Terminator: Survival Instinct
- Thread starter nx1701g
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The elevator seemed to fall in slow motion, yet it was too fast for Lauren Fields to do anything about her plight. The Medic stopped to help a fallen friend and now she was being dragged into the belly of the beast on an express elevator to hell that wasn’t so express. Beside her Catherine Luna was in the fetal position muttering something in Spanish that Lauren couldn’t make out. Why did she ever stop? Why didn’t she keep running? Why did she let Captain Luna retreat back in on herself like that and condemn her to a personal hell?
She stopped and tried to help because she was human and that was what humans did in the new world. Humans helped each other, except for a few who were more focused on their own bellies than beating Skynet back, and that was something she would never forget. If she turned her back on humanity she’d be no better than the metal beasts that she had fought since she was little more than a kid. What kind of role model could Lauren be if she didn’t live up to the expectations of her own role model?
That woman was Sarah Connor. When the machine came for her mother and sister Lauren got to spend time with the mother of humanity’s savior. In that brief time she had become enamored by this lady and what she did. Sarah Connor was determined, resolute, and steadfast. In many ways she was like the machines, but her dedication to humanity kept her from falling over the brink. There was darkness in Sarah Connor but there was also a spark of life that Fields had seen very little in anyone else except for maybe her son. If Lauren could be half the person that Sarah Connor was her life would be a success. If there was one thing that Sarah had ever taught her it was that you never stopped fighting, and Lauren wouldn’t. She searched for anything that could be a weapon but found only rubble and more rubble.
The other question was something that she was about to rectify. As the elevator crossed paths with what Lauren could make out as a Skynet security scanner, Fields was at Captain Luna’s side holding her hand. She held firmly as the mechanical whirring kept up its brutal symphony somewhere below them. Fields brushed a hair free from the Captain’s forehead. “Catherine,” Lauren said with kindness and sympathy. “Catherine its me Lauren. Catherine I need your help.”
The fiercely strong Resistance Captain was still locked in the fetal position muttering. “Skynet… Skynet’s coming… It’s coming for me again. William… William wants me to be a monster. William where are you? Why did you do this to me? Why do you want me to be a monster? Why did you become a monster? Why… Why…”
Luna’s plight was more unique than anyone else’s could have been. She grew up in relative peace in a human enclave that was low on Skynet’s list of priorities and hard for it to find. Her husband, fearing for their mortality, found Skynet and made arrangements with it for immortality for him and his wife by selling out the Haven Enclave’s future. Then she had major attacks to her life. First, the Resistance found, captured, and reprogrammed the machine carrying the essence of William. In the wisdom of the machine called Bob, that machine was assigned to the same squad as Catherine and she had to look at him nearly every day and face the demons. Then she had to lose him to the machines again. When they on patrol and captured by Skynet, the machines reprogrammed William but didn’t bother to restore his cerebral syncording. William died again and his shell was all the left – still operating by his last name of Cromartie.
“He’s not here,” she became firmer, “and I need your help if we’re going to survive this. Catherine, we can escape but we’ve got to work together to do it.”
Catherine stared into the eyes of the medic, but she wasn’t there. The eyes were soulless, devoid of life. It wasn’t the same as staring into the eyes of one of the machines but it wasn’t much different. This was a woman who had been stripped of everything and how did you pull them back from the brink of oblivion? How did you save them from their reality? Could you even?
Her accent was thick, far thicker than one could imagine possible. Most regional dialects and accents had faded away since the world became essentially one at the start of the war against Skynet. Luna’s was still there and Lauren, for a moment, wondered what part of Mexico she originated from. The accent sounded like it was from Guadalajara, but she couldn’t be sure. It wasn’t important but it kept her from thinking about her own fate. They were probably going to die anyway, but Lauren wanted to fight on her feet and not die on her knees. Luna didn’t seem to care either way anymore.
“We’re not going to survive this,” said the senior officer. “There is no surviving this. We’ve been in hell for years and now Satan has called us to his lair. We’re going to be punished again. Where is our salvation? When do we survive?”
Fields grabbed hold of the Captain’s lapels, “We have a chance for salvation. We need to fight and not give in like lambs for the slaughter! Catherine you’re one of the strongest women I know! You’re one of the best fighters that we have in the war against the machines. We need you. You have to come back!”
“I was one of the best,” she admitted, “but I’m not anymore. William… oh William what did you do? What did you do to me?” A smile formed on her lips that was wicked, “Maybe this is our deliverance? Maybe we’re meant to be machines?” She started to laugh hysterically. “It’s our destiny! I’m coming William. I’ll be with you soon, my darling!”
Before the Doctor could think she slapped the Mexican right in her face for what she said. “Snap out of it! Our destiny is to drive those machines back, not to join their flock like some traitorous bastards! You are Catherine Luna. Never forget that. You need to fight, we need to storm the wires, we need to kick the asses of whatever’s waiting for us when we stop! We have to escape this and I can’t do it without you so snap out of it Captain!”
Catherine was still laughing, “There is no escape.”
“She’s quite right,” a new, male voice came from beyond them.
Lauren Fields turned and gasped at the man that she saw standing on the platform adjacent to them. It was the man of her dreams, or rather her nightmares; a man who was the devil, who lay down with the machines and became worse than they could ever be. Now she stood there staring at him in his pressed business clothes of perfection while she wore tattered rags. His perfect white dress shirt with light grey pinstripes and rolled up sleeves, khakis that were unlike anything she could remember seeing in what seemed like forever. Then there were the man’s shoes. They were factory fresh without a bit of damage while the average human had to live with footwear that was falling apart at the seams. The devil stood before them indeed.
And he wasn’t alone. Standing next to him were two older model six hundred series infiltrators with their incomplete rubbery skin. Red eyes glowed as they held their massive machine guns trained on the two humans. One was focused on her while the other had his gun trained on the Captain that sat next to her. As she stared Lauren had to admit to herself that she was still impressed by these two machines or rather how Skynet had accomplished it. When dealing with the endoskeletons these machines were a full eight feet tall, yet when they were in their infiltration sheaths these tin cans compacted their bodies down to an average human height. It was the only time she’d admit being impressed by a machine.
“Charles Fischer? So Skynet let you come out to play? Hope they don’t mind losing you when I kill you,” challenged Fields.
He smiled back at her, “If it isn’t my favorite porn star. Don’t worry, I brought you some new toys. We have all new Triple Eights just waiting for your own special kind of… interrogation.”
“And I’ll trash them just like I trashed the last ones,” she taunted. “Then I’ll find you and I’ll rip out your throat.”
“I doubt that,” he crossed his arms, “but I welcome you to try. How about you, Captain, do you want to rip out my throat?”
Luna looked at the two machines and then to Doctor Fields. Pushing herself up off the ground with her hand she limped across the platform to join Fischer and the two machines, all the while the one kept his rifle trained on her and its finger on the trigger waiting for the woman to make a hostile move. It wasn’t a plasma gun but that particular weapon could still cut the woman in half if the machine decided to pull the trigger. Lunda didn’t seem to care.
“I’m tired of running,” she said between sobs as her accent deepened. “I’m tired of a war that I can’t win. I want to join you, to be with you, to be one of you.”
“You bitch!” Lauren Fields screamed at the betrayal.
Charles Fischer ran his finger along the woman’s cheek, “A wise choice.” He looked back at Fields, “You know you should thank her, Doctor. You owe your life to her.”
“I’ll just kill her too when I come for you,” she didn’t threaten. She promised.
“I doubt you’ll have the chance,” Charles looked at the machine to his left. “Process her.”
The tin can that had kept its gun trained on Doctor Fields repositioned its hands and walked forward with an echoing thud at each step. It came up to the woman without concern for her and reached for her with its free hand. The metal fingers clasped around her arm and the machine turned to face Fischer and Luna. Fields tried to resist but the machine didn’t care. In this case her resistance was futile and would have no benefits. As she fought like a child who didn’t get her new toy – kicking, clawing, and trying to grab hold of the floor in a tantrum – it merely dragged her along.
“JUDAS!” Lauren screamed as the machine drug her into the laboratory.
Fischer looked at the woman and his new prize, “Don’t worry about her. You have new life waiting. Let’s go get you to the laboratory and we’ll get the party started. You’ll be better, stronger, faster, and no one will dare oppose or threaten you again. You’ll be perfect.”
Luna kissed the goateed man for a moment and then pulled away, “Let the adventure begin.”
Charles looked to the last remaining Series 600 automaton with them. He kept a hand on the side of the former Resistance soldier, “Please escort Miss Luna to the laboratory and have Skynet bring an unprogrammed body to the chamber.”
The machine nodded and started away with Luna in tow.
Charles Fischer watched as the two walked through the door and into the chamber. Two down and only one left to go.
Derek Reese stumbled down the hallway using the broken remains of the wall for support. With every step he felt like he was being stabbed in the chest and that the knife was being turned in one last act of spite. The average man would have just given up and committed himself to death, relishing the chance to finally be rid of this hellish world. Not even hell itself could be as miserable as being stuck here in the radioactive wastes that were the slums of humanity. For the average person being interred in hell would be a vacation from this world. That was, of course, if you still believed in such things as God, the Devil, Heaven, Hell, angels, and demons. Not many people had the time to even bother with such things these days.
For Lieutenant Reese the thought hadn’t ever really occurred to him. His life had never been based on the philosophical or the metaphysical; rather his life was based upon realism and the here and now. Earl Wise believed in those things and asked Derek if he did. Derek wasn’t sure and, to be honest, he still wasn’t. One thing was certain to him though: Skynet was as close to a realistic devil as you could get. He didn’t know what he believed but, for now, he had to focus on something other than his pain. So he’d instead focus on his duty.
“Kyle?” Derek called as he pulled himself along the broken down hallway. “Kyle you see anything?”
Up ahead Kyle Reese had his back pushed against the wall and was peering around the corner. Kyle Reese was one of the best soldiers that the Resistance had ever had. John Connor himself had said more than once that the Resistance was lucky to have him. When Derek returned from the Skynet Laboratory, when he managed to escape, he’d learned that his brother was missing and presumed killed in action during the Resistance’s invasion of Topanga Canyon. Here he was though just like Derek had remembered him: his little brother, his savior.
“Nothing much,” he looked down the long hallway, “just another broken down building.”
Derek joined his sibling and peered around the corner for himself, “I don’t see anything either. Wise is probably dead.”
“I wouldn’t count him out yet,” Sergeant Reese suggested. “There’s something about that guy that just makes me wonder sometimes. Something that tells me that that guy’s more than he seems – I’m just not sure if that’s a good or bad thing.”
“I saw it too,” confirmed the Lieutenant. “There seems to be more to him than meets the eye. I haven’t been able to put my finger on it… yet.” He shifted the plasma rifle realizing just how heavy they could be, “We really need to get R&D on making one of these lighter.”
Kyle smiled, “I always preferred the .50 caliber sniper rifle myself. It may weigh as much as a cinderblock but at least it made a nice dent in the metal bastards.”
Derek let out a laugh that was half a grunt in pain, “I think that’d be heavier. You think that Desert Eagle’ll do you any good?”
“Can’t hurt,” he replied, “may give a diversion at least. Maybe I’d be able to take out the visual sensors and give us a bit more breathing room at the very least.” He looked at ground ahead, “What’d you make of that?”
Lieutenant Reese glanced at the hole in the ground, “Looks like the floor just gave way, but it’s too perfect to have been an accident or fatigue to the structure. Maybe it was an elevator? It’d at least explain the metal gears that we heard grinding earlier.” His head was throbbing again.
“Your head still bothering you?” Kyle inquired looking at his protector for so many years.
“I think I have a concussion,” he admitted. “I’m tired and my head feels like someone ran it over with an HK Tank. Hell maybe an Ogre or a Harvester instead. I need to sit down and rest. I need to sleep. I’ll be better soon.”
Sergeant Kyle Reese grabbed his brother, “Listen soldier and listen carefully: I’m not letting you give up. You’re going to fight.”
“My head’s on fire,” Derek challenged him. “You go ahead. The tin cans would never expect you coming alone.”
“I’m not going without you. Pain can be controlled,” he countered. “Don’t disconnect it, this time use it. Channel it into you and make it into a rage. Use it against these tinnies instead of feeling bad for yourself. Got it?”
Derek stared into the eyes of his brother and saw something he’d never really seen before: authority. When did his brother become like this? Kyle’d always been stronger than most any other kid or man that Derek had meant. Now there was something more. When did his little brother become more than just a kid he’d give his life to protect? When did his brother become a man he was today? When did Kyle become more than a soldier?
“Who are you?” Sergeant Kyle Reese asked pointedly with turbulence flooding through his voice.
“What do you mean?” Lieutenant Reese questioned.
Kyle was still fierce in his words but enunciated them more clearly. He paused between each word, “Who are you?”
