George looked down at the two humans the machine guards had dragged into the hospital. They lay still, stunned into unconsciousness by the machine's electrified stun-nets and kept under sedation. One older, one younger; both had filthy, matted locks of scraggly, dark and matted hair and matching beards from what was likely months without shaving or even washing. Their faces and hands were covered in dirt and they both stank of sweat and body odour.
They were clearly both soldiers: both had worn camouflage-pattern DPM jackets, combat trousers and black boots when they'd arrived inside the building. Now they'd been stripped to their underwear and strapped to the beds. Tubes ran into and out of their bodies, connected to various drips and catheters feeding nutrients to keep them alive and removing waste from their bladders and bowels. Numerous machines monitored their conditions and would alert them to anything unforeseen.
George let out a slight smile; he had to give Daniel and his men some credit: they'd performed this routine flawlessly. The ward was full of men and women similarly sedated and restrained in beds throughout the ward, all of them taken from the worker's side of the camp into the hospital and being farmed for their blood; an all-important component in their newest machines. The machines' construction was on schedule, and he had to admit he was impressed with Daniel's work on the new terminators.
He was not impressed, however, with the glaring lapse of security that had gone on right under Daniel's nose this whole time. If Emily hadn't taken it upon herself to go over the security footage from the CCTV cameras and spotted these two continuously scurrying back and forth and disappearing into the generator room – which Daniel should have demolished before the camp had started operating – then they could have continued unchallenged.
"Do you mind telling me," George said to Daniel, stood behind him in silence. "Exactly how you failed to notice some of the prisoners scavenging and scurrying around? Are you trying to ruin our work, or are you really that incompetent?" George turned and glared at the human.
"You're serious?" Daniel coughed, incredulous. These damn infiltrators were so fucking full of themselves, he couldn't believe it: they expected him and his tiny, overworked staff to keep going like machines. "There were only five of us running this whole place before you came expect us to tend to the machines, harvest these guys, cater for the slaves out there, and keep an eye on what they're all doing at all times?"
"You sided with our Lord to save yourself, and Skynet let you live because you're useful." George stared at Daniel with sly smile and an evil, murderous glint in his eye. "If you can't do your job then you've outlived your purpose." If Daniel thought he was going to go easy on him or give him points for the work he'd done on the machines he was wrong. The second the Greys were no longer useful he'd lay them all out in beds next to these two newcomers and bleed them dry.
George turned away from the Grey and marched out of the ward. He was curious to see how the new terminators were coming along, but he had a more important task to accomplish now. Daniel's screw-up had almost cost them dearly, and he had to make sure it never happened again. He took an elevator to the ground floor, waiting patiently as the car slowly descended.
As soon as the doors opened he strolled out into the corridor and made his way through the almost eerily silent hospital to the main reception area that they'd converted into a machine shop for the T-70s. Crates of 7.62mm ammunition were neatly stacked along one wall, along with boxes of spare machine parts and a recharger for their power cells. The T-70s had a limited combat life, only a few days before their fuel cells depleted. The guards would be relieved by another machine and they'd return to the hospital, where a service drone would remove their fuel cell and replace it with a fresh one, then take the empty and recharge it.
George marched up to the lumbering, motionless form of the two-handed T-70, and craned his head upwards, trying with difficulty to maintain eye contact with a machine that was just under two feet taller than him.
"Search the camp for weapons," George spoke to the machine. It didn't understand the actual words he spoke, but he transmitted his orders via his neural implant – the tiny chip Skynet had inserted into his brain allowed him to issue orders to machines in the future. In the present they'd had a hand in designing every unmanned air and ground vehicle and built them to not only be accessible to Skynet's control, but also that of the Infiltrators'. He almost literally willed the machine to do his bidding. He knew that it understood his orders, even though the machine made no gesture of acknowledgement; no nod of the head to show it understood. It simply turned away from him and marched out through the two sets of blacked out automatic doors and made its way through the camp.
George had seen the security footage from the camp, and although two of the ringleaders had been captured and now lay under sedation, it was impossible to know how many others were in on whatever exactly they were doing; it was too dangerous to keep them around. He'd have the machines place all the workers into the other half of the camp and take sixty of the strongest condemned prisoners and assign them to disposal duties, granting them a stay of execution. Better to wipe the slate clean and start afresh than risk them trying something else. It was a horrible waste of materiel, and the newly selected workers would be weaker slower, and the efficiency of the camp would suffer as a result, but that was irrelevant. These new terminators they were building would help secure victory for Skynet in the end, and that was all that mattered.
