ACT II

 "What did you do to her?" Murch stopped halfway through setting a bulging plastic bag down on the table, his eye caught by Cameron's display of defiance. He'd turned up within half an hour of Sarah's aborted conversation with the machine. Sarah hadn't even realized he was gone until Ellison had sent Savannah to call him down for breakfast and that was something they were going to have to talk about.  She wasn't going to have their dubious safety put at risk by spontaneous shopping trips. 

 "Nothing, she's being a smartass," Sarah snapped, taking the bag out of his hands and dropping it on the table beside the terminator's body. The logo looked like it came from some kind of electronics store, and her suspicion was confirmed when she pulled out several headsets wrapped in hard plastic. "What's all this?"

 "Are you sure?" Murch responded to her initial comment first, pushing his glasses back up his nose. "There could be something wrong…" His hands reached seemingly of their own accord towards the controls, and Sarah sighed, denying the tiny twinge of worry brought on by his concern.

 "If it makes you feel better, go ahead and check," she grumbled, pulling a pair of small devices out of the bag that looked like fancy hearing aides.

 Murch didn’t wait for further invitation. He and Cameron had reached a compromise as far as monitoring went. She gave him limited access to basic system information so that he could monitor the equipment and make sure all the hardware and software was running properly, and in return, he didn't try to get into her activity records. It was an uneasy truce at best. Murch was too damned curious for his own good, but for now, it seemed to be working.

 "Well?" Sarah asked after a few minutes.

 Murch punched a few more keys and looked up. "Uh… she's being a smartass."

 Sarah snorted, relieved despite herself. "That's what I said. Now, can you tell me why you snuck out this morning to buy headphones?"

 "Headsets, and I didn’t sneak!" Murch insisted, coming back to the table and pulling a piece of paper out of his back pocket. He handed it to Sarah. "Cameron gave me a list."

 Sarah shook her head, unfolding the paper and skimming the printed list of audio equipment.  "So now you're an errand boy?"

 "Well, she can't go herself." Murch shrugged. "I don't mind, it's something to do."

 Sarah suppressed a stab of jealousy. She was uncomfortably aware that a great deal of her irritation came from being penned in. Even dead, her face was still getting a remarkable amount of media attention. Until the panic over Miranda died down, she needed to lie low. Murch, by comparison, was relatively free to come and go as he pleased. At Ellison's suggestion, he'd already gone and made a statement to the police. So no one was looking for him.

 It was petty and mean for Sarah to resent the scientist for that, but this place, despite its size and every comfort, was feeling smaller and more confining every day, and there wasn't enough to do to keep any of them busy for long. Much more of this, and they'd all be gnawing on the furniture. 

 " Hmm…" Sarah tried not to let any of her frustration show. "So why does she need headsets?"

 "They're not for her," Murch explained, snapping the first one out of its plastic case. "They're for us, so that she can talk to us without a screen." He picked up one of the high-tech hearing aids and held it out to her. "These are for hands-free calling. All you need is a cell phone, and she'll be able to speak to you anywhere you go."

 Sarah took the device reluctantly. She was beginning to feel a little thrown off balance by Cameron's smooth assumption of control. Sarah was used to calling the shots, ordering the machine around, ignoring and berating her one day and confiding in her the next. Cameron had always taken it, letting the abuse and intimacy slide off equally, as if she didn’t even notice the difference.

 No, that wasn't true.

 Cameron knew the difference. Sarah couldn't deny that much. Cameron understood, she'd simply had no alternative other than to accept whatever Sarah and John had dished out. Good or bad.  

 But that was then.

 Whatever Cameron had figured out about herself before she'd started talking, it had shifted the balance between them. Cameron was no longer taking orders, she was giving them. A fingerbreadth away from pulling the trigger of a gun pointed at her own temple, Sarah had told Cameron that they could either work together or alone to stop Skynet, and she'd meant it. This wasn't going to work unless they learned how to talk to each other, learned how to cooperate, to be a team. Sarah was going to have to meet her in the middle.

 Sighing, she put the little earpiece back on the table and met Murch's eager gaze. "You'll need to show me how to use these."                       

*****   

 

"You know how to use this?" Derek asked, handing John a battered black pulse rifle. "Or is your brain still scrambled?"