“I’m Derek Reese.”
“More than that, soldier!” He challenged through gritted teeth.
Derek could see where he was going, “I’m Second Lieutenant Derek Thomas Reese of TechCOM.”
“I can’t hear you, soldier!”
“I’m Second Lieutenant Derek Thomas Reese of TechCOM!” It was a yell.
Kyle nodded with a knowing grin, “Glad to hear it, trooper. Now go out there and kick metal ass!”
Derek looked at his brother, “You coming?”
“I’m right behind you,” the younger man confirmed. “I’m always with you, brother, now let’s go fight these bastards. We have a war to win!”
Derek Reese charged down the hallway without the assistance of the wall doing just as he brother said. He focused the energy of the pain into rage and used it to make his way through the dilapidated building that hid a dark secret. Pushing himself through the stairway door he started down ready to kick metal ass.
Skynet Research and Development was like any other laboratory that you could possibly imagine, but in a world where humanity was on the brink of everlasting death it was particularly impressive. While most of the surface world was trash covered and dirty, the Skynet R&D Facility was clean and clear. There was no dirt, no muck, and no trash was strewn over the ground. The walls were white and perfect, the floors tile covered without a single crack. The air was the most haunting thing. No screams hung amongst it, no cries for help sang in the dark. There was no rain, no cold air, no warm; it was comfortable. Then there was the smell. On the Earth’s surface all you could smell was the end result of years of devastation. Here the air was clear. There was no scent only clean air perfectly scrubbed by the environmental systems.
Lauren Fields cried as her fists struck against the machine’s leg for what seemed like the millionth time. Her punches had left her hands bloody from the damage, yet the machine didn’t stop. It brought her to a large metal door that had no outward controls, nothing that could be used to open or close it. The machine stopped and held her steady. Within a second of it stopping the slab ascended and let them into another more concealed laboratory inside the Skynet base. The walls were the same stark white and the air was still clear. It wasn’t as clean though, it was more dirty and disgusting despite the perfection and it was because of one thing and one thing only.
Centralized in the room was a metal slab shaped like a table. From her vantage in the mechanism’s powerful grasp the woman could see the tabletop. It was made of steel and was polished, though it’d seen some wear throughout the years. The metal was scratched and scraped from some yet unseen instrument. Then she realized what the mess of dark patches was on the flat top. The dirt was blood both coagulated and some that had been there so long it had crusted over. This wasn’t just an experimentation chamber, this was an execution room. She was going to die as a Skynet experiment and this would be the site of it. The doctor wanted to scream, but the machine didn’t give her time. It lifted her like she was made of nothing and tossed her on the steel table. From the sides metal scanners emerged and began their task. She wanted to scream but nothing came.
She stopped and tried to help because she was human and that was what humans did in the new world. Humans helped each other, except for a few who were more focused on their own bellies than beating Skynet back, and that was something she would never forget. If she turned her back on humanity she’d be no better than the metal beasts that she had fought since she was little more than a kid. What kind of role model could Lauren be if she didn’t live up to the expectations of her own role model?
That woman was Sarah Connor. When the machine came for her mother and sister Lauren got to spend time with the mother of humanity’s savior. In that brief time she had become enamored by this lady and what she did. Sarah Connor was determined, resolute, and steadfast. In many ways she was like the machines, but her dedication to humanity kept her from falling over the brink. There was darkness in Sarah Connor but there was also a spark of life that Fields had seen very little in anyone else except for maybe her son. If Lauren could be half the person that Sarah Connor was her life would be a success. If there was one thing that Sarah had ever taught her it was that you never stopped fighting, and Lauren wouldn’t. She searched for anything that could be a weapon but found only rubble and more rubble.
The other question was something that she was about to rectify. As the elevator crossed paths with what Lauren could make out as a Skynet security scanner, Fields was at Captain Luna’s side holding her hand. She held firmly as the mechanical whirring kept up its brutal symphony somewhere below them. Fields brushed a hair free from the Captain’s forehead. “Catherine,” Lauren said with kindness and sympathy. “Catherine its me Lauren. Catherine I need your help.”
The fiercely strong Resistance Captain was still locked in the fetal position muttering. “Skynet… Skynet’s coming… It’s coming for me again. William… William wants me to be a monster. William where are you? Why did you do this to me? Why do you want me to be a monster? Why did you become a monster? Why… Why…”
Luna’s plight was more unique than anyone else’s could have been. She grew up in relative peace in a human enclave that was low on Skynet’s list of priorities and hard for it to find. Her husband, fearing for their mortality, found Skynet and made arrangements with it for immortality for him and his wife by selling out the Haven Enclave’s future. Then she had major attacks to her life. First, the Resistance found, captured, and reprogrammed the machine carrying the essence of William. In the wisdom of the machine called Bob, that machine was assigned to the same squad as Catherine and she had to look at him nearly every day and face the demons. Then she had to lose him to the machines again. When they on patrol and captured by Skynet, the machines reprogrammed William but didn’t bother to restore his cerebral syncording. William died again and his shell was all the left – still operating by his last name of Cromartie.
“He’s not here,” she became firmer, “and I need your help if we’re going to survive this. Catherine, we can escape but we’ve got to work together to do it.”
Catherine stared into the eyes of the medic, but she wasn’t there. The eyes were soulless, devoid of life. It wasn’t the same as staring into the eyes of one of the machines but it wasn’t much different. This was a woman who had been stripped of everything and how did you pull them back from the brink of oblivion? How did you save them from their reality? Could you even?
Her accent was thick, far thicker than one could imagine possible. Most regional dialects and accents had faded away since the world became essentially one at the start of the war against Skynet. Luna’s was still there and Lauren, for a moment, wondered what part of Mexico she originated from. The accent sounded like it was from Guadalajara, but she couldn’t be sure. It wasn’t important but it kept her from thinking about her own fate. They were probably going to die anyway, but Lauren wanted to fight on her feet and not die on her knees. Luna didn’t seem to care either way anymore.
“We’re not going to survive this,” said the senior officer. “There is no surviving this. We’ve been in hell for years and now Satan has called us to his lair. We’re going to be punished again. Where is our salvation? When do we survive?”
Fields grabbed hold of the Captain’s lapels, “We have a chance for salvation. We need to fight and not give in like lambs for the slaughter! Catherine you’re one of the strongest women I know! You’re one of the best fighters that we have in the war against the machines. We need you. You have to come back!”
“I was one of the best,” she admitted, “but I’m not anymore. William… oh William what did you do? What did you do to me?” A smile formed on her lips that was wicked, “Maybe this is our deliverance? Maybe we’re meant to be machines?” She started to laugh hysterically. “It’s our destiny! I’m coming William. I’ll be with you soon, my darling!”
Before the Doctor could think she slapped the Mexican right in her face for what she said. “Snap out of it! Our destiny is to drive those machines back, not to join their flock like some traitorous bastards! You are Catherine Luna. Never forget that. You need to fight, we need to storm the wires, we need to kick the asses of whatever’s waiting for us when we stop! We have to escape this and I can’t do it without you so snap out of it Captain!”
Catherine was still laughing, “There is no escape.”
“She’s quite right,” a new, male voice came from beyond them.
Lauren Fields turned and gasped at the man that she saw standing on the platform adjacent to them. It was the man of her dreams, or rather her nightmares; a man who was the devil, who lay down with the machines and became worse than they could ever be. Now she stood there staring at him in his pressed business clothes of perfection while she wore tattered rags. His perfect white dress shirt with light grey pinstripes and rolled up sleeves, khakis that were unlike anything she could remember seeing in what seemed like forever. Then there were the man’s shoes. They were factory fresh without a bit of damage while the average human had to live with footwear that was falling apart at the seams. The devil stood before them indeed.
And he wasn’t alone. Standing next to him were two older model six hundred series infiltrators with their incomplete rubbery skin. Red eyes glowed as they held their massive machine guns trained on the two humans. One was focused on her while the other had his gun trained on the Captain that sat next to her. As she stared Lauren had to admit to herself that she was still impressed by these two machines or rather how Skynet had accomplished it. When dealing with the endoskeletons these machines were a full eight feet tall, yet when they were in their infiltration sheaths these tin cans compacted their bodies down to an average human height. It was the only time she’d admit being impressed by a machine.
“Charles Fischer? So Skynet let you come out to play? Hope they don’t mind losing you when I kill you,” challenged Fields.
He smiled back at her, “If it isn’t my favorite porn star. Don’t worry, I brought you some new toys. We have all new Triple Eights just waiting for your own special kind of… interrogation.”
“And I’ll trash them just like I trashed the last ones,” she taunted. “Then I’ll find you and I’ll rip out your throat.”
“I doubt that,” he crossed his arms, “but I welcome you to try. How about you, Captain, do you want to rip out my throat?”
Luna looked at the two machines and then to Doctor Fields. Pushing herself up off the ground with her hand she limped across the platform to join Fischer and the two machines, all the while the one kept his rifle trained on her and its finger on the trigger waiting for the woman to make a hostile move. It wasn’t a plasma gun but that particular weapon could still cut the woman in half if the machine decided to pull the trigger. Lunda didn’t seem to care.
“I’m tired of running,” she said between sobs as her accent deepened. “I’m tired of a war that I can’t win. I want to join you, to be with you, to be one of you.”
“You bitch!” Lauren Fields screamed at the betrayal.
Charles Fischer ran his finger along the woman’s cheek, “A wise choice.” He looked back at Fields, “You know you should thank her, Doctor. You owe your life to her.”
“I’ll just kill her too when I come for you,” she didn’t threaten. She promised.
“I doubt you’ll have the chance,” Charles looked at the machine to his left. “Process her.”
The tin can that had kept its gun trained on Doctor Fields repositioned its hands and walked forward with an echoing thud at each step. It came up to the woman without concern for her and reached for her with its free hand. The metal fingers clasped around her arm and the machine turned to face Fischer and Luna. Fields tried to resist but the machine didn’t care. In this case her resistance was futile and would have no benefits. As she fought like a child who didn’t get her new toy – kicking, clawing, and trying to grab hold of the floor in a tantrum – it merely dragged her along.
“JUDAS!” Lauren screamed as the machine drug her into the laboratory.
Fischer looked at the woman and his new prize, “Don’t worry about her. You have new life waiting. Let’s go get you to the laboratory and we’ll get the party started. You’ll be better, stronger, faster, and no one will dare oppose or threaten you again. You’ll be perfect.”
Luna kissed the goateed man for a moment and then pulled away, “Let the adventure begin.”
Charles looked to the last remaining Series 600 automaton with them. He kept a hand on the side of the former Resistance soldier, “Please escort Miss Luna to the laboratory and have Skynet bring an unprogrammed body to the chamber.”
The machine nodded and started away with Luna in tow.
Charles Fischer watched as the two walked through the door and into the chamber. Two down and only one left to go.
Derek Reese stumbled down the hallway using the broken remains of the wall for support. With every step he felt like he was being stabbed in the chest and that the knife was being turned in one last act of spite. The average man would have just given up and committed himself to death, relishing the chance to finally be rid of this hellish world. Not even hell itself could be as miserable as being stuck here in the radioactive wastes that were the slums of humanity. For the average person being interred in hell would be a vacation from this world. That was, of course, if you still believed in such things as God, the Devil, Heaven, Hell, angels, and demons. Not many people had the time to even bother with such things these days.
For Lieutenant Reese the thought hadn’t ever really occurred to him. His life had never been based on the philosophical or the metaphysical; rather his life was based upon realism and the here and now. Earl Wise believed in those things and asked Derek if he did. Derek wasn’t sure and, to be honest, he still wasn’t. One thing was certain to him though: Skynet was as close to a realistic devil as you could get. He didn’t know what he believed but, for now, he had to focus on something other than his pain. So he’d instead focus on his duty.
“Kyle?” Derek called as he pulled himself along the broken down hallway. “Kyle you see anything?”
Up ahead Kyle Reese had his back pushed against the wall and was peering around the corner. Kyle Reese was one of the best soldiers that the Resistance had ever had. John Connor himself had said more than once that the Resistance was lucky to have him. When Derek returned from the Skynet Laboratory, when he managed to escape, he’d learned that his brother was missing and presumed killed in action during the Resistance’s invasion of Topanga Canyon. Here he was though just like Derek had remembered him: his little brother, his savior.
“Nothing much,” he looked down the long hallway, “just another broken down building.”
Derek joined his sibling and peered around the corner for himself, “I don’t see anything either. Wise is probably dead.”
“I wouldn’t count him out yet,” Sergeant Reese suggested. “There’s something about that guy that just makes me wonder sometimes. Something that tells me that that guy’s more than he seems – I’m just not sure if that’s a good or bad thing.”
