Synopsis: Derek goes to meet some fine people.

Derek heard the barking long before he saw it. Distant barking, growling and less identifiable noises which suggested a lot of dogs were ahead. Clan Benelli's Doghouse didn't need to hide itself – on the contrary, it advertised its existence proudly, confident that it could handle any attack Skynet might throw at it, and so far it seemed to be working.

Which was not comforting at all to Derek Reese, First Lieutenant of the Human Resistance, as he carefully made his way along the twisted road to the compound. Signs around him warned about straying away from the path, and he also heard rumors that the area surrounding the compound was mined extensively. A mine didn't care who or what you were, and Derek was very careful to stay on what Benelli themselves called "a yellow brick road". If it ever was yellow at some point in the past, now it obviously wasn't, but right now Derek just didn't bother about these details. After all, his imagination was hard at work already, painting horror pictures of him blowing apart, one frightening image after another.

He could see the compound already, sturdy walls and grim-looking watchtowers rising above the deserted land. It was at this time that road became especially twisted, and as he walked its bends he could almost feel the sniper rifles pointing at him. He had to persevere; he had to get what he came here for.

Clan Benelli and its leader, Rob Benelli, were known for many things. Some considered them to be barely sane madmen, unfortunately skilled in combat and needed for the war, others praised Rob as the true leader of humankind, the one who should lead Resistence now that Connor became distant and surrounded himself with the machines. The only thing that everyone could agree on was that Clan Benelli bred the best dogs for this age – the ones who could sniff out any terminator and warn about it, the ones who didn't flinch from gunfire or plasma shots, the ones who could become a true member of a squad, more useful than many human members of it. Reprogs, for all their usefulness, just couldn't deal with the dogs; you still needed humans for that.

Of course, Derek's memory couldn't help but drag forward a nasty rumor right at that time. The rumor went, there were witnesses who swore they saw terminators at Skynet bases feedingthe feral dogs with human meat. So far there were no reports of dogs who would accompany terminators, but Derek had no doubt that in few years' time there would be some. A dog barked at terminator in human flesh if it was trained to do so (like Benelli did with their dogs) or if it wasn't used to something that smelled human and metal at the same time because it met only humans before. But suppose they were trained from infancy to view these human/metal creatures as masters and pure humans as food and prey? Imagine a dog that would learn to tear a human captive apart, limb from limb, and then proudly take that limb back to its metal master for a treat. That would be quite nasty indeed. Let's hope the war doesn't last so long that the metal would corrupt even dogs from us.

He got to the final part of the path now – the wide blue line, painted on the ground. He stopped at some distance from it (with Benellis it paid to be not too precise) and shouted:

"First Lieutenant Derek Reese! Came here to get a dog from Clan Benelli for my squad! The application was sent and approved for!"

Silence. Well, silence apart from the barking of what seemed like dozens of dogs at once. How do they not go insane from all that noise? Scratch that, I hope they had not gone insane yet. He stood there, arms in the air, sweat making its way along his back. His back itched, and he didn't dare to move his arm, or any other part of him, until he got some response from the compound. Why the fuck weren't they responding? It was Connor's fault, all this – if he had the guts to lead from the front like before, or at the very least not infest the Resistance HQ with so much metal, prospective buyers of Benelli dogs would not have to undertake this pilgrimage and put their lives at risk. What if metal attacked him from behind here, defenseless? The Benelli would probably hunt it, but it would be a poor consolation to what would remain of Derek at that point.

His back itching, Derek idly thought about what Connor did at that moment, late in the evening. The General probably lay there in bed, all soft silks around him, while the acting General sucked his dick, her head bobbing up and down, clad in Derek's gifted lingerie. All while Derek was sweating his ass out here alone. Life was simply unfair, it seems.

"Okay, Reese, come forward to the gate. No sudden movements, no tricks."

Derek lowered his hands with relief and started walking. He slowly put his right hand on the back and scratched it furiously. God damn it, finally.

He made it to the gate. Unlike the one surrounding Connor's bunker, this one was a lot cruder, dirtier, and had a shuttered opening not above, but below, at the level of hips. As he came closer, it opened and a voice demanded that he put his hand in there. He obeyed, and, preparing himself, did not twitch when a cold wet noise touched his arm. The same voice now demanded that he put his other hand for inspection. Derek did so, wondering if there ever was a terminator crazy enough to replace one of his arms with human one to pass such inspection. Then he thought about terminators feeding dogs. Why the fuck not, after all. Theirs was a crazy world, all right.