Cameron crawled through the devastated landscape of Century City, propelling herself forward using only her hands and elbows as she pulled the dead weight of her legs behind her. Her DPM jacket was torn and the skin from her fingertips up to her elbows was covered in abrasions from jagged shards of glass and metal. Crawling wasn't difficult for her but it was slow; it had taken five hours to pull herself slightly less than three miles. Her pace would have been faster if not for the machine patrols she'd had to avoid and the hundreds of obstacles that she could have stepped over before but now had to navigate herself over or around. Each one only took seconds but their cumulative toll had slowed her considerably.
Cameron knew what loneliness was; she'd learned long ago what it was to have no friends. She felt it again now, more acutely than before. Courtney was dead and John's chances of survival were miniscule. Cameron didn't understand futility: she'd never stop until she'd rescued him or her power cell depleted and she was rendered permanently offline.
Cameron heard the high pitched whine of HK jet engines approaching overhead. Cameron turned left and crawled faster, pulling herself towards an overturned ambulance. Her recent experiences with HKs had made her adverse to the aerial predators, conditioning her to avoid contact with them. They registered as a far greater threat to her now than they'd been before. She pulled herself into the ambulance's cab, through more broken glass, and curled her body beneath the passenger-side door, concealing as much of herself as she could under it. She couldn't move her remaining leg so she had to manually bend it and tuck it back with her hands to curl herself up further.
The HK flew a low, slow circle overhead, then lifted into the air, banked right and launched a missile at a target Cameron couldn't see. Gunfire sounded from another direction, forcing the HK to turn and evade. Cameron recognised it as .50 calibre ammunition. She poked her head out the empty windscreen and watched the rounds streak upwards from behind a building a block away and hit one of the engines, which erupted with a loud bang and spewed out a thick plume of trailing black smoke. The machine lifted up unsteadily into the air and turned to evade the gunfire. A second gun opened up from out of Cameron's sight and harassed the aircraft further, causing it to evade two separate enemies; unable to target one without being shot by the other.
Cameron saw movement in her periphery and identified another human three hundred metres away, keeping close to the buildings for cover as he shouldered a surface-to-air missile launcher and pointed it upwards. She knew what would happen: the humans had taken the HK by surprise and would shoot it down while it was distracted by the two separate volleys of gunfire. Skynet would mobilize a second HK and ground units to search and clear the area, and she'd have to wait until they passed before she could continue crawling towards the Topkick. Cameron didn't want to wait; every moment she waited drained her power cell further and reduced the chances of her returning to Cheyenne Mountain.
She sat up and shouldered her SCAR-H, pointed it at the missile-wielding human and tapped the trigger twice. She saw the human drop to the ground with a faint cry as her weapon barked loudly, the report seemingly gone unnoticed among the gunfire in the distance. The irony that she had to assist a Skynet machine and attack human fighters was lost on her. They didn't matter, only John. The HK turned and fired a second missile towards the other humans Cameron couldn't see, and the sounds of gunfire dwindled. A third missile silenced the other position and the aircraft pulled away, smoke still trailing from its right engine, and flew out of sight. Cameron slung her rifle over her back and dragged herself back outside the ambulance, crawling forward once again.
Cameron crawled away from the scene, faster than before. She met no further interruptions and dragged herself through the city as the commercial district faded away behind her and the damage grew less extensive as she made her way through the residential areas, devoid of any sign of movement – human or machine. After another mile the houses she crawled past seemed almost undamaged compared to the devastation she'd left behind her. Shattered windows and the occasional crack and hole in a roof or wall from debris thrown by the blast waves were the only signs of any damage at all. Large front lawns were covered in yellowed dead grass and children's toys littered several of the suburban dwellings, likely left and dropped moments after the bombs had fallen.
She made her way to a large detached house with a two-car garage; the wide stainless steel door wasn't completely closed, sticking out slightly at the bottom. She reached out to grasp it then pulled it all the way open. The door swung upwards and revealed the black Topkick where she and Courtney had left it. After they'd parked the 4x4 they'd siphoned gas from several other remaining cars in the neighbouring houses, so they had a full tank and a spare can in the back seat.
Cameron pulled herself towards the car and opened the driver's-side door. She dragged herself up onto the seat and swung her remaining leg into the footwell, then placed her pack and rifle onto the passenger seat beside her. She could barely move her knee, but the hip and ankle joints still functioned. She turned on the ignition and shifted her position on the seat to give her remaining foot better purchase of the gas pedal. She pressed down on the gas with difficulty, but she managed to push the pedal to the floor. She'd have to use the one foot to control both the gas and the brake.
The Topkick slowly pulled out of the garage and down the drive, the lights off and the vehicle barely visible in the fading darkness. Cameron drove out through the deserted and lifeless outskirts of Century City, passing house after house, street after street; all completely empty and devoid of life. She drove north, leaving Century and LA County in her wake.