 John cursed Sierra and her ruthless efficiency in spreading his cover story. It had only taken a few days for him to go from mysterious stranger to village idiot. He wouldn’t have minded so much, if it had meant a reprieve from Derek and Jesse's not so gentle ministrations, but they were still driving him into the ground from dawn to dusk. The only difference was now they treated him like he was stupid instead of just incompetent. And he hadn't seen Allison.

 John found himself looking for her in his scant moments of free time, scanning the busy corridors and common rooms. Rationally, he knew it was because she reminded him of Cameron. With no sign of John Henry or Weaver, and Terissa ducking any attempt John made to talk to her, Allison was the only link he had to Cameron. It was natural for him to be drawn to her, and her disappearance stung. Other than Terissa, she was the only one on the base who seemed to like him at all.

 "Daydreaming, Connor?" Derek snapped.

 "No, Sir," John said automatically, shifting the weapon in his hands to check the charge. He hadn't had much of a chance to examine the model, but Cameron had explained them to him in the past. There had been something almost like enthusiasm in her voice when she'd talked about guns. Cameron appreciated efficiency, and there had been more than one evening when she'd turned the necessary task of cleaning their arsenal into a lesson on future weaponry and its improvements on modern firearms. 

 "No, you don’t know how to use it, or no, you're not daydreaming?"

 "I know how to use it," John clarified, bringing the rifle into position and sighting down the barrel.

 "Prove it." Derek stepped back, giving him room. They were in an uninhabited part of the tunnels, an old parking garage converted to a training ground. Generators powered the lights, and one end had been set up with targets of varying sizes, scraps of metal with crudely painted targets and charred holes where previous shots had hit their mark.

 John took aim on the remains of a car door sporting a metal skull with a series of red rings around it and pulled the trigger. The recoil kicked his shoulder hard enough to make John grunt, and the chemical smell given off by the pulse burnt the inside of his nostrils, but the shot was good. A new hole smoked from the terminator's left eye. 

 "Not bad, Connor," Jesse drawled. "We'll make a soldier out of you yet."

Derek snorted. "Takes more than fancy shooting," he cautioned, but there was guarded approval in his voice. "Try for a grouping."

 Nodding, John sent a second pulse into the skull's right eye and put a third dead center.

 "I think he's got it," a new voice chimed from behind him, and John turned to see Sierra, arms crossed, a rifle twin to the one in his hands slung over her back, and a smaller model strapped to her leg. "You done with him for the day?"

 "We could call it," Derek agreed amiably. "Kid's not doing too badly."

 "Thanks." Without bothering to ask John's opinion, Sierra indicated that he should follow her, and she headed for the exit. John scrambled to put his weapon away and collect his gear. He'd stripped down to a light sleeveless shirt to train, but the tunnels could be chilly, and he'd been read the riot act his first day on keeping track of his own clothing and equipment. Everybody had what they needed, but there weren't a lot of extras. If you lost your jacket, then you got cold, and that was that.

 He caught up to her before the first turn, and Sierra acknowledged his presence with a sideways glance that stilled the questions on his tongue.

 "There's been a sighting of metal up in the hills, a single male fitting John Henry's description. There are two squads going out. Since we're the only two people who can make a positive ID, you'll be in one of them, and I'll be leading the other."

 "Who's leading mine?" John asked, trying not to let his pique creep into his voice. Sierra's tone made it clear it wouldn't be him in charge, and objectively, he knew that made sense. He was less than nobody to these people. They had been living this life for the last decade and a half, fighting a war he'd washed his hands of. John had no right to their respect, but he ached for it just the same.

 "You'll be taking orders from Kyle," Sierra said without any indication that she understood their connection. "He's agreed to keep an eye on you." She paused at a corner, checking down the hall in either direction before continuing. "You need to understand this, John, everyone going out today will be someone Prophet and Tango personally trust. They don't know who you are, but they know this is a covert operation and that you're a part of it. You're to do exactly what they say, when they say it." Sierra's tone was deadly serious. "No showing off."

 "I get it," John growled, his ego smarting in the face of a lecture from someone who used to come no higher than his hip.

 "Do you?" Sierra asked. "Because I don’t care who you were supposed to be, or what you were supposed to do. That John Connor doesn't exist anymore, not here, not now. We are the reality, and if you see this as some kind of grand proving ground, then you need to get your head out of your ass, or you're going to get a lot of people killed."