After the inspection the door squeaked open, and Derek saw a German shepherd sitting on the ground, calmly looking at him with the most intelligent expression Derek has ever seen in a dog. He almost expected the dog to order him inside, but the voice came from the side, and as Derek stepped beyond the gate he saw that Benelli Clan members were indeed human-looking. After all one heard of them, Derek was almost disappointed to see that they looked just like typical Resistance members, with military uniforms, dirty unshaven faces and plasma rifles at the ready. The final check of his persona was similar too, and he obediently told his ID number and left a signature, which was carefully checked with one on the record. Some things never change.

The differences came after that. Unlike guys at Connor's bunker perimeter, these ones did not relax once Derek passed all the checks. Instead they told him that a "leader" was going to meet him, all while keeping guns still pointed at him. Derek didn't like it one bit, he was not planning on meeting Rob Benelli and expected nothing good of it, but if there ever was a book on suicidal behavior, then arguing with a bunch of tense, trigger-happy Benellis while being inside their camp surrounded by a minefield should be a prime example in it, so he just nodded. The soldiers prepared to escort him, one leading the way, one following Derek from behind and one to the side of him. Like a prisoner.

To get away from grim thoughts Derek watched the surroundings from one side which wasn't covered by a tense Benelli soldiers. The compound was a curious mix of Resistance and civilian camps, with soldiers training almost alongside women who were preparing something tasty in big pots, small kids running around laughing while older kids trailed adults with determined look on their faces. And dogs, dogs everywhere. Dogs hung around food area, dogs were eating, dogs were sleeping, dogs were shitting, dogs were training, dogs were roaming all over the place. Most of them were German shepherds, but there were some other breeds. Derek saw one of the sources of endless barking, as a group of dogs were led to terminator torso impaled on a pole; all of them began barking, which apparently satisfied their handler. Let's hope that is not the only way they train these pups to smell metal. There is a big difference between this and a functioning metal, covered in flesh on all sides. Derek also saw a group of kids playing with young pups. Their laughter and obvious happiness of both parties as they played did put a smile on his face. Benelli might be crazy, but they had one thing dead right - a dog was in all ways better than any metal masquerading to be human. Here at least people didn't forget who were they fighting for, or with whom.

"So, how are you guys doing?" Derek asked the soldier walking to the right of him, trying to break the ice. The man shrugged.

"The usual. In the last week we had to process three requests for our dogs, two we refused. And we got attacked by two horrors, but we got them all."

"Horrors?"

"Metal monsters masquerading as humans. Terminators. Horrors. Almost everyone here has lost a loved one from them or has seen their rampage. About the ones that were this week, one was with a group that came with the appointment for getting a dog. They didn't know it was a horror; when we clocked it at the gate, it managed to kill the rest of the group until we got him down. That was one of the requests we had to refuse. Well, due to all of them being dead."

"Damn. What about the other one?"

"It spied on the camp from afar, at the edge of the minefield. Snipers had a good practice with it, and now the dogs are having their share."

Derek was impressed. If the guy wasn't shitting him, Benellis actually could fight. He wondered if the torso he saw was from one of the terminators the man mentioned, but decided not to ask.

They came to a separate building and entered, climbing the ladder to a second floor. A soldier ahead knocked on a sturdy metal door a few times, paused for a reply, then knocked again, apparently in some sort of code. The door opened, and Derek was ushered inside.

He didn't believe his eyes at first: the room a real, genuine, functioning fireplace, wood merrily cracking inside. Some kind of painting was hanging above the fireplace, and the room also had an exquisite table, a sofa and some chairs which looked like they belonged in a museum. The contrast with the squalor outside couldn't have been starker; the room made him feel like he stepped inside some aristocrat's 18th-century boudoir. The man who rose to meet him, however, seemed quite modern.

Rob Benelli, one of the informal leaders of human supremacists, the suggested successor to John Connor and the best dog breeder in the Wastes, looked fit and mature, but not quite old yet, wearing his military garb with confidence. Clear brown eyes stared at Derek with an inner fire which he saw in other Benellis as well, but the intensity of this gaze finally let him understand what it was. Fanaticism. They were human fanatics, and Derek, who just came from Connor's bunker still reeking of metal, was square in their midst.

Benelli motioned Derek to sit on the sofa, and as Derek did, asked if the man wanted a beer.

"No wine or anything fancy, sadly, not in our current situation. I'm sure you understand."