Derek stood on the steeply sloping mountainside next to Perry, almost wishing he'd not bothered to come out and take a look. They crouched well away from the crater made by the railgun and waited for the inevitable explosion that would rock the mountain below their feet anytime now.
"Coming up on nineteen minutes," Perry said as he glanced down at his watch. Skynet had upped its rate of fire to one round every twenty minutes – increasing its attacks on the mountain by a third. Derek crouched down behind the boulder they were using as cover and raised a pair of binoculars to his eyes.
"You won't see it," Perry said. "The round impacts at over Mach. 7."
"I'm not looking for it," Derek replied curtly. He scanned across the landscape surrounding the mountain. He counted four pairs of T-2s patrolling along the highway to the east, plus several more pairs to the north. In all he counted twenty of the tank killers, and that was only what he could see. He guessed there was at least that again patrolling the south and west sides. "Looking for the machines," he elaborated.
"They're keeping their distance," Perry said. He was thankful for that, at least. The machines could have attacked them now and they'd be hard pressed to fight them all off. "One thing I don't get," Perry said to Derek, turning to look at the grizzled resistance fighter. "Skynet could rush us right now and probably take the mountain in a day. What's it playing at?"
"Doesn't want to waste machines," Derek replied.
"I don't buy that; back in Fort Carson, the machines shot their own to pieces when we used them as cover. They don't care about their own."
"They don't," Derek agreed. "But Skynet's not gonna throw away its own machines, either; not very efficient." He figured that's what drove Skynet's decisions, anyway.
A sonic boom tore through the air and the side of the mountain exploded once again, hurling rock fragments and dust into the air. The ground trembled beneath their feet and Perry held out a hand to steady himself against the rock as he almost toppled over. Derek had already braced himself against a rock behind him and only wobbled slightly.
"Let's go," Perry got up and started jogging towards the impact crater. Derek followed close behind, easily finding purchase on the steeply sloping rock; years of running and marching over the vast debris fields and mountainous ruined buildings of LA in his own time had made him as surefooted as a mountain goat. The pair of them quickly made their way to the impact site, and the sight of it up close was a shock to both of them. The crater was easily sixty feet in diameter at the top, narrowing as it went deeper inside.
"That's gotta go halfway through the mountain," Derek commented. He couldn't even see the bottom.
"They're making their own entrance," Perry said, repeating what they already knew. Still, the sheer sight of it was both impressive and utterly depressing. From the looks of it, Skynet planned to send an army through the hole it was punching through the mountain. The machines would pour in through the wide entrance, down into the base, and wipe them all out inside the mountain. Even the most basic infantryman knew it was easier to fight their way down a structure rather than up it; Skynet would obviously know it too, Perry figured. The tunnel entrances were too narrow and too easily defended; even with what little they had left they could decimate a legion of machines if they tried to take them through the front door. Even if the machines succeeded, the blast doors could be sealed and they had nothing that could penetrate those.
"Colonel Perry," the infantry commander's earpiece buzzed in his ear, loud enough for Derek to hear.
"Tell me its good news," Perry replied with a sigh. The sight of the hole had left him feeling completely drained.
"Yes sir; we've got one of the radios working and we've managed to establish contact with-"
"I'll be right there," Perry interrupted, not even bothering to ask who they were in contact with; anyone was better than no one.
The pair of them rushed down the mountainside, having to pause again several times whilst more heavy rounds smashed into their base and slowly tore the mountain apart. When they were inside the two highest ranking men in Cheyenne Mountain ran through the corridors, almost crashing into several people when they turned corners, and both slammed the double doors of the command centre as they hurriedly entered.
The room itself was a wreck: George's rampage had smashed every computer, every radio and radar console, even the large flat-screen TVs that hung from one of the walls had fallen victim to his carnage. One of the soldiers and a civilian stood behind a single radio console that looked like it would never work again. The whole thing was a mess of shattered plastic and protruding wires. The smell of burnt metal indicated that some serious soldering work had been done.
"We had to cannibalize components from several other consoles to get this one working, and-"
"It works," Perry quickly interrupted. That's all he needed to know. He picked up the mic and pressed the com button. "This is Colonel Perry, 4th Infantry in Cheyenne Mountain, who am I speaking to?"
"About time, colonel," the voice on the other end crackled through the speakers. The radio was cobbled together and so broken that the voice was distorted almost beyond recognition and surrounded by static. "This is Captain Wallace of the USS Nimitz. I understand you're in a spot of trouble?"
"You could say that, captain," Perry grinned. Derek rolled his eyes and crossed his arms over his chest; they had no time for pleasantries like this. "Get to the point," he said in a low voice to Perry.
