The rains returned to Southern California with a vengeance. Already night, the fat drops pounding the earth obscured the landscape, flooding streets, cutting visibility to nil, and threatening to turn the fire-scorched hills of the LA basin into rolling landmasses of rock and mud. It was a night not fit for man nor beast.

 

In an alley, behind a strip of abandoned and dilapidated buildings with ‘For Sale’ signs, something flickered, a flash of light. As if seemingly from nowhere, a spark of blue and white expanded upon itself until it was a ball of energy. The light was blinding, so bright even the rats scurrying about the alleyway ran for cover.

 

The ball grew and spread outward in a bright, heated pulse, building in a heartbeat until it was a perfect circle of light - eight feet wide and just as tall. Then, as suddenly as it had appeared, the light blinked out, the alley returning to darkness, except for a small space of cement where the bottom edge of the circle had cut deep into the man-made stone. It glowed an eerie orange of still smoldering rock.

 

In the center, a naked man crouched. Steam rose from his skin in drifting wisps as the rain poured down on him. He rose, slowly, purposefully, his head turned, his eyes scanning the alley. He began to walk, in the darkness of the alley; the only illumination was the man’s pupils as bright and red as blood.

 

*****

 

John thought about asking where they were going, but he was getting used to not asking questions. That wasn’t his job anymore, to ask questions. To lead. They told, he did. Here, he was no longer the leader of the resistance, he never was. Not asking questions made life both easier and harder. Easier because he was no longer responsible for the decisions made around him, and harder because he couldn't help but wonder if the resistance was better off without John Connor or worse.

 

He followed Allison and Duke to the edge of a collapsed building. He thought he recognized it - someplace on Wilshire? - but then blinked away the thought. The past was the past, and it was best not to remember what things used to look like. Better to concentrate on the now, the always darkened sky, the scorched earth, the smell of death and destruction.

 

They slipped around the side of the structure, going over and then down a hill of crumbled and collapsed stone. There wasn’t so much a door as a hole no more than four feet tall. Allison crouched at the entrance, letting Duke lead as the dog sniffed around.

 

“It’s clear,” she said before disappearing into the hole.

 

John followed. They crawled over, under, crouched and walked on their knees through the collapsed foundation. Eventually, a half-mile or so, John thought, the hole opened to a corridor where a thick, metal door stood. Allison banged hard, three times and then twice.

 

“What’s the password?” a male voice asked through the metal.

 

“Deadtown,” Allison answered.

 

The door opened, and they were immediately met by two men with guns pointed at them. The German Sheppard next to the armed guards started barking madly, yanking at its leash. Duke lowered, haunches raised as he started to growl. Allison pulled back on his leash.

 

“Stupid dog,” one of the men muttered, yanking his dog back so they could walk past.

 

The dog continued barking; John could hear it as they met the end of the corridor and turned left. They were in a basement of sorts, one of the few places still left standing that could be considered safe. There were people sitting against the walls, refugees: men, women, and families with children, their faces and clothes covered in dirt.

 

Another corner and the refugees turned to soldiers. The distinction wasn't in their weapons, but the way they carried themselves, hardened, ready to snap into action at a moment’s notice. Some nodded at Allison, most just looked at them with disinterest.

 

“We’re here,” Allison said as they came to another door near the back end of yet another corridor. It was flanked by two guards who merely nodded as Allison opened the door.

 

The room was warmer and smelled of not exactly fresh coffee. There were maps on the walls with pins and black x’s dotting their surfaces. In the center of the room was a large table overflowing with maps. John recognized several of the people huddled around an unfurled map - Tango, Derek, Jesse, Kyle and Sierra. There were others in the room, faces John didn’t recognize. The majority of them stood to the side, listening to the conversation.

 

That was the way it always played out whenever Tango was in a room: the soldiers standing at attention with a sort of reverence. Terrisa Dyson didn’t just lead them, she’d saved them. Gave them the one thing that seemed to be in such short supply - hope. John wondered if there would have been such a reverence for him, and then pushed the thought away. That future didn’t exist. Not anymore.

 

Duke padded towards Sierra and immediately sat at her feet. “Duke!” Allison whispered harshly, pulling at his leash, but the dog wouldn’t budge.

 

“It’s okay,” Sierra lifted her head towards the two. Her eyes lingered on Allison. John thought he saw her blush. “Glad you could make it.”

 

“What’s going on?” John wondered, finally in a situation where he felt comfortable asking a question.