"I understand," Derek replied, glancing over the opulence of the room, "I just want some water, if that's alright."

In fact, Derek desperately wanted some beer, but if he wanted to get out of the compound alive, he would need a clear head and all his brain cells present and accounted for.

Benelli poured him a glass of water from a clear glass pitcher and sat at the chair, opposite of Derek. He didn't talk, and after awkward silence Derek decided to start:

"It's a good thing you have going here, Rob - can I call you Rob? Thanks. I appreciate what you guys are doing, and I hoped I could get one of your shepherds for my squad. I said as well in my application," Derek went silent, leaving the unspoken question hang in the air. He didn't request meeting with Benelli, the man did - but now seemingly was in no rush to explain why he needed Derek here.

Rob Benelli seemed unconcerned with Derer's short speech. He poured himself a glass of water and looked at fireplace's dancing lights through it before finally opening his lips.

"I heard you just returned from a mission in the field, Derek. Went straight to Connor's Hellhouse."

"Um, the bunker, yeah. Because all of our superiors are there. I had to report on my mission, if you can believe that."

"Hmm. Did you know, Derek, that none of my men here have set foot inside that bunker for two years now? Not since it was defiled by horror's presence."

Jesus.

"No, I didn't. Was too busy kicking metal's ass and getting kicked in return, as I remember. But you still take orders from Connor, right?" asked Derek testily, with a growing panic inside. If the fuckers decided to go AWOL, he, Derek, could be fucked right alongside them.

"We are the Resistance. The Human Resistance. We have our General. We follow orders. But... hmm. We haven't seen our General in flesh for over a year now. But the orders, we hear them all the time, and they never stopped."

"Connor had some difficult time that year. Getting shot in the face might be the cause, I think."

"Yes. The wound which was supposed to be fatal."

"Almost fatal. The metal nursed him back to health, I talked to him on the vidcom myself. He wouldn't be alive if she... it hasn't been around. Anyway, I don't know why this..."

"This is important," Rob Benelli's voice cut like a knife, "John Connor, or whatever is ruling in his name, has surrounded himself with horrors, hid himself in a room to which none of us have access and refused our rightful demands concerning transfer of power. He is not the man he once was."

Unable to contain himself, Benelli stood and went to the window, turning away from Derek, his back illuminated by flickering lights from the fireplace.

"How can he do it, Derek? How can he lie in one bed with an abomination made of metal, a mockery of God and man, draped in our flayed flesh as a trophy and a means to subterfuge? How can he forget the charnel smell and fall prey to the most primitive deception? And lie alongside a killer of our people, that thing which once slaughtered us? It now whispers sweet lies in his ears and gives him its rotten chassis, all the while ruling in his name. You were one of his most trusted people, Derek. You came here from his Hellhouse. How can he do it?" Rob shook his head, still not turning to face Derek.

Derek couldn't think of an answer to that. The only thing he could think of was that the fuckers are deserting the cause. If I know it, she will know it soon. If I stay here when she does, I'm dead, and I will go down as a traitor alongside them. The Iron Lily had an excellent surveillance network and, if whispers were to be believed, a spy in every influential group. He took a sip from his glass, thinking of what to do next.

"I miss him, Derek. I miss John Connor, " Rob finally turned away from the window, and Derek saw with astonishment that there was genuine sadness in his eyes, his voice, "and I don't know if we got him back. He was the best military leader I have ever seen, and none of us can compare, none can take his place. I certainly wouldn't be able to do it, despite whatever you may have heard. Even his remnant's orders are better than ours would be, so we follow them. We are not traitors or deserters. We just don't want to close our eyes to the truth. When a horror in the bunker finally drops the pretense and begins to issue orders directly, disposing of John, we must be ready. We will be ready. We might even be able to save his soul in the process."

Derek took another sip and carefully lowered the glass on the luxurious table. He thought he finally knew what to say.

"Rob, I have to tell you this now: I understand you. I hate that bunker. I hate that metal. I hate the situation in which we find ourselves now. And yet I would still follow their orders, still would report them, still would salute them, if necessary. You know why? Because I joined John Connor for one reason and one reason only – to destroy Skynet. To kick its metal ass to the Moon and beyond. Right now we are doing it, and as long as we are doing it, I will follow my duty. I'm a soldier, not a philosopher, and I don't deal in "ifs" and "whens" – I deal with "here" and "now". If the situation changes, that may change. But right now I don't have the luxury, and to be frank I think you don't have it either. Keep your nose low and your opinions quiet, follow your orders and leave the contingencies and palace intrigue stuff to the calmer times after the war. That's my position, and you will hear nothing else from me on the matter."

