The muted greys of dawn slowly crept across the landscape, illuminating the tired waste of a city crawling with the oblivious, all intent on their own happiness and unconcerned with the future their actions would help to create. It was a world where style was prized more highly than substance, and the mighty dollar was worshipped like a god. A world where the warnings of an apocalyptic future were treated as the ravings of a deranged mind.

It was home.

As the familiar pain of displacement faded, John realised that he was finally back where he belonged, amidst the flashing neon lights and distant sounds of traffic that were the signature tune of the twenty-first century. He took a heady breath, reveling in the stench, a disgusting mix of rotting food and diesel that characterised the industrial areas at the edge of the city. It was an aroma he knew well, but until that very moment, he had never realised how much he had missed the pungent odour. In a strange way, it reminded him of the future, with its polluted air and areas of depravation, but the lingering taint of decomposing food cut through the similarities and grounded him in the present. A present where food wasn’t prized more highly than gold and his belly had never known true hunger.

The sound of a horn blaring brought him out of his musings, and a sudden shift in the wind reminded him of his nude and vulnerable self. A smile tinged his lips at the absurdity of human modesty, but he was unable to curb his response and quickly searched the area for any sign of voyeurs.

His body hunched, he shuffled towards the nearest shadow, his euphoria edged with sadness as he began to realise the extent of his loss. The future, that had never been his, had passed into non-existence without even a hint of protest, but the memory of the people he had left behind reached out to him with ghostly arms.

His father, now a child, would never know the son he could have fathered, the spirals of history poised to rob them of even a passing acquaintance. Allison, the mirror image of his first love, had stepped from the shadow of her reflection and gained a unique place in his heart. All of his plans and hopes had crumbled to dust as she slipped from his fingers, and his dreams of a shared future shattered against the dirt of an uninterested street.

Tears welled in his eyes, before he forced himself to ignore the future’s pull on his loyalty and remember the reason for his return.

Keeping to the shadows, he began his journey home, to the one person who time and distance could never remove from his life, his mother.

 

ACT I

White noise invaded Sarah’s mind and dragged her kicking and screaming into the blinding absence of light that shrouded her war-ravaged body. Pain consumed her. The white-hot fires of Hell danced naked across her skin, taking indecent pleasure from her muted screams, before congregating in a blazing inferno that engulfed and finally consumed her left arm. Sarah’s past and future lost all meaning as the agony tore through her defences and demanded nothing less than total surrender. Names, once sacred and later defiled, crumbled to ash in her mouth as she beseeched the Heavens for a release from the unholy pain.

"Cameron!" The name caught in her throat, but its utterance sliced through her torment with indecent ease, the agonies of white replaced by the darkness of the night as the world around her began to take form.

The outline of furniture and her meager belongings began to come into focus as Sarah turned in her bed to reach for the warm body she remembered. "Cameron?" The sheets were cool to the touch and held no trace of the vigil Sarah half-remembered. Groping with blunt fingers, she searched for Savannah, but the child’s warmth was as absent as Cameron’s.

The sheet fell away with reluctance as Sarah abandoned the bed and went in search of the others. The IV tube, aggressive in its salvation, pulled at her skin and issued a reminder of pain’s dominion. With trembling fingers, Sarah ripped it from her arm, the stench of blood pervading the room and following her as she stumbled out into the hallway.

Cameron’s name tried to force its way past her lips, but years of caution stayed Sarah’s voice and drove her to seek the darkest shadows. Sarah had no idea how long she’d been unconscious, or what horrors might have befallen the others during her slumber, but there was one thing she knew with gut-wrenching certainty and that was that a different kind of darkness had invaded their new home.

A light flickered.

The burst of white squeezed at Sarah’s chest and tore the very air from her lungs. She knelt by the stairs, gasping in remembered pain, as the world around her first shattered and then coalesced into its lie of normalcy.

A discarded doll, its smiled deformed by anger or haste, mocked Sarah’s pain from where it lay forgotten. The evidence of yet another broken childhood, the blame for which she could never escape, forced Sarah to her feet. The world around her swayed, but remained solid, the feel of varnished wood against her soles the centre of her universe, as she slowly began to make her way down the stairs and towards the light.

Sarah’s palm ached with the absence of a weapon. In the warehouse, the walls had been pockmarked with secret arsenals, their locations memorised and secure. The new house, its walls untarnished, held no such secrets, and she was forced to continue, alone and defenceless.

