and an M-240 machine gun and pulled out a half dozen two-hundred round ammunition belts.

Since John had been missing, Perry had sent the men out on patrols constantly, scouting out and eliminating any Skynet factories they found, and scavenging what weapons and ammunition they could. Derek hadn't been part of any of this, given his broken leg and numerous other injuries, and had settled instead for supervising the training of the civilians living in the mountain. He was bored of sitting around doing nothing and pissed off that John was missing and Perry seemed to be making no effort to find him. Derek knew why, of course.

Perry had been angry since John had taken command after their first battle in Fort Carson against the machines. He saw John as an inexperienced kid, despite his accomplishments against Skynet, and had doubted him further still when Cameron had been exposed as a machine. At a time when people had started to lose trust in John over the Tin Can, Perry had assumed command of the resistance and was happy to keep things the way they were and fight the machines his way.

Derek loaded up some webbing with ammunition, grenades, and slung the Javelin and spare rockets over his back. He turned to leave when he saw the M-32 grenade guns stacked on their racks, and he couldn't resist; it was almost the perfect weapon to take down machines; it could kill T-1s and T-70s with a single well aimed shot, and he could fire off six grenades before having to reload. It had been one of the more sought-after weapons even in his time and were even harder to obtain than the plasma weaponry normally reserved for TechCom special forces. He slung it over his shoulder along with a bandolier of 40mm grenades.

"This should do it," he muttered to himself. John had always made fun of his affection for weapons but he knew firsthand that you could never be too well armed against the machines. He groaned under the weight of all his weaponry as he hobbled his way out of the armoury and slowly staggered down the corridor. Only a little more, he told himself, grimacing at the pain and trying to block it out as best he could. Future John had taught them all to ignore pain as best they could, though it couldn't be disconnected completely. They weren't machines, after all.

He focused on just putting one foot in front of the other, exhaling when he stepped on his bad leg, pushing the pain to the back of his mind. It was only a few more corners to get to the blast doors. He wasn't going to even try and come up with an excuse for what he was doing with half the armoury strapped to his back; he'd point the machine gun at whoever was guarding the entrance until they let him out. Then it was a simple matter of taking a Humvee and driving west to Las Vegas. He'd find John and bring him back. It wasn't the best plan he'd ever come up with but it'd do for the time being and was far better than sitting around doing nothing.

As Derek passed the infirmary the weapons on his back shifted in mid-stride, his weight became unstable and he lost balance. He planted his bad leg on the ground at an awkward angle and shouted out in pain as he toppled to the floor, grunting in discomfort as he hit the ground loudly in a clatter of weapons and ammunition.

Charley stepped outside the infirmary entrance and looked down at Derek's prone, haphazard form on the floor, tangled in amongst weapon straps and ammo belts. He instantly went to Derek's aid, pulled him to his feet and leaned him against the wall while he got a chair from the sickbay.

"You're not thinking of going to Vegas again, are you?" Charley shook his head ever so slightly as Derek sat down on the seat, shrugging off the machine gun and the ammunition belts still draped over the back of his neck. Derek had tried before to go searching for John; he couldn't walk at all on his first attempt and had been struggled to walk on crutches and hold a weapon at the same time. Charley had been forced to dope him under the pretence of injecting him with painkillers. "Where're the crutches I gave you, anyway?"

"I don't need 'em," Derek replied. "John's out there, we gotta find him. Now."

"No," Charley grabbed the SCAR-H from Derek's grip before he could even think about protesting. "You're not a hundred percent; you're still healing. If you overdo it you're gonna end up limping for the rest of your life, Derek, if not crippled completely."

"So much for caring about John," Derek stared at him in disgust as he spoke levelly. Derek didn't want to hear it. All he heard was Charley backing out of helping John. "That kid looked up to you, so did Sarah."

"I love John like a son!" Charley snapped back at Derek. "But we don't know what we're up against out there; we'd just get ourselves killed and that doesn't help John at all. Just use your head."