 

“It’s the machines,” Derek said, scratching the side of his scruffy face with his fingers. “They’re up to something.”

 

Jesse snorted. “The machines are always up to something.”

 

John took a step towards the table, staring down at the map. “What’s the plan?”

 

All eyes turned to Tango. She lifted her cup of coffee to her lips, taking a long sip. Her mouth minutely twisted in distaste, like a person who remembered what coffee was supposed to taste like. Tango lowered her mug onto the table, pointing with a finger at the map. “We’ve been getting some chatter from China Lake. There’s been some, and I quote, ‘strange activity’ over in Death Valley. I’m going to send a team to rendezvous with them here.” She pointed again. “Of course, that’s where things will get hairy.”

 

John chuckled. Jesse’s head snapped up, her eyes glaring at him.

 

“Something funny, Connor?” she practically hissed in her native Australian accent.

 

“No, sorry.” John shifted nervously. “Just thinking about what my mom would do.”

 

Sierra snickered. “Barrel in with a truck full of C-4, blow the place sky high, and then come back with a flamethrower just to make sure.”

 

John smiled for the first time in what felt like weeks. “Yeah.”

 

All the eyes in the room were on them, Allison’s voice breaking the odd tension. “You knew John’s mother?”

 

“Yeah,” Sierra chuckled, her eyes getting a far away look.

 

“I also knew hers,” John added.

 

Sierra’s head snapped up, her eyes heated as she glared at John. “That thing wasn’t my mother.”

 

“Sierra,” Tango said calmly and coolly, but underneath, there was the hint of a warning tone. The two shared a look, weighted with a meaning that reminded John of his mother. A look that said Sierra had said too much.

 

John thought about looking away, breaking eye contact, but slowly thought better of it. He felt a responsibility for her, towards the life they’d once shared. But, as Sierra had told him, that was in the past.  Whatever he and Sierra had shared, it had been cursory, like everything else. They were survivors. But, he didn’t turn his eyes away because they did have one thing in common.

 

They’d both been trained by Sarah Connor.

 

 

 

ACT I

 

It was only thunder.

 

For most of Los Angeles, the distant rumbling portended nothing more ominous than an oncoming storm, but in Sarah’s dreams, it was a shotgun blast, cannon fire, the sonic boom of a nuclear warhead detonating…

 

Or the explosion caused by stabbing a screwdriver through flesh and metal and burying it in an open electrical panel.

 

Sarah’s eyes snapped open, her heart drumming heavily in her chest, and her fingers instinctively reaching for the gun under her pillow, as if the nightmare might follow her out of sleep and into the waking world.

 

Another distant growl of thunder muttered its way into the silence of the warehouse, and Sarah finally recognized the sound for what it was. She inhaled deeply, willing herself to calm, and then exhaled in a long, drawn out sigh. Releasing her fingers from their death grip on the cold steel of the gun, Sarah rolled onto her back and draped an arm over her face. The single unbroken night of sleep she’d gotten in Savannah’s pink ruffled bed already seemed closer to weeks than days ago, and she could feel herself starting to fray around the edges.

 

Closing her eyes had been a mistake.

 

The last few frames of the dream came back to Sarah in a rush. The full-body pain, the slipperiness of the screwdriver handle under her blood-coated fingers, and the terminator’s face as it had turned in that final moment… Sarah’s heart rate kicked up again at the one detail where the dream had differed from reality. In the instant before she had plunged the screwdriver through the machine’s wrist for the second time, it had been Cameron looking at her from behind those warm brown eyes.

 

Not a nameless terminator with a copied face, but Cameron.

 

That was the shock that had torn Sarah out of her nightmare; watching the electric current rip through that familiar body and cast it aside and knowing it wasn’t just another machine she had taken out.

 

And if Cameron wasn’t just another machine, then what the hell was she?

 

Sarah recalled the warm comfort of Cameron’s fingers sliding over her own at the bonfire the night before, and her skin prickled, every hair standing on end.  

 

The real question might be, what was Cameron to her?

 

She pressed the back of her arm more firmly against her eyelids and clenched her jaw, willing the images and the uncomfortable questions to fade. They obeyed reluctantly, retreating even as the storm crept closer. 

 

Underneath the rumbling, the warehouse was quiet. No Murch on his computers, no Savannah quietly humming herself to sleep, no Ellison shuffling his papers, no Cameron walking the perimeter.