The light emanated from behind the closed door to the living room; the bursts of light created a halo of menace that any normal person would heed, but Sarah Connor had abandoned normal decades before, and no ghost writer’s cliché was going to change that. Scrabbling around in the darkness for anything she could use for a weapon, Sarah's fingers tightened on a rugged, and seemingly incongruous, piece of timber; splinters from its untamed surface savaged the palm of her hand, but with effort, she was able to hold it aloft, a meagre barrier against whatever new evil lurked on the other side of the door.

Her right hand clasped tightly around the makeshift weapon, Sarah reached for the door with the other, but even as the limb rose in reluctant compliance, she knew it would be incapable of the task. Her fingers, once dexterous, felt bloated and sore; her forearms, caught in the inferno of her imagination, pulsed with a fire that raged just outside of her senses. The dull ache, that her mind had chosen to ignore, erupted in sweet agony as her hand collided with the door, sending Sarah spluttering to her knees, her vision once more consumed by white.

For as long as she'd been fighting against the future, Sarah had been plagued by physical pain, her body a road map of injuries both trivial and severe. She had learnt, in that cold factory decades before, to fight through the pain and get the job done, but there was something different about these agonies, something that robbed the strength from her veins.

"Get up," she choked. "Get up and fight!"

The words barely rippled against the surface of the air, but they were enough to propel Sarah off of her knees and back into the motion. Her left arm discarded as useless, Sarah clumsily turned the door handle with her right, the wooden club banging against the sheetrock and robbing Sarah of the single true weapon in her arsenal: surprise.

Her eyes momentarily blinded by the light, Sarah manoeuvred through the room by memory, the expectation of gunfire dogging her every step, until she fell to her knees behind the false sanctuary of the couch. Slowly, as her vision began to clear, she could discern the source of the light: a computer monitor, its screen cracked and abused, lay on its side, light streaming from within in a staccato of vision blurring whiteness. Eyes half-closed, Sarah inched forward, determined to see past the light to whatever lay beyond.

Clouds of colour began to dance in the air, but Sarah refused to look away.

White faded, grew weak, and blinked out of existence, leaving the screen blank. The room fell into darkness. Seconds passed with neither sight nor sound as Sarah waited, not fooled by the tricks of light and darkness. The screen flickered back into life, its whites muted with shadow as a picture slowly began to form; a lone figure, devoid of definition, stalked the streets, its purposeful stride reawakening Sarah's worst nightmares.

It had found her.

The source of all her terrors; the big, hulking, inhuman machine that had ruined her life and set her on the path to insanity with its very being. The one she had destroyed, time and again, in her nightmares, only to see it rise again and take from her everything that she held dear. She had always known, despite all she'd seen, that in the end it would just be the two of them: human verses machine, with no grey areas or questions of morality, just black and white, kill or die.

Footsteps echoed through the house.

The tread was heavy and sure, but it lacked the feminine grace that coloured Cameron's every move. It could be Ellison, returning from God knows where, but Sarah couldn't be certain, and without certainty, she wouldn't allow herself the luxury of relief. Holding the club aloft once more, she shuffled on her knees into the darkest shadow, her arm throbbing in protest with every jostle and jerk. If it was that thing on the monitor, she wouldn't stand a chance, but if she could only damage it somehow, she might make things easier for Cameron on her return.

A floorboard creaked.

The figure loomed in the doorway; its face was obscured, but the paleness of its skin robbed Sarah of her last hope.

She charged.

The club sliced through the air with clumsy grace, pulling Sarah off-balance as it delivered its first, glancing blow that was quickly followed by a second and then a third, before the creature wrenched the wood from Sarah's blood-soaked hand and threw it with contemptuous ease to the floor. Enraged, Sarah threw herself at its head, her fingers clawing at its fake skin as she tried to gouge out its eyes and reveal the machine within. A scream, muffled by the blood rushing through her veins, spoke of treachery and deceit, but a familiarity, more felt than heard, stilled Sarah's hand.

Light from the monitor, strangely absent until that point, flared to life, illuminating a young face creased in pain, but instantly recognisable.

John. Alive. Home.

Distrust warred with instinct as Sarah stared at the impossible, her good hand reaching out of its own volition to brush the hair from his eyes, and in doing so, releasing a torrent of memories that washed away any doubt.

"John?"

He smiled. The years of resentment had melted away, and for the first time, in what felt like a lifetime, Sarah could feel both his love and trust, without reservation.

Falling to her knees, Sarah reached for him, silent words of gratitude ruffling his hair, as she pulled him close, breathing him in, as she'd done when he was first born, as if she could capture the moment and set it in amber. One heartbeat, two, and the reality started to set in. Her head swam, her body ached, and her arm was on fire, but none of that mattered, because he had returned. She squeezed him tighter. He was real. His body was solid, and warm, and wet.

