Chapter 3

~o~

As John Connor followed the stream as it cut through what could only be a city, he couldn't help but notice that the layout of the place was like a business district. The buildings ranged from five to twenty floors that were stacked together, such that the space in between each was only enough for an alleyway that fit one or two people side-by-side. However, beyond that, the design of the streets and sidewalks was strange. The sidewalks were larger than what he was used to, and the streets were smaller, sometimes only having room for a single lane in each direction. Despite the tall structures, he could possibly have thought that this was a small town, if it wasn't for the fact there was actually a highway, elevated only four stories off the ground and positioned much too close to the buildings nearby. It was shattered, broken at sections, but it implied that there were supposed to be cars even though there weren't any at all to be seen, abandoned or otherwise.

It was so unlike the design of Los Angeles that it really boggled his mind, feeling a lot more claustrophobic in comparison. There wasn't even space to park a car on the side of the road nor any parking meters. It had a compact efficiency to it, but humans weren't born to be crammed in like sardines. Not that anyone would ever be living in these anymore since the buildings were in ruin, overgrown with plants and pocketed with massive trees sprouting their limbs through the cement. The roads and sidewalks were similarly taken over by dirt and greenery, much of the paint faded with time. It was the very image of a ruined city, but that was all it was. An image. Like a Hollywood prop, it felt only superficial.

John Connor was standing in the middle of the ninth floor of one such building, looking at the empty expanse of a room before him. The layout and design seemed to indicate that it was supposed to be a large space where employees could work in communion. However, there was nothing here. Not a work desk, paperwork, computer, or even a candy bar wrapper. There was only dust, decaying walls, small piles of rubble, and windows where the glass was long gone. He could tell that the room hadn't been stripped. Instead, nothing had been there in the first place. He had explored a couple other similar buildings for supplies, only to find nothing but more evidence of the artificiality of this city. It begged the question though: what was all this for?

John mulled it over as he strode up to the window. From this high up, he could look down on the elevated highway. More importantly, he saw that, on the highway, there were three small robots waddling around aimlessly. Normally, one would think that, as machines, they would always have some goal to complete even if it was something inane like endless patrolling. However, there was no sense to their movements; they simply moved around in random directions, sometimes ending up in each other's path. When it seemed like they would crash into each other, they simply stopped, waved their hands as if greeting each other, and then moved around each other. It was an oddly human-like behavior, though its continuous repetition wasn't.

While he was watching them, he had been expecting something like the both of them changing paths abruptly and simultaneously in coordination with each other, something that would be impossible without some kind of connection or network. However, there wasn't anything like that, and honestly, it made things easier since they wouldn't be able to raise an alarm about his presence.

At least, hopefully.

Raising his assault rifle, John placed the stock against his shoulder, more out of habit than anything else. Despite the disguised plasma rifle seeming to not have any noticeable recoil, he still did it in this way to align the iron sight and steady his aim. Aiming at one of the three robots, he placed his finger just before the trigger but not touching it. The distance was such that he would have preferred to use something a bit more accurate like a sniper rifle, but this would be a good test for calibrating his aim for a long range shot. Just in case, instead of aiming at the torso, he raised the gun slightly, changing the angle so that the iron sight was focused on the spot in between the robot's yellow eyes. If there was any sort of bullet drop, this would compensate for it. In one rapid motion, he squeezed the trigger.

A sharp bullet of plasma shot out of the barrel, lancing through the space. It took a little more than a second before it struck the first robot's head, sending it into a half-spin to the ground with a vaporized scalp. The other two robots' eyes turned red, but they were searching randomly, almost as if they were confused.

After a few seconds of waiting patiently, it was only when it looked like they were simply going to continue their aimless searching that John squeezed off another shot. The bolt of plasma raced through the air and struck the second robot in the neck, immediately detaching its head. It flailed its arms wildly even as it fell backwards, ceasing that action quickly thereafter.

The third robot finally saw him, swinging its arms menacingly as it waddled over to the edge of the highway. However, upon realizing the distance was way too far to make the jump which took it a few agonizing slow seconds to do, the machine began moving back towards the exit of the highway. A shot of plasma smashed into its back, instantly melting through the metal and into its internal circuitry. Smoke wafted from its superheated wound even as it fell forward on its front and ceased operations.

