Derek marched down the corridor from the armoury, having supervised the transfer of the last few crates of weapons, leaving the room barren and bare. He'd not seen Cameron or Davenport in a while but knew they were both working to fix her up. It'd take a while, he knew: she'd been a complete state when they'd found her and was surprised she'd even made it back. Even for a terminator, she was tough; he had to give her that.
"Baum!" Perry stormed down the corridor towards him, face like thunder and murder in his eyes. Derek had never seen Perry so angry before. "That fucking robot's stolen a helicopter!"
"What?" Derek couldn't believe what he was hearing. He'd told Cameron they'd get to the Nimitz and recruit her marines to rescue John; what the hell was she thinking?
"She took Bedell and the Seahawk up into the air, and we're now a chopper down. Why the hell did you bring the tin can back? You hate the tin bitch as much as I do. Should have blown it apart and be done with it."
Derek shook his head slowly at Perry's rant, realising with embarrassment that he'd sounded just like that when he'd tried to convince John to get rid of Cameron. Still, she could have at least told him about her plan; he and Davenport would have gone with her. "Metal," he sighed. Why the hell did she have to go off on a crazy solo mission without telling anyone? "She's gone after Connor," Derek said.
"You really think he's still alive?" Perry asked doubtfully. He'd realised he wasn't a match for the machines and he sorely wished Connor could come back and take charge, but he just didn't believe it was possible the kid was still alive. Perry also wondered if it was his fault the machine had stolen the helicopter after saying he wasn't going to let it fly with them. That was a mistake, he realised. He should have waited right up until they were boarding and then made sure it never made it on board.
"Tin Can says he is; that's good enough for me," Derek shrugged. He never thought he'd take Cameron's word on anything but she really had no reason to lie about this. He was still a little disturbed that she actually felt anything at all, even more that she felt it all for John, but that was probably why she'd done what she did. He'd seen the same behaviour from her in Mexico when they'd gone after Cromartie: 'I can't let anything happen to him.' He just wished they'd beaten the Triple-Eight then, instead of Cromartie getting away and coming after them later.
"I guess we'll see," Perry glared at him as he passed by and continued on his way.
Derek made his way to the infirmary and found Charley and Ellison inside, along with Davenport. Good, Derek thought. The three people he trusted were all in one place. "Cameron's gone," Derek said to them. "She's taken a helicopter and flown off. Perry's pissed."
"Where?" Ellison asked.
"I'll give you one guess," Derek replied.
"Century," Charley nodded. "So why aren't we going after her?"
"Why aren't we going with her?" Davenport asked, running a hand through his short dark hair, confused why she hadn't said anything about it to him in the hours he'd spent helping her repair herself.
"Perry will have the other helicopters under guard now," Charley said. No way would Perry let anyone else near them now until they were ready to take off. "We'd never be able to take one, and none of us know how to fly anyway."
"Then we 'convince' one of the pilots to fly for us," Davenport hefted his assault rifle – swapped in place of his AA-12 shotgun – and fingered the trigger guard.
"I've got a problem with that," Ellison shook his head. He had an issue with them taking a pilot hostage and forcing him to fly them out, even if it was to rescue John. "And two Chinooks can't take everyone else if we steal one."
"That's not the plan," Derek chipped in. "We're gonna take off as normal; I'll do the rest. I just need to know you're all in."
Charley, Ellison, and Davenport all nodded solemnly at him. They all wanted John back. Charley loved him like the son he'd never had; he was a great kid, and they'd bonded ever since he and Sarah had met.
Ellison had spent his early career chasing John, losing almost everything when they'd seemingly blown themselves up in a bank. He'd felt like Job; having everything taken from him – his glittering career, his wife, any chance of a family, and very nearly his sanity. God hadn't taken them from him, though; Skynet had. John and Sarah Connor had given him something much more than he'd had before: a new purpose in life, to help beat the machines.
Davenport had just assumed at first that John was a kid; pleasant enough but a little strange. During their first battle together at Fort Carson he'd seen Connor's leadership and prowess, and how he and Cameron had saved their asses from the T-2 killing machines. Connor had proven himself again and again, not only as a capable soldier and commander, but that he knew how to fight Skynet. More than that, he liked Connor.
"We're in," Davenport clutched his rifle tighter, ready for action now.
"Don't do anything just yet," Derek said. After Cameron's solo stunt Perry would have security round the helicopters locked down tight; the marines who'd flown in had probably been told by Perry not to let anyone near them until he said so. Derek didn't want to attract any attention just yet. "Just make sure we're all on the same helicopter."
John lay helpless on the bed as George stood before him. He was in a bad way and he knew it; his face, chest and stomach were swollen, covered in burns, and his skin was red raw and peeling away. His whole body ached and burned, and he was barely able to concentrate on much more than just sucking in air. That hurt, too. Every breath burned inside his lungs as if he was breathing in acid.