“I saw it too,” confirmed the Lieutenant. “There seems to be more to him than meets the eye. I haven’t been able to put my finger on it… yet.” He shifted the plasma rifle realizing just how heavy they could be, “We really need to get R&D on making one of these lighter.”
Kyle smiled, “I always preferred the .50 caliber sniper rifle myself. It may weigh as much as a cinderblock but at least it made a nice dent in the metal bastards.”
Derek let out a laugh that was half a grunt in pain, “I think that’d be heavier. You think that Desert Eagle’ll do you any good?”
“Can’t hurt,” he replied, “may give a diversion at least. Maybe I’d be able to take out the visual sensors and give us a bit more breathing room at the very least.” He looked at ground ahead, “What’d you make of that?”
Lieutenant Reese glanced at the hole in the ground, “Looks like the floor just gave way, but it’s too perfect to have been an accident or fatigue to the structure. Maybe it was an elevator? It’d at least explain the metal gears that we heard grinding earlier.” His head was throbbing again.
“Your head still bothering you?” Kyle inquired looking at his protector for so many years.
“I think I have a concussion,” he admitted. “I’m tired and my head feels like someone ran it over with an HK Tank. Hell maybe an Ogre or a Harvester instead. I need to sit down and rest. I need to sleep. I’ll be better soon.”
Sergeant Kyle Reese grabbed his brother, “Listen soldier and listen carefully: I’m not letting you give up. You’re going to fight.”
“My head’s on fire,” Derek challenged him. “You go ahead. The tin cans would never expect you coming alone.”
“I’m not going without you. Pain can be controlled,” he countered. “Don’t disconnect it, this time use it. Channel it into you and make it into a rage. Use it against these tinnies instead of feeling bad for yourself. Got it?”
Derek stared into the eyes of his brother and saw something he’d never really seen before: authority. When did his brother become like this? Kyle’d always been stronger than most any other kid or man that Derek had meant. Now there was something more. When did his little brother become more than just a kid he’d give his life to protect? When did his brother become a man he was today? When did Kyle become more than a soldier?
“Who are you?” Sergeant Kyle Reese asked pointedly with turbulence flooding through his voice.
“What do you mean?” Lieutenant Reese questioned.
Kyle was still fierce in his words but enunciated them more clearly. He paused between each word, “Who are you?”
“I’m Derek Reese.”
“More than that, soldier!” He challenged through gritted teeth.
Derek could see where he was going, “I’m Second Lieutenant Derek Thomas Reese of TechCOM.”
“I can’t hear you, soldier!”
“I’m Second Lieutenant Derek Thomas Reese of TechCOM!” It was a yell.
Kyle nodded with a knowing grin, “Glad to hear it, trooper. Now go out there and kick metal ass!”
Derek looked at his brother, “You coming?”
“I’m right behind you,” the younger man confirmed. “I’m always with you, brother, now let’s go fight these bastards. We have a war to win!”
Derek Reese charged down the hallway without the assistance of the wall doing just as he brother said. He focused the energy of the pain into rage and used it to make his way through the dilapidated building that hid a dark secret. Pushing himself through the stairway door he started down ready to kick metal ass.
Skynet Research and Development was like any other laboratory that you could possibly imagine, but in a world where humanity was on the brink of everlasting death it was particularly impressive. While most of the surface world was trash covered and dirty, the Skynet R&D Facility was clean and clear. There was no dirt, no muck, and no trash was strewn over the ground. The walls were white and perfect, the floors tile covered without a single crack. The air was the most haunting thing. No screams hung amongst it, no cries for help sang in the dark. There was no rain, no cold air, no warm; it was comfortable. Then there was the smell. On the Earth’s surface all you could smell was the end result of years of devastation. Here the air was clear. There was no scent only clean air perfectly scrubbed by the environmental systems.
Lauren Fields cried as her fists struck against the machine’s leg for what seemed like the millionth time. Her punches had left her hands bloody from the damage, yet the machine didn’t stop. It brought her to a large metal door that had no outward controls, nothing that could be used to open or close it. The machine stopped and held her steady. Within a second of it stopping the slab ascended and let them into another more concealed laboratory inside the Skynet base. The walls were the same stark white and the air was still clear. It wasn’t as clean though, it was more dirty and disgusting despite the perfection and it was because of one thing and one thing only.
Centralized in the room was a metal slab shaped like a table. From her vantage in the mechanism’s powerful grasp the woman could see the tabletop. It was made of steel and was polished, though it’d seen some wear throughout the years. The metal was scratched and scraped from some yet unseen instrument. Then she realized what the mess of dark patches was on the flat top. The dirt was blood both coagulated and some that had been there so long it had crusted over. This wasn’t just an experimentation chamber, this was an execution room. She was going to die as a Skynet experiment and this would be the site of it. The doctor wanted to scream, but the machine didn’t give her time. It lifted her like she was made of nothing and tossed her on the steel table. From the sides metal scanners emerged and began their task. She wanted to scream but nothing came.
Hope you liked it more than I did.
It's just an offhanded comment. No need for the admonishment.
John Connor had lost his mind somewhere along the line. That was the only logical explanation for his actions; at least in the mind of Colonel Daniel Dyson. His deference to Cameron was far more than dangerous; it was catastrophic. She had kept something as critical as a death of one of his personnel – a particularly important member of Connor’s staff no less – and just went about her day like nothing had happened. This was becoming more and more risky and his faith in her was misplaced. Dyson may trust the machines, but he didn’t trust them to the level of John Connor. He’d informed his old friend, and one time bitter rival, of their true nature when ‘scrubbed’ as being only overridden and capable of resetting. His faith in her was starting to become a major security risk.
It was funny that he’d been forced to take this route. For days he had been fighting to reprogram the machine that thought it was Allison Young using Cameron as a blueprint because of the quick success with her transformation; yet here he was regretting that decision. What if Cameron was bad and had been playing them all along? He’d used Cameron’s diagnostics and protocols when he wrote the protocols and scenarios to reprogram Allison to turn against her version of God and now he could just have been wasting his time.
As he approached the laboratory where he had been working on the machine he hoped that Seven had the results. Dyson hoped that he was just being paranoid from lack of sleep or some other easily fixed problem. If the machines were working against them then there was no way that any of them would survive. Cameron was highly trusted by General Connor and had already seen things that could cripple the entire Resistance. Troop deployments, weapon storage bays, the location of the hidden bases, everything that Skynet would need to take down the Resistance in the span of minutes. With her high capacity transmitter arrays and built in modem it would take the machine seconds to transfer the files to the Skynet processors, if she could get to a suitable location.
Why destroy the communications array though? If she had turned and needed to get those files out there was no way to do it from inside the base. Resistance bases were essentially massive Faraday Bags with telecommunications screened out through minerals and other little tricks. The machine could send messages from the surface, but going out there would get her a lot of attention. The communications arrays would be the only other option for the transmission. Through her communications port she could connect to the technology through an Ethernet connection, upload the data to Skynet, and be disconnected in minutes but it would sound an alarm in the base with or without their operator being alive. The main computer would have been informed of it via the spyware they installed on it as a last resort. The only other reason to destroy the communications array would be to stop someone from calling out or calling in. Why though? The Resistance had a policy that they didn’t come to the rescue of attacked bases if it was a risk to the rescuer so if a Skynet invasion came a distress call was meaningless. The only other reason was if someone was calling in to tell them something. There were groups out on assignment, Connor’s little mini-briefing to him when he visited Operations confirmed that, but they were looking for a Skynet base. There was a transport mission for General Perry to Serrano Point but that was routine and he had the Four Horsemen with him as guardians. No communications risk there. Chances of someone in the field finding out they’d been betrayed were slim and there was no one in the line of sight of the base in the event of an invasion.
What the hell was the answer?
Danny grunted in frustration as he reached his lab. The Colonel slammed his hand down against the door handle on his lab and pushed it open in the blink of an eye. After crossing the threshold into his lab he slapped in shut and it closed with a boom. His staff would probably each ask him what was wrong but, much to his surprise, no one came running. That was because no one was there. The cybernetics laboratory was empty of his staff and all the technology was powered down. That wasn’t right. The policies said that there had to be someone on duty in the lab at all times, but there wasn’t a creature stirring (not even a mouse – the vermin were everywhere usually). The anger built in him. Before he knew it a glass shattered against the wall and he realized that it’d come from his very hand.
The expert on the machines pulled the chair of his desk out in a rush and crashed down on it a second later. He pulled the keyboard of his platform toward him and started the initialization sequence. It was an older model – passed the stage of antique – but a beggar couldn’t be a chooser. As the screen showed the initialization progress bar his eyes surveyed the lab with a quick scan. Why wouldn’t there be anyone here? Where the hell was everyone and where would they go? It wasn’t like this was a normal thing to find the lab empty. Nothing was broken and the machine was powered down in the corner.
Then it occurred to him. When he’d left the lab Allison was still online and they were running a full diagnostic protocol to prepare to bring her fully online. There was no way that it could have been done so quickly. No way in hell. Her eyes would be glowing for the entire scan and they were in the powered down mode – as black as the star filled sky. The man slid the chair out from beneath the desk and walked over to the dismantled machine. He rested a hand on the top of her head and started lightly massaging part of it. This wasn’t for personal reasons or for some sort of sick thrill (though some people would probably have tried it) he was looking for something. When he cut into her head he left a small notch that would allow him to have easier access to the chip implant. He couldn’t find it.
“Strange,” he mumbled to himself. He repeated the check again but the same results came. No notch, no nothing. The skin was completely healed over. That wasn’t possible not this quickly at least. The artificial skin that Skynet built for the machines could grow at a geometric rate, wounds that would take days for humans to heal would be repaired in hours, but the cuts wouldn’t be fixed yet. Plus when they were deactivated the process couldn’t work because there was no manipulation by the central processor. Danny rubbed his chin and walked to the keyboard. He flipped the switch to bring the system back online. Nothing happened. The diagnostic equipment, the infiltrator, nothing was reborn. What the hell was going on? This was starting to become a bit too much for him to comprehend. What someone playing a joke on him?
The door to the lab swung open and the Series 700 endoskeleton that served as Danny’s protector stood on the adjacent side with its orange eyes glowing brightly. Danny didn’t give it a second thought and returned to his typing on the keyboard trying to get the system to work. His keen ears, not that you needed keen ears to hear a seven hundred, heard the hydraulics moving and the servos whirring. He was coming closer to him.
“Seven,” Dyson turned toward the monitors, “Is there some sort of power surge or is something going on? I can’t get the computers to work or the diagnostics to initialize.”
The Colonel turned toward the guardian just in time to see the massive mechanical hand reach in and grab hold of his neck. The automaton lifted him off the ground at least a full foot and stared into his eyes. Danny had forgotten in the brief seconds his own arguments against Cameron, Bob, and all the other machines. He’d forgotten that the machines were the enemy and now he was going to die because of it.
It didn’t take long for the T-850 to design and construct a makeshift gurney to transport young Scott Mason in the devastation of the future. When the Eight Fifty was first encountered, Katherine had been told by one of the Resistance Technicians that they had a form of electronic firing that increased their strength and endurance – a form of electronic adrenaline that they could tap into when facing a superior opponent. With that program in place and active the machine could bench press a rhinoceros with another rhinoceros strapped to its back. That was a far cry from a teenage boy who grew up eating rat for dinner and emergency military ration packs.
For what it was made to do the machine also had a surprising grace. It walked in perfect military precision carrying the child on the gurney in its arms, but he never bobbed his hands even a millimeter. The injured soldier lay perfectly flat on his back and undisturbed. Rocky terrain, flat surfaces, neither of them mattered. In a heartbeat the machine simply maneuvered its arms or legs a certain way to compensate and avoid a jolt to the boy’s system.
Katherine Brewster-Mason was grateful for the machine, but spiteful at the same time. It was his fault that they were here in the first place. That wasn’t fair though. Kate was just as guilty and, if her son died, she’d be just as at fault. Either way she’d lose her mind to somewhere far darker than the place where she already lived. The General had been the one to order that Moe try to hack Skynet’s systems despite her better judgment and the recommendation of the machine. She thought that they’d be able to compensate, to win the fight, but now she was paying a very dear price for her cavalier attitude. They kept walking forward for the base despite the wide open space between them.
Like a petulant child, “Are we there yet?”
“We have a nine hour, fouty-seven minute, sixteen second walk until we are out of the Skynet controlled zone,” explained the machine. “The nearest Resistance base will be reached in an additional two hours, twenty-one minutes, and forty-two seconds following that.”
“Nothing closer?” She knew that Moe had the most recently updated maps built into his subroutines.
“Nothing Resistance controlled,” it answered. “The nearest Skynet base is eight minutes away.”
Kate challenged that statement, “Not possible. There’s no Skynet base on this path – we made sure of that before General Perry and his team were sent out. We couldn’t risk their being captured.”