 John stopped, forcing Sierra to stop as well or go on without him. "Is that really what you think of me?" he asked when she reluctantly turned around.

 Her cold glare said it all.

 Stubborn pride, a trait John had inherited from his mother, squared his shoulders and roughened his voice. "I don’t want anyone dying for me," he said levelly.

 Sierra met his stare, her blue eyes searching his face. "Too late," she whispered softly, but John felt some of her antagonism ease.

 They continued on in silence, the tunnels becoming more populated the further they went. Finally, Sierra led him outside into the lowering dusk, and John took a deep breath of the first fresh air he'd tasted in days. He hadn't realized how much the confinement was weighing on him until he could see the sky again. Some of the tension eased out of his bones, and he felt the first stirring of a hesitant anticipation beginning to build in its place. This was it. He could be hours away from finding John Henry and getting his hands on Cameron's chip. After that, well… he'd find a way home, or he'd figure out some way to get her a new body. He couldn't let Cameron go. She needed him, and he needed her.

*****

 

"Thirty five?" Savannah asked, her legs swinging idly as she leaned forward over the table, paper in front of her and a pencil in her hand.  

 Correct

 Another equation appeared on the screen, and Savannah bent her copper head, pencil scribbling furiously.

 "What are they doing now?" Sarah asked, coming down the stairs with empty boxes and packing plastic in her hands. Watching Murch install headsets hadn’t been the most stimulating experience of her life, but it beat waiting for Cameron to finish ignoring her. She'd come downstairs intent on confronting the machine, but it looked like Cameron had moved on without her.

 "Math," Ellison answered dryly. He was perched on a stool at the kitchen island, papers spread out around him and a cup of coffee at his elbow. 

 "Figures." Sarah tossed the cardboard and plastic in the recycling bin before joining him. "What are you looking at?"

 "FBI records, Cameron printed them out for me."

 Sarah leaned over the island.  "Who are you interested in?"

 "The agent in charge of your case, Auldridge; he contacted me when you were in custody, asking for all of my notes, both on you and on the Dyson case. He wanted to know what I thought about your story." Ellison slid a piece of paper over to her, a sheet of phone records with a series of highlighted calls. "He's been in contact with Terissa Dyson, and it looks like he's taken on the investigation into her son's disappearance as well."  

 "He said he believed me." Sarah glanced over the records, noting how frequent the calls to the Dyson residence were. "What did you tell him?"

 "Nothing, but he's persistent. He'll get a warrant for my home, if he hasn't already. He'll find what he wants.

 An icy stab of fear hit Sarah's gut. She'd been prepared to kill herself rather than let the agent take her back to jail. He'd seen that, in the moment their eyes had locked at Miranda, and he'd been just as determined to stop her. "Why would he care? I'm dead. He saw me at Miranda."

 Ellison shrugged. "And I saw you blow yourself up in a bank. It doesn't matter, it's a puzzle. He'll need to solve it before he can let go. Cases like this will ruin a man's career if he lets them."

 "Like you did?" Sarah asked, her uneasiness making her sharp.

 "Like I did," Ellison agreed quietly. "My career, my marriage… I thought it was a lot." He looked around. "I was wrong."

 Sarah followed his gaze, taking in their bare surroundings, the high concrete walls that shut out the world. Ellison had finally lost everything, even his name. Guilt weighed on her. "I didn't plan on any of this." The admission was as close as Sarah could get to an apology, and Ellison seemed to understand, leaving it alone. She tapped the papers in front of them. "Do you think he'll keep looking for me?"           

 Ellison hesitated, and then nodded. "I think he'll need answers."

 "Don't we all." Sarah looked up as Murch emerged from the last room onto the catwalk with another armload of packing material, an idea beginning to form in the back of her mind. "Keep digging," she ordered Ellison brusquely. "Get Cameron to help you when the math lesson is over. I want to know everything Auldridge knows and anything he doesn’t."

 "Where are you going?" Ellison twisted around on his stool as Sarah left to intercept Murch on his way out the back to the loaded recycling bin.

 "To solve another problem."     

 Ellison sighed and resigned himself to a long day, but it felt good, having something to do, something he was good at.

 *****

 

"I don't understand," Murch rubbed a hand over his head and pushed up his glasses. "Why do you want to talk outside?"

 Sarah led him onto an empty dock, well out of Cameron's range, before answering. "I have a job for you." She took a deep breath, tasting salt on the back of her tongue. It was good to be out. "I need you to find me a chip."