The last twenty-four hours had been worse than any other time since he'd woken up in the hospital. He'd been beaten, burned, electrocuted, and it wasn't going to stop anytime soon. He didn't know what time it was or even what day – not that it had really mattered for the past six months, but he'd kept track of the time, the days and weeks, to keep him sane and grounded. After he'd been through so much in this session - that had gone on for so long he couldn't even keep track, that he was completely disoriented.
George moved closer and pressed a button at the foot of his bed, raising it up so John was angled slightly downwards with his feet sticking up and his head pointing towards the floor. The infiltrator then picked up a wet cloth and squeezed John's neck. John struggled to get free of his iron grip but he knew by now it was useless; George had inhuman strength. He kicked and struggled and opened his mouth to fight for air. The second his mouth was open George stuffed the cloth deep into his mouth, causing John to gag and choke on it. His eyes were wide open with fright as he wondered with dread what the hell George was going to do to him now.
George wrapped medical tape around the cloth, effectively holding it in place inside John's mouth. He took a fire extinguisher off the wall – having checked earlier that it held water inside – and held the nozzle above John's face, grinning as he saw the abject fear on his face. He pulled the trigger and water sprayed out onto his face. John choked and spluttered as water filled his sinuses, struggling to push the cloth out of his mouth with his tongue, but it was useless. Everything started to blur and he desperately thrashed his head from side to side to try and get free of the water, to escape what felt like drowning, but George held him still and kept the flow of water constantly on him. The pain in his chest grew and grew and his lungs threatened to burst...
George ripped the cloth out of his mouth and John retched out the water that had blocked his throat and nose and started to fill his lungs. He struggled to draw in breath and each inhalation hurt even worse than before. He knew he couldn't take much more of that; he'd felt like he was actually drowning. It seemed gone on for so long he'd thought maybe George was going to let him die.
"Waterboarding," George explained, tossing the wet cloth onto the tray.
"Fischer teach you that?" John asked; anything to keep George thinking he was from the future. He saw a brief flash of shock on his opposite's face, only a split second before his face returned to its normal smug, self-satisfied, superior expression.
"Actually, this one was used by the CIA and military intelligences all around the world long before Judgement Day, but yes, he showed us that. You call the machines cruel, but they don't hold a candle to man." Such a filthy race, he thought. They spent so much time torturing and killing each other, no wonder they could never hope to beat Skynet. "Anyway; tell me your mission, Cameron. If you don't then there's plenty more water in the extinguisher," he gestured towards the red metal can and back at John.
John got the message very quickly, and he wasn't going to go through that again. He struggled to remember what Derek told him about his mission, what his future self had sent Derek's team back for. "We were sent back to 2007... four of us. We were told to set up a safehouse and wait."
"Wait for what?" George asked.
"I don't know," John coughed the last of the water out of his lungs and spat it out over the side of the bed. He grabbed onto the safety rail on the side of his bed and wiggled it slightly; it was still loose. Between electric shocks he'd worked on wriggling the rail and trying to work it loose.
George shook his head and glared down at John. "I don't believe you, Cameron. I think you knew damn well what you were doing. Connor doesn't send back people who know jack shit about their mission."
"You... you know Connor, do you?" John asked. He felt a tiny sense of satisfaction that George didn't know who he was; he felt like he at least had that one up on his captor, something small he could hold on to.
"My last mission in the future was to kill John Connor," George replied.
"I guess it didn't go well," John smirked.
George shrugged his shoulders indifferently. "I didn't get the chance; Connor shot himself."
"You're lying," John said evenly. He had to be, surely, he thought. He thought back to all the times he'd nearly done it in the past; shortly after he'd killed Sarkissian, after Cromartie had shot his mom, and the first few weeks inside the camp. It had all been too much for him to take and killing himself had seemed like the only way out. The only reason he hadn't done it in the camp was because the gun had jammed. How much worse would it be for his future self – having lost everything and everyone. Cameron had said she'd been his one friend in the future; with her gone and the war won, he'd have had nothing left. It scared him that he could easily see him killing himself.
George smirked as he saw the look in John's eyes, realising he wasn't lying and his precious saviour had blown his own brains out. The kid was slowly cracking, he could see it on his face; another few bouts of waterboarding and he'd sing like a canary. Only a human could devise such an effective means of torture, he thought. There wasn't a single form of interrogation used by Skynet in the future that wasn't already invented by man: they were indeed a violent and sadistic race, and had perfected hundreds of years of torture on each other. No wonder it worked so well, George thought as he stuffed another wet cloth into John's mouth and taped it into place. He felt immense satisfaction as he looked into John's eyes and saw not abject, wild fear like before, but tense anticipation and a hint of defeat. It wouldn't take long now.