"Fine, sit it out here. I'm going to find John," Derek brushed past him and pulled the rifle out of Charley's grip and slung it over his shoulder, then hobbled out of the armoury and towards the tunnel.

"You won't make it to Vegas, Derek," Charley called out as he followed John's stubborn uncle down the corridor. Derek promptly ignored him and struggled under his heavy burden as Charley followed close behind. Derek made it to the blast doors, straining under the weight of his load. As Charley caught up he saw Derek harassing the guard sat behind the heavy steel entrance to the mountain base. The doors were open but the guard was between Derek and the entrance.

"What's up, Lieutenant?" The private asked. "Didn't know you were cleared for duty; leg okay?"

"Yeah, it's fine," Derek replied curtly.

"Where's your team, sir?"

"There is no team, just me. I need the keys to a Hummer."

"Does Perry know about this? I can't just let you out of here with half the armoury unless you're cleared to go."

"I'm going to find Connor," Derek said, getting annoyed at the guard on duty.

"No, you're not," Charley said from behind. "Derek, wait until you've healed properly," he said quietly. "You go out there alone and you'll just get killed. That's no help to John. Wait a couple weeks until you can at least walk properly, and put a team together. I'll even go with you. Davenport will go, for sure. That's three of us, and I know there's people here who preferred John over Perry."

Charley was right about that; since Perry took over he'd done everything to put his stamp on Cheyenne Mountain; he'd changed the patrol routes and sent the tanks and Bradleys out everywhere in force as if he were trying to display a show of strength to Skynet. It might have worked in Afghanistan or Iraq but against metal, Derek knew it wouldn't matter. Skynet wouldn't be fazed at the sight of a few tanks and armoured personnel carriers. Perry's problem, Derek knew, was that he was trying to fight a conventional war. He was thinking like the commander of an army, fighting an enemy army or taking on insurgents. He just didn't accept that they were the insurgents and Skynet was the dominant force.

That wasn't just it, though. John had been simply more popular, better liked. He'd taken time between his long sessions in the command centre or on the front lines, and his canoodling with Tin Can, to speak to the soldiers, to listen to them. Perry just gave them orders and that was that. Even though he'd known all the men longer than John had, they'd become more attached to John in the short time he'd led them in Cheyenne Mountain. He'd kept them at arm's length still, never allowing himself to feel attached to his men – something his future self had always done. But unlike Future John, and also to a certain extent, Perry, John always made face-time for the troops.

"Screw it," Derek said. "I can walk, that's enough."

"Until your leg gives out because it's not healed..."

"Then I'll crawl," Derek said flatly. "I'm going to find John. Now. Whatever the cost, I'm gonna find him. Either help or get out of the way." Charley stood aside and sighed in frustration, knowing he wasn't going to be able to talk him out of it. Derek snatched the first set of keys he saw and pointed the gun at the guard when he tried to take them back, stopping the soldier in his tracks. He didn't want to get shot over a set of keys and everyone thought Lieutenant Baum was a bit off. He wasn't going to risk it. Derek limped towards the Humvee matching the keys and got into the driver's seat.

Sarah had long ago filled Charley in on John's future, the war, Skynet, and the machines. He'd seen Cameron and Vick, and Cromartie, and knew it to be true. Derek and John had filled him in on the blanks left in Sarah's quick and simple version. But still, it was impossible for Charley to reconcile John with the hard-as-nails, ruthless, emotionless sociopath of a commander that Derek had told him about. That John sounded invincible, not like the John he knew. From the sound of it, Charley reckoned he'd have left Future John to it; but this John was still like a son to him. Maybe Derek was right, he thought. Maybe they were wasting time and every second they waited meant more chance of John disappearing forever.

"Fine, I'll go with you. Just wait one hour; let me get Ellison and Davenport. We'll do it properly."