John lowered his pseudo assault rifle. As much as his instincts told him that he should leave, he decided to stay put. He needed to find out if the machines had called in reinforcements somehow—or if they even could. If an assault commences on the buildings, he would be able to hear them coming and use the stairs as a defensive funnel. If he had to abandon this position, he was fairly sure that he could make the jump onto the highway below. It wasn't perhaps advisable to fall that far onto a concrete roadway like that, but he knew how to roll on impact to bleed off the momentum, though there was still a chance of breaking his neck.

In the meantime, while listening closely to the sounds of his surroundings, he thought over what he had discovered. The reason that he had gone up here in the first place was because the stream went underneath the broken highway. Having learned to look up from his previous experiences at the shopping mall, he wasn't too keen on letting the machines get the drop on him again. So he had gone into a tall enough building nearby so he could see what was on the highway, and it turned out his intuition was correct. If he had simply continued following the stream, it was possible they would have jumped down on him. Still, it did present the opportunity to learn more about his weapon and the machines.

The plasma rifle was as ridiculous as he thought; there was virtually no bullet drop, and it was unaffected by wind current. The plasma shot was slower than a bullet, but it made up for it with its lethality. The barrel was now started to warm after three shots, but after gingerly tapping it, John found that it wasn't hot enough to cook an egg so there was still a lot of leeway. Perhaps after a few more shots, it would be. He wanted to test the gun on full-auto, but besides having to wait for it to recharge, he didn't want to risk having the barrel melt and rendering the weapon inoperable, especially since he didn't have a replacement, and the thought of relying solely on his spear was definitely not a pleasant one.

Thankfully, the machines did not seem to be constantly connected to a network, or at the very least, there didn't seem to be any local network or communication with the other robots in their vicinity, as evident by their conflicting patrol paths—if their aimless meandering could even be called that. The search protocols were haphazard and uncoordinated, the last robot took a far longer time than expected to realize that it couldn't jump from the highway to the building. The fact that it considered jumping said something about its AI programming, just as much as the fact that it had reconsidered in the end. He didn't know what to think of it except that it certainly wasn't very efficient for a machine, but that could stem from subpar programming and software.

After a few minutes of waiting—it was difficult to keep count without a watch—John began making his way down the stairs. Stepping lightly and peeking around corners, he journeyed downward floor by floor cautiously. By the time he finally reached the bottom floor, even his excessive caution was starting to wear away at his own patience when he found no machines lying in wait to ambush him.

Just as he was about to take a step out of the building, he heard a loud voice.

"Those idiots!"

John quickly ducked back to the side of the doorway. Peeking out, he saw two people—one woman and one man—standing in the middle of the stream. They were dressed in the same desert mercenary style clothing that he was. However, the things that he noticed the most was that they were armed with StG 44's—World War II era German assault rifles—and they had a ragged white cloth tied to one of their hands or wrists. It was obvious to him that those assault rifles were disguised plasma rifles, though the reasoning for using old era obsolete weaponry as camouflage eluded him.

"I told them again and again to stop littering!" To punctuate her statement, the woman kicked a small machine husk that was lying in the stream, sending it through the air like a football. It bounced pathetically against the dirt and grass, spewing water, screws, and circuit boards in the process.

"Calm down, Jackass."

"I am calm. Don't you see how goddamn calm I am?" The woman huffed indignantly, crossing her arms over her chest. "These assholes are going to kill all of the fishes if they keep doing this shit."

"That's a bit of an exaggeration."

"It really isn't."

While they were talking, John pulled a white cloth out of one of his pouches. Luckily, he hadn't thrown away anything that the Terminator corpse had, except for the underwear. Looping the cloth around his left wrist, he used his teeth and his other hand to tie a knot. However, despite doing that, he didn't go out. That was because, while he could be mistaken as part of whatever cell they were part of from a distance, it was possible that he would be discovered as a stranger upon closer inspection. With the existence of Terminators, getting shot in the chest with a plasma bolt was a very distinct and unpleasant possibility. For now, it was better to observe and gather information since it didn't seem like they were being actively hunted down. After all, they were bantering loudly and carelessly in the middle of unoccupied territory.

"Why not just get the twins to clean it up?" the man asked. "Picking up trash is all they're good for."