 "A chip?" Murch looked at her blankly. "Like a computer chip?"

 "No." Sarah shook her head. "A chip for Cameron. I need her mobile."

 Murch glanced back at the warehouse. "Shouldn’t you be asking her about this? I mean, she's in the system, if there's a chip to be found…"

 "She doesn’t want one."

 "Why not?"

 Sarah shrugged. "She doesn't think her body is worth fixing." Cameron's words the night Miranda had been destroyed came back to her, I’m not a terminator anymore. It had almost sounded like a declaration, and Sarah wondered briefly if there was something more to Cameron's refusal than simple pragmatism.  But whatever her reasons, it didn’t change the fact that Sarah needed a terminator right now.  Cameron was just going to have to deal with it.

 Murch hesitated, "You think she's wrong?"

 "I think we have to try," Sarah said firmly.

 "Where should I look?"

 "Start with companies related to A.I., manufacturing, or anything connected to Kaliba. Somebody built the machine that crashed into Zeira Corp, and someone sent another one after Savannah. The technology is out there, somewhere."

 "Right," Murch agreed. "But what do I tell Cameron?"

 "Nothing," Sarah turned back towards the warehouse. "We'll worry about it when we have something."  

 *****

Sarah watched from the trees as Agent Auldridge approached Terissa Dyson in the cemetery. They shared a bench beside Miles' grave, their proximity and low tones evidence of long association and mutual respect, even affection. Sarah couldn't hear what they were saying. The words were lost in the soft breath of the wind as it ruffled the leaves over her head and the tiny, but purposeful voices of the birds and squirrels, singing and scolding at each other among the branches. 

 It was insane for her to be this close. The fake identification in her back pocket would be no protection against Auldridge, but Sarah didn’t have any illusions about her own sanity anymore. She needed to speak to Terissa. She needed to know how much Auldridge knew, and what Danny's disappearance had to do with all of this. Auldridge had told her about it for a reason.

 The FBI might think she was dead, but Ellison was right, they still had a puzzle to solve. They would be looking for Savannah and Danny… and John. The time when he could have been absolved of her crimes by youth was long past. If she was gone, then they would hunt him instead. For the first time, Sarah was glad her son was beyond their reach.

 Terissa's son was another story, and Sarah owed her this much. Maybe together they could save at least one of their children.

 Auldridge didn't stay long. He would be busy, burning himself out hunting shadows. Cameron would make sure he got nowhere near anything that might lead him to them. Whatever they thought of each other, whatever the unresolved conflicts and tensions between them, Sarah trusted the machine not to betray her. Maybe that was stupid, or naive, but she had to trust someone, and Cameron was as good a candidate as anyone else she had left. They needed each other. As a basis for trust that wasn't much, but Cameron had spoken rather than watch Sarah harm herself, and Sarah had risked her life to drag the machine out of a burning basement and had seen the terminator put back together as much as she possibly could be. Maybe it was impossible to stay completely objective after working and living with another personality for two years, or maybe Sarah was just going soft, but when her mind sorted the world in the ‘us and thems’, Cameron had somehow shifted to the ‘us’ side of the equation.    

 Sarah waited until the agent was out of sight before easing out of the shadows, checking the gun under her shirt, just in case. Terissa didn't move, but when Sarah paused a few feet away, she saw the other woman's shoulders stiffen.

 "I knew you would come." There was no surprise in Terissa's voice, only cold resignation. "What do you want, Sarah? You always want something… "

 "And I never die," Sarah finished for her, recalling their last conversation in this very spot. She relaxed marginally when Terissa didn’t immediately shout for Auldridge. It was a mistake.

 The words had barely cleared her lips, before Sarah was on the ground, the copper taste of blood in her mouth and her head ringing.

 Terissa stood over her, shaking hands wrapped around the butt of a gun pointed squarely between Sarah's eyes. The metallic click was loud in the suddenly hushed cemetery when she cocked it. "Are you sure about that?"

 Sarah froze. The grass was cold and wet against her back, her jaw ached from the sharp blow of the handgun, and she was staring up into eyes holding a heart-wrenchingly hopeless pain, pain that was a perfect mirror to Sarah's own. "Terissa…"

 "Where is he?" Terissa demanded, her voice shaking as much as her hands. "Where is my son? Where's Danny?"