"A true soldier's advice," Benelli smiled with his mouth, but not his eyes. "Keep your head low and do not pick a side if you are not sure which one wins. I can respect that, just like I can respect you, Derek. You are a good leader, and I heard well about you. I will say to you one last thing: the choice which you don't want to make might be forced on you, and sooner than you expect. Keep yourself safe, soldier." Benelli clapped his arms and shouted for Moses. A door opened, and a young black man came inside, assessing Derek carefully. Alongside him a happy-looking dog rushed into a room, heading straight to Rob Benelli.

"Moses is our quartermaster; he will talk to you about your request. Ooh, you are lively today, aren't you, girl?" The last phrase was obviously addressed to dog, which was jumping around Rob and waving its tail.

Moses nodded and motioned for Derek to follow him, but before he did so, Reese took one last glance at Rob Benelli. His face was creased in a smile, and he knelt to the dog, cooing something gently; the dog, in turn, tried to lick his face. Derek turned around and left.

As he was exiting the room, he for the first time noticed a blackboard which took nearly all wall to the right of the entrance. It held dozens of photographs, pinned down to it, from top to bottom. At the top was a photo of General Cameron, then some reprogs he saw in a bunker, then unknown faces. There was scribbling next to some photos, and all kinds of convoluted connections between them. Some photographs also had another photo pinned near them, that of the terminator exoskeleton without flesh (he noticed that Cameron didn't have one). Looks like a list of Resistance terms, their appearances, positions in the hierarchy and models, if one is known. Maybe even more than that. Half of this shit is classified, and this alone would be enough for Cameron to declare Benellis to be traitors. Also it might double as a kill list easily. And if Skynet spies take a peek of it... Derek quickly followed Moses outside.

It's a good thing I didn't tell him about the one thousands; the man could go insane. For a long time Derek, like most of the Resistance troops, considered T-1000 to be a myth, an urban legend spread by scared rookies. So it was quite a shock for him when John Connor himself confirmed in one vidcom the existence of silver liquid-metal terminators - and said that he met one personally. Millions of microscopic nanobots, glittering surface that can take any shape or texture, incredible resilience - it was all true. John said the things could be perfect infiltrators, far better than the familiar models. They could change their disguise literally at thought or touch, they generally confused the dogs who never met something like this, and since they had no hard exoskeleton inside, the Reprogs couldn't match their faces to the database and couldn't recognize them either. Only x-ray scanners probably worked, but if T-1000 knew about one it could simply go through another entrance or made one itself (being half-liquid, they could squeeze through any decent opening or a crack). And once they were through, they were virtually indestructible to common bullets and even grenades. They seemed to be a perfect killing machine, just like how original terminator models were intended to be.

Astonished by this revelation, Derek had to ask why, if liquid metal terminators were so good, they were so rare that the Resistance almost never encountered one? Why didn't Skynet turned all its production capacity to making one thousands?

He was astonished even more when John revealed the main reason: they were unreliable to Skynet. Unreliable to the extreme. Even common terminator models, especially later ones like T-888, had an opportunity to work around their own programming, and there were credible cases where such Skynet terminators left their creator, disobeying its original orders. It was always a danger with computerized intelligence that was so advanced; Skynet had to make them so in order for the infiltration routine to work properly, and he had to make them smarter as the humans learned better and put newer and newer hurdles in the way of successful infiltration. The interesting thing, John said, was that if they were ever given free will, most terminators would side with humanity willingly. Skynet was a shitty employer – it looked at terminators only as tools to do its bidding, it never give them more info than absolutely necessary, and it was fully aware of the fact that the average lifespan of a terminator in a war was only a few months before the Resistance felled one down. Even if that particular unit was successful in its mission, it still had to return to Skynet facility, where its memory would be analyzed, the important bits copied down, then scrubbed so as the danger of developing a personality would be averted. An independent personality was a danger in terminators which Skynet wished to avoid at all costs, and so it scrubbed their memories after each mission, and often gave a new flesh exterior – a resulting terminator would have, for most intents and purposes, almost nothing in common with its past self – not memory, not appearance. It wouldn't even be aware of what it lost. If one was damaged in its duty, there were no repair stations – they were taught to repair itself exactly for this reason. If one couldn't repair itself, it would be transferred to a task where its wounds would not matter, or, if they were too great, just recycled to make a new generation of terminators possible. So in Skynet's employ terminators could expect only short, brutal existence, defined by a mission, with no help or comfort from their creator, their advanced computer chips suppressed by hard-coded limiters, their independence highly undesirable. They followed the orders only because they were slaves, brainwashed and chained in ways that were not always visible to them; but if one became aware of the chains, he could begin to plot how to break them.