"Eh. They always get the worst jobs. Don't you feel sorry for them?"

"Why would I? It's their own fault." The man started looking angry. "If they hadn't screwed things up—"

"Hey, hey. Stop getting worked up over it. That was a long time ago."

"You're one to talk. Weren't you just getting mad over fish?"

"That's recent!"

"Stop yelling," the man said with an aggravated look on his face. "Do you want to bring all the machine lifeforms in the city down on us?"

Machine Life Forms? John filed that question away for later as he focused on the conversation.

"What are you worried about? Most of them don't even attack on sight anymore."

"Only in this area. The ones in the desert are still aggressive."

"They're pretty easy to take care of anyways. You just need the right explosive to blow them all away."

"That's a waste of resources," the man said with a tone that seemed as if he had this conversation many times before. "Just shoot them instead."

"Where would the fun in that be?" Not inclined to listen to the answer, the woman shrugged her shoulders and began walking away upstream. "Let's go back already so I can find out who littered the water with all this junk."

As they moved away, John slipped out of the doorway and silently followed them.

~o~

Following them actually proved both easier and harder than he thought.

What was easier was the fact that they weren't really paying attention to their surroundings, which allowed him to trail after them without having to hide behind pillars or around building corners too much. What made things harder was actually the fact that they moved fast. It was actually to the point where the only reason he was keeping up with them was the fact that they stopped occasionally to point out the sights or to debate. He couldn't make out too much from the snippets since he was spending most of his time catching up to them or taking a breather rather than listening. It was like they didn't need to take a break at all.

The interesting thing was that they actually ignored the small robots that were in their path. However, despite doing that, those small machines did not attack them. They certainly saw them and acknowledged them, but they didn't take any hostile actions at all. Did the humans do something to the machines in this area? Maybe jamming them somehow or replacing their network signal to render them harmless?

Even then, John was honestly still apprehensive about approaching the machines, but there was no way to keep up otherwise and shooting them would only reveal his presence to the two soldiers he had been following. With that in mind, he forced himself to jog forward toward the machines, even as his heart started beating deafeningly in his ears. Surprisingly enough, the robots' eyes never turned red even when he came close to them, and he was able to simply run by them without being attacked.

By that time, he wasn't sure if his heart was beating from the fear or the exertion. Trying to keep those two people in his sights had pushed him to and past his limits, allowing him to traverse more terrain in a shorter amount of time than he would have normally, though he knew that he would feel all of that later. Eventually, he found them standing before a large clearing with a shallow lake that was being replenished by a deluge of water flowing out of a sewer pipe that stuck out of a rocky cliffside. A large boar was drinking from the lake on one of the few "islands" in the middle of it, but considering that the water would only reach halfway up to his knees, barely higher than what the stream it produced could do, there was no danger of being stranded on it at all. The boar simply raised its head and stared at the two with a familiar disdain even as those two soldiers ignored the animal and made their way around the lake. They moved on a path that reached up along the side of the cliff.

There was no way to keep cover in the large clearing, but that didn't seem necessary. Above the cliff was a spot where someone had made makeshift barricades out of sheets of scrap metal. It was shoddy, looking more like something that was made in a rush, hammered together with drilled-in screws and duct tape. The two soldiers went into the open walkway in between the barricades and disappeared out of sight.

John was tempted to follow them. He felt his heart bursting with relief since there were humans. Actual humans! That meant that, despite how bleaks things look, humanity had not fallen on the wayside despite the White Chlorination Syndrome and the presence of the machines. However, as much as he wanted to run in and find out what had happened, caution won out.

These were obviously man-made barricades so there was probably some kind of residence or base behind them. Even though the barricades looked like they were unmanned and practically left with their doors wide-open, that didn't mean that they couldn't hold hidden guards and traps. He wanted to get closer to the barricade to check, but the clearing made it impossible to do so without getting sighted, especially since there were still plenty of buildings just a little distance away. It would be too hard to spot any watchers hidden in the structures around the area. While he did look like one of their soldiers, that would probably only get him up to the entrance at most. Walking up there and then immediately leaving could possibly be noted as suspicious activity, and he didn't want to ruin his disguise so early.