 "I don’t know," Sarah said honestly, making no attempt to get up or take the gun. Terissa was on the edge, and the slightest unexpected move from either of them might push her over it. "But I know someone who can find him, if you'll help me."

 "Who was it, Sarah?" Terissa continued as if she hadn’t heard. "Who died for you in that lab? Was it someone else’s wife? Mother? Did you kill her? Or was she another hero like Miles, like Andy Goode?"

 "She wasn't a hero," Sarah whispered hoarsely, trying to block the image of Molly Samuels' dead grey eyes from her mind.  "And I didn't kill her."

 "But she is dead because of you," Terissa said knowingly. "That's what always happens, isn't it? They all die for you. For John. What about Danny? Does my son have to die so that yours can live?"

 Sarah closed her eyes against the stab of pain and guilt that came with that simple question. Kyle, Miles, Andy, Riley, Charley, Derek… the list went on and on. None of them dead at her hands, but every one of their deaths still feeling like it was her fault, another link in the chain around her neck. She hadn't been strong enough, fast enough or smart enough somehow. Not this time. This time she would do better.

 "He's not dead yet, Terissa," she promised, opening her eyes again. "Help me save him. Help me save our sons."

 Terissa stared down at her, an unbelievable weariness replacing the anger as she stepped back. The gun dropped to her side, resting heavily against her leg. "You don’t save anyone, Sarah," she said without censure, only a kind of jaded conviction. "I want you to stay away from me and stay away from my son."

 Sarah stayed on the ground while Terissa walked away, a weight like an anvil on her chest and tears burning in the corners of her eyes.  

 *****

 

The warehouse was dark when Sarah got back in the early hours of the morning. Laying her hand on the door, she heard a dull click as the locking mechanism disengaged, and she pushed it open, struggling to shift the heavy metal. She'd called ahead, let Ellison know she would be late, and it looked like he and Murch had gone to bed. A glance to her left revealed Cameron right where she'd left her, the shadows on the machine's face disguising the unhealed damage so that it looked as if the terminator was merely sleeping. Her screens were dark, and Sarah wasn't sure whether to be grateful or sorry.

 The stairs had never seemed so far away, or so steep. Sarah made it to her room on sheer cussed will, too focused on putting one foot in front of the other to notice the security cameras tracking her progress. Likewise, when she finally got her bedroom door shut behind her and began stripping off her clothing, she was oblivious to the laptop on her desk, still sitting open from the installation of the headset software. The screensaver blinked off as she pulled her shirt over her head, replaced by the simple unit frames of the webcam. 

 Sarah's jeans followed her shirt, and she dropped down on the edge of her bed in nothing but her bra and underwear, burying her face in her hands, all at once too damned tired and sick at heart to do anything but keep breathing. A flicker of light and colour through her fingers finally caught her attention and she looked up to see a badly manipulated photograph of a donkey in a graduation cap appear on the screen in front of her.

 Smartass: One who is particularly insolent, a person regarded with an obnoxiously determined advancement of one's own personality, wishes, or views.

 "What?"

 You called me a smartass this morning. I looked it up. The definition is inapplicable. I am not a person.               

 Sarah blew out a breath that was midway between a sigh and a half-formed laugh. "Not the best time for semantics, girlie," she warned the machine.

 You're upset.

 "No shit," Sarah muttered, wincing as the words pulled on the split in her lower lip.

 You're hurt.

 "I've had worse."

 The screen changed again, repeating an earlier trick of reflecting Sarah back on herself, the camera zooming in on the visible scars decorating her body and tiling them across the top of the screen.

 Yes, you have sustained significant damage.

 Confronted with an objective catalogue of the punishment her body had taken over the last eighteen years, Sarah could only stare. She stood and crossed to the desk to graze her fingertips over one of the images, startled when it separated itself from the others under her touch, expanding and moving to the center of the screen.         

 That one is recent.

 Sarah stepped back, moving her hand from the picture to the real thing, tracing the twisted scar on her left arm that still ached when it rained or when she pushed herself too hard. Derek had told her to get it checked, but there had been too much to do, too many other things that needed her attention. If the bone had been broken, then it had healed on its own. No harm done.

 "It hasn't slowed me down."

 No.

 The screen cleared and then the camera swept slowly from Sarah's bare feet up her body, pausing on her face before blinking out again.