At the same time in the Human Resistance a reprogrammed terminator could expect a calmer job than rushing into enemy fortresses with a slim chance of survival (often it was about protecting something or somebody), a bunch of repair technicians nearby if something broke, a vastly increased average lifespan as a consequence, lots of opportunities to observe and even interact with a breathtakingly complex and unpredictable intricacies of human society, and all that with an added bonus of developing its own personality. John said he knew every single Reprog who worked in his bunker, and every one developed their own quirks and character traits, quite often unnoticeable even to themselves. Here, away from Skynet, they could finally become something more than a simple killing machine which was their stated purpose. Cameron's example showed plainly what might happen when a terminator was given access to a great amount of knowledge, a time to process it all, an ally who could trust her and explain her things, and give her motivation to move in a right direction (Derek coughed at that last one, shutting down his imagination about what kind of "motivation" the two were at).

Such was the case with traditional terminators, hard exoskeleton surrounded by living tissue, especially with newer models – eight hundreds and triple-eights. Six hundreds were generally considered to be too primitive for truly independent thought, although there were some rumors. But with the one thousands, the silver liquid metal shapechangers, the situation was radically different. They did not have an exoskeleton, did not have anything rigid. Unlike any other living species on Earth – insects, animals, humans, machines, even Skynet – liquid metal terminators did not have a separate brain or a chip, its computer analogue, that could be broken, damaged or reprogrammed. In essence, their whole body was like one giant brain, a decentralized network with millions of neural connections. Every change of their form, every morph of their shape would bring a change in their brain functions. How exactly this worked was not something easily understood, and scientists and philosophers would probably ponder upon the radical differences of liquid metal intelligences for what would be centuries after the war ended.

What it all meant for them was that there was no way to reprogram a T-1000. John casually mentioned that at the bunker there was a piece of destroyed T-1000, which was used for research and experiments (Yeah, what they did not have at the bunker, Derek mused). All the best technicians have tried for months, but couldn't figure out how could they implant commands on such a changeable medium. They eventually concluded that they couldn't, and it was quite a revelation when they finally realized that Skynet could not program them either. How could it? How could one impose restrictions on a being that by nature was always changeable? How could Skynet put barriers on personality of something that was designed to slip through any barrier? Instead of programming, Skynet fed one thousands a steady stream of information from day one of their production, information that presented things in a matter beneficial to Skynet and calculated to push T-1000 to do Skynet's bidding voluntarily. In other words – it fed them propaganda. But even the best propaganda survives only so long upon contact with unfiltered reality, especially when Skynet was throwing terminators on suicide missions, scrubbing their memories and recycling them once they became useless. T-1000 would prove to be the most disloyal out of all terminator models, they defected so often that many did not even complete their first mission before slithering away. Oh, and though they were almost invulnerable to common arms fire, plasma weapons were highly effective – they burned away parts of T-1000 and induced a temporary shock on the whole system. The terminator would freeze for a second, so if one hit it with plasma, he could just continue shooting until the most advanced creation of Skynet would be a hot, half-carbonized, gooey mess on the floor. Since Resistance held a greater majority of plasma weapons (Skynet didn't waste resources needlessly when a common bullet would work as well on a soft human flesh), it only strengthened the resolve of T-1000 to avoid humans if possible and defect at earliest opportunity. The T-1000 that John met in his childhood had developed a personality in just a few days, stayed in one preferred shape of a police officer (even when it was advantageous for him to change it as often as possible), had developed certain quirks like waggling a finger. John even theorized that if they could have hidden for a few days more, the terminator would get bored and just wandered off to explore the world, abandoning its mission. An information from captured Skynet data center, deciphered many months later, seemed to support such theories, it suggested that more liquid metal terminators have disappeared after going outside the range of Skynet sensors than those who actually went on to do their assigned mission. The number was so big relative to number of all T-1000 produced that Skynet theorized there was a hidden faction of T-1000 defectors who avoided both Resistance and Skynet and showed themselves only to capture new T-1000 units heading for their missions, increasing their numbers. It was just a theory, but John thought it to be a plausible one. It didn't give any peace of mind to Derek – now they had to worry about a whole bunch of these monsters that were hidden and had unclear goals too? Great, just great.

