lines in the sand | anklebones

act 3

The sun was high overhead by the time they made it to the weapon cache. It didn't look like much, nothing more than a crumbling cellar buried under an abandoned farmhouse, but John was hoping it would have something they could use.

"Charming," Danny said, stepping carefully over a pile of indistinct rusted junk to join him at the door.

"That's the idea." John pushed the weeds aside, ripped away a rotten board, and pulled out the loose bricks to retrieve a key. "Mom bought this place when I was just a kid. I have no idea what she stashed here, but it doesn't look like it's been touched since."

The padlock gave way with only a token complaint, but it took both of them to shift the door. Time had warped the foundation and the hinges squealed their distress when they were forced to bend. Danny looked around nervously at the sound, but John just kept pushing and after a moment Danny did the same, until they were able to turn sideways and wriggle their way into the darkness.

Light slashed through the gaps in the wood and stone, but it wasn't enough to reveal more than a dirt floor and bulky black shapes that could have been shelves lined out along either wall. Pulling his gun free of his jeans, John waited for his eyes to adjust before moving out of the pool of light around the door. Danny followed right behind him, and John couldn't help the itch that tickled his spine between his shoulder blades. Given a setting that wouldn't have been out of place in a horror movie, John would have preferred to have the programmer where he could see him.

Movement at the edge of his vision brought John up short, and he nearly lost his footing when Danny blundered into him from behind. Ducking to the side, John brought his gun around on pure reflex, feeling his finger tremble on the trigger before he dropped the weapon with a shaky exhalation.

"You okay?" Danny asked, his voice no steadier than John's nerves.

"Yeah." John put the gun away and rubbed his hands together to get the stain of suspicion off them. A rustle drew his eyes back to the corner and he snorted as a fat black rat finished rummaging through a pile of old rags and darted out the door. "Jumpy is all."

"Jumpy," Danny echoed, following John deeper into the cellar. "Same here."

I'll bet, John thought sourly, wondering if Danny had any idea of the thin line he was walking. Probably not. If there was anything John had learned about him since they'd moved in together, it was that Danny was cocky enough to think he could play both sides and get away with it. Only around Cameron did his ego seem to melt away. Which went to prove he wasn't completely stupid, despite evidence to the contrary at times.

*****

"Turn left up here." It shouldn’t have felt like an accusation, but it did. Words, even innocuous words like driving directions, could bear knives, and Sarah couldn’t help but feel their sting.

She slowed to take the corner, ignoring the tightening of Terissa’s jaw at their speed, or rather, their lack of it. If the other woman had been driving, Sarah had no doubt they would have ended up in a ditch by now.

Sound familiar? Her conscience demanded, losing no opportunity to harass her. That was you for seventeen years.

And I have the scars to prove it, Sarah admitted. She couldn’t blame Terissa for being willing to risk everything to get to Danny before the terminator did, or for being pissed at her because she wasn’t.  That would have been the height of hypocrisy. Terissa was still trying to hold on, still desperate to hide her son under a rock to keep him safe. It wasn't wrong; it just didn't work.

"We’ll find them." The words and the soothing tone felt foreign in Sarah’s mouth, much like this role she found herself playing.

Terissa looked up from the GPS they were using to track Danny's cell phone. "You don't know that," she said bluntly. “We’re hours behind.”

Sarah wisely kept her immediate response to that to herself. Terissa didn’t need to be reminded that the side trip to the house had been necessary; she already knew that, but the knowledge hadn’t stopped her from resenting the delay.  

For Sarah’s part she was grateful for the miles separating them from their sons and whatever plan John was hatching. The farther away they were, the better chance Sarah had of keeping her promise to Cameron.

"They can handle this," she said instead.

Terissa snorted. "Maybe John can." She held up the GPS with it's blinking red light, flashing like an accusation. "Danny left his goddamned cell phone on."

*****

The ringing was all the warning they got.

John spun away from the dusty safe he had found under a section of false floor in the back of the cellar, and stared unbelievingly at Danny. "You left it on?"

Any answer Danny might have made was drowned out by a hail of gunshots from outside.

"Shit." John was on his feet in an instant, his back to the wall and gun ready in his hand. Danny wasn't far behind him, but John could see him shaking. Counting the gunshots in his head, John frowned. There were too many for a single shooter, and terminators didn't generally make a habit of announcing their presence by taking pot shots at grasshoppers, which should have been the only things moving out there.

Mom? he wondered. Then, Cameron?

There was no way to know from in here. 