"Fine," Derek grumbled, switching the engine off. "We'll do it your way." He wasn't happy about it; even that one hour was time wasted that could have been spent getting to Nevada. "One hour, the four of us, and as much ammunition as we can fit in this thing."

"I'll go tell Ellison, then we can-"

Charley paused midsentence as the behemoth form of a Bradley rumbled into the tunnel and towards them, screeching to a stop a few scant feet away as the rear hatch opened and a squad of soldiers bomb-burst out the back, carrying a stretcher between them.

Charley's instincts and training as a medic took over immediately and he turned away from Derek and the Humvee and went straight for the squad, seeing Davenport in command.

"What happened?" Charley asked, already looking down at the stretcher. A man lay groaning as he was being carried; his clothes – grey cargo trousers and a black sweater – were stained with blood, he was pale and unconscious. The left side of his face was burnt and the hair on that side had completely burned away. Blood dripped down from the stretcher onto the floor, and he was struggling to breathe. Three puckered holes marked his chest.

"We found him in a basement. Three bullet wounds to the chest; he's bleeding out a lot, lost at least three pints of blood already. We got him on an IV and doped him up with morphine. It's a wonder he's not dead already." Davenport was all business unlike his usual, cheery demeanour, and something about that threw Charley off for a moment.

Charley took over and led the soldiers carrying the stretcher to the infirmary. As soon as they were into the sickbay he had them transfer the injured newcomer to a bed, connected heart monitors and various other instruments to him and began working. He had the men turn him over and checked the bullet wounds; a triangle of silver-dollar sized exit wounds painted his back like three bloody, gaping dots on his body, the top one was directly over where his heart was. He was barely breathing.

"His heart's screwed up," one of the soldiers said as he looked at the monitor, displaying a rapid but irregular beat.

"Looks like a bullet grazed it," Charley said as he inspected the gushing wound while someone else put an oxygen mask over the man's face. Charley wasn't a doctor so he had no idea how bad it really was, and the infirmary didn't have any scanners or any diagnostic tools to help him. The best he could do was stop the bleeding for now and hope he made it.

"Went straight through," Charley said as he probed the exit wounds. At least he didn't have to worry about fishing any bullets out. He'd treated untold numbers of gunshot wounds before, including Derek's, so despite not being a combat medic he was well prepared to deal with them. The stranger was bleeding badly though, his heart had definitely been nicked by a bullet and one of his lungs had deflated, probably filling up with blood as well.

After several minutes of frantic work Charley had managed to stabilize the patient, stopping the bleeding from his heart and inflating his lung once more. He barely had enough time to breathe a sigh of relief when Perry burst into the room and marched up to the bed.

"Who's this?" He asked. He'd heard second-hand from one of the men in the command centre that a patrol was on their way back with an injured man in tow, but Perry had simply assumed it was one of their own wounded. He didn't recognise this man.

"Ask Davenport," Charley said, not looking away from what he was doing to make eye contact with Perry, who turned his gaze expectantly to the lieutenant.

"We found him in the basement in the UCCS campus. The place was fucked."

"Could you be more specific?"

"Everyone was slaughtered," Davenport elaborated. "It was a bloodbath. Everyone there was dead, except for him. Whole place was trashed; machines went for the radios, the ammo dump... everything was gone. They tore the place apart."

"Shit," Perry groaned, rubbing his temple. "That's the third cell gone in two weeks. Goddamn machines are taking us apart little by little." Since they'd arrived back at Cheyenne Mountain six weeks ago, they'd lost contact with eight different resistance cells in El Paso County that John had helped set up and equip, plus the slaughterhouse they'd found in the Denver tunnels. They'd lost contact with two units in Colorado Springs already, and now the one at the university was gone. There'd only been thirty or so people there; all civilians led by a handful of reservists, but it was another unit gone now. It was clear to Perry what Skynet was doing; wiping out all their outposts in preparation to attack Cheyenne Mountain – ensuring there was nobody to come to their aid when the time finally came.