"We're in the shit, Captain Wallace," Perry said bluntly, much to Derek's approval. He didn't see the point in dancing around the fact, and the longer they waited meant more time for Skynet to punch through the mountain. "Don't tell me where you are; Skynet's regained control of its satellites and this channel may not be secure. We need extraction soon as possible: Cheyenne Mountain's under attack and we can't hold out much longer."
"I don't think that'll be possible, colonel. We're down to just our choppers and a handful of Hornets; I don't wanna lose anymore aircraft. If you can make it to the coast I can arrange pickup."
Derek snatched the mic from Perry's grasp. They had a chance to get out of the mountain, and to try and find John; he wasn't going to let some dickhead floating around on a giant tub at sea stop him now. "Listen, Wallace," he growled. "If it wasn't for Connor you'd still be floating out at sea, sitting on your hands. Time to return the favour."
Perry looked up at Derek, incredulous, but he couldn't care less. They needed out of Cheyenne Mountain and there was no way they could walk or drive out. They had nowhere to go and the carrier was their only option. He needed their help to find John, too; a hundred or so marines would come in handy trying to find and rescue John, wherever the hell he was.
"Tell you what, if you can secure a landing zone and arrange a safe place to refuel halfway, I'll send the birds in to pick you up. How many of you are there?"
"Sixty," Derek replied. "When can you get here?"
"I'll give you forty-eight hours to report a clear LZ, then we'll come pick you up."
Perry frowned at his reply; Skynet's railgun would pave punched through the mountain by then and sent a legion of machines against them. Two days, and then they'd send the helicopters in – guessing at three days, total, until they arrived; his men wouldn't last that long. He grabbed the mic from Derek.
"We won't last that long, Wallace."
"That's the best I can do, Perry," Wallace said calmly. "It'll take us that long to get in range of the coast and strip our choppers down to make the trip. Take it or leave it."
Derek grabbed Perry's hand holding the mic and pressed the colonel's thumb over the com button, then pulled his arm close to his face. Perry tried to wrestle it away from Derek but the resistance fighter caught him by surprise. "We'll take it," Derek said.
"Roger that. Next contact in twenty-four hours."
The radio went blank as Wallace cut off the transmission from his end. Perry turned towards Derek, incredulous. "We can't wait that long," he insisted. "As soon as Skynet's through the mountain it'll attack. We both know that's going to be less than forty-eight hours."
Derek shoved a computer terminal from one of the desks, sending the already broken device crashing to the ground and shattering it further. He tore a large map of Colorado from the wall and placed it down on the now-cleared surface. Perry stood over the map and watched him.
"We need to buy time," Derek said, his finger pointing at a point on the map, the legend Schriever AFB just above his fingernail. "I'll take a squad inside the base; take out their fuel dump. Without it their aircraft don't fly: without air cover Skynet won't launch an attack, and Nimitz's helicopters can fly through Colorado without being shot down."
"That's suicide, Baum. You know that."
"We're dead anyway," Derek said curtly, turning to march out of the command centre and intent on finding Davenport and filling him in on his plan.
He'd been on plenty of supposed one-way missions over the years, and he'd come back from every one of them. He'd survived the rescue mission in Eagle Rock Bunker, where he'd met Jesse and been infected by Skynet's bio-weapon. He'd taken on T-888s with nothing more than a pistol and survived, and he'd gone one on one with Cromartie and lived to tell the tale. Sneaking into a prominent Skynet base to blow their fuel supply should be a milk run compare to some he'd been on. Besides, he thought; it wasn't as if they had much choice: if he didn't, then they'd all die when Skynet finished peeling the mountain open and the machines stormed inside.
Dead either way, no matter what I do, he thought. It was just like being back in his original future. No place like home, he thought grimly.
John struggled to slowly peel his eyelids open and was rewarded with a blinding white light and burning pain in his eyes and the back of his head for his efforts, accompanied by an instant bout of nausea that send the world spinning around him. He instantly screwed them shut again. His head pounded, his throat was like a desert, and he felt dizzy and disoriented. The worst hangover he'd ever felt; the morning after he'd got drunk and shoved Cameron through the shower screen felt pleasant compared to now. Another round of pain tore through his head as an invisible lumberjack ran a chainsaw through his skull, and he instinctively reached up to clutch the back of his head, but his hands stopped short, inches from his side, with a clink of metal on metal and the feeling of something digging into his wrists.
John's eyes snapped open and he looked away from the bright white light shining down on him, his eyes starting to come into focus as he took in his surroundings. He was surrounded by other beds, occupied by people lying prone and unmoving. Medical equipment surrounded him and he saw various drips running into his body. One above on his right was filled with a clear solution that ran into his right arm.