 You are still in excellent shape for a woman of your age and body type.

 "Thanks," Sarah muttered sarcastically, about to brush the machine's appraisal off before realizing that, by all appearances, Cameron had more or less just taken a good long look at her standing half-naked in her own bedroom. And it probably hadn't been the first time, either. Sarah tried to remember how often she had left the laptop open since they'd moved in but couldn’t. She'd almost forgotten about it to be honest.

 "Cameron, have you been… do you watch me in here?"

 Is that a problem?

 It shouldn’t have been. There should have been no reason for Sarah to care whether or not Cameron had access to her bedroom. The machine had no concept of modesty or privacy, no personal opinion on human anatomy. The last thing Sarah should be worrying about was whether or not Cameron had seen her naked, but nevertheless…

 "Fuck, do you watch me in the damn bathroom?"

 There is no camera in the bathroom.

 That simple sentence carried a hint of reproach, as if Cameron resented there being anywhere she couldn’t see. Sarah wondered briefly what it would be like, to be able to go almost anywhere, and yet nowhere. Limited by the very technology that gave her freedom.

 Do you not want me to watch over you?

 "No… yes… I mean," Sarah stammered, reaching down to pull the sheet off the bed and wrap it around herself. "I want you to keep watch." She asserted finally. "But we need to establish a few ground rules here."

 Ground rules?

"Yes," Sarah said firmly. "And we'll start with no watching me without my permission… at least in my bedroom," she amended, turning the laptop around so that it faced the wall before rummaging through the dresser for something to wear.

 Fortified with a pair of sweatpants and a tank top, Sarah flipped the laptop back around.

 Please don’t do that.

 "Don’t do what?" Sarah asked, settling on the foot of the bed, her legs curled underneath her.

 Shut me out. It's… I don’t like it when I can’t talk to you.

 "You shut me out this morning," Sarah pointed out, a little unnerved by the use of the word like. Cameron had been doing that more lately, both before she had lost her chip and after. Claiming feelings and opinions a machine shouldn't have. She had even admitted to wanting to kill Ellison. Considering how things had looked at the time, Sarah couldn’t really blame her, but it had still been eerie.  

 "Can't have it both ways, Tin Miss," she continued, putting the question of Cameron's shifting nature aside in favour of dealing with the current problem. "Either we talk to each other or we don’t."

 There was a long pause. The cursor blinked thoughtfully, and Sarah was just about to give it up and go to bed, oddly disappointed that Cameron had ducked out on her yet again, when another image flashed on the screen. This time the camera was looking at the wireless headset sitting on the desk.

 Let's talk.

 Butterflies erupted in Sarah's stomach at that simple phrase. She shivered, reaching for the headset with trembling fingers, even while she cursed herself for feeling like a teenager on a first date.

 There was no reason for the thought of hearing Cameron's voice again to affect her like this. She had never given a damn one way or the other about talking to the girl before. Conversations happened, and Sarah often said more than she’d meant to. There was something about Cameron's ability to be perfectly still; Sarah could almost forget she was there, almost forget she wasn't talking to herself. But it was never planned. She hadn't sought the girl out… not like this.

 "What will you sound like?" Sarah asked, holding the headset between her hands.

 What would you like me to sound like?         

 Sarah drew in a shuddering breath, running her fingers over the smooth plastic. "Can you sound like yourself?"

 A familiar human voice would make you more comfortable, would give you comfort?

 "Yes," Sarah admitted, not without some self-recrimination, but unable to stomach the idea of Cameron speaking with a computer's voice.

 Okay.

 A window popped up on the screen, a graph with a series of vertical levels that adjusted themselves as Sarah watched, the sliders moving up and down seemingly at their own discretion.

 There.

 With no reason left to stall and anticipation humming not-so-unpleasantly through her veins, Sarah flicked the switch on the side of the headset. The green light flickered to life and Sarah put it on, pushing her hair back and out of the way of the earphones as she adjusted the microphone.

 "Hi," she whispered, unsure what to say now that the moment was here and feeling just a little silly about the whole thing.

 "Hi," Cameron responded softly, and Sarah felt goose bumps rise on her arms. The illusion was that perfect.

 "That's one hell of an audio program."