“The data was faulty,” the machine continued walking and speaking. “During my connection to Skynet it had expressed a desire to keep the humans from penetrating the base, thus necessitating my turning against you and your personnel and then attacking. I was to immediately deliver your bodies to the base for medical experimentation following.”
“So it’s a research base?” Mason inquired.
The infiltrator answered with a single word, “affirmative.”
The General stopped and stared at the machine. It had an additional seven steps before it realized that the General had stopped. It brought its massive feet to a stop and twisted its waist toward the General (still not disturbing the injured teen). “General, query, why have we stopped? You ordered that we get to the nearest Resistance base as quickly as possible.”
“The Skynet base,” she came next to them, “it has medical facilities?”
“Affirmative.”
“Automated or manually controlled?” She continued questioning.
There was a second length pause, “Data suggests the medical facilities consist of both types. There are eight manual bays and twelve automated laboratories.”
“Moe,” Kate swallowed hard, “You’re going home.”
The machine didn’t ask a question and merely cocked his head to the left like a dog not understanding the command its master had issued.
General Mason got the hint, “We’re surrendering and you’re turning me and him over to Skynet.”
“This is ill advised,” the machine replied. “Skynet will be aware of the truth, my systems are not currently attuned to the hive mind.”
“Then its time for you to get creative,” smiled the General, “either way Scott won’t survive without help and this is the only way to get it to him. I can use one of the base medical bays to help him and it’d be better for him than having to deal with the long struggle and the limited supplies that we have back at Serrano.”
“My mission priorities involve the survival of General Katherine Brewster-Mason,” it said having restored those files. “Attempting to infiltrate a Skynet held outpost is a direct threat to the successful completion of that mission. Current analysis of the injured child indicates that he has a mild concussion and will survive.”
The doctor couldn’t dispute that claim because she knew the truth behind it, but the mother inside of her had a strangle hold. The mother was screaming at her to do whatever she could to save her son. This time the mother won out, she’d let the soldier win next time.
“I can’t take that chance. I’m altering your mission priorities as of this moment. Your new mission is to ensure the safety of Scott Mason in addition to General Katherine Mason.” She looked into the machine’s eyes, “Comply.”
“Negative,” it answered, “I cannot change mission priorities while in the field.”
“Please,” she pleaded. “You have to help my son, you did this to him!”
The Model one oh one looked at the boy then at Brewster-Mason, “My mission is to ensure the safety of Katherine Brewster-Mason. Undertaking this mission is a direct threat to completion of my primary objective. Request denied.”
Kate was running out of options. The machine wasn’t going for it, why should it because it was as crazy as it sounded, and without that equipment there was a chance that Scott wouldn’t recover. Mild concussion or not any head injury was dangerous. She couldn’t take the chance. She reached down into her medical kit and pulled a syringe full of morphine from the pouch. “Know what this is?” She showed the machine.
“Negative.”
“It’s morphine,” she put the needle next to the vein in her arm, “I inject myself with this full amount and I’m dead.”
The guardian looked at the deadly weapon in her hand, “You cannot self terminate.”
“Humans can,” she argued, “you can’t. I’ll do it if you push me, so please help my son!”
The machine calculated the threat level. Based on her actions it was likely that if he said no she would kill herself with the medication. It could maneuver its hand to the gun holster on its belt and fire at the syringe in 1.3 seconds; however, there was a high risk of damage to the General if that were to be attempted. The risk was greater than operational specifications would allow. Moe relented.
“Request granted,” said the machine. “You will need to submit to being carried.”
“I understand,” she would willingly give herself to the machine’s directions. “Just tell me what you need from me.”
The guardian looked at the boy on the gurney, “I will not be permitted to enter the base carrying him in such a manner. I will need to do the same to him.”
“Moving him is dangerous!” Kate exclaimed. “If you try…”
“It will be the same effect as allowing him to die here if I do not attempt to enter the base with him over my shoulder. Skynet will be more likely to fire without question if I do not comply with its orders for delivery,” interrupted the machine.
Kate shrugged, “Guess I deserve that one. There’s no other way?”
“Negative.”
“Lead on MacDuff,” she gave him her approval. The machine didn’t take long to comply and hit her like a linebacker would though minus the strength and speed. It carried her and the boy together – one of both side – toward the belly of the beast. The machine had said its part and advised against it, but the human had made her case and overridden his better judgment. Still, though, his default program orders were still in effect: he would keep her alive at the cost of her son if necessary. Only if necessary.
It was funny that he’d been forced to take this route. For days he had been fighting to reprogram the machine that thought it was Allison Young using Cameron as a blueprint because of the quick success with her transformation; yet here he was regretting that decision. What if Cameron was bad and had been playing them all along? He’d used Cameron’s diagnostics and protocols when he wrote the protocols and scenarios to reprogram Allison to turn against her version of God and now he could just have been wasting his time.
As he approached the laboratory where he had been working on the machine he hoped that Seven had the results. Dyson hoped that he was just being paranoid from lack of sleep or some other easily fixed problem. If the machines were working against them then there was no way that any of them would survive. Cameron was highly trusted by General Connor and had already seen things that could cripple the entire Resistance. Troop deployments, weapon storage bays, the location of the hidden bases, everything that Skynet would need to take down the Resistance in the span of minutes. With her high capacity transmitter arrays and built in modem it would take the machine seconds to transfer the files to the Skynet processors, if she could get to a suitable location.
Why destroy the communications array though? If she had turned and needed to get those files out there was no way to do it from inside the base. Resistance bases were essentially massive Faraday Bags with telecommunications screened out through minerals and other little tricks. The machine could send messages from the surface, but going out there would get her a lot of attention. The communications arrays would be the only other option for the transmission. Through her communications port she could connect to the technology through an Ethernet connection, upload the data to Skynet, and be disconnected in minutes but it would sound an alarm in the base with or without their operator being alive. The main computer would have been informed of it via the spyware they installed on it as a last resort. The only other reason to destroy the communications array would be to stop someone from calling out or calling in. Why though? The Resistance had a policy that they didn’t come to the rescue of attacked bases if it was a risk to the rescuer so if a Skynet invasion came a distress call was meaningless. The only other reason was if someone was calling in to tell them something. There were groups out on assignment, Connor’s little mini-briefing to him when he visited Operations confirmed that, but they were looking for a Skynet base. There was a transport mission for General Perry to Serrano Point but that was routine and he had the Four Horsemen with him as guardians. No communications risk there. Chances of someone in the field finding out they’d been betrayed were slim and there was no one in the line of sight of the base in the event of an invasion.
What the hell was the answer?
Danny grunted in frustration as he reached his lab. The Colonel slammed his hand down against the door handle on his lab and pushed it open in the blink of an eye. After crossing the threshold into his lab he slapped in shut and it closed with a boom. His staff would probably each ask him what was wrong but, much to his surprise, no one came running. That was because no one was there. The cybernetics laboratory was empty of his staff and all the technology was powered down. That wasn’t right. The policies said that there had to be someone on duty in the lab at all times, but there wasn’t a creature stirring (not even a mouse – the vermin were everywhere usually). The anger built in him. Before he knew it a glass shattered against the wall and he realized that it’d come from his very hand.
The expert on the machines pulled the chair of his desk out in a rush and crashed down on it a second later. He pulled the keyboard of his platform toward him and started the initialization sequence. It was an older model – passed the stage of antique – but a beggar couldn’t be a chooser. As the screen showed the initialization progress bar his eyes surveyed the lab with a quick scan. Why wouldn’t there be anyone here? Where the hell was everyone and where would they go? It wasn’t like this was a normal thing to find the lab empty. Nothing was broken and the machine was powered down in the corner.
Then it occurred to him. When he’d left the lab Allison was still online and they were running a full diagnostic protocol to prepare to bring her fully online. There was no way that it could have been done so quickly. No way in hell. Her eyes would be glowing for the entire scan and they were in the powered down mode – as black as the star filled sky. The man slid the chair out from beneath the desk and walked over to the dismantled machine. He rested a hand on the top of her head and started lightly massaging part of it. This wasn’t for personal reasons or for some sort of sick thrill (though some people would probably have tried it) he was looking for something. When he cut into her head he left a small notch that would allow him to have easier access to the chip implant. He couldn’t find it.
“Strange,” he mumbled to himself. He repeated the check again but the same results came. No notch, no nothing. The skin was completely healed over. That wasn’t possible not this quickly at least. The artificial skin that Skynet built for the machines could grow at a geometric rate, wounds that would take days for humans to heal would be repaired in hours, but the cuts wouldn’t be fixed yet. Plus when they were deactivated the process couldn’t work because there was no manipulation by the central processor. Danny rubbed his chin and walked to the keyboard. He flipped the switch to bring the system back online. Nothing happened. The diagnostic equipment, the infiltrator, nothing was reborn. What the hell was going on? This was starting to become a bit too much for him to comprehend. What someone playing a joke on him?
The door to the lab swung open and the Series 700 endoskeleton that served as Danny’s protector stood on the adjacent side with its orange eyes glowing brightly. Danny didn’t give it a second thought and returned to his typing on the keyboard trying to get the system to work. His keen ears, not that you needed keen ears to hear a seven hundred, heard the hydraulics moving and the servos whirring. He was coming closer to him.
“Seven,” Dyson turned toward the monitors, “Is there some sort of power surge or is something going on? I can’t get the computers to work or the diagnostics to initialize.”
The Colonel turned toward the guardian just in time to see the massive mechanical hand reach in and grab hold of his neck. The automaton lifted him off the ground at least a full foot and stared into his eyes. Danny had forgotten in the brief seconds his own arguments against Cameron, Bob, and all the other machines. He’d forgotten that the machines were the enemy and now he was going to die because of it.
It didn’t take long for the T-850 to design and construct a makeshift gurney to transport young Scott Mason in the devastation of the future. When the Eight Fifty was first encountered, Katherine had been told by one of the Resistance Technicians that they had a form of electronic firing that increased their strength and endurance – a form of electronic adrenaline that they could tap into when facing a superior opponent. With that program in place and active the machine could bench press a rhinoceros with another rhinoceros strapped to its back. That was a far cry from a teenage boy who grew up eating rat for dinner and emergency military ration packs.
For what it was made to do the machine also had a surprising grace. It walked in perfect military precision carrying the child on the gurney in its arms, but he never bobbed his hands even a millimeter. The injured soldier lay perfectly flat on his back and undisturbed. Rocky terrain, flat surfaces, neither of them mattered. In a heartbeat the machine simply maneuvered its arms or legs a certain way to compensate and avoid a jolt to the boy’s system.
Katherine Brewster-Mason was grateful for the machine, but spiteful at the same time. It was his fault that they were here in the first place. That wasn’t fair though. Kate was just as guilty and, if her son died, she’d be just as at fault. Either way she’d lose her mind to somewhere far darker than the place where she already lived. The General had been the one to order that Moe try to hack Skynet’s systems despite her better judgment and the recommendation of the machine. She thought that they’d be able to compensate, to win the fight, but now she was paying a very dear price for her cavalier attitude. They kept walking forward for the base despite the wide open space between them.
Like a petulant child, “Are we there yet?”
“We have a nine hour, fouty-seven minute, sixteen second walk until we are out of the Skynet controlled zone,” explained the machine. “The nearest Resistance base will be reached in an additional two hours, twenty-one minutes, and forty-two seconds following that.”
“Nothing closer?” She knew that Moe had the most recently updated maps built into his subroutines.
“Nothing Resistance controlled,” it answered. “The nearest Skynet base is eight minutes away.”
Kate challenged that statement, “Not possible. There’s no Skynet base on this path – we made sure of that before General Perry and his team were sent out. We couldn’t risk their being captured.”
“The data was faulty,” the machine continued walking and speaking. “During my connection to Skynet it had expressed a desire to keep the humans from penetrating the base, thus necessitating my turning against you and your personnel and then attacking. I was to immediately deliver your bodies to the base for medical experimentation following.”
“So it’s a research base?” Mason inquired.
The infiltrator answered with a single word, “affirmative.”
The General stopped and stared at the machine. It had an additional seven steps before it realized that the General had stopped. It brought its massive feet to a stop and twisted its waist toward the General (still not disturbing the injured teen). “General, query, why have we stopped? You ordered that we get to the nearest Resistance base as quickly as possible.”
“The Skynet base,” she came next to them, “it has medical facilities?”
“Affirmative.”
“Automated or manually controlled?” She continued questioning.
There was a second length pause, “Data suggests the medical facilities consist of both types. There are eight manual bays and twelve automated laboratories.”
“Moe,” Kate swallowed hard, “You’re going home.”
The machine didn’t ask a question and merely cocked his head to the left like a dog not understanding the command its master had issued.
General Mason got the hint, “We’re surrendering and you’re turning me and him over to Skynet.”