 

No Cameron walking the perimeter…

 

Sarah yanked her arm back from her face, her eyes flying open. While Cameron had been in the system, Sarah had almost been able to forget the rhythm of the machine as she’d moved through their house on her nightly rounds. She had almost forgotten how reassuring, even soothing, that rhythm had become. Sarah’s own walking metal lullaby. But she’d… missed it, and last night, it had been the return of that rhythm that had finally lulled her to sleep. The dull ringing of Cameron’s boots against the catwalk outside her door had filled a need Sarah would have preferred to deny.

 

Now the silence in place of Cameron’s soft but weighted steps was deafening to her ears. Sarah took another deep lungful of air as her senses went into overdrive, ears straining to hear every moan and creak of the warehouse. It was quiet, painfully so.

 

She rose, sliding her legs over the edge of the bed and leaving her gun behind in the tangled sheets.

 

****

As rain began to patter on the pavement beyond the open warehouse door, long fingers drifted through ash and rust, the skin becoming coated with tinges of brown and grey. The fine particles were all that was left of her, of who she had been. Cameron lifted her hand from the pit and blew the powdery substance off before wiping it clean on her jeans.

Even the air smelled like ash. Before, she would have only noticed scent as chemicals in the atmosphere in which John Connor breathed. She hadn’t been able to appreciate how good, or bad, something could smell. Since entering this new body, Cameron had been assaulted by sensation to the point of being almost overwhelmed. In reprogramming the new chip, she’d stripped away Skynet’s filters, filters designed to make her appear human while preventing her from ever truly feeling what it was like to be one. Now… everything she touched, heard, saw, smelled… it was all new to her, revealed in a rich detail she’d never known.

Ash may have been all that was left, but Cameron had still felt compelled to return to the fire pit in the early light of morning.

Sarah had walked away first the night before, offering Cameron a simple nod as she left. Cameron had remained alone, making sure everything was destroyed, that nothing of who she had been remained. But as the sun rose behind rain-heavy clouds, she’d found she needed to see the truth one more time before she could fully believe it.

There was no remorse for the loss of her old body. Cameron felt only satisfaction that another terminator had been destroyed.

A footfall made her turn her head, and Cameron was unsurprised to see Sarah leaning against the open door, studying her carefully. Sarah hadn’t bothered with an umbrella and she was already soaked to the bone, her dark hair hanging in loose curls around her face. Cameron rose from her crouch beside the pit, resisting the urge to say anything about the other woman’s condition. Sarah hated it when people ‘fussed’ as she put it. Privately, Cameron thought Sarah could do with a little more fussing, but she didn’t say that either, settling for a simple, “Good morning.”

Sarah took a deep breath and stepped inside the space, approaching the pit warily. “Having second thoughts?”

Cameron glanced down at the ashes before looking back at Sarah. It was a cool morning in Los Angeles, and Cameron could see Sarah shivering slightly. Pursing her lips, she slipped out of her leather jacket, tossing it to Sarah with ease.

“I don’t…” Sarah started to protest. With a sigh, she stifled the argument and slipped the jacket on, surrounding herself in warm leather. “What are you doing out here?”

“I don’t know,” Cameron confessed, pleased that Sarah had accepted the jacket with little argument. “I needed to see it one last time, I think, in the light. I needed to know it was real.” She blinked, surprised by her own thoughts. “Why did you follow me?”

Sarah shrugged. “I just wanted to make sure you were… here.”

“I'm here,” Cameron said simply.

Sarah nodded and came closer, standing next to Cameron. They both looked down into the pit of ash and rust. “You didn’t answer my question,” she murmured, lifting her gaze to study Cameron’s profile. The small gashes along her jaw from the gunshots were almost gone already.

“Am I having second thoughts?” Cameron repeated before tilting her head to look at Sarah. “That worries you?”

“Some," Sarah admitted. “I can never tell what you’re thinking, Tin Miss.” She sighed and ran a hand through her damp hair.

Cameron tracked the motion with her eyes, taking an interest in the way the light caught the different shades and textures in Sarah’s hair. She wondered how she could have missed them before now. 

“Like now for example,” Sarah murmured, unsure of what to make of the enraptured look on Cameron’s face as she watched her.

Cameron blinked again. “You’re still shivering,” she pointed out instead of answering either of Sarah's questions, explicit or implied, unsure why she didn’t want to admit what had caught her attention. She stepped closer, grabbing the lapels of the jacket and drawing them closer.