He didn't recognise where he was at all. Clearly he was in a hospital or infirmary of some kind, but where? He didn't recognise it at all. Maybe someone found the camp and rescued us? But if that were the case, he thought, why am I handcuffed? It was too extreme a measure to make sure he didn't fall out of bed. He tried to swivel his feet around and found they were similarly cuffed.
He looked around and saw nobody up. No doctors, no nurses, nothing. He saw Slater laid on a bed opposite, unconscious and connected to the same kinds of drips that were hooked up to him. The memory of what happened came crashing back and he remembered the machines breaking into the generator room. They'd failed and been caught, and he was in the hospital inside Century Work Camp, he realised. What happens, now? He asked himself. And why the hell were they keeping him alive? He remembered the bloodied skeletons he'd had to dispose of before, and realised whatever happened to them was going to happen to him, too. He had to get out.
John tried to sit up but the nausea returned and his stomach muscles cramped, forcing him to flop back down onto the bed. Instead he propped himself up onto his elbows and looked across to Slater.
"Slater," he hissed. No response. The man was still unconscious. After the blow to the head he'd seen Slater take, he wasn't surprised. How long had they been out for, anyway? Minutes, hours, days, even? Judging from the drips he guessed days; nobody would go to the trouble of hooking you up to an IV for a few minutes or even hours, assuming the drips were feeding him. "Slater!" John hissed again, harsher this time.
Doors opened at the end of the ward to reveal two men – one blonde and one with auburn hair – and a woman, another blonde. From their body language, John had to guess the blonde man was in charge. He marched in front of the others, a confident gait and a hard, intense glare in his eyes. John saw a look of contempt in his face as the man locked eyes with him.
"You're awake," George said. He hadn't expected that; something must have gone wrong with the sedative drip. Daniel had told him the subjects remained under sedation during the procedure.
"Who are you?" John asked, trying to work out what the hell was going on. "What is this place?"
George ignored him and turned towards Slater, inspecting the man. Daniel checked the IV drip nodding at George as he saw it was empty. "That's another unit consumed," Daniel said to George as he disconnected the bag. "Should I connect another?"
"What's going on?" John asked, still disoriented and utterly confused. Who are you people?" George turned to John and lashed out, backhanding John hard in the side of the face and sending him reeling to one side. John's face burned from the stinging pain; he felt like Cameron had hit him, not a human. This guy was strong. If he wasn't chained to the bed he'd have been knocked off of it. He resolved to stay quiet for now, try and work out what was happening, and how he was going to find a way out of this place.
"I'm George," he introduced himself to John in an overly patronising voice, the way an adult would speak to a very small child. "This is Emily, and Daniel. Happy now?"
"And no," George turned back to Daniel. "Let's prep him for surgery and then drain him; get all the blood we can out of him to add to the rest."
"And him?" Emily gestured to John.
"Him, too," George nodded.
Surgery? John's eyes widened in horror at the mere mention of the word; what the fuck was going on?
John made no attempt to ask anything else as more people entered the ward with a pair of gurneys. He felt far too weak to resist or to even think about trying to get away as they removed the catheters from his body; he winced in pain as they did so. They released his handcuffs and lifted him off his bed and onto one of the gurneys. He lay there, unmoving as they secured him to it with thick leather straps over his thighs, waist, and chest. They then reattached the cuffs to the metal railings on the side. John's only movement was turning his head to the side as he watched them do the same to Slater. He hoped the SEAL was only feinting, that he'd burst out of bed and jump them, but it was a fantasy and he knew it.
John remained silent as his gurney was pushed out of the ward and through a long, sterile corridor. The windows were all blacked out so he had no idea how high up they were. They stopped at an elevator and John still kept quiet. His body was weak and unresponsive but his mind was ablaze. He concentrated on absorbing every detail he could. He watched as one of them pressed the button for the elevator, watched the small LED display changing as the car travelled up to them: G, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. The elevator doors opened and the two gurneys, plus the three original people who'd come into the ward after he'd come to.
The doors closed behind them and they descended in silence. John watched the display inside the elevator as they rode it down, and noted that they stopped on the second floor. No chance of jumping out a window, he thought. Even if he somehow managed to get free, he might survive the drop but he'd break his legs and who knew what else, and get gunned down by the machines.
They left the elevator and John was pushed through another corridor, crossing a corner and passing under several signs hanging from the ceiling that were marked 'Operating Theatre.' John concentrated on remembering the route from the elevator, in case he managed to get free at some point. Down the corridor, turn left at the end, pass two corners on the right... turn right at the third... twenty metres down the next corridor...