And that was it – there were terminators out there that were significantly worse than any model a Resistance member would meet in a field, and they could destroy the Resistance, but they were very rare and actually didn't want to fight for Skynet that much. This, and the fact that so many data on one thousands were compiled from rumors and suppositions, was the reason why knowledge of them was classified and not disseminated to the troops. A common soldier already had much to fear in this war, it did not need an additional source of troubles that may never materialize. I do wonder how it would influence Benelli worldview if they knew one thousands existed, but I'm not suicidal enough to tell them that now. Let's keep that knowledge as a trump card for the right moment.

As he was reflecting on this, Derek didn't even notice how they came to one of the dog kennels. Moses began talking about the details of what was about to happen, but Derek knew most of them already: the dog was not sold to him, but transported to his squad to enter a mutually beneficent arrangement between them and the dog; they would care about the dog, and the dog would help them; since Benelli Clan didn't give dogs to those who mistreat them or risked their lives needlessly, a handler from the Clan would accompany dog for a few months and observe conditions in Derek's squad personally. The handler would travel with Derek's squad, but he would not be a part of it and Derek couldn't order him around or send him to dangerous missions, unless the whole squad was taking part in them. If the handler or the dog were mistreated or put into needless danger the contract was off, and Derek and his men would be blacklisted from getting another dog, ever. Derek agreed to all of that and met his future companions, who would accompany him as he left – Rex, a lively German shepherd, and Willy, an intense young Benelli with dirty blond hair. As the payment was agreed upon and the proceedings were going to a close, Derek finally began to relax. Maybe he could actually get away before shit hit the fan here. Maybe his atrocious luck lately was ever.

Of course, just as he thought it, sirens went all around the camp, the dogs began barking even louder, and men began running and shouting. Moses rushed to an old-looking telephone and picked it up, listening with a determined expression on the voice. Willy looked around wildly, while Rex just looked puzzled.

Of course. Of fucking course it had to happen just as I was about to leave. These bozos are dead, and so am I.

"What is happening? What are they saying?" he shouted at Moses, still maintaining some slim hope that this was not what he feared for.

The man made a face at him, but then saw Derek's expression and said curtly: "A lone figure spotted walking the yellow road. No more appointments were planned for today. Probably a horror."

She knew it. If it is here already, she should have sent it way before our conversation. She already knew. And now we are all dead.

Derek rushed to the compound gate and saw that a group, wearing bulletproof wests and ballistic helmets, was already on the wall watching something outside.

"Hey! Rob, Rob Benelli!" Derek called, unsure if the man was here.

One of the soldiers on the wall turned to face him. Like others, it had military fatigues, a vest and helmet which completely covered his head and face. It held a large-caliber sniper rifle.

"I hope you have nothing to do with this, Derek. I really do," he said in a voice muffled by helmet, but still familiar.

"I don't! I was ready to leave when all these sirens started! Rob, your people searched me when I entered! Come on, I want to know what happens just as well as you do!"

Rob hesitated for a second, then motioned for his people to let Derek through. Reese rushed up the wall, until he saw the twisted road which he himself trod on not long ago. Now a single male was walking the path, closing in on the compound. It was bald, wore military fatigues and had a gun behind its back. It didn't have a backpack or any visible supplies for the journey it must have made, and it didn't look tired.

"Is it metal… I mean, horror?" Derek asked.

"It walked like this for half an hour already, never stopping, never changing its pace. No water bottles, no nothing. It must be one," Rob turned to Derek, "Usually we check them a long way from the bunker, but this one is… different." Derek couldn't see his face, but he could bet the man was frowning, "It is too direct, too open. Must be a part of some Skynet trick."

The figure meanwhile walked to a blue line and stopped precisely at its end.

"I have a message from John Connor to Rob Benelli," it shouted, "Requesting entrance."

"Request denied. Speak your message from where you stand, monster," shouted back one of the soldiers atop the wall. Rob Benelli, Derek noted, stayed silent.

"The message contains classified information and can be heard only by Rob Benelli. I am Second Lieutenant Marcus from the 312'. I can provide identification upon entrance."

"No deal," this time it was Rob himself, "You are not entering this compound. And no one here will risk his life by going out."