"That's the odd part," Davenport said, scratching the back of his neck nervously. "It didn't seem like the machines' handiwork to me."

"Care to explain?"

"The tin cans only kill people," Derek said, standing in the infirmary entrance, having seen reason finally and realised Charley was right and he'd never find John on his own. He knew what Davenport meant; the primitive models like the T-70s only killed the people living in the tunnels they attacked; they never went for radio equipment or the supplies and ammunition; they were too simple for that. They attacked targets, nothing more. He'd seen them take prisoners but only very rarely. Only Terminators had the intelligence to prevent their victims calling for help or fighting back with heavier weapons. Even then only the more advanced models managed it; T-600s and early model T-800s tended to just get into a tunnel and blast every human in sight.

"Come with me," Perry motioned for Davenport and Derek to follow him outside. He led them away from the infirmary and into his office; John's office that he'd never once actually set foot inside. Derek casually took a seat while Davenport stood at ease, hands behind the small of his back. Perry sat down at his desk, facing the two lieutenants, and leaned back in his chair.

"I wanted to speak in private," Perry said reasonably to them, then pointed at Derek. "I don't know how you know so much about these machines; You, Connor, and that tin can wind up toy that followed him about everywhere he went. I know you won't say, and nothing I do will make you say a word." Perry knew that; he'd seen plenty of men like Derek, mostly in special ops. They never spoke about their missions apart from what the regular soldiers needed to know.

"I don't know how you know about these things, and I don't care, but I want to know what you know. Starting with that guy in our infirmary," he turned to Davenport. "Our resources are limited, Lieutenant. We can't just help every stray we find or we'll have nothing to patch up our own guys when Skynet decides to roll over us. Now who the hell is he, and what did you mean about the machines not taking out that bunker?"

"Pretty much what I said before," Davenport sighed. "We were patrolling Eastern Colorado Springs and dropped in on the UCCS campus to see how they were doing."

"That wasn't your mission," Perry stared at Davenport. "Simple patrol; sweep and clear; I never said anything about stopping by for a chat."

"No, you didn't," Davenport replied, annoyed. "But since you stopped resupplying the other cells in the area with weapons and ammo I thought it best to check up on them." Davenport had protested, as well as Derek, against Perry's decision to cut support for the other cells in the area. Perry saw Cheyenne Mountain – as the only military led cell in the area – as the real resistance, and didn't rate the other units because they weren't technically soldiers. He saw Cheyenne Mountain as the only real force in the area and reasoned that with their mountain in Skynet's sights, and the AI sure to attack them sooner or later, that they needed the supplies and weapons more, and left the other cells to fend for themselves.

"The place was a tomb when we got there; the guy in the infirmary's the only survivor. Something was... off. I don't know what, something about the bodies we found."

"What was it?"

"That guy we've got, he was shot three times. Most of them were torn to shreds, other guys we found in the tunnel had a single round to the head; tin cans can't fire single shots with mini-guns."

"Something else killed them," Derek said, a light-bulb in his skull went off, and this particular bulb had 'Terminator' written all over it. He'd seen that happen before, too. Skin-jobs went in and took out the armouries, radios, and anyone holding a heavy weapon; and then heavier units – armoured T-900 endos – would follow the Terminator inside and lay waste to everything inside, normally as a distraction to keep the troops busy while the Terminator went straight for the primary target. Was the same happening here? Was there another Terminator out there?

"Something?" Perry asked. "Don't you mean someone?" Perry knew John had mentioned a second robot that looked human. He didn't think there could be more out there; where the hell would they come from? He'd never heard of a robot like that before. Obviously at least one existed – the one that called itself Cameron, and the one John had gone after. But he couldn't imagine many more being around; it would be too expensive to mass produce something like that, wherever it had come from. In his eyes it was more likely a person had done it.