The single Seahawk flew through the California air as the sky darkened, and headed southeast from the Calabasas Highlands and into barren, hilly wilderness of Topanga State Park. It flew low; hugging the ground to avoid radar detection, sometimes only fifty feet above the ground and buzzing the tops of dead trees, weaving around hills rather than flying over them.
The flight had taken hours from Cheyenne Mountain; taking even longer to land in Utah and refuel, and to further explain to the National Guard refuelling crews why they had to wait several hours longer for the other aircraft in the formation.
Inside the rear of the aircraft Cameron knelt on the ground and tended to an arsenal of weapons from the crates stashed in the back; she readied her SCAR-H, loading a twenty-round magazine – clipped securely next to a second - then loaded a 40mm grenade into her launcher. She pulled back the charging handle and released it with a loud click that echoed through the helicopter. She placed the battle rifle down onto the deck and picked up an M240 machine gun, then opened the feed-tray cover and loaded a hundred-round belt, connected to two others so she wouldn't have to take time to reload it. Machine gun ready; Cameron moved on through a large array of weapons until she had her own SCAR-H, machine gun, M4A1, M32 grenade launcher, M82 sniper rifle, AA-12 shotgun, Javelin and Stinger missile launchers loaded and ready, plus spare rounds for all of them.
"Got enough guns there?" Bedell quipped as he peeked over his shoulder and into the back of the helicopters. She had enough to fight a small war on her own. Machine or not; he had no idea how even she would carry it all.
"Yes, I have enough guns," Cameron replied, not realising the question was rhetorical. She'd included the Stinger in her arsenal to shoot down the HK that had killed Courtney and severely damaged herself; the aircraft was the greatest threat. She hadn't seen any T-2s but had decided to take the Javelin to be safe. Cameron was nothing if not thorough and careful, especially when John's life was concerned.
She unzipped her purple jacket and placed it carefully into her bag, then took a combat vest and pulled it and zipped it up. She loaded the spare SCAR-H and AA-12 magazines into the pouches on her upper chest, and slotted spare 40mm grenades into the lower ones. Into a small pack on her back she stuffed a medical kit, ration packs for John, and spare Raufoss rounds and rockets for the Javelins and Stingers, then slung it over her back.
With all of her weapons loaded and ready, Cameron was ready. "How long?" she asked Bedell as she took her seat in the cockpit once again and looked out at the rolling hilly terrain all around them and the tops of the ruined skyscrapers in the distance. Patience was part of her design but Cameron felt a powerful sense of urgency inside her; just the same when she and Derek had arrived in Mexico and found that Cromartie was chasing him. She wouldn't let anything happen to him.
"Gonna land in a moment," Bedell replied. "Trying to find somewhere not too exposed."
"Keep going," Cameron told him, staring forward to look for an open space. They flew into LA County and over the ruins of Beverly Hills and to the outskirts of Century City. Cameron scanned the scene before her; scouring both the landscape for a place to land and the sky for any airborne threats. Cameron didn't want to encounter HKs whilst trying to rescue John. HKs had caused her and John to be separated, nearly destroyed her three times, and had killed Courtney; she'd classified them as a much higher threat than she had done before and she'd prefer to avoid them.
Eventually they flew over Century's suburban residential area, a short distance from where she and Courtney had approached from. "Land there," Cameron pointed to a playing field in a high school a few blocks away from where their location. Bedell nodded and pushed the yoke forward, lowering the chopper and easing back on the pedals to slow the rotors.
As soon as the Seahawk touched the brown earth Cameron moved to the rear and started slinging weapons over her shoulders. Bedell stepped out of the cockpit and opened the side door to face her. "Take these," Cameron handed Bedell the M4 assault rifle, AA-12, the Stinger launcher and the pack containing the spare ammunition and supplies. Bedell grunted and heaved under the load, but marched forward, rifle shouldered and at the ready. Cameron moved next to him with ease, despite being weighed down by over a hundred pounds of assault and heavy weapons. The mud was packed firm under her feet and her progress was quick.
They marched through the residential area, Cameron leading the way with the M240 pointed forward, scanning for any signs of movement. The immediate area was quiet; she heard no signs of either human or machine activity. The only sign that either had been present were the telltale bullet holes in buildings and dried bloodstains on the ground. As they moved further into the city, marching in total silence, they started to see human remains. Most were little more than bleached skeletons picked clean by dogs and carrion birds, but Cameron saw two corpses along the way that appeared to have died recently; they were still mostly whole and birds sat atop them, picking and tearing at the insides. Their beaks were glistening red as they came upright and swallowed the meat. Bedell shivered at the sight of it but Cameron was unfazed.