 "Yes," Cameron agreed. "I have access to the most sophisticated software currently available. This program is capable of emulating the full range of human voices as well as several animal-"

 "Your voice is fine," Sarah interrupted with a small grin before Cameron could offer to demonstrate. She slid back on the bed, arranging the pillows against the headboard so that she could sit comfortably.

 "You like my voice." It wasn't a question. Cameron almost sounded shy, pleased, as if it meant something to the machine, that Sarah liked something about her. 

Sarah sighed, the barest suggestion of heat warming her cheeks, but she saw no point in lying. "It’s a nice voice."

 "Thank you," Cameron said promptly. "I… enjoy the sound of your voice as well."

 The compliment was awkward, surreal, like this entire conversation, and just as difficult to deal with. Simultaneously amused, exasperated, and a little uncomfortable, Sarah rubbed at her eyes. If she didn’t look, she could almost see Cameron sitting there beside her, whole and undamaged, her legs crossed neatly, that damningly familiar tilt to her head. The image seemed oddly normal beside all the other weirdness, as if this was something they had done before, and Sarah felt a little of the strangeness ease.

 "So… what did you do while I was gone?" she asked, dropping her hand and wishing her supply of small talk wasn't quite so pathetic.

 "I assisted Ellison with breaking into the FBI's private files, and Savannah read me a story."

 Sarah could hear a hint of confusion in that last part, and she felt the corner of her mouth twitch up in a smirk. "She seems to like you, Pirate Queen." 

 "Yes, she suffers from an animistic mistake of logic."

 "A what?"

"Animism," Cameron explained. "It is a term used by developmental psychologist Jean Piaget to describe the mistake of logic that leads children in the preoperational stage of development to believe that everything is alive the same way they are." She paused. "Savannah understands that I am a machine, but she does not discriminate between artificial life and human life." 

 Sarah blinked, about half of Cameron's explanation going completely over her head. "You’ve been doing your homework."

 "I found myself unprepared for extended association with a small child," Cameron admitted. "I have done research to compensate." 

 "She's not a mission, Cameron," Sarah protested, wondering what Cameron's developmental psychologists would say about a little girl being raised in a warehouse by a computer geek, an ex-FBI agent, a federal fugitive and a cyborg tethered to a computer. Something fairly uncomplimentary, she imagined. Of course, before this, Savannah had been in the care of a liquid metal terminator who may or may not have been planning to blow up the world, so it was more of a step sideways than down.

 "She is our responsibility," Cameron insisted.

 "She's Ellison's responsibility," Sarah corrected her, wondering idly where this new concern of Cameron's had come from. "I didn't want her here in the first place."

 There was a long pause, long enough for Sarah to rearrange herself on the bed, sliding down the pillows and tugging the blankets up against the night's slight chill. She was tired; sleep beckoned like a siren's call, but Sarah resisted its pull, in no hurry to end what felt like the first real conversation she'd had in days, odd though it may be.

 "She is safer with us," Cameron said finally.

"Is she?" Sarah demanded, Terissa's words coming back to her sharply enough to hurt. "We're fugitives, and you're broken. How are we supposed to protect her? Take care of her? It's not all pirates and storybooks, Cameron. Savannah's a little girl. She needs more than we can give her."

 "She needs her mother," Cameron agreed. "But her mother is dead. We are all she has."           

 The truth of that lay in the silence between them. Curling up on her side, Sarah wondered if, somewhere in the future, Weaver even thought about the child she had left behind. Had she cared about Savannah at all? Murch insisted John Henry had, but the A.I. was gone, too. Is that why Cameron felt responsible for the kid? She'd sent John to the future to keep him safe, was taking care of Savannah a way to make up for her failure to take care of John? 

 Sarah wasn't going to find the answers to her questions in the middle of the night. "We'll talk about it in the morning," she said, her eyes already closing.

 "Goodnight Sarah," Cameron whispered. "I will keep watch."

 Sarah murmured a sleepy affirmative, and Cameron chose to take that as permission to stay. She shifted some of her attention to the perimeter, enough to watch over the warehouse, but the majority of her focus stayed on Sarah. She had spent a great deal of time studying herself in the system, how she had changed, how much she could change, but Cameron did not yet understand this new preoccupation with Sarah Connor. It was similar, but not identical to the way she had felt about John. So much of that had been a programmed response, an artificially imposed concern. There was nothing artificial about this. Which made Cameron wonder; if she wasn't a terminator anymore, just what was she becoming instead?

 ****

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