“This is ill advised,” the machine replied. “Skynet will be aware of the truth, my systems are not currently attuned to the hive mind.”
“Then its time for you to get creative,” smiled the General, “either way Scott won’t survive without help and this is the only way to get it to him. I can use one of the base medical bays to help him and it’d be better for him than having to deal with the long struggle and the limited supplies that we have back at Serrano.”
“My mission priorities involve the survival of General Katherine Brewster-Mason,” it said having restored those files. “Attempting to infiltrate a Skynet held outpost is a direct threat to the successful completion of that mission. Current analysis of the injured child indicates that he has a mild concussion and will survive.”
The doctor couldn’t dispute that claim because she knew the truth behind it, but the mother inside of her had a strangle hold. The mother was screaming at her to do whatever she could to save her son. This time the mother won out, she’d let the soldier win next time.
“I can’t take that chance. I’m altering your mission priorities as of this moment. Your new mission is to ensure the safety of Scott Mason in addition to General Katherine Mason.” She looked into the machine’s eyes, “Comply.”
“Negative,” it answered, “I cannot change mission priorities while in the field.”
“Please,” she pleaded. “You have to help my son, you did this to him!”
The Model one oh one looked at the boy then at Brewster-Mason, “My mission is to ensure the safety of Katherine Brewster-Mason. Undertaking this mission is a direct threat to completion of my primary objective. Request denied.”
Kate was running out of options. The machine wasn’t going for it, why should it because it was as crazy as it sounded, and without that equipment there was a chance that Scott wouldn’t recover. Mild concussion or not any head injury was dangerous. She couldn’t take the chance. She reached down into her medical kit and pulled a syringe full of morphine from the pouch. “Know what this is?” She showed the machine.
“Negative.”
“It’s morphine,” she put the needle next to the vein in her arm, “I inject myself with this full amount and I’m dead.”
The guardian looked at the deadly weapon in her hand, “You cannot self terminate.”
“Humans can,” she argued, “you can’t. I’ll do it if you push me, so please help my son!”
The machine calculated the threat level. Based on her actions it was likely that if he said no she would kill herself with the medication. It could maneuver its hand to the gun holster on its belt and fire at the syringe in 1.3 seconds; however, there was a high risk of damage to the General if that were to be attempted. The risk was greater than operational specifications would allow. Moe relented.
“Request granted,” said the machine. “You will need to submit to being carried.”
“I understand,” she would willingly give herself to the machine’s directions. “Just tell me what you need from me.”
The guardian looked at the boy on the gurney, “I will not be permitted to enter the base carrying him in such a manner. I will need to do the same to him.”
“Moving him is dangerous!” Kate exclaimed. “If you try…”
“It will be the same effect as allowing him to die here if I do not attempt to enter the base with him over my shoulder. Skynet will be more likely to fire without question if I do not comply with its orders for delivery,” interrupted the machine.
Kate shrugged, “Guess I deserve that one. There’s no other way?”
“Negative.”
“Lead on MacDuff,” she gave him her approval. The machine didn’t take long to comply and hit her like a linebacker would though minus the strength and speed. It carried her and the boy together – one of both side – toward the belly of the beast. The machine had said its part and advised against it, but the human had made her case and overridden his better judgment. Still, though, his default program orders were still in effect: he would keep her alive at the cost of her son if necessary. Only if necessary.
Since I have been away for a while I thought I'd give everyone a little treat. Three new parts to the story:
Lauren Fields stared at the stark white ceiling with blinding white light shining down straight into her eyes. The machines were thorough but it wasn’t like she could go anywhere even if she wanted to. The Six Hundred Series had strapped her down tight on the table with straps that were built in. Her hands, legs, and even her head was tied down so tight she could barely feel them anymore. Moving her eyes she could see traces of the massive machine standing on the other side of the chamber staring at her. If the stories were true from the people who managed to escape from these places the machine would stay with her as a last resort protector, to prevent her from escaping by any way shape or form. The infiltrator’s minigun was locked on her and ready to fire should she become a threat. Better to die fighting than die as a lab rat.
Mechanisms inside the steel table sprang to life. The gentle whirring of gears and servos beneath her head made her cringe. The Doctor expected the sound of a saw blade activating or a laser scan engaging. A barcode reader did pop up from the table and processed the barcode tattoo Skynet had given her previously, but nothing terribly dangerous had emerged to greet her yet. Another piece of equipment lifted with a whisper of air from the head of the table. A blue beam struck downward from the center of the unit and focused on the center of her forehead. A warm sensation filled her body that was comforting to her, but hauntingly painful. Memories began to flash before her eyes in rapid fire succession. Was this what life passing before your eyes felt like? Warmth followed by memories and then death? It wasn’t possible that it was that simple. If this was the afterlife why was she still trapped on the bed? Surely she’d be released from this prison, unless she’d been condemned to what theologians called hell.
The metal scanner retracted back into the table leaving her alone with her thoughts. Another device popped out from beneath her vision and rose up above her. A small arm rose up with a needle affixed to the end of it. Straining her eyes so that she could see a small, empty vial was attached to the side opposite the needle. The arm slammed down and the empty vial quickly filled with the crimson of her blood. More and more mechanical whirring came and passed. A symphony of noise rose from the sides as monitors displayed different facts and figures from the analysis. Lauren pondered why the monitors were even there in her final moments. They were probably a throwback to the days when Skynet had Luddite scientists working on its side to help cleanse the Earth – or so their twisted machinations believed. Fischer wouldn’t dirty his hands by coming in and taking part in the actual process.
Coward. That was the best word to describe Charles Fischer, aside from a few other more colorful ones that she could think of. Most would call him a traitor for what he did on a daily basis, but she’d call him a coward. It was one thing to turn your back on your people to survive, but it was an entirely different one to stare one in the eye as you pulled the trigger to end their life. That took something that Fischer would never have, that he could never hope to have at his disposal. Strength, courage, and conviction. Charles Fischer lacked everything that made a man a human. He was worse than the machines.
The titanic infiltrator walked across the aisle next to the table and spun around toward the other direction. Just one little tactical movement and the machine would turn its gun on her and cut her in half with a barrage of bullets traveling faster than human eye could see. The question was how did you make a tactical movement when your body was strapped to a steel table? Complicating matters the situation was changing yet again. Above her she noticed that a portion of the ceiling that had once been flush to the tile had risen upward and was separating down the center. From the opening a new piece of equipment lowered toward her body like a spider lowering on a silken strand of webbing toward a helpless fly. Arms and various other pieces of equipment cascaded outward from the points of the mechanism and pointed downward toward the captured specimen. The mechanics of the machine whined.
“No last words?” Asked Fields with her eyes focused on the machine. “You aren’t even going to have someone come in and give me the last rites?”
In a deep, motorized voice the automaton answered her request succinctly. “Final words and last rites are not permitted.”
Lauren rolled her eyes, “How disappointing.”
The lab equipment stopped a mere three feet from her body and the arms repositioned themselves to fit the needs of the moment. It was a standard surgical kit from what her eyes were telling her. One of the arms was outfitted with a laser scalpel that was pointed toward her stomach. The location was clear to her as being her womb. Skynet was going to salvage her ovaries and reproductive organs from the looks of it; probably in the hopes of building human and machine hybrids. There was no arm giving her an anesthetic. At one time she was told that the machines weren’t designed to be cruel, but that didn’t seem to be the case for Skynet itself. Skynet wanted its victims to feel pain and this was going to be one hell of a pain. Maybe she was in hell after all?
Looking at the machine she noticed something that she hadn’t before. A gentle gleam sparkled behind the robot like it were a star that had fallen to the Earth. As her eyes focused on it Fields watched it plunge downward in a stabbing motion and connecting right with the back of the Series 600. It arched backward and lost control over itself. Its finger slammed against the control stud and bullets began to arc across the room digging deep into the once perfect walls. It moved in circles trying to break itself from its afflicted state, fingers clutching at the object slammed into its back. As it turned Lauren realized what it was: a dagger had been jammed into the ventilation system in the center of its back. Motor functions were impaired, but it wasn’t a permanent solution. The machine would get the knife out in time and be back to full combat status seconds later. Whoever her rescuer was he’d have to hurry.
Lauren saw who it was and gasped, “You’re going to have to hurry. We don’t have much time!”
Derek Reese watched as the machine spun like a dog chasing its own tail. How he’d been able to get the combat knife through the rubber flesh was nothing short of a miracle; how he’d gotten the dagger through the ventilation system was more along the lines of being impossible. Still he didn’t think that Doctor Fields would look a gift horse in the mouth. Especially since that gift horse was giving her back her freedom.
Struggling forward he came alongside her and pulled his backup knife from its holster. The spiderlike machine hissed at him as he started cutting at the restraints, but the threat of the spider wouldn’t survive much longer. The spinning machine had spun directly in its line of fire and a stream of bullets had shattered the circuitry into a million pieces. Its arms dropped to the side and hung life lifeless vines. For a moment Derek froze and stared at the dead machine waiting for it to spring back to life and cut him to pieces. It didn’t and this time he wasn’t going to look the gift horse in the mouth. As fast as he could he tore the restraints off the Resistance medic and pulled her to her feet.
“We have to get out of here.” Derek said quickly. “The machines are looking for us. Where’s Luna?”
Lauren pulled herself off of the medical bed and looked at her rescuer, “Luna defected to the Grays. She’s with Fischer somewhere in the complex agreeing to whatever the hell he wants probably.” Fields ducked to miss the spinning T-600. “We have to rescue her.”
“She made her own bed,” Reese charged, “she can live in it.” He pulled her, blood covering the shirt he wore, “We still have a chance and we’re gonna take it.”
“We can’t just leave her,” charged the Doctor as they left the exam room. “She’s not in her right mind; she’s just sick. If we leave her behind we’re no better than the machines. We’d have killed her.”
Derek shot the door mechanism to keep the rubber skinned beast trapped inside the lab for a few more seconds, “We’re not exactly combat ready here, Doc. Just look at me,” he pointed to his chest and other injuries, “plus I have a splitting headache and feel like I’ve been run over by an HK.”
“I’m not surprised,” Lauren revealed, “but we have to do this. She’d do it for us. She did it for Kyle.”
“Don’t lecture me,” The older Reese looked to his side though contemplative in thought. He squinted his eyes, “Is that true?”
“Of course it’s true. I wouldn’t have said it otherwise,” Lauren Fields argued with a raised eyebrow in surprise. Had Derek Reese asked her if it was true or was he asking someone else? He wasn’t looking at her.
“The asylum?” Reese said questioningly. “That base where they were designing the zombies?” In between coughs and retching, “Luna saved Kyle from Stone…”
Lauren nodded in agreement, “That’s right she did.”
“You have to help her,” Kyle Reese told his brother. “It’s what we do; we help people. We don’t let our friends get killed and we never leave them behind.”
“Alright,” Derek relented. “We’ll go after her and rescue her. Doctor Fields do you have a weapon?”
Lauren let out an exhausted giggle, “If I had a gun do you think you’d have found me alive?”
“She has a point,” said the younger of the two Reeses.
Lieutenant Reese took point, “Okay. Kyle, give her one of your Eagles.”
Lauren was really surprised now. The question hadn’t been directed toward her, it’d been to his missing in action brother. “Excuse me?”
“My brother,” he said, “you’ll take his spare pistol. I know it doesn’t exactly have stopping power, but it’ll create a diversion.”
“Lieutenant, are you seeing your brother right now?” Asked the concerned Doctor.
Derek was surprised by what she said and it showed on his face, “Why wouldn’t I see him? He’s standing right here!” His voice was growing agitated. “Sergeant Kyle Reese is standing right here with us, in the flesh, back from his mission at the orders of General Connor.”
Fields knew his injuries were worse that she suspected from the Nine Hundred backhanding him. If he was hallucinating like she supposed then that meant that he’d had worse injuries that she’s thought and his concussion could be far worse than she’d thought in the beginning. His wounds were bad but she hadn’t expected them to be that bad. His pupils were a bit dilated and his mental state was precarious at best. His whole self was being balanced on the edge of a cliff and any movement could cause him to lose his grip. She had to play along or get him some help. This was hell. They were in a medical center and none of the equipment, nothing around them, could be used to help her patient. This was hell.
“Okay,” she smiled at the air where Kyle Reese was meant to be, “good to see you, Kyle.”
The imaginary man spoke words that only Derek could hear. “Not now, Kyle.” The Lieutenant nodded, “But I agree that it might be best for her to use one of my spares instead of yours.” The Lieutenant gave the medic one of the pistols he’d been carrying, “It doesn’t have the kick of the Eagle, but you’ll be able to make another diversion or two. Ready to go?”