They passed into the operating theatre and the first thing John noticed was how cold and sterile it was, even for an OR. Everything was clean, gleaming stainless steel; walls, metal tables, surgical instruments. In the middle of the room was a single operating table, and a secondary surface next to it, topped with scalpels, forceps, and various other surgical tools. Clear glass vials filled with liquid stood atop the surface; he had no idea what they were for. The room smelled of disinfectant and antiseptic.
"Him first," George pointed at Slater, and Emily and Daniel unstrapped the SEAL and moved him onto the operating table.
"Want to do the honours?" Daniel picked up a scalpel and offered it handle-first to George.
"You go ahead," George waved it away. Daniel had done the procedure before and knew how it went; it was one thing the human could probably do better than him. "Emily, if you'd like to assist?" The blonde woman stood on the opposite side of Slater and looked to Daniel for instruction. The Grey was in charge, now.
John watched in horror as they stood over Slater and held a scalpel above his stomach. "Stop it!" John shouted out as Daniel lowered the scalpel and made an incision, cutting through the muscles of Slater's stomach. Slater suddenly opened his eyes and roared out in white-hot agony, screaming at the top of his lungs and bucking on the table in pain and abolute terror.
"Let him go!" John screamed out. George sneered callously and lashed out once more, punching John in the head with enough force to knock the gurney over on its side. John crashed to the ground and his shoulder and face smacked into the floor and took the brunt of the fall. Starbursts swirled around him as he lay there in a daze. He heard Slater still screaming, then his, replaced with a pained liquid gurgle.
"Hold him still!" he heard Daniel shout out. John struggled in his restraints and managed to look up to see George holding Slater down as he writhed and bucked and gurgled in pain, and watched as Daniel and Emily pulled out lengths of ropy, coiling grey intestines from his abdomen, still twitching as they lifted the mass clear from his body and placed it into one of the liquid vats.
John kicked and pulled hard against his restraints, struggling to break free and come to Slater's aid, even though he knew it was too late. He couldn't take it anymore, his gut swirled around his stomach and clenched, and he threw up. Vile, bitter liquid spewed from his mouth and he retched again and again, emptying his stomach onto the floor and leaving the acrid taste of bile in his mouth as his stomach, chest and throat convulsed, retching nothing but air until his gut cramped from the strain.
Slater's choked gurgling had stopped and John saw they'd filled up the other vats with his organs: liver, kidneys, stomach, bladder... all had been placed inside clear liquid inside the glass containers.
George pulled John's gurney upright and positioned it so John saw everything: he saw Slater's open body and watched impotently as they slit his throat and collected the blood in a large funnel that channelled down into a large plastic bladder.
Emily collected the container and placed it onto a trolley, as well as the glass vials holding Slater's organs. George pressed a button on the intercom by the wall. "This is George, I need someone in the OR to pick up a body and take it down to the kitchen."
"Kitchen?" John whispered as he realised with disgust what exactly he'd been eating these past months. "Why?" John asked, not caring how whiny or pathetic he sounded. He was completely beyond caring, now.
"Your organs will serve our new soldiers, to supplement their organic sheath."
'Organic sheath?' John shook his head. That was how Cameron described her flesh; they were building machines: that had to mean that they were...
"Greys!" John blurted out, as the dots connected in his head. The shock of everything that was happening had stopped him from seeing it, but now it struck him with sickening clarity: they were helping Skynet. "You're Greys."
"How'd you know about Greys?" George snapped, utterly shocked at the kid's words. He'd been resourceful enough to plan an escape from the camp, to somehow put together crude items he'd found into improvised explosives and plant them throughout the camp the fence, and he knew about Greys. "You're from the future."He must have been sent back shortly before the end of the war. Only TechCom's elite were sent back on missions.
"The future?" Emily said, not quite believing it. The chances of a TechCom operative from the future being in their camp were too small to be coincidence.
"Harvesting his organs will have to wait," George said. This was far too important. Every instinct in him, his training, his religious beliefs, commanded him to slit the kid's throat from ear to ear. One of Connor's commandos; the most intelligent and resourceful soldiers humanity had produced in the war. He was dangerous to their plans, very dangerous. They needed to know what he was doing here. "Take him to Ward Three," he said.
Emily nodded once and turned John's gurney around, pushed it out of the operating room and through more sets of corridors. John forced the fear and anger deep down into his gut and once again concentrated as hard as he could on memorising his route. They entered the elevator and travelled up one floor to the third, then rolled out and crossed more hallways until they arrived in another ward like the one he'd woken up in.