"Here's what I think: that guy in the infirmary, or someone else, fell apart under the pressure of it all, grabbed a gun and started killing people. The machines heard the din and came to investigate and slaughtered the rest. The pressure gets to some people, they just go nuts. It happens sometimes." He couldn't think of another rational reason for it. "Any other signs of Skynet out there?"

"Nope, all's quiet in Colorado Springs," Davenport said. "We patrolled for six hours and didn't see a single tin can. Just keep finding their mess."

"Baum," Perry turned to Derek now. "I'm going to admit you know more about the machines than pretty much anyone else in this mountain, myself included. Given that in mind, would you please stop trying to go off yourself to find Connor? He's dead, okay? I wish he wasn't, but he's gone. We've gotta move on, and I need your expertise for when the machines do come."

Derek and Davenport both stared at Perry as he spoke down to Derek and pretended he was upset about John's death. Derek glared at Perry before getting out of his seat and marching straight out of the room without saying a word.

"Way to put your foot in it, sir," Davenport said as he got up and followed Derek. "Connor's his nephew."

Derek stared at the carnage in the UCCS basement. The outpost here had been established in the basement level of what once had been the science department of the university. He wasn't shocked or fazed in the slightest; he'd seen the exact same thing too many times in his life to really affect him anymore. He stood over the scene of the carnage like a crime scene investigator, searching for anything to suggest a Terminator had been responsible for the massacre here.

Thirty bodies lay sprawled throughout the basement in pools of blood and surrounded by bits and pieces of their insides that had been torn out of them by high velocity rounds. Many of them had been shredded by overwhelming gunfire and rendered little more than bloodied strips of flesh hanging from shattered bone, whilst others had been killed by single bullets or double-taps to the head; precision fire impossible with the mini-guns mounted on the machines.

A pair of shattered T-70s also lay on the floor; someone had bagged a couple of Skynet's bad guys before they'd bitten the dust. At least they'd gone down fighting, Derek supposed. In the future that was as good a way as any to go out.

Derek had stormed out of Perry's office, unwilling to hear Perry insist that John was dead, unable to accept Perry's theory of what had happened in UCCS, and flat out ignoring Charley's sound medical advice to take it easy until his leg had healed properly. Yes, some people lost it; some did pick up a gun and start blazing away at anyone that moved, like Perry said, and said rampages sometimes did bring metal down on them. But it seemed too much of a coincidence that it happened in yet another base in close proximity to Cheyenne Mountain, days after two more resistance cells in the area had been wiped out.

Perry had put someone on duty at the armoury who'd barred Derek entry, so he and Davenport had taken Derek's personal weapons from his quarters and driven through Colorado Springs to the university.

"Sorry about Perry," Davenport said sheepishly, next to Derek. "I don't think he knew about you being Connor's uncle."

"Stop apologising for him," Derek replied, not taking his gaze off the destruction for a second and constantly fingering the trigger of his M-79. "He was always a tight ass."

"You mean in the future?"

"Yeah, he was different then, though."

Davenport still found it weird when Derek, John, or Cameron spoke about the future in the past tense. It made him feel like they were just going through the motions of it; that they weren't in control of what they did. The way things were going recently, he guessed they really weren't. Skynet was in control.

"How so?"

"My Perry liked the metal - maybe not liked; only John liked the machines – but he was in favour of reprogramming them."

"Well, Perry was one of the biggest advocates for using the machines in the field; he put a lot of faith in them in Afghanistan. Word had it that if we'd gone into Iran like some were saying, they'd have put as many machines on the front line as people. Was he still a dick in the future?" Davenport realised too late that he'd also started talking about the future in the past tense. The time-loop stuff was too complicated for him. He'd never been good at science anyway; he'd majored in history at college.

"Not as much, no. Maybe something changed and made him an asshole."

"Or maybe he just mellows out later," Davenport shrugged.