"You'll get used to it," she commented. Soldiers like Derek in the future barely blinked at the sight of a fresh body; most of them saw a recently dead corpse as a treasure trove for weapons, tools, or other supplies. She led Bedell through the city to the same spot that she and Courtney had spotted John. She saw a bloodstained, ravaged corpse – little more than a skeleton with a few shreds of meat here and there - shrouded in a few ragged, torn scraps of what were once military fatigues, trapped under a large slab of concrete; the lower jaw and the hand of the broken left arm were missing. Blood spatters stained the ground around it. A pistol lay three inches from the corpse's skeletal hand, just out of reach.
"Ouch!" Bedell grimaced quietly at the sight of the remains. "What happened to that guy?"
"He got what was coming to him," Cameron said. She didn't need to scan the body to know who it once was, and she felt a small sense of satisfaction that he'd died painfully. Cameron turned away from the grizzly sight and made her way over to the large pile of rocks against a shattered wall. She scanned the pattern of the pile and was glad that Courtney's body underneath it hadn't been disturbed.
A few metres on they were in the exact same spot she and Courtney had occupied that looked into the camp. Cameron scanned it for any signs of John and found none. "He's inside the hospital," she told Bedell as she pulled the various slings off from around her shoulders and lowered her weapons to the ground, picking up the SCAR-H and kneeling down to the ground. Bedell did the same and sighed with relief to finally get all that weight off his back. While Cameron stared at the work camp with her machine eyes, scanning for machine patrols and ways inside, Bedell lay down on the ground and popped open the covers on the M82's sniper scope and stared down the sight, into the camp. "I count fifteen machines," he said quietly.
"Twenty-four," Cameron countered. "Possibly more inside."
"Great. You got some kind of plan?" He wanted to help Connor but he couldn't see any way into the camp, and a frontal assault wouldn't work with just the two of them.
As she'd scanned the camp Cameron realised getting in would be difficult with the increased security. There had been eighteen machines when she'd last been inside. There were still ten machines inside the perimeter, guarding the prisoners, but the outer sentries had increased to fourteen, almost double the original number. She couldn't fight them all without attracting the HK on the rooftop.
"Yes," Cameron turned to Bedell with the corners of her mouth slightly upturned in satisfaction. She was going to do what Courtney had done to survive alone in Cactus Springs. "I'm going to hide."
Two T-70 drones marched through the ruins of Century City, patrolling the area around the work camp to maintain security and ensure no threats approached. Each was armed with an M-134 7.62mm minigun, and six-hundred rounds held in a large magazine bolted onto their backs. They scanned the ground around them with optic sensors, motion detectors, and infrared targeting systems, searching for heat signatures or movements that would indicate human presence.
The two machines patrolled less than half a mile from the camp perimeter and marched down a road between small buildings, only mildly damaged by the bombs on Judgement Day. They moved along a preset route to the west of the perimeter as part of a squad that provided a security screen to protect the camp. The first of the pair discovered anomalies on its route: A pile of rubble from a shattered building that didn't match its appearance on their last patrol, and a heat signature inside the back of an overturned white van on the opposite side of the road.
Alert! Heat signature detected.
The machine transferred its data to its partner and to its command and control system inside the camp, sharing what it had found in a fraction of a second. The second machine turned towards the heat signature and the pair ignored the visual anomalies: heat signatures were always prioritised over visual changes as they were more indicative of human presence. They couldn't think for themselves; they only ran on the strict parameters of their programming.
As the machines turned towards the van to investigate the rubble pile opposite exploded behind them. The machines turned at the sound in time to see a petite brunette facing them, wielding a large machine gun.
Enemy detected.
Subject armed: M-240 7.62mm machine gun.
Threat level: High.
Activating M-134 Minigun...
Engage...
The two machines raised their gun arms but their reactions were too slow. By the time their weapons were raised and aimed they were struck with dozens of 7.62mm armour piercing rounds that hammered against their steel armour. Scores of rounds struck their faces and chests and tore through their thick metal skins, penetrating through and shattering their CPUs before either of them fired a single shot. The two machines dropped to the ground in a clatter.
Cameron pointed her machine gun at the two downed machines and fired a burst into each of their heads, ensuring they were permanently offline. She knelt down on the ground as the echoing reports from the gunshots died away, scanning for any signs of movement following her ambush attack. She credited the idea to Courtney; she'd been adept at hiding from the machines and had survived by remaining unseen. Cameron had typically taken threats head on, as terminators had little sense of self preservation beyond surviving long enough to carry out their mission. Courtney had shown her how to hide, and in doing so Cameron realised she could fight even more effectively.
Cameron ran from her position and hid behind a low wall a few metres past the van, and waited. Her plan was to remain hidden and draw out machines towards her then pick them off in small numbers to create gaps in the camp's perimeter defences. A T-70 was individually an insignificant threat to her, but a large group of them could do her damage. Their weapons couldn't penetrate her hyperalloyed endoskeleton but could damage pistons and servos with enough hits, and the weight of their concentrated fire could pin her down whilst the HK attacked her.