Unlike his previous ward, this one was completely unoccupied. John realised he had no idea whether it was night or day; they'd taken his watch and the windows were blacked out like before; the room was illuminated only by the lights hanging from the ceiling. Emily undid John's handcuffs and pulled off the leather straps restraining him to the gurney. As soon as they were off John shot up and lashed out a fist as hard as he could, but Emily lazily caught it in her hand and squeezed her fingers over his hand, clamping down like a vice. John hissed and winced in pain as she slowly started to crush the bones of his hand. He tried to pull away but she was far stronger than her slender frame let on. Like Cameron, he thought. Were they Greys? She was too strong to be human, but she didn't act like a machine.
Emily lowered his hand in front of his face and kept the pressure steady on John's hand, bringing his carpal bones to the brink of fracture. "Nice try," she said. She let go of his hand and stepped back, then pulled out a pistol from the waistline of her trousers and pointed it at John. "Next time I'll put one in each kneecap," she glared at him, then tossed the handcuffs to him. "Onto the bed and cuff yourself to it," she ordered.
John complied, knowing he had no choice in the matter. He stepped off the gurney and plodded a few paces on the cold floor towards the bed she'd indicated, sat down and placed each hand into one half of the cuffs and then attached the right one securely to one of the railings on the side of the bed, designed to keep people from falling out. He noted that the rail was ever so slightly loose; it wobbled the tiniest bit as he moved his arm.
"Word of advice," Emily put down the gun and leaned over John to attach the second cuff, her piercingly bright blue eyes bored into his and he felt a wave of hate emanating from her. "Tell us the truth and you'll be a lot better off."
"You're gonna kill me, anyway," John said sullenly. After seeing what they did to Slater he was under no illusion about what they'd do to him. They clearly held human life in even less regard than the machines. To the machines they were just targets: John could already tell that these Greys, from how they'd acted, despised him for being human. He'd seen a certain satisfaction as they'd dissected Slater and cut him to pieces.
"True," she shrugged. "But give it a few days and you'll be begging us to kill you. Trust me."
"He won't talk," George stepped into the room with a tray full of various implements and tools. John saw several syringes, scalpels, and a whole host of things he didn't even want to know what they were. "Not yet, anyway." TechCom soldiers were trained to resist interrogation as long as possible, but everyone cracked eventually: it just showed how weak humans were. Charles Fischer – head of the Greys, had educated his brothers and sisters well on how to get under peoples' skin and make them tick. All it took was finding the right method and a little time.
George pushed the tray in front of John and picked up a scalpel at the foot of the bed, then left the tools on a table at the foot of his bed. "Let's start with what you can tell me," George said, holding the scalpel up in front of him, the gleaming metal reflected the light and John knew the man would have no qualms about using it on him – he'd already seen them cut up Slater. They wanted him alive, though, so they'd cut him, badly; but keep him alive while they did it. He didn't doubt for a second they were experts on how to do just that.
"Name and rank?" George asked, almost conversationally. John looked up at George, his eyes sullen and his face blank. He couldn't say anything; they'd kill him the second they found out who he was. While he was alive he still had a chance of escape.
"Your name?" George demanded, sterner this time. Again, John said nothing. George lowered the scalpel to the inside of his thigh and pressed the blade down; the razor-sharp blade cut through layers of skin and muscle with ease. John grit his teeth and clenched his whole body against the pain, balling his hands into fists and screwing his eyes shut as the knife cut through nerves in the skin and set them ablaze. George slowly drew the blade down his thigh, leaving a shallow cut three inches long down the front of John's leg. He twisted the scalpel blade back and forth and John whimpered in response. The worst part was he knew this was the tip of the iceberg; they'd have far worse in mind later.
"Why can't you just tell us your name?" Emily asked. Why was he letting himself suffer for something as paltry as a name?
"I can't," John shook his head. Emily drew her fist back and smashed it into John's right eye. Starbursts exploded all around him John fought to keep consciousness. His eye immediately began to bruise and swell up and started throbbing painfully. He felt like he'd been hit by a freight train.
The second strike smashed into his gut even harder than the first and forced the air from his lungs. John tried to clutch at his stomach but with his hands restrained all he could do was struggle to suck in air, looking like a fish flapping out of water. Finally, after several seconds, he managed to draw in breath again, and the aching, crushing pain in his chest started to slowly subside.
"Leave him," George commanded Emily. She looked at him questioningly then stood back. George picked out a square grey device the size of a car battery and placed it on the table. He started connecting wires to sockets in the side of the object, and attached electrodes to the free ends of the wires. John recognised what it was immediately; he'd seen Cameron working on them before when she'd fortified Cheyenne Mountain's defences: a T-2 power cell.