"You're very up, you know that?" Derek said. How he could always see a positive he didn't know. He'd never met him in the future so he couldn't say if he'd kept it up or not through the war. He hoped he could; not many people saw the bright side in anything. "Hey, look at this." Derek knelt down beside the body of a man in his forties with a bloodstained shirt and a bullet hole in his forehead. He tore the shirt open to reveal a pair of bullet holes in the top-left of his chest, less than an inch apart. "Two in the heart, one in the head."

"That's not T-70s then," Davenport followed along Derek's train of thought. "Not someone gone crazy, either; it's too clean. A crazy man would have ripped off a mag on full auto. What'd you think; Terminator?"

"Looks that way," Derek replied, unsure. The precision of it indicated a Triple-8, but why would any Terminator take out a tiny little backwater outpost like this? There was nothing important here and Skynet's regular tin cans would have found it themselves sooner or later. Who or what killed them all wasn't foremost on his mind, though. "Question is; whatever did this, where are they now?"

"Where... where am I?"

Charley turned back towards the man Davenport had brought back from Colorado Springs, amazed the man was awake so soon with three bullet holes in his chest, at least a few pints of blood lost, and enough morphine in his body to knock out a rhino. The man looked around frantically, looking scared out of his mind and trying to work out where he was. He tried with all his might to sit up but Charley gently pushed him back down onto the bed.

"Easy, you're hurt pretty bad. You're okay now; we're gonna take care of you. What's your name?"

"George," he choked out groggily.

"I'm Charley."

"Wa... water?" Charley smiled at his patient and held out a plastic cup of water, pushing the straw inside to George's parched lips. He sucked on it greedily, swallowing all the clear liquid in one go. Charley had stopped the bleeding and managed to patch up George as best as he could, and then cleaned and dressed the bullet wounds, and did the same for the burns on his face. The left hand side of his face was bandaged from the top of the head all the way down to his jaw, covering his left eye and rendering him half blind for the time being.

"Where am I?" George repeated, looking around and trying to recognise where he was.

"You're safe," Charley said reassuringly. "You're in Cheyenne Mountain, in the infirmary."

"Cheyenne?" George snapped alert instantaneously, struggling to sit up again. "Where's John Connor, is he here? I need to speak to Connor."

"He's... he's not here right now. We don't know when he'll be back."

"Who's in charge, then?" George tried to sit up again, pushing himself slowly upright with his hands supporting him.

"Easy!" Charley pushed him down once more, having to force George back onto the bed with both hands. For someone who'd been at death's door mere hours ago, he was pretty strong. "I'll get Perry."

"Forget Perry, I need to speak to Connor! It's important," he insisted again. Charley wondered why he wanted to see John, why he wouldn't accept seeing anyone else. The thought he was a Terminator briefly flashed through his mind but he brushed it aside; he'd been elbow-deep in the man two hours ago and there wasn't the slightest hint of metal in him.

"I told you: John's not here. We don't know where he is." Charley pressed the buzzer labelled 'Command Centre' on the intercom. "Perry, our patient's awake and he wants to talk to you." Charley faced away from George as he spoke and he never saw the scowl of disgust and contempt on the man's face as he called Perry.

A minute later Perry marched into the infirmary and took in the conscious form of George, and Charley standing over him.

"You said he was shot in the heart?" he asked, confused.

"A bullet grazed his heart; another one went through his left lung."

"Heart and lung shot out, and he's conscious already? Either you're a miracle worker or he's Superman." Perry turned to George. "You wanted to see me?"

"Perry, this is George," Charley made the introduction, though neither party mentioned seemed to care about making acquaintances.

"I wanted to see Connor," George grimaced as he tried to sit up. Charley pushed him down once again and instead raised the top of the bed so he was in more of a sitting position. "But you'll do I suppose," he said reluctantly. "We were about to send a message to you when the machines attacked; you're lucky I survived. You're in danger, Skynet knows where you are."