Sarah inhaled sharply in surprise and Cameron looked up, startled by her body’s reaction to the tiny sound.

They stared at each other for a long moment before Cameron willed herself to let go of the leather and back away. She frowned at the floor, trying to understand the cascade of feelings, both tactile and emotional, that were washing over her.

Sarah took a breath as she watched Cameron. “You okay?”

Cameron looked at her again. “It… will take some getting used to.”

“Being in a body again?” Sarah guessed, gripping the edges of the coat and holding them tighter against her body.

“Yes,” Cameron agreed. “The body,” she hesitated slightly, “and the modifications I made to my programming.”

“Modifications?” Sarah asked, a note of alarm creeping into her tone.

“Yes,” Cameron said again, then added more abruptly, “I have work to do.” She wasn’t ready to discuss just how many modifications she had made to her original programming or the way some of them were reacting in Sarah’s presence, not yet, not until she’d figured it out herself.

“Cameron,” Sarah called after her when she’d reached the doorway.

The former terminator hesitated before glancing back over her shoulder.

“We’re going to talk about your… modifications… later.”

Cameron nodded her head once before stepping out into the rain. She paused halfway to their warehouse to tilt her chin up, taking in how it felt to have the heavy wet drops striking her face. She decided she rather liked it.

Caught up in the sensation of rain on her skin, she didn’t see Sarah watching her, a speculative look on her face.

****

Later that morning, Sarah stepped heavily, wearily, out of the shower.  Chilled from her walk through the rain, she had stayed under the spray until the water went cold, her fingertips taking on the appearance of small pink prunes and the bathroom filling with a thick mist. Wrapping a towel around her torso, Sarah wiped the condensation off the mirror, her fingers leaving long streaks against the cool glass.

She gazed at her reflection. The shower had helped, increasing her circulation and bringing a fleeting blush of health to her skin, but she still looked tired. Battered was more like it, battered and bruised. There wasn’t a patch of skin that was left unmarked from her fight with Cameron.

 

No. The thing that looked like Cameron, Sarah corrected herself. The distinction was as important now as it had been at dawn.

 

More important.

 

Seeing Cameron again this morning, brimming with her own unique brand of understated intensity, had brought that point home almost painfully. The body was the same, but Cameron’s presence within it was unmistakable. The whole situation had left Sarah feeling strangely agitated, but like poking at a sore tooth, she couldn’t seem to leave it alone.

 

Last night they had stood shoulder-to-shoulder, hands overlapping, and today a nightmare had sent Sarah tracking Cameron out in the rain, just to make sure she was still there. Something had shifted, something small, but it felt like the next-to-last unit of pressure before a storm. Sarah had no idea what would happen if the mercury in their metaphorical barometer climbed any higher, and she wasn’t sure she could handle finding out.

 

Shaking her head as the fog settled back onto the mirror and slowly blotted out her face, Sarah pushed uncomfortable ruminations firmly aside and dried herself off. The towel was rough on her half-scalded skin, and she went slowly, careful of both new and half-healed bruises and scrapes. Most of them would fade; some would be added to the gallery of scars documenting the damage she’d already done to her body.

 

It was all Sarah had ever been able to count on - her mind, body and soul - and as she turned back to the mirror, she couldn’t help but notice that it looked like parts of her were failing. Her skin was still too pale; there were dark circles under her eyes. When she inhaled too deeply, her ribs hurt, along with all the other aches and pains a long hot shower couldn’t alleviate.

 

Then there were the parts Sarah couldn’t see. Was there still a ticking time bomb hidden within her body? Under her skin, was the cancer that was fated to kill her already stirring? Unlike Cameron, Sarah couldn’t upgrade to a newer model.

 

She let the towel fall to the floor, raised her right arm like she’d been taught by the doctors, even though she should have been lying down, and began a careful examination of her right breast. Her fingers immediately went to the receiver implanted deep within her flesh. It was about the size of a grain of rice. To Sarah, it felt like a two-ton boulder. She’d thought about taking a knife and removing it herself, but then she’d need time to heal afterwards. And, like everything else in her life, time was a luxury Sarah couldn’t afford.

 

She dressed, running a towel over her head to dry her hair as best as she could before heading for the stairs. The main floor was quiet, save for the fast clicking of fingers across a keyboard.

 

Cameron’s fingers.