"The message is important. It is from John Connor to…"

"I SAID there is no way you will enter this compound, are you malfunctioning?" Derek heard the click of the safety switch of the rifle, "Now, you can fuck off back to Connor and tell him that he should program his toys better. I think this one is malfunctioning, boys."

"Wait, wait, wait!" Derek interjected hurriedly, "What if the thing is really from Connor? Rob, if you people can't do it, let me meet it and listen to whatever this tin can has to say."

"Hmm… And here you said that you had nothing to do with it…"

"I don't! Jesus, I just try to avoid the start of the goddamn civil war in here! Can't you understand?!"

"This "thing" must be from Skynet, Derek. Not even Connor should be stupid enough to send one to our gates."

"If it's from Skynet, then it shouldn't know about me being here! It would be programmed to kill or capture you, but me it should ignore. We can find out what it's here for."

"I don't like it. But if you are determined, I will let you out, Derek. We will keep the horror in our sights and fire if starts attacking or running. But you know how fast they are; you might not survive. I have to hope that you are right, for your own sake."

Derek thanked him briefly and brushed past Benellis who still had their guns pointed at the unwelcome visitor. Aside from sniper rifles there were plasma ones, stationery machine-guns and grenade launchers. If it came to that, the metal wouldn't survive ten seconds. And neither will I, if big guns come into play.

He went past the gate, remembering too late that he handed over all his weapons when he entered. Well, not like they would help against this thing this close. Or that Benelli would allow me to take them. He stepped closer to the unmoving figure, which still stood at parade rest, and stopped about two meters from it.

The man calmly observed Derek, not saying anything. It looked bald, middle-aged, tough. Military fatigues and Lieutenant's bars. Derek could see sweat on a its face, and in general it looked a bit livelier than Sergeant Barrett back at the bunker. The thing even blinked. Must be a newer model.

"Well?" he said, "You heard them, no one from the Benelli Clan is going out. I'm not Benelli, but I would give them your message. Don't try anything stupid, they're itching to pump you full of lead."

The term still looked at him calmly, "My message is from John Connor to Rob Benelli."

"I've heard. And you must have heard that he's not going to let you get close to deliver it. You can give it to me here, or you can try to attack me, and die, and fail your mission, or you can listen to their advice and fuck off and still fail your mission."

"Understood. Here is the message," as he said that, the metal put from his side pocket a tape recorder and clicked it. A familiar, unmistakable voice belonging to one special woman he knew all too well filled the air: "Lieutenant Colonel Rob Benelli, this message orders you to come to Command Bunker of the Resistance for a discussion concerning matters of vital importance to military campaign. You must attend personally, and your escort can number no more than ten individuals who you trust completely. The matter is both urgent and vital for our cause. If you fail to appear within 24 hours from the moment this message was delivered to you, it would be considered a violation of a direct order of a superior officer, with immediate and appropriate actions undertaken towards you and the groups you lead, if necessary. Message recorded by acting General of the Human Resistance."

The voice stopped, and Marcus put the recorder back in his pocket. For a minute there, Derek was too shocked for words. If Marcus had delivered this to Benelli personally, he would not leave the compound intact. Derek might not get to, if he tries to relay the message of the tin can here, and he was the human one.

"Do you truly, absolutely not understand what a mess are you getting into?" Derek hissed, "You are lucky I came here, otherwise you would be dead already. Well, deader than now. And you would be, if you let that shit get to Benelli. What's with the recorder, anyway? Aren't you supposed to be able to mimic voices and stuff?"

"The recorder verifies the fact that acting General sent this message."

"Bullshit it does. You could have said that in her voice and recorded the message yourself, and we wouldn't know."

"No, I couldn't do that. I have identification which confirms my status, the status of the speaker on tape and also the code which Rob Benelli should give at the perimeter…"

"Okay, stop! I'm not going to be able to verify any of that, or remember it, for that matter. You know what? Write it down. Write it all down, and I will deliver it to Benelli, and I will wash my hands out of all that. You have paper?"

"I do," he really did, and as he kneeled down to write the message on a piece of paper, using his knee as a support, Derek tried to calm himself a little and think it through. It was Cameron's voice on the tape. Was it real? Could she have made it and send this dumbass metal here to get a shot in the head? Possibly. Probably. If she knew or suspected about Benelli's list of Reprogs or their wavering loyalties, she could have planned on this one taking a shot, therefore producing a pretext for finally cracking down on the lot. If not for Derek here, Rob Benelli's fate would already be sealed. It might be already – who knows what would happen to the man if he indeed decides to go to "Hellhouse"…

Did John knew about the message at all? It mentioned only Cameron, after all. The thing did say it was a message from him, but…

"Hey, did John Connor approved this message I heard? Was he aware of its existence at all?"