"We know that already," Perry crossed his arms dismissively. "That's why we've got patrols out twenty-four hours a day."

"Did you... also know that Skynet's got a new base up and running?"

"Skynet's got a lot of bases in the area," Perry replied. "Damn factories are popping up like cockroaches; we trash one and two more show up." Perry felt like he'd been screwed over when he'd taken command back of Cheyenne Mountain; John had beaten Skynet in Colorado, gone toe to toe with the machines and won every time. As a result Skynet had learned quickly from its encounters with their heavily armed force and had dispersed its presence in the area.

There were no more large factories to be targeted; Skynet set up dozens of smaller facilities and spread them around. They'd consist of one or two small production lines that made a handful of machines a day, and perhaps a half dozen machines guarding them. Easy enough to take down but there were so many of the things it was impossible to find them all. They got reports every day from the remaining units and – and independent groups who still shared information with them – about new factories popping up. Old factories, warehouses, even the remains of a high-school gymnasium had been found to contain a small production facility. Anywhere that was big enough to be useful but small enough to hide in, Skynet used. The machines had kicked their operations up a notch and Perry had to admit they couldn't keep up. Still, George's news was old news to Perry.

"This is worse than any factory." George coughed and spluttered and drank more water from another cup before continuing. "Skynet's got a hold of Schriever air base. They were far enough away from the bomb that wiped out Peterson to only suffer minor damage, and most of that was from EMP. They're repaired satellite dishes and antennae and installed factories on site; they're churning out machines as we speak. This thing's as big as Nellis and getting bigger; we're talking scores of machines, maybe hundreds if it keeps going.

"We followed a T-2 patrol and found the base a week ago; Skynet keeps building and building." George started coughing once more and his face contorted into a mask of pain. Charley went straight for the sedatives and painkillers to try and make him comfortable.

"Now we know why Skynet's not gone for us yet," Charley said as he injected George with more morphine.

"What's it waiting for?" Perry asked.

"I don't know," George replied, closing his eyes as his injuries and the morphine coursed through his veins. "But it looked like the base is still under construction, expansion - whatever. Skynet's turning it into a fortress. We didn't have the firepower to attack it but you do. You might be able to take it down but you've gotta do it soon, or it'll be too late.

Perry thought about his long and hard. If Skynet had control of Schriever then it was extremely bad for them; the base used to control over a hundred and seventy military satellites. If Skynet managed to wrestle control of the satellites John and the machine had worked so hard to take from the AI, then it'd have eyes and ears everywhere, and total control of all satellite communications. They'd be unable to contact the rest of the world without Skynet intercepting every last word they said and tracing the locations of every single base they spoke to, and he couldn't let that happen. If what George said was true, then Schriever air base was the single biggest threat to Cheyenne Mountain. He pressed the buzzer on the intercom and spoke straight to the command centre down the corridor.

"Ellison, this is Perry. Bring any satellites we've got in the area to bear on Schriever AFB and get me some pictures. Cancel all scheduled patrols, as well."

"I'm on it," James Ellison's voice sounded back over the intercom from his position running the command centre. "Nearest satellite's gonna be in position to take pictures in almost an hour. We've still got two patrols out there."

"Well call them back," Perry snapped. Factories could wait. They had to take out Schriever air base before Skynet got those satellites back under its control. Whatever the cost.

A/N: Not a lot happened in this chapter, sorry. It's setting things up for big events later, though. The next chapter will be a lot better, and will have some action!

A few bits explained:

UCCS – University of Colorado at Colorado Springs.

Schriever AFB – Air Force base 13 miles east of Colorado Springs, home to the Air Force Space Command's 50th Space Wing. I envision that Skynet would have deliberately avoided destroying a place such as this to ensure it can use it later. I also envisioned two nukes hitting the Colorado Springs area: Peterson air base 3 miles east, and the Air Force Academy to the north.