"Follow me," he whispered, inching back further into the cellar. His mother always made sure there was a back door. She had set this place up, so there would be another way out. He found it in a second room, a grimy window hidden in the shadows of the ceiling. It would have been a tight enough fit for his mother, which meant that he and Danny were going to lose a bit of skin. But it was either that or walk out with their hands up, and he didn’t think the machine was going to read them their rights.

John climbed out first with a boost from Danny, not quite ready to trust him to stick around long enough to help him out in return. The window was wider than it looked, but it was surrounded by prickly weeds, and John bit down on a curse when his grab for support found a particularly spiky one. The window opened onto the back of the lot, and there was no one in sight. A wild urge to flee caught John unexpectedly at the sight of a clear line of retreat. The machine wasn't after him; he could get away and leave Danny to the fate he had engineered for himself.

It was what he'd been taught to do, but John wasn't a child anymore and Danny still had a choice.

Another shot rang out from the driveway, and John lost no more time in ducking down to haul Danny through the window.

"We need to get to the truck," he whispered once they were both crouched against the side of the house.

Danny nodded. "Do you think it's her?" he asked.

John shook his head. He didn't think Cameron would have left Savannah’s side to chase after him so long as Weaver was around, and she wouldn't have brought the child with her. If there was someone on their side with a gun out there, he’d lay odds it was his mother.

They crept around the house, keeping down where the grass and weeds offered some cover.

Theirs was the only vehicle John could see when he reached the corner of the porch, and it took him a moment to find the source of the gun shots. Two shooters were hidden behind trees to either side of the driveway, and there was a third inside a shed on the other side of the house. He couldn’t get a good look at them, but all three of them seemed to be in some kind of black, military-style gear.

A bullet passed close enough to send John scooting back into the brush, nearly knocking Danny over in his haste.

That one had come from just around the corner. From the trajectory, John guessed the shooter was standing in the entrance to the cellar. It looked like that was where all three of what John decided to call the “bad guys,” for lack of a better description, were aiming. From the number of shots, they either needed to spend some more time in the range or whatever they were shooting wasn’t going down.

He shook his head. They always use the front door.

Pure instinct made John want to run for the truck, but he held his ground, grabbing Danny's arm when the programmer followed the same line of logic and tried to bolt. For now the terminator seemed to be concentrating on the bad guys, but that could change at any moment.

Still, they weren’t likely to get a better moment. Five targets made for better odds than two, which was all there would be in just a few minutes.

Of course, the bad guys might be after Danny too... making it four against two, but John didn’t want to dwell on that.

Putting himself between Danny and the machine, John yanked him up and shoved him towards the truck.

Danny didn’t need to be told twice. He took off running with John close behind him.

New shots rang out from the cellar, the bullets making the gravel around them leap and spin, but somehow they made it to the dubious protection of the truck unscathed. They clambered into the truck cab just as the terminator emerged from the cellar with that horrible methodical stride that turned John’s bones to water, shooting all the while.

John pushed Danny down as bullets hit the truck, one shattering the windshield and thudding into the seat only inches from his shoulder. The next covered those inches, tearing a jagged line across his bicep and making John hiss in pain.

Blood welled from the shallow gouge, but he ignored it; there would be time enough to tend to it later, assuming they survived. As he turned the key, John met the machine's eyes and shuddered at the death he saw there. It broke into a run when the engine turned over, reaching for the truck bed as John hauled the wheel around and sent them squealing down the driveway.

The terminator's grab missed by inches, and John watched in the rear view mirror as it slowly fell back, giving up the chase once they reached the road, but John felt it's eyes on the back of his head long after it was out of sight.

*****

Weaver waited.

Patience was a natural asset for a machine, and she had done a great deal of waiting since she had begun her mission. Waiting and watching. For the right moment, or the wrong one, depending on her goals. Practice should have made it easier, but Weaver was finding, illogical as it might seem, that the longer she waited, the less patient she became.

Hidden under a bush, she lay on her belly just outside of the range of the sensors they had set to foil her and watched the front door. There was some kind of bug crawling around in her fur, and Weaver fought the urge to scratch it loose. She could have changed shape to escape it, but this spot wasn't as secluded as she would like, and, perversely, she felt like that would have been admitting defeat. So she endured.

Weaver couldn't have explained why she had held onto the shape of the resistance girl's Sheppard after returning to the past, it made no logical sense. The form was useful, but any dog would have served as well. There was no reason to return to this shape again and again, except that it fit.

Being Catherine Weaver had felt the same way.

Even the name, Weaver, seemed to have attached itself to her somehow. Perhaps it had to do with how long she had worn it. She had been Weaver longer than she had ever been anyone else.