"Two pairs of T-70s approaching to your half-left and half-right, respectively," Bedell's voice spoke to her through a radio earpiece. "You take the left pair, I've got the right."
Cameron's highly sensitive ears detected the pounding of heavy machine feet on the tarmac ground and the whirring of their servos. Skynet's early machines were not designed for stealth and Cameron understood how humans managed to evade them in the first years of the war. She waited, completely still as the machines approached, until they were fifty feet away.
Cameron burst up over the wall and her advanced targeting systems immediately activated as she raised the machine gun and fired an extended burst from the hip. Scores of rounds pounded the first machine and tore through its armour, shattering the optic sensors as they raised their gun arms and returned fire. Long volleys of fire tore through the air towards her, but Cameron had already rolled to the left and opened up on the second machine with a thirty-round volley. Her rounds split the machine open from its chest to the top of its head, rendering it a shattered mess. Cameron fired another burst at the remaining, blinded machine, and her rounds pierced through its neck and lower head, effectively decapitating it. What was left of its head dropped to the floor with a dull thud; followed a second later by the remaining quarter-ton of deactivated machine.
A booming report sounded from behind her and one of the other machines' heads exploded into metal and plastic shrapnel. She targeted the third machine and fired another long salvo as the right half of its head splintered, followed by another resounding boom. She turned around and looked up, zooming in on the source of the noise: Bedell lay atop the roof of a two-storey building and chambered another round, then offered her a thumbs-up gesture.
Bedell looked through the M82 Barrett's scope and couldn't see anymore activity nearby. They'd taken out six machines between them in the space of two minutes; it would take time before more T-70s came. He swept the gun from left to right, over the camp and the grounds outside. He saw two machine pairs march towards each other on the far side of the camp. They moved as a group of four, and as Bedell surveyed the area he saw other machines outside were doing the same, consolidating into larger groups.
"Tin cans are doubling up into fours," he said through his radio to Cameron. He swept the sight back towards the camp and saw another six machines exit the hospital's main entrance. They marched towards Ospreys on the ground and crammed themselves tightly inside the backs like sardines, three in each aircraft. The Ospreys then took off and flew upwards and out over the camp fence. Shit! They were going to overwhelm her. He didn't think the machines were that smart.
"Six more just came from inside the hospital. They've just landed in Ospreys on our side of the fence."
"Don't fire," Cameron instructed him without a hint of concern in her voice. "Entering the camp; radio silence." He wished he could be like that; cool, unflappable. Inside his heart was rattling around in his chest like a pinball. He was nervous as hell, but it still felt good just to be doing something. Explosions flared on the far side of the camp and Martin Bedell had no doubt his cyborg colleague was creating havoc down there.
Cameron dropped down from the perimeter fence amid a large sea of desolate, starving and hopeless people. In the pitch blackness of night nobody gave any signs of having seen her; nobody looked at her or moved towards her. Most were asleep and barely stirred as she stepped past them. She scanned the crowd and picked out four machines that stood sentry over the prisoners. Cameron had observed the camp with Courtney and knew this was the half where the prisoners selected for disposal were held. They wouldn't have been fed or given water: there was no point in Skynet's view, in wasting resources on humans about to be terminated.
She crouched low to the ground and stared at the guarding T-70s. When she was certain they weren't looking in her direction she quickly dashed along the fence towards a crowd of humans stood up and milling around in quiet conversation. One of them turned and stared at her, wide-eyed and open mouthed in surprise. "Who the hell are-"
Cameron pressed the palm of her hand against his mouth to silence him, and with her other hand brought her forefinger to her lips, signalling him to be quiet. "Where's John?" she asked. She wanted to make sure he wasn't still in the hospital before she infiltrated it. If he had been taken back to the camp proper she needed to know.
"Who?" the man asked.
"Hey," someone else hissed at her. Cameron turned to her right and saw a tall man in combat DPMs, with long, matted black hair, a matching beard, and a winged dagger tattoo on his right wrist, just above the barcode. She recognised the accent as Irish. "Ye looking for John?"
"Yes," Cameron turned and approached him. The soldier looked at her with a glint in his eye at the sight of her weapons.
"Declan Byrne," he stuck out his hand but pulled it back after a moment when she didn't return the gesture. He took a step back as he recognised the petite brunette who stood before him. "Bloody hell, yer the girl from John's photo; he thought ye were dead, so he did."
"Where is he?" Cameron asked.
Byrne pointed towards the hospital. "Took him in there three nights ago; if he's still alive he's in there."
Cameron turned away from him and started towards the gas chambers: the only way into the other half of the camp without scaling the fence. "Hey," Byrne hissed behind her. "Ye not gonna give us a gun or anything?"