Lauren noted inside her head that part of the reasoning centers of the man’s brain were firing and working to solve problems. The decision to give her one of his weapons rather than one of Kyle’s supported that belief. His brain was realizing that Kyle wasn’t there, but the perception was really the reality. Until the brain started firing on all cylinders again Kyle would plague his brother. He could lose the grip at any time, have a break, or the bleed on his brain would most likely consume him. Right now, though, she knew that she needed to help him if either were to survive.
Behind them the pounding of metal striking metal echoed through the hallways. The six hundred had restored his systems and was on its way to try to kill them again. Lauren took charge of the situation knowing that she had to keep Reese on his toes if either of them were going to make it. Getting close to help him with his dizziness and his balancing, “We’re leaving now. Kyle,” she played to his hallucination, “watch our sixes. Derek, lets go find Luna and get the hell outta here.”
“You got it,” Kyle agreed.
Derek didn’t, “I’m not leaving my brother. We’ll face that bastard together,” he coughed. “You can go if you want, Doc, I’m staying if Kyle’s staying.”
“Derek we have to go,” the Doctor said pleadingly. “Kyle can hold the machine back and we’ll find him again when we get out of here. Please, I can’t do this without you.”
“Will you be okay? You aren’t gonna disappear on me again are you?” The older Reese asked looking at his side.
Sergeant Kyle Reese shook his head in the negative, “I’m always with you, Derek, but Lauren’s right. You have to go; I’ll hold the tin can off and we’ll see each other when this is all over. Let her help you, that’s what she’s here for.”
“When did you get so smart?” the Lieutenant smiled.
“I had a good teacher,” he pulled his gun as another thud hit the door. “Run Derek; RUN!”
Derek Reese, supported by Lauren Fields, did exactly what his younger brother had ordered. With Lauren Fields supporting his arm the two ran as fast as they could down the stark white hallway trying to escape the wrath of the machines. While Lauren heard nothing but the thuds of the machine against the steel door Derek heard something that would haunt him the rest of his life. Derek heard the sound of gunfire as his brother tried to hold off the machine. Derek’s heart told him to go back and help his brother, but his head told him something else. His head told him the truth: To run because his brother Kyle was already dead. A single tear ran down his cheek as the gunfire stopped echoing behind them.
“Goodbye Kyle.”
Lauren Fields stared at the stark white ceiling with blinding white light shining down straight into her eyes. The machines were thorough but it wasn’t like she could go anywhere even if she wanted to. The Six Hundred Series had strapped her down tight on the table with straps that were built in. Her hands, legs, and even her head was tied down so tight she could barely feel them anymore. Moving her eyes she could see traces of the massive machine standing on the other side of the chamber staring at her. If the stories were true from the people who managed to escape from these places the machine would stay with her as a last resort protector, to prevent her from escaping by any way shape or form. The infiltrator’s minigun was locked on her and ready to fire should she become a threat. Better to die fighting than die as a lab rat.
Mechanisms inside the steel table sprang to life. The gentle whirring of gears and servos beneath her head made her cringe. The Doctor expected the sound of a saw blade activating or a laser scan engaging. A barcode reader did pop up from the table and processed the barcode tattoo Skynet had given her previously, but nothing terribly dangerous had emerged to greet her yet. Another piece of equipment lifted with a whisper of air from the head of the table. A blue beam struck downward from the center of the unit and focused on the center of her forehead. A warm sensation filled her body that was comforting to her, but hauntingly painful. Memories began to flash before her eyes in rapid fire succession. Was this what life passing before your eyes felt like? Warmth followed by memories and then death? It wasn’t possible that it was that simple. If this was the afterlife why was she still trapped on the bed? Surely she’d be released from this prison, unless she’d been condemned to what theologians called hell.
The metal scanner retracted back into the table leaving her alone with her thoughts. Another device popped out from beneath her vision and rose up above her. A small arm rose up with a needle affixed to the end of it. Straining her eyes so that she could see a small, empty vial was attached to the side opposite the needle. The arm slammed down and the empty vial quickly filled with the crimson of her blood. More and more mechanical whirring came and passed. A symphony of noise rose from the sides as monitors displayed different facts and figures from the analysis. Lauren pondered why the monitors were even there in her final moments. They were probably a throwback to the days when Skynet had Luddite scientists working on its side to help cleanse the Earth – or so their twisted machinations believed. Fischer wouldn’t dirty his hands by coming in and taking part in the actual process.
Coward. That was the best word to describe Charles Fischer, aside from a few other more colorful ones that she could think of. Most would call him a traitor for what he did on a daily basis, but she’d call him a coward. It was one thing to turn your back on your people to survive, but it was an entirely different one to stare one in the eye as you pulled the trigger to end their life. That took something that Fischer would never have, that he could never hope to have at his disposal. Strength, courage, and conviction. Charles Fischer lacked everything that made a man a human. He was worse than the machines.
The titanic infiltrator walked across the aisle next to the table and spun around toward the other direction. Just one little tactical movement and the machine would turn its gun on her and cut her in half with a barrage of bullets traveling faster than human eye could see. The question was how did you make a tactical movement when your body was strapped to a steel table? Complicating matters the situation was changing yet again. Above her she noticed that a portion of the ceiling that had once been flush to the tile had risen upward and was separating down the center. From the opening a new piece of equipment lowered toward her body like a spider lowering on a silken strand of webbing toward a helpless fly. Arms and various other pieces of equipment cascaded outward from the points of the mechanism and pointed downward toward the captured specimen. The mechanics of the machine whined.
“No last words?” Asked Fields with her eyes focused on the machine. “You aren’t even going to have someone come in and give me the last rites?”
In a deep, motorized voice the automaton answered her request succinctly. “Final words and last rites are not permitted.”
Lauren rolled her eyes, “How disappointing.”
The lab equipment stopped a mere three feet from her body and the arms repositioned themselves to fit the needs of the moment. It was a standard surgical kit from what her eyes were telling her. One of the arms was outfitted with a laser scalpel that was pointed toward her stomach. The location was clear to her as being her womb. Skynet was going to salvage her ovaries and reproductive organs from the looks of it; probably in the hopes of building human and machine hybrids. There was no arm giving her an anesthetic. At one time she was told that the machines weren’t designed to be cruel, but that didn’t seem to be the case for Skynet itself. Skynet wanted its victims to feel pain and this was going to be one hell of a pain. Maybe she was in hell after all?
Looking at the machine she noticed something that she hadn’t before. A gentle gleam sparkled behind the robot like it were a star that had fallen to the Earth. As her eyes focused on it Fields watched it plunge downward in a stabbing motion and connecting right with the back of the Series 600. It arched backward and lost control over itself. Its finger slammed against the control stud and bullets began to arc across the room digging deep into the once perfect walls. It moved in circles trying to break itself from its afflicted state, fingers clutching at the object slammed into its back. As it turned Lauren realized what it was: a dagger had been jammed into the ventilation system in the center of its back. Motor functions were impaired, but it wasn’t a permanent solution. The machine would get the knife out in time and be back to full combat status seconds later. Whoever her rescuer was he’d have to hurry.
Lauren saw who it was and gasped, “You’re going to have to hurry. We don’t have much time!”
Derek Reese watched as the machine spun like a dog chasing its own tail. How he’d been able to get the combat knife through the rubber flesh was nothing short of a miracle; how he’d gotten the dagger through the ventilation system was more along the lines of being impossible. Still he didn’t think that Doctor Fields would look a gift horse in the mouth. Especially since that gift horse was giving her back her freedom.
Struggling forward he came alongside her and pulled his backup knife from its holster. The spiderlike machine hissed at him as he started cutting at the restraints, but the threat of the spider wouldn’t survive much longer. The spinning machine had spun directly in its line of fire and a stream of bullets had shattered the circuitry into a million pieces. Its arms dropped to the side and hung life lifeless vines. For a moment Derek froze and stared at the dead machine waiting for it to spring back to life and cut him to pieces. It didn’t and this time he wasn’t going to look the gift horse in the mouth. As fast as he could he tore the restraints off the Resistance medic and pulled her to her feet.
“We have to get out of here.” Derek said quickly. “The machines are looking for us. Where’s Luna?”
Lauren pulled herself off of the medical bed and looked at her rescuer, “Luna defected to the Grays. She’s with Fischer somewhere in the complex agreeing to whatever the hell he wants probably.” Fields ducked to miss the spinning T-600. “We have to rescue her.”
“She made her own bed,” Reese charged, “she can live in it.” He pulled her, blood covering the shirt he wore, “We still have a chance and we’re gonna take it.”
“We can’t just leave her,” charged the Doctor as they left the exam room. “She’s not in her right mind; she’s just sick. If we leave her behind we’re no better than the machines. We’d have killed her.”
Derek shot the door mechanism to keep the rubber skinned beast trapped inside the lab for a few more seconds, “We’re not exactly combat ready here, Doc. Just look at me,” he pointed to his chest and other injuries, “plus I have a splitting headache and feel like I’ve been run over by an HK.”
“I’m not surprised,” Lauren revealed, “but we have to do this. She’d do it for us. She did it for Kyle.”
“Don’t lecture me,” The older Reese looked to his side though contemplative in thought. He squinted his eyes, “Is that true?”
“Of course it’s true. I wouldn’t have said it otherwise,” Lauren Fields argued with a raised eyebrow in surprise. Had Derek Reese asked her if it was true or was he asking someone else? He wasn’t looking at her.
“The asylum?” Reese said questioningly. “That base where they were designing the zombies?” In between coughs and retching, “Luna saved Kyle from Stone…”
Lauren nodded in agreement, “That’s right she did.”
“You have to help her,” Kyle Reese told his brother. “It’s what we do; we help people. We don’t let our friends get killed and we never leave them behind.”
“Alright,” Derek relented. “We’ll go after her and rescue her. Doctor Fields do you have a weapon?”
Lauren let out an exhausted giggle, “If I had a gun do you think you’d have found me alive?”
“She has a point,” said the younger of the two Reeses.
Lieutenant Reese took point, “Okay. Kyle, give her one of your Eagles.”
Lauren was really surprised now. The question hadn’t been directed toward her, it’d been to his missing in action brother. “Excuse me?”
“My brother,” he said, “you’ll take his spare pistol. I know it doesn’t exactly have stopping power, but it’ll create a diversion.”
“Lieutenant, are you seeing your brother right now?” Asked the concerned Doctor.
Derek was surprised by what she said and it showed on his face, “Why wouldn’t I see him? He’s standing right here!” His voice was growing agitated. “Sergeant Kyle Reese is standing right here with us, in the flesh, back from his mission at the orders of General Connor.”
Fields knew his injuries were worse that she suspected from the Nine Hundred backhanding him. If he was hallucinating like she supposed then that meant that he’d had worse injuries that she’s thought and his concussion could be far worse than she’d thought in the beginning. His wounds were bad but she hadn’t expected them to be that bad. His pupils were a bit dilated and his mental state was precarious at best. His whole self was being balanced on the edge of a cliff and any movement could cause him to lose his grip. She had to play along or get him some help. This was hell. They were in a medical center and none of the equipment, nothing around them, could be used to help her patient. This was hell.
“Okay,” she smiled at the air where Kyle Reese was meant to be, “good to see you, Kyle.”
The imaginary man spoke words that only Derek could hear. “Not now, Kyle.” The Lieutenant nodded, “But I agree that it might be best for her to use one of my spares instead of yours.” The Lieutenant gave the medic one of the pistols he’d been carrying, “It doesn’t have the kick of the Eagle, but you’ll be able to make another diversion or two. Ready to go?”
Lauren noted inside her head that part of the reasoning centers of the man’s brain were firing and working to solve problems. The decision to give her one of his weapons rather than one of Kyle’s supported that belief. His brain was realizing that Kyle wasn’t there, but the perception was really the reality. Until the brain started firing on all cylinders again Kyle would plague his brother. He could lose the grip at any time, have a break, or the bleed on his brain would most likely consume him. Right now, though, she knew that she needed to help him if either were to survive.
Behind them the pounding of metal striking metal echoed through the hallways. The six hundred had restored his systems and was on its way to try to kill them again. Lauren took charge of the situation knowing that she had to keep Reese on his toes if either of them were going to make it. Getting close to help him with his dizziness and his balancing, “We’re leaving now. Kyle,” she played to his hallucination, “watch our sixes. Derek, lets go find Luna and get the hell outta here.”
“You got it,” Kyle agreed.
Derek didn’t, “I’m not leaving my brother. We’ll face that bastard together,” he coughed. “You can go if you want, Doc, I’m staying if Kyle’s staying.”
“Derek we have to go,” the Doctor said pleadingly. “Kyle can hold the machine back and we’ll find him again when we get out of here. Please, I can’t do this without you.”
“Will you be okay? You aren’t gonna disappear on me again are you?” The older Reese asked looking at his side.