 

The machine was back in front of the monitors. It was exactly where she had been every day for the last month, but instead of slumping over in a chair like a doll whose batteries needed replacing, Cameron sat, perfectly erect, in the same chair near the middle of the table, her hands dancing over a wireless keyboard while information streamed across the screens too quickly for Sarah to follow. Murch stood behind her, watching with one hand tucked under his other arm while he chewed on a thumbnail. Savannah was at the end of the table, her child’s brow comically furrowed as she worked on some problem or other, pencil scribbling furiously.

 

Sarah’s eyes strayed from Cameron to the long cord still attached to the Turk. Neatly coiled on the floor instead of plugged into the back of Cameron’s head, it reminded Sarah that Cameron hadn’t answered her question at the fire pit. The cord may have been nothing more than another piece of hardware now, but to Sarah, it looked like a sleeping snake. She wanted it gone.

 

Her fingers rose to cover the watch hanging from her neck. John and Cameron’s secret, it was a symbol of a certain level of intimacy, a certain level of trust the two had shared between them. A trust that Sarah and Cameron, despite everything they’d been through in the last few weeks, years, didn’t have. Not yet, not quite.

 

Was that something she wanted?

 

There was no C-4 embedded in this Cameron’s head and Sarah didn’t want it there; the very idea made her slightly ill, but she wouldn’t have minded some kind of sign or guarantee that Cameron was back to stay. The fact that the machine hadn’t discarded the cord didn’t necessarily mean Cameron was planning anything, but if she felt that returning to the system was the best thing for her mission, she would probably do it, and Sarah was well aware that she had no way to hold her here.

 

She took a deep breath, burying her worries and the uneasiness they evoked as she moved to the bottom of the stairs. Savannah looked up with a smile when she reached the kitchen. Leaving her work, the little girl picked up a book from beside her on the table and bounded, as only small children could, over to Sarah. She held the book tightly against her chest, a shy but expectant look in her blue eyes.

 

“Good morning, Aunt Sarah,” she said dutifully before blurting, “can we read another chapter of The Wizard of Oz today? I finished my math…”

 

Sarah dragged her eyes away from Cameron and refocused them on Savannah, but looking down at that upturned face reminded her of another face she hadn’t seen yet. She scanned the room quickly, a frown coming to the edges of her mouth. “Where’s Ellison?”

 

Savannah shrugged, an over-exaggerated gesture of exasperation. “He said he needed some fresh air.”

 

Sarah pursed her lips. Ellison leaving unannounced wasn’t like him. Other than that first time, when he came back with Savannah, or maybe because of Sarah’s reaction when he came back with Savannah, he’d stayed close to home, only going out when he had to, and always letting Sarah know. She felt a tug on her hand.

 

“Can we?” Savannah repeated, her small fingers gripping tighter, one hand wrapped around Sarah’s, the other clutching her book. “Please?”

 

Sarah pulled her hand gently free of Savannah’s, placing it on top of the child’s head and rubbing gently. “Maybe later,” she promised.

 

Savannah sighed, “Okay.” But it was the ‘okay’ of a child who’d learned adult’s promises didn’t always mean what they were supposed to. Sarah remembered the first time she’d learned that lesson. She remembered the first time John had, too, and she had no more idea how to ease that blow now than she had then.

 

Guilt gnawed on her, but Sarah still walked away. Their one night of mutual comfort aside, she had no business taking on another child. Her life was too dangerous for promises. If a bullet didn’t get her, then the cancer probably would. It might be better for both of them if Savannah didn’t get too attached.

 

She poured a cup of coffee and left the kitchen, heading for Murch and Cameron. Savannah, innocent of Sarah’s morbid brooding, followed on her heels. Sarah had said later and apparently the girl was going to hold her to that. Sarah paused next to Murch, standing a few moments in awkward silence as they watched, Murch’s eyes on the screens and Sarah’s on Cameron.

 

“What are you doing?” she asked finally, annoyance swimming up out of the mire of tension and self-indulgent fatalism when it became obvious that Cameron wasn’t going to acknowledge her presence.

 

“Searching,” Cameron replied simply, but her fingers faltered. She glanced up briefly before returning her attention to the screens, and Sarah could have sworn she saw something unsure, even nervous, in those wide brown eyes. 

 

She understood completely. Cameron, it seemed, didn’t know quite where they stood after their moment by the pit this morning either.

 

Murch, still focused on Cameron, leaned slightly towards Sarah. “I think she misses it,” he whispered conspiratorially.