Humans seemed to place a great deal of importance on how others saw them, even allowing themselves to be defined by it. With no natural shape of her own, Weaver had only the faces she stole, so it could be accepted as logical that she would be most drawn to those that had been "seen" the most.

Had she been so corrupted by human influence?

Weaver found the idea as unsettling as the bug in her fur. It was a relief when the car coming down the street signalled an end to her long wait.

They couldn't put motion detectors everywhere, not on a public street, and Weaver had spent a great deal of time mapping the boundaries of each one. All she needed was a ride.

When the car passed her, Weaver moved, sliding underneath it in an instant of liquid metal, attaching herself to the undercarriage and allowing it to carry her past the perimeter. She stayed there until she heard the driver disembark, and the front door open, then she dropped to the pavement and rippled up and under the front steps while they were busy with one another. There, she waited for the alarm or any other sign that she had been spotted.

The quiet girl and the cyborg exchanged a few words, a pass code of some kind, and then the girl was admitted. Weaver stayed put until the door was closed, and then she was on the move again, sliding under the foundations of the house.

No one ever thought to guard the floor.

*****

"I'm sorry," Danny said for the third time, turned sideways in the passenger seat to dab the blood from John's arm with one of the antiseptic wipes from the first aid kit that had been stashed the truck. They had pulled over about half an hour after leaving the farm to take stock of their situation. The terminator was nowhere in sight, but neither of them wanted to leave the safety of four wheels and a tank of gas just yet.

"It's not your fault," John said through clenched teeth, fighting not to squirm against the burning of the alcohol.

"I left my phone on..."

John shook his head. "That wouldn't have brought it to us. Not without some kind of network access. If it could have tracked our phones it would have found the hangar a lot sooner. It knew about the cache already somehow."

"But you..." Danny couldn't forget the shame that had burned through his gut at the disbelief and scorn on John's face when his cell phone had given away their position at the farm. For a moment he had thought John would abandon him there, but here they were, and John was bleeding from a wound he'd taken to keep Danny safe. Torn between gratitude and doubt, Danny wasn't sure if he could trust him or not, but right now John was his only chance.

"The machine couldn't track us," John said again. "But our mom's might have."

"Oh." Danny finished wiping away the blood and began taping gauze over the wound. Now he understood John's reaction. John was determined not to bring anyone else into this, and he thought Danny had gone behind his back, letting the rescue party run right into the crossfire.  "I didn't think of that."

John snorted. "I didn't figure you had, but at the time..."

"It's off now," Danny felt the need to point out, not without a twinge of regret. Being rescued was starting to look pretty good right now. "I turned it off as soon as we got away."

"Good." John flexed his arm and nodded his approval. "And thanks."

"You're welcome." Danny put the tape and gauze back into the first aide kit and zipped it closed, stowing it back in the glove compartment when he was done. There was still one question looming between them, and Danny hesitated to offer an answer, lest the prospect of guarding his back begin to appear more of a risk than any sane man might be willing to take. A terminator John knew how to handle but...

"It was Kaliba," he said before he could change his mind. "The shooters... they were from Kaliba."

John swore under his breath. "Are you sure?"

Danny nodded. "I recognized one of them from the base. It's them."

"This just keeps getting better and better," John growled. "What's made you so popular all of a sudden?"

"I don't know," Danny said. "But they didn't actually seem to be paying a whole lot of attention to us, did they?"

"Not hard to pick a target when one of them is a cybernetic killing machine with a gun, John quipped, but he looked thoughtful as he started the truck and got them back on the road. "You might have a point. You think they were tracking the terminator?"

Danny shrugged. He had his suspicions but he kept them to himself. "So what do we do next?"

"Other than keep your ass in one piece?" John asked with a sideways grin. "I have no idea."

Almost uncomfortable with loyalty he had never expected and was pretty sure he didn’t deserve, Danny slid his hand into his pocket and closed his fingers around the chip he had taken from the wall safe before they had fled the hangar.

"I do."

*****

The scene they found at the farm was all too familiar.

Sarah had seen it too many times before, but Terissa turned grey at the sight of the bodies lying in blood-soaked grass. Sarah wondered if she was seeing Danny in their place as she’d seen John so many times. To Terissa’s credit though, she rallied quickly, examining the casualties without being asked while Sarah checked the perimeter. 

Sarah joined her once she was reasonably sure they were alone. Two of the men were dead and cold, hands still locked around their weapons, but the third was breathing in spite of a gaping hole in his chest. Terissa was trying to staunch the bleeding with his balled-up jacket.