A choked sob rattled the air.

"John?"

Blood, as black as night, clung to his lips as words formed, but failed to appear. His light, that had been so clear to her moments before, fell into shadow, as his head lulled forward and his last sight became that of his undoing.

Confusion was rapidly followed by horror as Sarah called to him, desperation strangling her voice, as her gaze followed his to the churned battleground of blood and flesh that was all that remained of his chest. Metal, sleek and grey in its destruction, had bulldozed its way through his body's meagre defences and ripped the very heart from his breast.

The metal sang with triumph, its edge capturing the dancing light and blinding Sarah with the truth she was too afraid to acknowledge.

The metal, buried deep within her son, burned with a fire that had become all too familiar. The strong lines, marred by blood and guts, liquefied and transformed, turned from a weapon to a mother's caring hand, to Sarah's hand.

"No!"

*** 

The scream tore through the house.

Sarah’s body lurched forward, her eyes crazed with delirium as they searched the shadowed world of insanity that only she could see. Cameron was the first to reach Sarah’s side; she knelt beside her on the bed, her arms cradling Sarah’s trembling body as it surged with adrenaline and fear. Her whispered words of comfort fell on deaf ears, but Cameron was powerless to ignore the compunction, and she continued to make promises of a salvation that might never come.

The house had remained unusually quiet after the doctor had departed, and Sarah had fallen into a restorative sleep, but as the light of a new dawn flooded the room, the tremors had started, and within minutes, Sarah’s body had been bathed in sweat, her muscles taut with the strain of unknown terrors.

"John!"

From the very moment of his departure, Cameron had witnessed the devastation John’s absence had caused his mother, but it wasn’t until she heard the agony in her voice that Cameron truly understood the depth of Sarah’s pain. Her own culpability in his desertion flooded Cameron with guilt and, in that moment, if she could have clicked her heels three times and turned herself into Sarah’s wayward son, she would have willingly done so.

"He’s safe," she lied; the unknown future masking her words with the cover of a truth she no longer believed in. "He’s not here, Sarah, but he is safe."

Her assurances failed to illicit a response.

With a seemingly casual brush of fingertips against heated skin, Cameron recorded Sarah’s body temperature at an alarming 104.7. The doctor, in her haste or incompetence, had missed something, Cameron was sure of it. She had calculated all the variables, and the blood transfusion should have worked, and yet Sarah’s all–too-human body, weak and feeble by design, continued to defy instruction and raced heedlessly on its course of self-destruction.

Cameron reached for her cell; precise calculations were issued by her processors to instruct her hand on the exact amount of pressure to use for optimal deployment of the device, but all the mathematical wizardry in the world could not keep her from pounding the numbers and cracking the phone’s fragile case.

She listened, her face a mask of calm, as her call went to voicemail. She did not leave a message. Her decision to spare the doctor’s life had seemed fortuitous when Sarah’s condition deteriorated, but with each unanswered call, there was building within Cameron a desire to see the physician pay.

"Will she be okay?"

The quiet voice cut through Cameron’s thoughts of destruction and tinged her need for arbitrary retribution with the hint of shame. It was the first time Savannah had spoken in hours, and Cameron could see the distress it caused the girl to question the outcome she’d been promised. Standing at the end of the bed, Savannah had silently watched as Sarah’s body began to reject its salvation, her lip bloodied with worry as she witnessed the onset of Sarah’s terrors.

"Yes." Cameron kept her voice firm, with only a hint of the warmth she usually reserved for the girl, unable to even contemplate a different answer to the question. "I told you, I won’t let her die."

This time, there was no fiercely comforting hug or sense of relief, just a short pause followed by a nod as Savannah signaled her acceptance. It was in that moment that Cameron recognised the shadow of Sarah’s influence, and she turned from the child to once again survey the woman, her doubts and fears rising to the surface as she became a spectator to Sarah’s inner battle.

***

"John!" Sarah turned, her blood soaked arms reaching out into the darkness, begging for the return of what she had lost.

“It’s too late.” Her voice sounded as young and petulant as Sarah remembered, but the Riley who stood before her was a far cry from the teenager she recalled. The girl’s hair was a hedgerow of uneven clumps, the blonde strands stained red in places where a pair of barber’s shears had cut too close. Her features, once cushioned by the pillows of youth, had turned sharp, her eyes sunken into a face gaunt with depravation. “You destroyed him,” she mocked, the animation in her voice at odds with the pale oblivion of her gaze. “He always knew you would.”

“No.” She would never hurt John. It was a lie, it had to be; her son couldn’t be dead. “I would never hurt him.”