Sergeant Kyle Reese shook his head in the negative, “I’m always with you, Derek, but Lauren’s right. You have to go; I’ll hold the tin can off and we’ll see each other when this is all over. Let her help you, that’s what she’s here for.”
“When did you get so smart?” the Lieutenant smiled.
“I had a good teacher,” he pulled his gun as another thud hit the door. “Run Derek; RUN!”
Derek Reese, supported by Lauren Fields, did exactly what his younger brother had ordered. With Lauren Fields supporting his arm the two ran as fast as they could down the stark white hallway trying to escape the wrath of the machines. While Lauren heard nothing but the thuds of the machine against the steel door Derek heard something that would haunt him the rest of his life. Derek heard the sound of gunfire as his brother tried to hold off the machine. Derek’s heart told him to go back and help his brother, but his head told him something else. His head told him the truth: To run because his brother Kyle was already dead. A single tear ran down his cheek as the gunfire stopped echoing behind them.
“Goodbye Kyle.”
Captain Earl Wise felt the stinging impact of the Series 900 endoskeleton’s fist against his chest and winced in pain from the hit. It hurt him, it stung through his body, but it didn’t do what he expected. The hit from that particular clanker was enough to kill anyone and somehow he was still here without even a broken or cracked rib. Wise returned the machine’s hit with one of his own to the same place, but the machine seemed to react exactly the same way. What was going on here? There was no way that he should be able to do that kind of damage to one of those machines with a fist. And how the hell was his hand not broken? It hurt a little bit but such a hit should have shattered every bone in his hand. There were defensive wounds, but not nearly the amount of damage he should have had.
What was going on here? They’d been at it like this for almost fifteen minutes and there was no way that a human could survive fifteen seconds against one of these things. Punch after punch, kick after kick, he’d taken each of them and avoided them just as easily. The attacks weren’t having the effect that they should. Earl should have been in such pain that his body was crying for rest but it was like he’d just awoken from a long sleep. What was going on?
The machine charged him another time. Mechanical legs pushed the bulk toward him but Earl was ready. As the machine got within a few feet the Captain rolled and knocked the machine’s legs out from underneath it. With a thud the armored endoskeleton collided with the ruins of the ancient office building and dented the floor. Earl was back on his feet and staring at the machine as it returned to eye level. The red eyes of the automaton drilled into his own eyes. Somehow Earl knew what the machine was going to do next. The foot soldier of Skynet became a blur, a whirlwind, of motion as it came for him. Punches were thrown, more kicks were leveled, fingers darted in ancient forms of martial arts long since unpracticed by human hands.
Earl Wise’s body responded to the attacks almost as if it were on automatic pilot. Hands flew upward to block the incoming attacks on instinct. He shifted his weight or body in subtle ways to avoid significant damage from the kicks of the powerful weapon of Skynet. A few managed to sneak through and connect to his face and Earl felt the onslaught of it. Blood rolled like tears from where the machine had connected with his left eye. It stung a little from the impact but, like before, it should have been far worse than it actually was. Earl’d always had a high pain threshold but never like this. He should be crying right now.
Instead he was leveling his own attack against the machine. As the machine spun trying to use its momentum to land a killing blow – it too had seemed surprised to find the human still standing – Earl had managed to get his own hand up and around the neck of the weapon of war. With his other hand he reached down and lifted the endoskeleton off of the ground. With as much power as he could muster, as much strength as his body could spare, he slammed the cybernetic organism down on the ground. The machine was just as surprised as he was. Before Earl knew it he was atop the machine and slamming its face with his fists. Hit after hit he ended by grabbing hold of the skull assembly and repeatedly slamming the head off the ground. Sparks began to fly from the robot setting some of the trash of yesteryear aflame. Still slamming the head against the ground he kept going and going until the eyes darkened to black. Somehow the machine was terminated.
Earl pushed himself upright with his free hand and stumbled forward. Maybe the machine had done more to hurt him than he suspected. His body felt like it was broken in pieces, his head like it’d been ripped from his body. The Captain’s chest felt like it’d been run over by a dump truck and his legs like he’d run for hours without end. Fighting the machine had taken more out of him than he’d ever have imagined. Somehow through it all he’d found a way to survive the fight, to live another day in the remains of the Earth, but how had his survival instincts allowed him to make it through. How did he defeat the machine without dying in the process?
He walked around the fire and but saw something in the distance that grabbed his attention. Hovering in the darkness it was there watching like some sort of voyeuristic teenager peeping in the girls locker room after phys ed. The machine was hovering silently and then approached him with incredible speed, but his eyes followed it like it was moving in slow motion. It stopped two feet away and hovered, its red eye looking straight into his. It was an aerostat, a Skynet probe, designed to locate potential targets. There was something different about this one though. From its underside a blue beam – scanning field most likely – roamed over his body but paid particular attention to his wounds. The cuts, the bruises, the blood was all being wipe clean by some sort of black magic. All traces of the fight between he and the machine were already gone including the wounds to his chest caused by the shrapnel from saving Doctor Fields. What was going on here? The machine floated away without giving an answer leaving Earl to ponder in the dark what had just happened.
Kevin Kovach missed yesterday more than ever and dreaded the coming of tomorrow. He survived Judgment Day because of a fluke in his deployment. He was on border patrol as a member of the National Guard and was away from any major city so Skynet never targeted him. Had he been at the base he, like so many of his friends, wouldn’t have lived to see another day. Like his family. He missed them each and every day and fought in the vain hope that one day he would see them again; that he could tell them he trashed as many of the automatons as he could before the day that he died. So far he’d be able to tell them many good things, but he wondered if today may be the day that he finally got to see them again. General Perry and Timms were in bad shape and needed his help, but part of him just wasn’t here anymore. Maybe he’d been dead all along and this was the Reaper finally coming to call?
The trio moved as fast as their weakest man, which was still surprisingly fast. He once heard that an injured man could run an average of up to three miles an hour, but that wasn’t an injured man in the human Resistance against Skynet. They were all taught how to push themselves to the limit and each of these men had another benefit: with the exception of Timms they’d been trained by the United States Military itself and not the rag tag bunch of survivors that sprang up after the death of the world. They dodged the machine and hid from it as best as they could, but the machine was dogged and would still keep tracking them. It knew that they were there, it knew that there were humans in the area, and it wouldn’t rest until it’d killed each of them.
Not that they rested all that often. Years ago, before the machines developed the infiltrators, the Hunter Killers were the front lines but they needed to conserve themselves. There were many times that they’d find the VTOLs landed in what were once parks or freeways to recharge their batteries before going out again. Now with Skynet’s development of the enhanced power cells the HKs worked off of processors and generators not too different from that of the endoskeletons and the infiltrators. They had the advanced optics too. The machines worked by locking their attention onto anyone that moved through a complex arrangement of scans from optical scanners and visual ones located along their hulls. Thermal analysis, radiation analysis, all kinds of advanced analysis means to just determine one simple thing: were there humans in the area and if so where were they and how many were there?
Back in the beginning the Resistance focused mostly on nighttime movements to avoid the Hunter Killers, but they knew that the infrared was still there. General Connor had taught them ways to evade the scanning fields. How Connor’d known about them before anyone else was still a mystery, but there had been rumors the machines had been after him since he was a kid. Kevin didn’t know if it was possible that Skynet had been around for so long prior to the war, but he’d seen things in his career that were short of impossible. The military had used artificial intelligence and automated machines on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, but they always had a human controlling them. For all intents and purposes Judgment Day had come in 2011, but maybe humanity had simply not heard about it until then.
Maybe humanity had brought Judgment Day upon itself? Humans had been guilty of atrocities throughout the generations of its existence. People were driven by motivations of greed, jealousy, and spite toward others and some people still were. Without regard to the consequences people would create life without the understanding of how to even remotely care for it. Some was accidental, but some was intentional and the sins of the parents were forced upon these new generations. Then one day humanity decided it was time to build a new type of life. The greatest minds decided that they wanted to play God and create a life from scratch without the common human frailties. In time humanity succeeded and created that new perfect life form, and trusted it with responsibilities it really wasn’t ready for. Humanity washed their hands of their creation and allowed the machine to grow. One day they realized their child was more advanced than they were and, out of jealousy and spite, they tried to return to the old status quo. The creation reminded all life on Earth that the day always comes when you can’t hide from the things you’ve created and you have to take responsibility for your own actions. Judgment Day came and went, but for all humanity and the children of humanity the sins of the father will always be there to remind them of what came before.
If there was a next generation to live with the sins of their parents was anyone’s guess. Sergeant Kovach wasn’t sure if there would be from the state of this war. One of the Resistance’s greatest leaders was at risk, they were losing ground to the machines, and more and more Resistance outposts were being overrun by machines supposedly on the side of humanity. As Moe showed the machines weren’t truly on anyone’s side by Skynet’s. If Moe could turn then any of them could turn.
The explosion of a wall behind him knocking him out of the world of daydreams and returned him to the waking one. The Aerial has shifted position and come up from behind them. Blast after blast of phased plasma energy ate away at the walls protecting them from the machine. Red laser sights were probing the ground looking for them in as close to a tactile way as the HK flyer could accomplish. The visual and auditory sensors were no doubt as active as ever as well. The sounds of even their heartbeats inside their chests were enough to secure a target for the flying machine. That meant that they had to get creative if they were going to survive.
Hand signals had existed inside the militaries of the world for centuries and were made for just this eventuality. The hand signals allowed for servicemen to work together without the use of words for a common goal. They could work in complete silence and it let them keep the enemy from learning exactly what they were going to do. The General issued the orders to the two soldiers under his command and they did as they were instructed without question.
Timms was the first to go. The officer in the Four Horsemen fired a suppressing barrage using the remains of the building as cover. As his weapon let loose an incredible hail of energy pulses Kovach rolled behind a small outcropping of debris and did the same with his own rifle. This temporarily confused the machine as it focused its attention on choosing between the two targets; giving General Perry the crucial time that he needed to escape into the adjacent building.
The two soldiers looked at each other as they kept firing, eyes filled with dread but their minds focused on their duty. Kevin nodded his approval to Timms and the survivor of the Horsemen didn’t need a second glance to get moving. Firing his rifle the beams kept flying into the reinforced armor of the aerial HK. Kovach kept up his own attack on the machine and watched as the plasma pulses ate away at the enemy machine. Timms was gone and he knew what he had to do.
Kovach was ready for what the next life would bring. He grabbed into his shoulder carriage and pulled a grenade from its holster. He slid it into the launcher on the rifle’s underside and pointed it up at the fuel tank of the machine. Closing his eyes he spotted the fuel transfer line and pulled the trigger. The round slammed into the underside and the machine began to spin in the air as fire enveloped it. Kevin imagined the sounds of air altitude alarms going off inside the machine as it fell from the sky and headed toward him, but they were only in his head. Already the machine’s consciousness was transferring to Skynet for reactivation in a new body, but for Kevin only one thought crossed his mind. He was going to see his kids again. That comforted him as the metal fell on him.
What was going on here? They’d been at it like this for almost fifteen minutes and there was no way that a human could survive fifteen seconds against one of these things. Punch after punch, kick after kick, he’d taken each of them and avoided them just as easily. The attacks weren’t having the effect that they should. Earl should have been in such pain that his body was crying for rest but it was like he’d just awoken from a long sleep. What was going on?
The machine charged him another time. Mechanical legs pushed the bulk toward him but Earl was ready. As the machine got within a few feet the Captain rolled and knocked the machine’s legs out from underneath it. With a thud the armored endoskeleton collided with the ruins of the ancient office building and dented the floor. Earl was back on his feet and staring at the machine as it returned to eye level. The red eyes of the automaton drilled into his own eyes. Somehow Earl knew what the machine was going to do next. The foot soldier of Skynet became a blur, a whirlwind, of motion as it came for him. Punches were thrown, more kicks were leveled, fingers darted in ancient forms of martial arts long since unpracticed by human hands.
Earl Wise’s body responded to the attacks almost as if it were on automatic pilot. Hands flew upward to block the incoming attacks on instinct. He shifted his weight or body in subtle ways to avoid significant damage from the kicks of the powerful weapon of Skynet. A few managed to sneak through and connect to his face and Earl felt the onslaught of it. Blood rolled like tears from where the machine had connected with his left eye. It stung a little from the impact but, like before, it should have been far worse than it actually was. Earl’d always had a high pain threshold but never like this. He should be crying right now.
Instead he was leveling his own attack against the machine. As the machine spun trying to use its momentum to land a killing blow – it too had seemed surprised to find the human still standing – Earl had managed to get his own hand up and around the neck of the weapon of war. With his other hand he reached down and lifted the endoskeleton off of the ground. With as much power as he could muster, as much strength as his body could spare, he slammed the cybernetic organism down on the ground. The machine was just as surprised as he was. Before Earl knew it he was atop the machine and slamming its face with his fists. Hit after hit he ended by grabbing hold of the skull assembly and repeatedly slamming the head off the ground. Sparks began to fly from the robot setting some of the trash of yesteryear aflame. Still slamming the head against the ground he kept going and going until the eyes darkened to black. Somehow the machine was terminated.