George nodded at Emily and she pulled down John's boxer shorts, then took an electrode and secured it firmly to his testicles. "Is it cold in here?" she looked down at his crotch as she worked and smirked at John, not a trace of humour in her face or voice as she spoke, her eyes still cold and glaring. "Those poor tunnel-rat girls; guess they're not missing you much."
John said nothing, knowing she was trying to goad him into reacting. He decided his best bet was to say as little as possible, to seem like the dumb soldier who didn't know what the hell he was doing here. Watching as Emily attached the other electrodes to his stomach, behind his back - just over his kidneys, and onto his chest, he didn't know how long he'd be able to keep that act up. Pain can be controlled, you just disconnect it. He remembered the words his mom had taught him, given to her by his father, and kept repeating them in his mind over and over again, hoping it would help.
George picked up a small black remote control and sat down on a chair facing John. "Clear," he told Emily. She backed away a few paces and he looked down at the remote; there were a handful of buttons and he considered for a moment which one to press. He grinned as he made his choice and pressed the button.
Lightning struck John's loins and surged upwards, tearing violently through him as he lost control of his body; agonising at it was, he couldn't even scream. He felt like his loins were on fire; the pain unimaginable, unendurable...
George let go of the button and the shock subsided, John stopped convulsing and finally manage to draw a ragged breath. Tears flowed from his eyes and John lay there, struggling to catch his breath and bring his pain under control. His balls still felt like they were on fire; he couldn't see them but the felt like they'd swollen to twice their normal size. The sheets beneath him were cold and wet, and he realised with humiliation that he'd pissed himself.
"Once again: your name?" George asked. When John gave no answer he pressed another button, and fire raged through John's back and tore into his kidneys. He convulsed again and this time managed to cry out in pain as he bucked and writhed uncontrollably. When the second bout of shocks had finished and John lay gasping, clenching his hands into fists, struggling for breath, George leaned over to Emily and whispered something in her ear. She looked at John and smiled, then marched quickly out of the ward.
"You're strong," George said to John honestly. He'd expected that a TechCom solider – even one so young – wouldn't crack straight away. But he'd thought that the kid would at least have given his name by now. Why he wouldn't even divulge that, he had no idea. He figured the kid assumed if he told them one thing it would spiral and he'd reveal more. Or he was someone important; if so then he wanted to find out even more.
"Too strong for your own good," George said. "The longer you hold out, the worse it'll get. I'll find out who you are eventually: how much of 'who you are' is left by the time I'm finished is up to you." He'd tortured humans before; some had held out for weeks, longer even. Those who'd lasted the longest were mere shadows of themselves by the time he'd extracted the information he'd needed; they'd become wretched empty shells of human beings and killing them had been an act of mercy.
"So, again: name and rank? What do your friends call you?"
"I can't say," John replied. He didn't know how long he'd hold out, or what they'd do to him next, but he had to try until he found a way out. His looked away from George, his eyes roving over the ward, taking in the number of windows, where the doors were. He couldn't see any cameras but that didn't mean they weren't there. He had to assume there were hidden cameras and every move he made would be caught on camera.
Emily returned with a bucket of water and tossed it over John, the icy cold liquid splashed all over him and soaked into the sheets beneath him. Then she placed another two electrodes on the sheets and secured them in place with medical tape.
"Last chance, soldier," George offered. John shook his head and his heart sank. It was everything he could do to not shake with fear at the pain he was about to feel, worse than before. He screwed his eyes shut and braced himself for the pain, but it never came.
He opened his eyes and saw George and Emily standing up. Emily picked up the tray and marched through the ward and out the doors, and George stood at the foot of John's bed. The power cell was still sat on the table, next to George, and he held the remote control in one hand. "Have it your way, I'll see you in the morning." George stared at John, his face unreadable. He followed Emily out of the ward – taking the remote control with him - and left John alone.
He heard the doors at the other end being locked, and then the lights switched off and immersed John in silence and complete pitch blackness, alone with his thoughts, his fears, and the knowledge that it was going to get much, much worse.
Lightning tore through him once again, a hundred times worse than before; the electricity flowed through the water splashed onto him and spread throughout his body. John once again lost total control of his body as every cell blazed alight and threatened to explode. It went on forever; John couldn't move, couldn't think, he existed only as pain as his body wracked in agony.
It subsided as quickly as it began, and John once again struggled to recompose himself. He needed to find a way to endure it, to cope. There was nothing he could do, he realised. It was going to be a very rough night ahead of him. They were going to shock him through the night, he realised, and he couldn't brace himself for it because he'd never know when it was coming. Pain can be controlled, you just disconnect it, he told himself again, repeating the mantra over and over in his head. Try as he might, he just couldn't believe it.