Riley laughed. “You always hurt the ones you love,” she singsonged, the very sound of her voice grating on Sarah’s nerves and bringing forth a wellspring of anger. “What’s the matter, Sarah, can’t you handle the truth?”

It wasn’t true. None if it was. John was safe. He had to be. The blonde had been a stupid annoyance when she was alive, and nothing had changed with her death; she was still just a poor man’s substitute for what John really desired.

“What you both desire,” Riley countered, as if death had imbued her with the ability to read minds. “A cold, hard, ruthless machine.” Her lips peeled back into an approximation of a smile. “Tell me, Sarah, what’s it like to fuck a machine?” Her laugh turned maniacal. “Have you ever wondered if John got there first?”

***

After his third circuit of the park, John had managed to map out the entire area until he knew the location of every pathway and dog pile within a two block radius. It was something familiar, taking in his surroundings and formulating an escape route to account for every contingency, and it eventually managed to quell the nervous tension that had arisen when John finally realised he had absolutely no idea how to find his mother.

Before, when they’d been separated, there had been a system in place to enable them to regroup, but things were different now. The cell number he remembered came back as unobtainable, and he had no way of knowing if the fault was due to his memory or the caution Sarah had instilled in him since he was a child.

Old friends, who could have helped, had either died or gone into hiding, and he had no idea if the people he’d met in the future had already joined his mother’s cause. Not that the knowledge would have done him any good, as he doubted Sarah would have allowed either Prophet or Tango the luxury of an open line of communication with the outside world.

The world that he’d left, on his ill-timed journey to the future, had been about to fall down around his mother’s ears, and he had no way of knowing how far underground she might have burrowed to keep her motley group of survivors safe.

***

Since meeting Sarah Connor, nothing in James’ life had remained untainted; his marriage, his career and even his religion had been shaken and nearly destroyed by what he’d learned. Now, sitting alone in the half-light of a house that he had begun to fear could never be a home, he listened as Sarah’s cries haunted the very air he breathed, and slowly, as his eyes filled with tears, he began to let go of the blame and anger he had harboured against her for all his losses.

He thought of Cameron, standing guard, a soldier in the guise of a nurse, and wondered if the sound of someone else’s pain had any impact on whatever circuitry she had in place of a soul. Over the last few days he had witnessed a side to the machine that both confused and concerned him; she was acting irrationally, her decision-making skills apparently clouded by emotion, emotion she wasn’t supposed to feel. It was something that went far beyond a simple computer glitch or faulty programming, and it scared him even more than the thought that she’d been compromised.

The very idea of leaving Savannah in her charge filled him with dread, but it paled in comparison to the possible consequences of removing the child from Cameron’s care. With Sarah unresponsive, Savannah had become the only person capable of focusing Cameron’s mind, and with little hope of Sarah surviving the night, the child’s influence could end up being the only thing that stood between civilisation and a rampaging killing-machine.

James shuddered, sickened by his own thoughts, the idea of using a child to tame a monster filled him with guilt and made him question just what kind of man he’d become, that he could so easily risk the life of an innocent.

“Enough.”

He wiped the question out of existence along with the tears misting his eyes. If Sarah died, he would deal with Cameron, but until then there was little point in speculating.

Seeking refuge from his thoughts, James turned to the world around him; even though the power had been restored hours earlier, every appliance in the house was still flashing big giant zeros. Resetting the clocks was a menial task of little importance, but he set to work rectifying the situation with a military precision; anything to keep him from thinking about the noises rattling through the house and what they might signify for the future.

He finished adjusting the clock on the old fashioned VCR and turned to the ultramodern computer system that Cameron had half-installed. He wasn’t a computer genius, like Murch, but like most people he knew enough to take care of the basics. Shuffling the mouse, he watched as the screen came to life, and the screen-saver’s brightly coloured ball was forced into retirement. The digital readout in the bottom corner of the screen coincided almost perfectly with the display on the VCR and proved, yet again, that not all machines needed human assistance.

Turning away from the monitors, James was caught by surprise when the muted colours that had filled the screen were suddenly replaced with the first in a series of images. His eyes registered the vague shape of a face, before the image was replaced, the replacement superseded just as quickly as its predecessor, as the images were dealt with a cardshark’s fondness for showmanship.

Just as quickly as the images had appeared, they stopped, and in their place resided a single, blurred photograph. The image was of somebody’s face; a man, James thought, but he couldn’t be sure. It was the kind of image he’d seen a thousand times during his stint at the FBI and had no doubt been taken from a store’s CCTV camera. Whoever it was, he or she had been on the sidewalk outside the store, and there was little to no chance that the photograph could be enhanced sufficiently to satisfy a jury.