 

Sarah repressed the urge to roll her eyes at the scientist’s ineffective attempt at subtlety, settling instead for raising a single brow in question.

 

Murch gestured towards the monitors, his eyes wide with excitement. “Being inside the system…” he elaborated, “I think she misses it.”

 

Sarah shrugged, but the suggestion followed too closely on the heels of her own concerns for her to dismiss it as casually as she’d have liked to. Murch was oblivious. His interest was purely academic; he thought of the machines differently than Sarah. They hadn’t tried to kill him, yet. He hadn’t been exchanging unsettling physical contact with them lately, either.

 

Sarah turned her back to the table, leaning against it and crossing one ankle over the other as she folded her arms over her chest. She glanced out of the corner of her eye to see Savannah mimicking her pose. The mother in her melted a little at the sight, and she ached for the girl’s obvious need for attention. Her resolve to keep her distance wavered, but the thought of Savannah’s hands wrapped around the butt of a gun, her innocent blue eyes gone hard and dangerous, stiffened it again. Sarah was the last person Savannah should be influenced by.

 

She turned her attention back to Cameron. “What are you looking for?”

 

Cameron kept typing, her eyes darting from screen to screen. “Our mission hasn’t changed.” The pause was almost so brief as to be nonexistent, and then Cameron looked up, holding Sarah’s gaze this time. “We need to find C.A.I.N. We need to destroy him.”

 

Sarah stiffened. Our. We… Cameron was speaking in the plural. She hadn’t done that before. It had always been the mission, or my mission. Never theirs… and despite the nonspecific pronoun, something in Cameron’s tone excluded the scientist standing behind her, or anyone else other than Sarah.

 

That was what Sarah had wanted, wasn’t it? She’d been doing everything in her power to bring Cameron back into the fight since she’d dragged her body and the Turk out of the rubble at Zeira Corp. Neither of them could do this alone, and despite Murch and Ellison’s assistance, it wasn’t really their fight, and Savannah was too young. So why did she suddenly feel so suffocated?

 

Sarah didn’t know how to put her unease into words, or even if it was something she wanted to share, so she said nothing, but she felt the tension between them stir and swell and she had to look away. After a few breaths, the return of clattering keys told her Cameron had gone back to work. Sarah shifted on her feet, focusing on the monitors. Two of the screens were nothing more than zeroes and ones raining down in singular columns. No wonder Murch was so fascinated. The other screens flipped through a never-ending series of images, police reports, building schematics and security snapshots.

 

Sarah frowned, surreptitiously checking the back of Cameron’s head again. Even as un-computer savvy as she was, she hadn’t thought this kind of performance was possible with nothing more than a keyboard and a mouse, but Cameron was clear and free so to speak; there was no evidence that she had any connection left to the system she manipulated so easily.

 

Just what were those modifications Cameron had mentioned?

 

Sarah shifted again. She needed something to do, something concrete. “You find anything yet?”

 

“Nothing that will lead us to C.A.I.N.,” Cameron said, but the slightest twitch to the corner of her lips and almost imperceptible cant of her head that no one else would have seen raised the hairs on the back of Sarah’s neck, along with her suspicions. She pulled her foot off the other, distributing her weight evenly.

 

“What is it?”

 

Cameron’s eyes flicked minutely up towards Sarah, and the streaming binary code slowed for a moment, but then continued at its normal speed. “It’s nothing,” she said again, but her protest sounded faintly defensive.

 

Sarah pushed herself away from the table, tensing. Enough that even Murch noticed, taking his eyes off the terminator and turning them to Sarah with a hint of apprehension before he stepped back, out of their way. He drew Savannah back with him, ignoring her sigh of disdain.

 

Sarah barely noticed, all of her attention on Cameron. The machine was capable of lying. For all that she had just thrown around, words like we and our, as if she understood the idea of teamwork, she was also fully capable of withholding information, information she didn’t want Sarah to have. This was more familiar ground, and Sarah let it steady her, pushing everything else aside.

 

“Cameron,” Sarah growled and then the printer whirred to life.

 

****

 

The room was quiet other than the hum of the machines and the air conditioner to keep them cool behind their thick glass doors.

 

Vaughn sat on one side of the table, elbows on the surface, his chin resting on his clasped hands. Before him sat a chessboard, some of the pieces already moved around the surface. Across from him, his opponent, C.A.I.N., was embodied only by a half circle of monitors.  