“Will he make it?” she asked, crouching down next to them.

Terissa shook her head. “I don’t know. Maybe, if he gets to a hospital.”

Sarah didn’t need to tell her that would have to wait. “Stay with him.”

“But...” Terissa’s eyes strayed to the open door of the cellar, the blood spattered against the ancient wood.

“I’ll go,” Sarah promised, relieved when Terissa nodded. She didn’t need company for this, and if there was any chance Danny was down there, Terissa didn’t need to be the one to find him.

And you do? Sarah asked herself. But she had her own reasons for wanting to go alone.

John had been eight when she had brought him here. He'd explored the ruined house while she dug a hole in the ground, burying their few possessions, a cache of weapons and money enough to hide them after the bombing of the computer factory that was supposed to set them free.

She'd never been back, but clearly John had remembered it well enough to find it. The last place they'd been together before he'd been thrown into foster care and told his mother was a lunatic.

Sarah wasn't really expecting to find anything; the truck was gone, and it wasn't until after the signal had moved on that Danny had finally switched his cell phone off. But she was still relieved when she found the open window and two sets of prints in the dirt  floor underneath it.

Hoisting herself up, she noted the flattened grass, and the smear of dried blood on one of the spiny weeds. Someone had definitely left this way. She dropped down and pulled the window closed.

On her way back out, she stopped at the safe they had uncovered. From the looks of it, they’d been interrupted before they’d gotten it open. Swallowing an unexpected lump in her throat, Sarah knelt and spun the dial. Future John had used judgment day for his code, but Sarah preferred a happier date. John’s birthday was too obvious, so she used the day she had never talked about, the day she had found out for sure that he was real.

Eighteen, alone, facing the end of the world and wondering if she was crazy, Sarah had been terrified. Her life could never have been the same after Kyle and the machine, but it was a cheap home pregnancy test that changed everything. She had left for Mexico the next day and never looked back.

From then on, John had been the only thing that mattered. Everything she had done, she had done for him. Sarah Connor had nearly disappeared, sacrificed for the greater good.

Until Cameron had given her back to herself.

The safe opened in a shower of dust. Sarah pulled out the money, guns, ammunition, and a folder filled with fake ID’s. She’d take them with her, but what she wanted was at the very bottom. An envelope, yellow and brittle with age, crackled against her fingers. Opening it carefully, she drew out two pictures and put them in her pocket before closing the safe.

Back above ground, she returned to Terissa and the wounded shooter.

“Any change?”

“He’s been in and out,” Terissa said. “The boys?”

“Gone.” Sarah knelt and felt for a pulse. It was weak, but steady, and he groaned at the press of her fingers. Hoping her might rouse enough to give them some answers, Sarah chafed the skin of his cheek gently.

They were in luck.

"Who...?" he managed, blinking up at them.

"You’re better off not knowing," Sarah told him. "What happened here?"

"It’s a robot!" The man blurted, struggling to rise, only to go white when what little blood remaining to him sloshed down around somewhere near his middle. Terissa pushed him back, and he took a few deep breaths, clinging to consciousness with visible effort.

"Cybernetic organism," Sarah corrected him automatically. "We know about it. Where did it go?"

"Where is my son?" Terissa cut in. "Who are you? Are you after Danny?"

Confusion entered pale blue eyes, and the man glanced between them, clearly unable to cope with more than one question at a time. "Danny?" he echoed, but Sarah couldn’t tell if that was an answer, or if he was just repeating the last word he heard.

"Let me do this," she told Terissa. "One thing at a time."

"It's my son..." Terissa started, but she subsided at the look in Sarah's eyes.

“What’s your name,” Sarah asked gently, turning her attention back to the wounded man.

He looked relieved to have a question he could answer. “Benjamin.”

“Okay Benjamin, who are you working for?”

“Am I going to die?”

“I don’t know,” Sarah admitted. “Answer my questions, and we’ll call an ambulance for you before we leave. Who do you work for?”

Closing his eyes for a moment, Benjamin licked his dry lips and nodded. “Kaliba,” he rasped, refocusing on her. “I work for Kaliba.”

Of course. Because this wasn’t complicated enough... Sarah nodded, not letting anything show on her face. “And the machine, what do you know?"

He swallowed, hesitating. "Are you going to destroy it?" he asked finally.

"Yes."

"Good..." he closed his eyes for a moment, coming to a decision before continuing. "We were tracking it. Hit it with... with a trace back at the old base. It..." he coughed, bringing up bloody phlegm that Terissa wiped away with the sleeve of his jacket.  "It was searching ..."