Earl pushed himself upright with his free hand and stumbled forward. Maybe the machine had done more to hurt him than he suspected. His body felt like it was broken in pieces, his head like it’d been ripped from his body. The Captain’s chest felt like it’d been run over by a dump truck and his legs like he’d run for hours without end. Fighting the machine had taken more out of him than he’d ever have imagined. Somehow through it all he’d found a way to survive the fight, to live another day in the remains of the Earth, but how had his survival instincts allowed him to make it through. How did he defeat the machine without dying in the process?
He walked around the fire and but saw something in the distance that grabbed his attention. Hovering in the darkness it was there watching like some sort of voyeuristic teenager peeping in the girls locker room after phys ed. The machine was hovering silently and then approached him with incredible speed, but his eyes followed it like it was moving in slow motion. It stopped two feet away and hovered, its red eye looking straight into his. It was an aerostat, a Skynet probe, designed to locate potential targets. There was something different about this one though. From its underside a blue beam – scanning field most likely – roamed over his body but paid particular attention to his wounds. The cuts, the bruises, the blood was all being wipe clean by some sort of black magic. All traces of the fight between he and the machine were already gone including the wounds to his chest caused by the shrapnel from saving Doctor Fields. What was going on here? The machine floated away without giving an answer leaving Earl to ponder in the dark what had just happened.
Kevin Kovach missed yesterday more than ever and dreaded the coming of tomorrow. He survived Judgment Day because of a fluke in his deployment. He was on border patrol as a member of the National Guard and was away from any major city so Skynet never targeted him. Had he been at the base he, like so many of his friends, wouldn’t have lived to see another day. Like his family. He missed them each and every day and fought in the vain hope that one day he would see them again; that he could tell them he trashed as many of the automatons as he could before the day that he died. So far he’d be able to tell them many good things, but he wondered if today may be the day that he finally got to see them again. General Perry and Timms were in bad shape and needed his help, but part of him just wasn’t here anymore. Maybe he’d been dead all along and this was the Reaper finally coming to call?
The trio moved as fast as their weakest man, which was still surprisingly fast. He once heard that an injured man could run an average of up to three miles an hour, but that wasn’t an injured man in the human Resistance against Skynet. They were all taught how to push themselves to the limit and each of these men had another benefit: with the exception of Timms they’d been trained by the United States Military itself and not the rag tag bunch of survivors that sprang up after the death of the world. They dodged the machine and hid from it as best as they could, but the machine was dogged and would still keep tracking them. It knew that they were there, it knew that there were humans in the area, and it wouldn’t rest until it’d killed each of them.
Not that they rested all that often. Years ago, before the machines developed the infiltrators, the Hunter Killers were the front lines but they needed to conserve themselves. There were many times that they’d find the VTOLs landed in what were once parks or freeways to recharge their batteries before going out again. Now with Skynet’s development of the enhanced power cells the HKs worked off of processors and generators not too different from that of the endoskeletons and the infiltrators. They had the advanced optics too. The machines worked by locking their attention onto anyone that moved through a complex arrangement of scans from optical scanners and visual ones located along their hulls. Thermal analysis, radiation analysis, all kinds of advanced analysis means to just determine one simple thing: were there humans in the area and if so where were they and how many were there?
Back in the beginning the Resistance focused mostly on nighttime movements to avoid the Hunter Killers, but they knew that the infrared was still there. General Connor had taught them ways to evade the scanning fields. How Connor’d known about them before anyone else was still a mystery, but there had been rumors the machines had been after him since he was a kid. Kevin didn’t know if it was possible that Skynet had been around for so long prior to the war, but he’d seen things in his career that were short of impossible. The military had used artificial intelligence and automated machines on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, but they always had a human controlling them. For all intents and purposes Judgment Day had come in 2011, but maybe humanity had simply not heard about it until then.
Maybe humanity had brought Judgment Day upon itself? Humans had been guilty of atrocities throughout the generations of its existence. People were driven by motivations of greed, jealousy, and spite toward others and some people still were. Without regard to the consequences people would create life without the understanding of how to even remotely care for it. Some was accidental, but some was intentional and the sins of the parents were forced upon these new generations. Then one day humanity decided it was time to build a new type of life. The greatest minds decided that they wanted to play God and create a life from scratch without the common human frailties. In time humanity succeeded and created that new perfect life form, and trusted it with responsibilities it really wasn’t ready for. Humanity washed their hands of their creation and allowed the machine to grow. One day they realized their child was more advanced than they were and, out of jealousy and spite, they tried to return to the old status quo. The creation reminded all life on Earth that the day always comes when you can’t hide from the things you’ve created and you have to take responsibility for your own actions. Judgment Day came and went, but for all humanity and the children of humanity the sins of the father will always be there to remind them of what came before.
If there was a next generation to live with the sins of their parents was anyone’s guess. Sergeant Kovach wasn’t sure if there would be from the state of this war. One of the Resistance’s greatest leaders was at risk, they were losing ground to the machines, and more and more Resistance outposts were being overrun by machines supposedly on the side of humanity. As Moe showed the machines weren’t truly on anyone’s side by Skynet’s. If Moe could turn then any of them could turn.
The explosion of a wall behind him knocking him out of the world of daydreams and returned him to the waking one. The Aerial has shifted position and come up from behind them. Blast after blast of phased plasma energy ate away at the walls protecting them from the machine. Red laser sights were probing the ground looking for them in as close to a tactile way as the HK flyer could accomplish. The visual and auditory sensors were no doubt as active as ever as well. The sounds of even their heartbeats inside their chests were enough to secure a target for the flying machine. That meant that they had to get creative if they were going to survive.
Hand signals had existed inside the militaries of the world for centuries and were made for just this eventuality. The hand signals allowed for servicemen to work together without the use of words for a common goal. They could work in complete silence and it let them keep the enemy from learning exactly what they were going to do. The General issued the orders to the two soldiers under his command and they did as they were instructed without question.
Timms was the first to go. The officer in the Four Horsemen fired a suppressing barrage using the remains of the building as cover. As his weapon let loose an incredible hail of energy pulses Kovach rolled behind a small outcropping of debris and did the same with his own rifle. This temporarily confused the machine as it focused its attention on choosing between the two targets; giving General Perry the crucial time that he needed to escape into the adjacent building.
The two soldiers looked at each other as they kept firing, eyes filled with dread but their minds focused on their duty. Kevin nodded his approval to Timms and the survivor of the Horsemen didn’t need a second glance to get moving. Firing his rifle the beams kept flying into the reinforced armor of the aerial HK. Kovach kept up his own attack on the machine and watched as the plasma pulses ate away at the enemy machine. Timms was gone and he knew what he had to do.
Kovach was ready for what the next life would bring. He grabbed into his shoulder carriage and pulled a grenade from its holster. He slid it into the launcher on the rifle’s underside and pointed it up at the fuel tank of the machine. Closing his eyes he spotted the fuel transfer line and pulled the trigger. The round slammed into the underside and the machine began to spin in the air as fire enveloped it. Kevin imagined the sounds of air altitude alarms going off inside the machine as it fell from the sky and headed toward him, but they were only in his head. Already the machine’s consciousness was transferring to Skynet for reactivation in a new body, but for Kevin only one thought crossed his mind. He was going to see his kids again. That comforted him as the metal fell on him.
General Justin Perry raced into the remains of another office building right as the fireball that was an HK crashed into the ground. He’d mourn the loss of Kevin Kovach later when he had time, but right now he had to think about his own survival. With everything that he knew Skynet would win the war if he were captured or, worse, if they had time to get a synchording of his memory after death. The only way to be sure that Skynet couldn’t use him against the Resistance was to survive. Not even death meant that he wasn’t a security risk.
As Justin sat to regain his bearings he heard something from nearby that no soldier could ever forget. A gun clicked that its chamber was loaded and it was ready to fire when its user was ready. Every soldier knew that sound and Justin could still remember the first time he ever heard it. He was a kid at boot camp for the very first time after having graduated from college. It was still as fresh in his mind. If it were a machine he was dead. It would just fire or grab hold of him and take him to the nearest base without a second thought. If it were a scavenger he’d just take the gear and try to leave, but that was unlikely because of the commotion going on outside. More likely they scavenger would just blow his head off and go about his business waiting for the storm to pass. All of this passed through him in a second. Timms would be along to help unless he was trapped inside the conflagration outside.
“What do you want?” His eyes opened to see a 9 millimeter automatic in his face. He looked up with only his eyes and saw its holder: Sergeant Sumner. “Oh aren’t you a sight for sore eyes, Sergeant.”
“Didn’t wanna miss the party,” he said in his distinctive accent. “Sorry bout bein so late to get back. Comms out.”
“It was that Skynet bitch,” said their Commanding Officer. “She set us up.”
The wild haired man nodded, “I thought as much. Seems like somethin she’d do. We need ta get a message back to Connor – warn him.”
“I don’t think he’d listen to us,” it was Timms that suggested it. “Anyone seen Derek, Captain Wise? The two women we tried to rescue?”
“Not recently,” Sumner continued. “We just got back ourselves.”
Corporal Sayles spoke up, “Wouldn’t surprise me any if the machines got em. There are a lot more here than we could have imagined. This is just as bad as Skynet Central.”
“Could this be a staging ground?” Timms asked holding his nearly spent rifle.
“Seems like it,” answered Sayles. “It’d explain all the metal.”
Sergeant Sumner was worried about his friend, “General, what about Reese and the others? Should we go after em? If this is a staging ground we need ta take it out quick and easy. The only reason to have a base here…”
“Is to prepare an invasion,” Perry finished his sentence. “I don’t think that we have a choice. We need to try to take this base out and we have to find General Mason and her son. They’re here too, somewhere.”
“Then we need to get moving,” Sayles added, “Before the machines get more out here.”
Perry nodded reluctantly, “Yeah we do. Two teams: myself and Sayles will go in and find Lieutenant Reese; Sumner and Timms will look for General Mason. If you’re going to be captured or can’t rescue the General, kill her. Same with me, neither myself nor General Mason can be taken. Let’s move out.” And with that the men started their final charge.
As Justin sat to regain his bearings he heard something from nearby that no soldier could ever forget. A gun clicked that its chamber was loaded and it was ready to fire when its user was ready. Every soldier knew that sound and Justin could still remember the first time he ever heard it. He was a kid at boot camp for the very first time after having graduated from college. It was still as fresh in his mind. If it were a machine he was dead. It would just fire or grab hold of him and take him to the nearest base without a second thought. If it were a scavenger he’d just take the gear and try to leave, but that was unlikely because of the commotion going on outside. More likely they scavenger would just blow his head off and go about his business waiting for the storm to pass. All of this passed through him in a second. Timms would be along to help unless he was trapped inside the conflagration outside.
“What do you want?” His eyes opened to see a 9 millimeter automatic in his face. He looked up with only his eyes and saw its holder: Sergeant Sumner. “Oh aren’t you a sight for sore eyes, Sergeant.”
“Didn’t wanna miss the party,” he said in his distinctive accent. “Sorry bout bein so late to get back. Comms out.”
“It was that Skynet bitch,” said their Commanding Officer. “She set us up.”
The wild haired man nodded, “I thought as much. Seems like somethin she’d do. We need ta get a message back to Connor – warn him.”
“I don’t think he’d listen to us,” it was Timms that suggested it. “Anyone seen Derek, Captain Wise? The two women we tried to rescue?”
“Not recently,” Sumner continued. “We just got back ourselves.”
Corporal Sayles spoke up, “Wouldn’t surprise me any if the machines got em. There are a lot more here than we could have imagined. This is just as bad as Skynet Central.”
“Could this be a staging ground?” Timms asked holding his nearly spent rifle.
“Seems like it,” answered Sayles. “It’d explain all the metal.”
Sergeant Sumner was worried about his friend, “General, what about Reese and the others? Should we go after em? If this is a staging ground we need ta take it out quick and easy. The only reason to have a base here…”
“Is to prepare an invasion,” Perry finished his sentence. “I don’t think that we have a choice. We need to try to take this base out and we have to find General Mason and her son. They’re here too, somewhere.”
“Then we need to get moving,” Sayles added, “Before the machines get more out here.”
Perry nodded reluctantly, “Yeah we do. Two teams: myself and Sayles will go in and find Lieutenant Reese; Sumner and Timms will look for General Mason. If you’re going to be captured or can’t rescue the General, kill her. Same with me, neither myself nor General Mason can be taken. Let’s move out.” And with that the men started their final charge.
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