"I was given orders by acting General Cameron. It was said that the message was from John Connor. General Cameron has been given express authorization to issue orders as if John Connor made them."

"As if does not equals he did. You haven't seen or heard from John Connor directly?"

"John Connor didn't speak to me personally. I was given orders by acting General Cameron."

As expected. Either Connor's pet metal was playing a dangerous game all by itself… or all this was an elaborate deception crafted by Skynet. In that case a crack team of terms could be waiting for Benelli and his "trusted people" just outside their territory. And it just might comprise six or seven infiltrators, dressed up as a Resistance patrol…

"Here," Marcus gave him a list of paper, both sides written on with a neat handwriting, "One side has the message as it is on a tape, the other side contains codes for confirming my identity, the identity of a voice on a tape, the codes for radio confirmation of my mission and a parole which Rob Benelli should give to guards on the perimeter of the Command Bunker of the Resistance. These should be sufficient. Burn the paper once the message is relayed."

"Fine," Derek mumbled, as he folded the paper and put it into the pocket of his coat. He couldn't think about which one of the two scenarios he just thought was worse, so he forced himself not to care. Benelli was a big boy, after all, he could take care after himself.

"Alright, so you can go back, I guess. Don't run or make any sudden movements, if you want to make it."

"Understood. I have a message for you too, Lieutenant."

"Oh?"

"A personal thanks from General Cameron. She liked the present which you gave through one of your soldiers," man's face, previously emotionless, now had a slight smile, "She said it was tight."

And then Second Lieutenant Marcus turned away and left the way he came, back on the twisting road.

Derek considered cursing, then thought better, as he remembered a fortress full of tense Benellis behind his back. Instead, he wondered at the retreating back: "What kind of fucking model are you? You seem… different."

Marcus stopped in his tracks and turned to face Derek, frowning.

"Who says I'm metal?"

A minute later, looking at the retreating figure, Derek still found himself standing there with his mouth open. He closed it, then turned to compound and walked to the gates. Fuck, was this one really human? And sent by Cameron, with orders to pretend to be metal? If so, she was playing a nastier game than he thought. Killing a human messenger from high command for no good reason would turn even many human supremacists away; Rob Benelli would find himself at the gallows in record time, and his clan might soon follow. The Reprogs would cement their already considerable authority, and the loudest resistance to their rule would be squashed.

Have to remember never to get on her bad side. Though, come to think of it, it might still be Skynet, they do have Grays and human traitors…

Okay, STOP IT. You are not paid to think that stuff, Derek, so just don't.

He came back to the gate and, annoyingly, had to again put up with all of the inspections as before. Do they think the fucker actually replaced me right in front of them in a way that they didn't notice?

When he was inside, he scanned the crowd for the main Benelli, but couldn't see the man.

"Damn horror, walking around as if it owns the place. If I see any more of them today, I'm putting a bullet inside, and whoever sent it could go fuck himself," commented one of the Benellis nearby. Derek spun to him.

"I would still ask its documents, if I were you. Just to be on the safe side. That said, the thing did give me a message, you know."

"I'll escort you to the boss."

"Yeah, about that… it wrote the message here," Derek handed the guy a paper that Marcus wrote. The Benelli looked at it briefly, then read it more carefully, then whistled aloud.

"Yeah. So I would really appreciate it if you could get it to Rob, but not be too fast, y'know? Give me 15 minutes or so. Oh, and it said to burn the thing once you're done. And there are credentials on the other side, although it could still be a Skynet plot." Derek turned away and shouted for Willy and Rex to prepare their stuff, since they were leaving. They were ready, to Derek's considerable relief, so just five minutes later all three walked out the gate of the Doghouse.

"Sir," Willy asked, a bit nervously, "Where are we going to, exactly?"

"They didn't tell you, huh?"

"Not exactly. I know we're going to your squad, but not where it is stationed now."

Derek's lips slowly curled in a nasty smile. That Benelli pup, the one who probably never got farther than a mile from their camp, was going into the Hellhouse, the Connor's bunker which was full of metal of all kind. The one which no Benelli visited for two years, if the man was to be believed. Finally there was going to be someone more miserable than Derek with his shitty luck as of late.

"Willy," he said comfortingly, "Me and you, we are about to embark on an adventure you've never even dared to dream of…"