"I need them all," Cameron replied. She might have given him the M240 if she hadn't left it behind outside the camp. Stealth was more important than firepower during infiltration, and the large machine gun was large and unwieldy once she was inside the hospital. The prisoners were better off without weapons; the T-70s would execute anyone they found with a gun. He was safer without one. She took his hand and slipped a pair of hand grenades into his palm; he was a soldier and he knew John. He could be valuable when she and John tried to escape.
She turned back and made her way towards the gas chamber. She took another hand grenade from her combat vest, pulled the pin and threw it at a T-70 on the opposite side of the condemned half of the camp. She timed it perfectly so the grenade detonated inches from the machine's face, hurling shrapnel into its head and knocking it backwards with the concussive force of the blast. People shouted and shrieked and the other machines marched towards the explosion to investigate. Cameron pulled the pin on a second and third grenade and tomahawked them over into the worker's half, exploding near the ruins of the brick hut she'd seen John being dragged from before.
While the machines were distracted Cameron opened the doors of the gas chamber and pulled it shut after her, sealing her in darkness. She quickly crossed the room and opened the door on the other side, barely making a sound. She knelt on the ground and kept still as she looked towards the entrance. A single T-70 stood outside, protecting the blacked out double doors to the hospital. She could eliminate it but not without the gunfire drawing attention to herself in the otherwise silent camp.
"I need a distraction," Cameron spoke quietly into her radio.
"I got it," Bedell's voice crackled into her ear. "Five seconds." She'd turned the volume of her earpiece to its minimum setting, easily able to hear it when humans would struggle. Cameron shouldered her SCAR-H and took aim at the machine by the entrance and waited. Five seconds later a rocket tore through the sky and exploded in the middle of the camp grounds next to another machine, erupting in roiling flame and consuming it in its conflagration.
As the fireball expanded and rose up into the air Cameron fired three shots at the T-70 guarding the entrance and shattered its face. She rushed at the entrance, sprinting across the open ground as fast as she could whilst the other machines were distracted. She stepped over the downed metal drone and pulled open the door, then slipped inside.
"What's going on?" George demanded in the security room of the hospital. One of his fellow infiltrators – Michael – and two of Daniel's Greys sat at the control consoles with terse, worried expressions on their faces.
"Units Six and Seven down," Michael replied, tapping furiously at the controls. The telemetry from the machines had disappeared; no sensory input, no radio communications. They were just gone.
"Lost contact with Fourteen and Fifteen," a fairly overweight, balding Grey named Gary added. "Eighteen's gone... so's Nineteen!"
"Who's out there?" George demanded. "Marines, Army Rangers, Special Forces of some kind?" It had to be at least a platoon-strength number of well armed, well trained soldiers; militia fighters couldn't take down over half a dozen T-70s in a couple of minutes like that. He looked to his side at Emily, her lips pursed and her eyes staring intently at the consoles. Something on one of the screens caught her eye a split second before the picture went blank. "Play that back!" she snapped at the human.
"Playing back the last ten seconds," the Grey nodded in compliance and deftly pressed a set of buttons. The image replayed and showed the last sights the T-70 had seen. Emily and George watched as the machine detected a heat signature and closed in on it. Seconds later it whirled around and saw a human wielding a machine gun. The gun's muzzle flashed and damage reports scrolled across its HUD, then the screen turned black.
"They tricked the T-70s," the Grey said. "Clever."
George frowned at the image, ignoring the human's comment. There was something about the soldier in the image; he recognised her from somewhere but he couldn't put his finger on it. "Play back the last five seconds," he commanded. "Slow it down and focus on the human."
The Grey did as he said and pressed another series of buttons, and the screen lit up again. The image zoomed in on the woman with the machine gun and enhanced, clearing it up to almost perfect definition. George was glad they'd designed the T-70s to record and transmit what they saw: it was a requirement for the U.S. Army, who'd ordered two-thousand of the machines, and it also worked for Skynet, who could see what they saw and learn from their experiences.
Emily's eyes widened and her lips parted slightly in surprise as she recognised the face on screen. Petite brunette, brown eyes, slender frame yet holding a large machine gun, and a blank, expressionless face. "Allison Young," she gasped, causing everyone else to stare at her.
"The TOK-715; the one that was sent to kill Connor," George replied, catching on. Skynet had sent it out and then never heard from it again. They'd assumed it had been destroyed but then there had been sightings from downed machines of the TOK in action, fighting alongside human troops. One of their fellow infiltrators who'd worked his way into one of the Resistance's bunkers had then informed them that Unit 715 had been reprogrammed and was serving as John Connor's bodyguard. He'd give Connor credit for taste; it was based on a very attractive woman; if he had to have a bodyguard then it might as well be one that was nice to look at, he figured.
Why is it here? He asked himself. It couldn't just be coincidence that they had a TechCom soldier from the future here and Unit 715 was attacking. "The kid!" he growled, putting two and two together. "Seven-One-Five was Connor's bodyguard; if its here in this time then it's got to be protecting his younger self."