Figures started to scroll across the screen, as green lines flashed against the image, and James realised that human eyes would not be the deciding factor in deciding the stranger’s identity. It took the computer less than five seconds to transition from a set of confusing of images to an identification of the unknown: John Connor.

An alarm started to sound as the images reappeared, and James realised they were all pictures of John: baby, child, man, each stage of his life was captured in a single image, each one contributing to the overall picture of a future legend.

James reached for his gun.

He walked the perimeter of the property, cursing its lack of vantage points as he scoured the surrounding area for any sign of trouble. His thoughts turned to Murch and the attack that had left the little man a discarded heap, his eyes turning to the sky as he recalled the hovering menace. It was almost impossible to hear above the shriek of the computers, but James tried nevertheless, his efforts rewarded by the arrival of a headache, but little else.

The first floor was secured. The physical alarm system was armed, and there was no outward sign of intruders. Convinced, at least momentarily, that the house wasn’t under immediate threat of an assault, James was able to see what wasn’t in the room: Cameron. Unless she were under attack, and by extension both Sarah and Savannah were in danger, the terminator should have been at his side, facing the threat head-on. That could only mean on thing, the attack was coming from above.

***

The alarms blared.

The artificial screech of danger was punctuated by the rabid sound of dogs baying for blood. Voices heavy with anger shouted in the distance, their words obscured, but the threat inherent in their tone unmistakable.

Sarah ran.

Pain lanced through her chest and turned each breath into a nightmare. Her body burned with fatigue as she tried desperately to outdistance whatever hell was on her heels. Each step brought her closer to a destination she could not name, but which offered her the only chance she had to escape from her past.

Darkness crowded her mind as she was chased through a wilderness barren to all but menace. Her pursuers grew closer, their words almost recognisable as they fought against the dogs’ howls to be heard. She looked ahead but could see no sign of reprieve.

“Sarah!”

Her name tore at the air and sent Sarah sprawling to her knees.

She scrambled to her feet, the hot breath of the beast rotting the very air that she breathed, as Sarah turned to face her pursuers.

“Mom!”

John, his face an angry mask of betrayal raced toward her; his father, aged by hatred and not the years, was by his side. They did not stop. Their faces did not soften. They kept coming towards her, anger and revulsion souring their handsome faces until they were almost unrecognisable.

Sarah ran.

She wanted to go to them. To embrace her son and forget herself in the arms of the man she’d loved. She ran on. Her lungs burned and her legs buckled under the strain. She fell.

“Sarah!”

“Mom!”

The voices she’d so longed to hear tormented her with their anger. She called to them, begged them to welcome her home, but the closer they came the more vicious their anger became.

Sarah ran.

“Sarah?”

A different voice. Up ahead, in the darkness, where nothing could be seen past her reflection in the mists. It was a voice she knew. Cameron’s voice, but different, as if the truth of it was only half-remembered, the warmth and promise alien to her memory’s recollection.

She would have called out, but the struggle had robbed her of a voice, and she could only go on, blind to the dangers on her trail, as her every thought turned to Cameron and the protection she knew the other woman could provide.

Smoke choked her lungs as she drew in great lungfuls of air, her body rebelling against the latest invasion and sending her straight to her knees. She looked behind her, at what had once been darkness, but the area surrounding her son and his father was consumed with flames.

“No!”

Sarah tried to turn back, to enter the flames and retrieve what had been stolen, but her body would not respond. She stood, but not by her own volition, her back turned on the screams of her past as she walked away from them into the mist.

Soft light glinted through the whiteness, and for a precious moment, Sarah was convinced of her salvation. She drew closer. The screams of the fire and those it consumed faded into the background. Up ahead, something moved.

“Cameron?”

Pain and terror leeched from her body, and for the first time in what felt like days, she could breath normally. Movement caught her eye and she stepped closer, a smile of relief warming her features, as Sarah discerned a familiar figure walking towards her.

The figure was clouded in a misty fog, but Sarah would have known Cameron’s sure-footed yet graceful gait anywhere. She wanted to run. To take Cameron in her arms and demand that the girl lead her to safety. She was desperate to see a friendly face.

Sarah looked up, her smile disintegrating into a thousand screams as she stared at the metal exoskeleton looking at her with Cameron’s soulful brown eyes. Its jaw contracted, the pistons lifting into a bastardised version of a smile, as Cameron’s voice issued from deep within its artificial mouth.

“Welcome home, Sarah.”

***

 

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