 

Vaughn reached out, his fingers hovering over the pieces before he finally chose to move his rook. It had taken him almost 30 minutes to make a move; in the blink of an eye, C.A.I.N. had chosen its own.

 

P-A6

 

The computer screen displayed the characters in a 2-inch size font. Vaughn could have activated the speakers, but he preferred the formality of text. If C.A.I.N. had a preference, the A.I. hadn’t voiced it. At least not to him. Danny Dyson might have known; his relationship with the C.A.I.N. project was more intimate than Vaughn’s, but Vaughn had been keeping the boy busy elsewhere since the complete mess with his mother and the Connor woman. He needed to make sure Danny was still theirs, and Danny had been asking a lot of questions. Vaughn didn’t want to risk C.A.I.N. answering any of them.

 

Vaughn reached for his cup of coffee, taking a long sip before setting down his cup and placing his chin back on his fingers. He loved this game. He’d been playing since he was a boy, owned a libraries worth of books and knew all the top players’ moves. He was a formidable opponent, but he’d yet to win a single game against the machine. Sometimes, it wasn’t because C.A.I.N. was a better player, either.

 

The screen went blank before a new set of characters appeared.

 

What is HOPE?

 

Vaughn pursed his lips. He’d become accustomed to, if not easy with, C.A.I.N.’s questions, questions that seemed outside the parameters of its program. But he found the programs endless curiosity distracting, especially when they were playing chess.

 

“What do you mean?”

 

You hope to find Sarah Connor.

 

Vaughn tilted his head slightly, squinting his eyes and gazing at the screen. “Yes, we hope to find Sarah Connor.”

 

Why?

 

“Because she's a threat,” Vaughn answered shortly. “Sarah Connor has information we need. She is very important.” He reached out and moved one of his pawns, hoping his play would compel the machine to continue with the game. “It’s your move.”

 

That was not my question, C.A.I.N. clarified. Why do you hope?

 

Vaughn leaned back in his chair, folding his arms over his chest. “Do you know where Sarah Connor is?”

 

The screen went blank. A second later, a single image made Vaughn jerk up from his chair. Palms flat on the table, he leaned forward, bringing his eyes closer to the screen. It was a missing person’s flyer. There was a name—

John Connor.

****

“This is a bad idea, Sarah,” Ellison said, stepping out of the way to keep from getting run over as Sarah marched past him into the back room.

 

“Yeah,” she fired back. “Almost as bad an idea as going out without telling anyone.”

 

“I told Murch and Savannah,” he pointed out with a glance over his shoulder into the warehouse proper. Sarah followed his gaze to where Cameron still sat at her table, and then refocused on his face. She saw some of her own unease echoed around his eyes, and her anger gave a last weary sputter and died. Ellison wasn’t sure what to do with the new and modified, walking, talking Tin Miss either, and he had nothing like her experience. Getting a little air was sounding like a better and better idea.

 

Leaving it for now, Sarah opened one of the many weapons lockers they’d retrieved from the last of Derek’s caches.

 

Ellison watched, a concerned look in his eye as Sarah grabbed a semi-automatic, loaded a clip and then pulled the chamber.

 

They hadn’t talked since she had brought Cameron’s new body back, not really. Sarah had always been a woman on the edge. Having been one of the people who’d put her there, Ellison understood that. He hadn’t known her when she’d been on the run with John, not as a person. First, she had been a means to making his career, and then she had been the ruin of it. He hadn’t known her then, but he knew this woman before him was someone else.

 

Someone lost.

 

He’d seen it before, too often amongst his former colleagues. She was a guttering candle, burning out, and desperately searching for one last blaze of glory to make it all worthwhile.

 

He tucked his hands into his pockets, knowing full well he wouldn’t be able to talk her out of this crazy idea she fully intended to carry out. Sarah Connor couldn’t be talked out of anything once she set her mind to it. “Has it occurred to you that this is a trap?”

 

Sarah tucked the semi-automatic in the back of her jeans. “A lot of things have occurred to me, James.”

 

“You have obligations.”

 

Sarah stilled. She turned towards Ellison and he looked pointedly to the doorway. Savannah was standing there, half obscured behind the wall. The Wizard of Oz was still held tightly to her chest and her wide blue eyes were fixed on the ugly gun that Sarah had just shoved into her jeans.