"The Resistance fighter?" Emily asked, not quite believing it. Connor should be nearly thirty by now, not still a child. "We've had Connor here the whole time?"
George grabbed two assault rifles from the rack on the wall and tossed one to Emily. "I think so," he nodded grimly. He couldn't believe he'd not recognised John Connor when he saw him. Not that he'd ever really gotten a good look at the guy: he was such a recluse in the future that all he'd been able to get was a vague description. He'd only seen General Connor's face once and at the time a large hole was in the side of it when he'd blown his own brains out.
"Who's with him now?" Emily asked.
"Daniel."
George walked over to the intercom on the wall, feeling the strain building up on him now. He'd like nothing better than to end Connor with his bare hands, to take what his future self had denied him, but with the TOK out there he'd have to give the privilege to Daniel. As long as he was dead; that was all that really mattered. "Daniel, come in..."
John lay on the bed and subtly tugged at the rails on the side of his bed, feeling it loosening slowly as he pushed it back and forth against the screws attaching them to the frame. He ached all over and the waterboarding had nearly crushed him; part of him had wanted to just shout out the truth, to put his torture to an end. Nobody was coming for him. Another part of him screamed and raged against it, told him to wait, to watch, and to find a way to escape.
The red-haired Grey called Daniel stood over him with the remote control to the electrodes once again placed all over his body. Daniel had taken over his interrogation while George had rushed off to deal with something important, or so he'd said. "Just tell me what your mission is," Daniel said. "They're going to kill you anyway, Cameron. Hold out and you'll just die crazy."
John shook his head slowly, careful not to move too fast because it only brought on more pain. His head felt like someone had taken a pickaxe to his brain. His face, neck and chest itched and burned where it had been napalmed and the skin was peeling off, and every part of him ached. It hurt to move, to breathe, just laying there was painful. He hurt so much that the electric shocks didn't seem as harsh as before. He wondered if he was just getting used to it – if such a thing was even possible – or if his nerves had just been too badly fried.
Daniel shrugged his shoulders and moved his forefinger over one of the buttons on the control. John closed his eyes in resignation and waited for the inevitable jolt of lightning to burn its way through him.
"Daniel, come in."
John opened his eyes and saw Daniel drop the remote onto the bedside table and march down to the far end of the ward to respond to the intercom. Once he was there and his back was turned John tugged and heaved at the rail on his left, pushing back and forth with everything he had. "Come on!" he growled as he felt it getting closer...
The rail came off at one end with a snap and John's left arm was free. He sat up and slid off the right end, then tugged at that rail with another monumental effort. The rails held but one of the aluminium bars pulled out of place; John slid his right cuff off the bar until he was free. His left arm was still connected to the safety rail that had snapped off, but that didn't matter to John. He'd broken free! He stretched his feet out and felt good to finally be standing up after spending so long chained to a bed. He heard the tail end of the intercom exchange and gulped nervously as he crept down the ward as silently as he could. Daniel's back was turned on him. Ten feet away... eight feet... four feet... John crept closer as he slowly pulled the rail backwards as if it were a baseball bat. Now or never.
"Yes, I said John Connor. Stop the interrogation and kill him immediately. I don't care how but just get it done."
"Yes sir," Daniel replied. As he turned around John swung the rail around and smashed it over Daniel's head. The grey dropped to the floor with a stunned groan and John was atop him in an instant. He brought his fists down on Daniel's face, then lifted the Grey's head up and slammed it against the floor again and again in a rage-filled frenzy. He wasn't thinking, wasn't feeling, just reacting with animal instinct, pounding Daniel again and again.
Daniel finally fought back and smacked his forehead into the bridge of John's nose, exploding stars all around John as he reeled back in shock and pain. Pain can be ignored, he told himself. If he let up for even a moment he was done for. He held onto the rail, still cuffed to his left wrist, and brought it down on Daniel's face, smashing it into his mouth and cracking several teeth. He brought it down again and again; spouting more blood from his nose and mouth and tearing open a gash in his forehead. John pushed the blood spattered bars against Daniel's throat and pushed down as hard as he could, snarling above his opponent as he forced the rail down on the Grey's windpipe. He leaned his full weight onto it as Daniel desperately clawed and struck at him, each blow getting weaker that the last. John ignored it all, so hyped up on adrenaline he barely felt anything anymore.
Eventually Daniel's arms dropped and his efforts slowed from frantic punching and thrashing to a weak attempt to push from his elbows as John starved his brain and body of oxygen. Finally he stopped moving at all.