He would need to stake out the barricades and gather information on what he saw. Looking around the area, it wasn't long before he spotted a building that had a floor high enough on it in particular that would be perfect for keeping an eye on the barricade. After that, he looked around some more and found his second choice which he immediately chose to go to instead. If they were halfway competent, they would have a spotter in his first choice so it would be prudent to monitor the traffic for that building. If there really was a spotter stationed there, he would need to ditch his second choice—since there was a chance that a spotter would be stationed at his location as well—and go onto his third choice just to make sure he didn't accidentally bump into someone on the stairs or something.

With that dilemma resolved and his plan determined, he set out for the target site of his second choice.

~o~

After approximately seven days—counted by way of seven naps—John Connor had come to an important conclusion.

Well, a couple of them actually. First, something was wrong. The sun had been out for far too long to even justify with a longer day scenario. In fact, it also didn't look like it had moved at all from its position. If he didn't know better, he would have said that the Earth had stopped rotating, but that would mean the death of all life on the planet.

No spin meant no protection from the sun's deadly solar radiation which would eventually have cooked the surface of the planet. The fact that wild life and a lush forest still existed made that an unlikely , he didn't have much time to dwell on it, especially with only limited information.

Which led him to his second conclusion, specifically about the people he was watching.

They didn't use spotter. At all.

While keeping watch on the barricades, he had gone through every piece of training that his mother had given him for counter-sniper operations—something that wasn't necessary in the special forces since the Legion didn't use human tactics like having snipers—but after hours upon hours of staring at each potential spotter location, he could not find any trace. Just to be sure, he had even gone over to his first choice spot, and all he found there were layers of dust on each and every floor. To tell the truth, he only needed to check the stairs to see if anyone had gone up them, but just to be on the safe side since roof hopping was a possibility, he checked all the floors one by one. The results had, in all honesty, confused him.

There really hadn't been anyone in those positions for a very long time.

Was he further behind the frontlines of the war than he had first thought? There didn't seem to be that same desperate wariness that he had so often seen when he was fighting against the Legion. The anticipation of an attack usually had people itchy and nervous with anxiety and anxiousness. However, none of that seemed present here. Was this area a safe zone? It would make sense in some ways, but not in others like why hasn't this area been completely cleared out of the machine's presence? And that didn't explain what was going on with this superb lack of discipline and organization? Was this cell really like this?

Collating all the information that he gathered from over a week of observation, he found that the answer was…

Yes, they really were that lax.

John had seen individuals, pairs, and groups of soldiers leave and enter the barricade every so often. It wasn't like on patrol timing but actually randomly, as if on their own initiative. Some returned fast, within the day. Others, after a few days. A few, not at all yet. He wasn't sure if those were a transient population or simply on a longer term mission. If he had to guess, it would probably be the latter since they were all similarly dressed like desert mercenaries with minor variations, surprisingly uniformed despite their seemingly careless ways. However, there was one exception. Or rather, one pair of exceptions.

"…looks like they are at it again."

He watched as twin red-headed girls started leaving the barricades. What made them stand out was that they were dressed differently than the rest of the soldiers. They wore black shawls and long white shirts that reached down to their knees, slitted on the sides and held to their waist by a black belt. On their lower halves were crimson jeans, knee guards, and shin-high black boots. Most importantly, they didn't have any white cloth tied to their hands or wrists, though they did have white flowers in their hair. However, the only thing that really differentiated the twins from each other was their hairstyle as one had a wavy, wild mane while the other had a straight and prim hairstyle.

This was actually the third time in a week that they had gone out, which was more than he saw of anyone else. With their appearances, there was no doubt in his mind that these twins were the ones talked about in the conversation he overheard a week ago. They did not have the white cloth that he had noticed on the others, and he had seen several people give them a wide berth as if they were actively avoiding them. He wondered what they had done that was so bad to be ostracized this badly, but there were not enough clues to figure that out. More importantly, they had returned not so long ago, which was why he was surprised to see them come out again so soon. After their second outing, he was sure one of those girls had been injured because she had been leaning on her sister. However, that straight-haired girl didn't seem so injured now, but it was possible that she could just be hiding it well. There was no doubt in his mind that these two were outcasts.

And they were his best option for information since outcasts were not likely to remember every single face they encountered.

~o~

A/N: Hope you enjoy the chapter. Thanks, Vahn, for editing as always.

Also, Ko-fi if you want to support my work.