 

Anger and guilt collided and mixed in Sarah’s gut, churning into a thick morass that tasted like bile on the back of her tongue. She didn’t need a new pair of eyes looking at her like that, asking her to make all the bad things go away. Her gaze snapped back to Ellison, dark and heated. “She’s not my obligation, James.” She slammed the locker shut. “You brought her here. She’s yours.”

 

Sarah held out a hand. Ellison sighed, pulling the keys from his pocket and dropping them into her palm. “You don’t have to do this.”

 

Her eyes lost focus, brows furrowing softly, and Ellison could almost see the weight pressing down on her shoulders. “I can’t… not do this.”

 

There was another flash of motion in the doorway, and Sarah turned to see Cameron pass Savannah with a gentle touch on the girl’s shoulder before opening the weapons locker.

 

“What are you doing?” Sarah asked, watching as Cameron pulled out two guns, tucking them both into her jeans to settle snuggly against the small of her back. It was a stupid question; Cameron’s intentions were as clear as the fear on Savannah’s face had been, but the machine answered it anyway.

 

“I’m going with you.”

 

“That’s not a bad idea,” Ellison put in with undisguised relief. Sarah wasn’t sure if he thought she needed protection, or if he just wanted Cameron away from of the warehouse, but she wasn’t a big fan of either sentiment.

 

“Stay out of this!” she growled before turning back to Cameron. “You’re not going.” It was a knee-jerk reaction, an instinctual urge to get away from something she couldn’t cope with. Sarah was honest enough with herself to recognize that, but understanding it didn’t lessen the need to escape.

 

Cameron didn’t react, but she didn’t move out of the way either. Sarah stepped sideways, intending to go around, but Cameron stopped her with nothing more than the tips of her fingers against Sarah’s chest.

 

The tension levels in the tiny room jumped upwards. Ellison’s hand jerked towards his gun, but stopped short. His eyes flicked between the two of them, as if trying to decide whether he needed the weapon or not.

 

“You are not going alone,” Cameron stated firmly, her fingers pressing just hard enough that Sarah could feel the faint synthetic pulse beneath her skin, but not hard enough to hurt.

 

“Cameron…” Sarah trailed off, taken aback by the terminator’s sudden intensity and unexpected touch. This was what she had brought back into her life, a machine capable of doing whatever she thought necessary for the sake of her mission. It wasn’t a matter of closing a laptop, or taking out an earpiece anymore; this version of Cameron would be far harder to argue with. For a moment, Sarah felt cold fear lick up her spine, and then their eyes met and something hot and bright flared in her chest. Cameron’s words rang in her ears.

 

Our mission.

 

It was too much to deal with, and exactly what she needed, both at the same time. Most of Sarah desperately needed some space, but the small, and insistent, piece of her that had sent her out into the rain at dawn didn’t want to let Cameron out of her sight.

 

So she swallowed hard and nodded, dropping her gaze to the floor. Cameron pulled her hand back without another word and turned on her heel. Zipping up her jacket, Sarah followed.

 

Savannah turned to watch them go as they passed, and Sarah glanced back over her shoulder to see the child almost reach out, almost protest, and then check herself. Even at five years old, Savannah was learning that there were things in the world that were more important than what she wanted or needed, and Sarah cursed fate for forcing her to watch another child grow up too fast. 

 

James slid the door closed, the lock clanging loudly within the cavernous room. He turned to see both Murch and Savannah staring at him expectantly. Sarah was right. She wasn’t the only one with obligations.

 

“What’s going on now?” Murch asked, flopping down in Cameron’s empty chair. “I mean, she practically freaked out when Cameron printed that missing person’s flyer. She knows the kid’s not hers, right?”

 

“With Sarah?” James ran his fingers over his chin. “Logic is not always the point,” he said as if that would explain everything.

 

After a beat of silence, Murch shook his head, extending his hands out and up. “Then what is the point?”

 

James ignored him for a moment. He walked to the counter where the coffee machine sat and poured himself a cup, adding three sugars and stirring. What was the point? For sixteen years, Sarah had only one purpose - to protect her son. Now John was gone. He turned around, leaning against the counter as he took another sip.

 

“She’s a mother,” he said softly, his eyes straying to Savannah. The child was still watching the closed door, her little shoulders tense with the effort of trying to be good, trying to be grown up, like her Aunt Sarah and Aunt Cameron. “She’ll do whatever it takes to protect her son.”

 

Murch’s look was pure disbelief. “Even if the kid’s not hers?”

 

****

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