John stood up from Daniel's body, breathing in deeply and trying to compose himself. Now he started to think coherently he found himself surprised he'd been able to take Daniel down so easily: George and Emily were impossibly, inhumanly strong, and he'd assumed all the others were the same. He racked his brain to remember what floor he was on. "Second floor," he muttered to himself. That's all he needed to know for now. He had to get himself to an elevator and then get the hell out of the hospital. A quick search of Daniel's body revealed no keys for the cuffs but did turn up a Glock 17 and a single magazine. It'd do, John smiled to himself. At least until he got outside. If he needed to use the whole magazine before then he was probably a dead man anyway.
John pulled off the Grey's clothes and quickly put them on himself. He didn't bother with the underwear, realising as he stripped the body that Daniel had soiled himself in the moments before he'd died. John pulled on the cargo pants and bloodied sweater, then slipped on his socks and laced up the pair of boots. They were a size too small for John and cramped his feet, but they'd have to do for now. He'd worry about finding a new pair later.
Armed with the Glock and the bloodstained safety rail, John slipped out of the ward and into the corridor, finding himself completely alone. He ran quickly through the long corridor and slipped around a corner, trying to remember the route he'd been wheeled in on. It seemed like so long ago and he was so exhausted and battered that he couldn't recall it. He kept on going, figuring he'd hit an elevator eventually and then he could find an exit on the ground floor.
Around the corner the corridor stretched on further, with only a single door, to the right. John held the gun forward and stepped inside. Nobody was in so he let the door close behind him. There was nobody in the room but what was inside made John's jaw drop to the floor. A dozen large glass tanks filled with what looked to John like blood. He walked up to the nearest one and peered inside it. He could just about make out a human face beneath the dark liquid; not yet fully formed. John could just about make out the musculature beneath; muscles, sinews and tendons beneath translucent skin. He took note of the stencilled writing on the side of the tubes: TOK-888.
TOK was the beginning of Cameron's design number, he thought. Is it some kind of cross between Cameron's model and a T-Triple-Eight? George had mentioned something about building terminators to him after he'd gutted Slater, but he'd never got why they'd needed his organs. John picked up charts and flipped the pages, reading rapidly and frantically over them. The first yielded nothing so he put it down on the table and read the second, finding a section on organ transplants.
"'Organ transfer successful, TOK-888 Model Zero-Zero-One: all organs appear to be fully functional. Early tests show digestion of food matter and later excretion and urination appears normal.'" John read through more files and charts on clipboards and got the gist of their research: the Greys weren't just building terminators; they were creating the most advanced machines yet. From what he'd read he saw their chips were a variation of Cameron's, very similar to her design. They'd be able to learn and grow as she did.
Advanced terminators, able to act as human as Cameron had when he'd first met her in high school, who could not only eat and drink but also pee, crap, fart, belch and perform any bodily functions that a human could. They'd be completely indistinguishable from people: they could infiltrate for months, years, and never be found out; if someone took a leak and he saw it he'd never suspect them of being a machine. People wouldn't stand a chance, especially this early in the war.
He couldn't do anything now, though; he had to get out of here. Escape and then bring in the cavalry. He'd get back to Cheyenne Mountain and bring their tanks and Bradleys down on this place; George and his turncoats might have advanced terminators but even they were no match for sixty-plus tonnes of armour and 120mm tank shells. He swore to whatever gods were up there he'd come back and raze the whole place to the ground.
Footsteps sounded outside, approaching the room, and John instantly sprang to attention. Shit! If someone found him now he'd be torn between attacking them with the safety rail and hoping they weren't as inhumanly strong as George or Emily, or shooting them and loudly announcing to everyone in the building where he was. He frantically looked around for anything he could use as a weapon as the footsteps grew louder. He found a tray of surgical tools and picked out a stainless steel scalpel. It wasn't much; the blade was only an inch and a half long but he could plunge it into the neck of whoever was outside if he got the drop on them, then have at them with the safety rail again. It doesn't matter how strong a person is; a clean stab to the carotid would take them down very quickly.
John shoved the Glock into he waistband of his trousers, flattened himself as much as he could against the wall next to the doorway and gripped the scalpel tightly in his hand. He'd only get the one chance to disable them with a strike to the throat; if he missed then he'd be at a huge disadvantage; even if his opponent wasn't as strong as George or Emily, John had been weakened by months of slave labour and days of torture and sleep deprivation.
He felt his heart pounding with fear and anticipation inside his chest as the footsteps stopped just outside. The doors pushed open and a figure stepped forwards. John didn't even look; he just lunged, scalpel-first towards his target and aimed for the side of the neck. The figure spun around to face him with inhuman, lightning reflexes and John stopped in his tracks at the sight of her face, his mouth agape and his eyes wide in disbelief as he dropped the scalpel to the floor. She stared at him with large chocolate-brown doe eyes he never, ever thought he'd see again.
"Cameron?"
A/N: Hope you enjoyed the chapter. I've been on a bit of a writing frenzy the past 2 weeks so I'm hoping to update a lot faster than before. Please do let me know your thoughts on the chapter, too. Next chapter will be posted in a week!