Already well aware of who the terminator was looking for, Sarah focused on what she didn’t know. "Trace?"

"Microchip.  Hidden in a bullet. Don’t know why, but the casing breaks up, but the chip's too small to dig out. We’ve been following it..."

"Why?" Sarah could think of several reasons, none of them good.

"I don't know." He coughed again, weaker now. "Just...following orders..." He fumbled at his belt, pulling free a little black box with shaking fingers. Holding it out, he waited until Sarah took it before relaxing back into the grass.

"Lead you..." he whispered.

Sarah looked down at the little device, recognizing it as a receiver of some kind. Probably the same type they'd used to track the chip they'd put in her chest back before she'd really known what Kaliba was. With this, they could follow the machine following their sons.

"That will take us to Danny?" Terissa demanded.

Sarah was tempted to lie, but she didn't think the other woman would ever forgive her for it. "It should," she admitted reluctantly.

"Then we need to go." Terissa made a grab for the receiver, but Sarah held it back.

"There are other questions to ask. We might never get another chance to find out what Kaliba is doing..."

"I don't care about Kaliba!" Terissa nearly shouted. "I want my son back!"

"This is bigger than Danny."

"No!" Terissa lurched to her feet. "If you won't help me, than I'll go find a news camera and tell the world my name is Tango, and the damned machine can come hunt me instead."

You are worth ten of him! Sarah wanted to shout, but she resisted the impulse. Terissa was in no mood to hear it, and she wouldn't believe it even if she was. There was more to this than a mother's protective instinct... an underlying taint of guilt. Sarah had tasted it herself, and she suspected Terissa was getting her own dose.

If Danny died, then Terissa would be convinced she had failed him. She'd rather die than live with that knowledge, and Sarah couldn't let that happen.

"We'll go," she agreed, fishing the wounded man's phone out of his pocket and dialling 911 before laying it open beside him. It wasn't much, but it was a chance.

"Keep the pressure on it," she told him, putting his hands on top of the jacket over his wound. "Help is coming."

He nodded, but his eyes were already glazing over, and Sarah didn't think he'd live to see the ambulance arrive. It was a damned waste, and she felt almost physically ill at the thought of leaving this opportunity to get into her opponent's head behind.

"Let's go," she said, rising and wiping the blood off her hands onto her jeans. She passed the receiver to Terissa and led the way to the car.

*****

Savannah was curled up on her windowsill with Walther asleep in her lap when Sabine got back. In an attempt to cheer her up through her incarceration, she had gone to the store to get Savannah some new art supplies.

Savannah appreciated the gesture, but she didn’t feel much like drawing.

“Thank you,” she said listlessly, turning around when she heard footsteps behind her. But it wasn’t Sabine.

"What are you doing here!?"

The tall, red-headed stranger who had died in their living room just smiled. Her feet were still silver, but they shivered and warmed to bare flesh tone as she stepped off the air vent in the floor and onto the carpet.

"Taking you home, Savannah. It's not safe for you here any longer."

"This is my home," Savannah insisted, edging towards the door. "I don't want to go with you."

"Ah, ah, ah," Weaver crooned, blocking the exit. "Mother knows best."

I'll scream..." Savannah warned her, fighting to keep her voice firm in spite of the frantic beating of her heart.

Weaver was across the room in an instant, a hand covering Savannah's mouth before she could so much as squeak. "Scream," she said, her voice lowering dangerously, "and someone dies."

Savannah glared, but that was all she could do. In her fear she clutched Walther a little too hard and the cat protested with a vengeance, springing out of her arms and attacking the first thing in his path, every claw bared.

Startled by the unexpected feline assault, Weaver took a step back and Savannah wrenched free, dropping and rolling past the machine and back to her feet again before darting out the door. Mindful of Weaver's threat, she didn't scream or do anything to summon rescuers to her plight. Instead she ran down the hall to Sarah's room.

The gun was in the bedside table where she remembered seeing it. Yanking the drawer open she pulled it out and spun, training it on the silver wave that flowed into the room and coalesced back into woman John had called family.

"I'll shoot!" she threatened, trying to hold the gun the way she had seen Sarah do it.

Weaver smiled, but it looked even more fake than it had before. "We don't have to be enemies, Savannah. Come with me and I'll show you who you could be, what we could be. Together we could save the world. We could protect everyone that you love, and keep them safe, forever..."

"No one is ever safe," Savannah said defiantly. "You’re lying! You can't make promises like that. Go away and leave us alone!"

"I can't do that, Savannah." Weaver took a step closer. "I need you."

"No!" Savannah closed her eyes and squeezed the trigger.

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