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act 4

Cameron froze when the quicksilver terminator stepped in front of her, appearing unharmed like a creature out of a monster movie, and Cameron had sudden insight into the source of some of Sarah’s nightmares. It was a replay of their earlier confrontation, and the disastrous results of that encounter gave Cameron pause.

Weaver cocked her head to the side and gave an emotionless smile. She extended her arms, her hands liquefying into two silver blades. Her first swipe made Cameron step back and out of the way, raising her handgun as she retreated. Cameron bought a few seconds and several feet of space when she unloaded her clip into Weaver’s face, the bullets gouging into the quicksilver like a child’s fingers in clay.

Sarah watched as Weaver recovered and advanced on Cameron. She scanned the cavernous room as she groped for her shotgun and scrambled to get to her feet. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of Danny Dyson, crouched motionless by a forklift. A shiny chip rested near his knee where he must have dropped it in his haste to cover his ears. 

Measuring the distance to the chip in her head, Sarah popped up and aimed the shotgun at Weaver. “SARAH!” Cameron’s yell caught her just in time as a silver blade detached from Weaver’s hand and arched toward her. The warning gave her a second to duck so that the blade only sliced into her shoulder rather than take off her head. Suddenly numb and slippery, her fingers lost her hold on her gun, and it skittered uselessly across the floor. 

“Damn,” Sarah muttered as she hit the deck hard and rolled behind a large crate, a rain of splinters pelting her as Weaver shifted her focus onto her in earnest. She was dimly aware of Cameron closing on Weaver in an effort to protect her. Another blade punched through the crate she was using as a shield, missing her cheek by the barest inch. Swearing again, Sarah propelled herself backward, jerking to her feet as she prepared to run from the advancing terminator.

Then Cameron was there, stepping in front of Sarah to intercept what would have been a fatal blow. She caught Weaver’s blade in the palm of her hand, feeling the razor sharp metal slice through skin and circuits. Her teeth came together to bite back a cry of pain, but she didn’t let go, curling her fingers around the spike to hold it in place. Sarah slipped past them both and Cameron felt a fleeting moment of relief. Blood ran down her palm to splatter on the dusty concrete floor, but Cameron ignored the injury as she went for a second Glock tucked into the back of her jeans. She yanked it free, trying to keep Weaver’s attention on her and off Sarah. As she pulled the trigger, Weaver slapped her arm aside, causing the gun to discharge with a deafening boom as the shot went wild.

A second blast echoed, louder than the first, and a hole blossomed in Weaver’s back, knocking the terminator forward a step. Clearly Sarah had retrieved her gun.

Cameron took advantage of Sarah’s distraction and fired two shots into the silver mass trying to shape back into human form. She felt the blade in her hand soften, and she gripped it tightly and swung Weaver face-first into the wall. Her follow-up punch was enveloped by silver metal, the cold liquid solidifying around her fist as Weaver gained control of her body. The terminator pivoted, returning the favor as she pulled Cameron off her feet and slammed her into the wall.

Flecks of plaster and cinder blocks sprinkled down on Cameron as she fell to her knees. She braced her hands on the wall and pushed off, only to collapse once again when a metal spike penetrated through her shoulder and embedded into the wall, pinning her there. Fear flooded her circuits as she struggled against the hold. She had been here before, her limited cybernetic body unable to match the strength and flexibility of the other terminator. She closed her eyes and her head dipped, waiting for Weaver to punch a spike through her energy source, but Savannah’s face swam before her eyes. She didn’t want to leave her, didn’t want to leave Sarah. She wanted that retirement, that place where they could all find peace. Savannah had stood her ground and battled Weaver, terrified but determined to protect her family. Cameron owed it to her and Sarah to do the same.

Her hand tightened on the spike, bent it, twisted it, as she rose to her feet and turned, the pain worth it to see the look on Weaver’s face.

Sarah planted the muzzle of her shotgun behind Weaver’s ear and pulled the trigger without remorse. An eerie, high-pitched tone came from the terminator as her head was neatly blown in two. Grabbing Cameron, Sarah wrested her off the spike as Weaver struggled to recover. Sarah just prayed that all the noise wouldn’t draw John and James. They didn’t need two more people in the line of fire.

As they ducked behind another crate for shelter, Sarah gently touched Cameron’s bruised and bleeding features. “You okay?” she whispered as Cameron dropped her empty clip to the ground and loaded another.

“Yes,” Cameron replied, her clipped tone betraying her pain. She locked eyes with Sarah for a long moment before nodding, giving the signal for them to move. Sarah went left and Cameron went right, catching Weaver in the crossfire and riddling her body with bullets.

"Find the chip," Cameron ordered Sarah over the gunfire.

Sarah frowned and slapped another magazine into her gun. "Can you handle her?" she demanded. She emptied her clip into the terminator again, taking meager satisfaction in hurting the creature in the only way she could. They were keeping Weaver off balance, but they were running out of ammunition and time.

"Go!" Cameron insisted. She tossed her spent weapon aside and closed in on the other terminator, picking her up and tossing her across the room and away from Sarah. She only had to keep Weaver busy while Sarah destroyed the chip. She could do that. She ripped a machine loose from the floor and tossed it onto Weaver, flattening the other terminator into a silver puddle. Cameron cocked her head as she watched Weaver trickling out from beneath the machine. She could do this, she promised herself, her chin hitching higher.

And maybe even get a little payback in the process.

*****

Sarah growled as she came around the forklift and discovered Danny was gone. The kid had an annoying way of vanishing into thin air. She hastily scanned the immediate area but came up empty. She’d done her best to save him, but sometimes people didn’t want to be saved. With a mental apology to Terissa, Sarah dismissed Danny from her thoughts. A quick glance back at Cameron told her she had wasted enough precious time on him already.

Circling the forklift, Sarah made her way through the haphazardly arranged equipment. She finally reached the door of the office, wincing as she heard the hand-to-hand combat resume between the two terminators behind her. Throwing caution to the wind, Sarah yanked open the door. She was a half step inside when she saw a flicker of movement out of the corner of her eye.

Her stomach plunged as she watched Danny run to John Henry’s body in the center of the room. Sarah knew what he was about to do. Thoughtless and stupid, Danny was trying to bring Sierra’s killer back to life, and possibly condemn them all.

*****

Danny remained hidden behind a pallet rack near the loading dock. He'd carefully hidden in the shadows while Sarah and Cameron battled with Weaver, wanting no part of their fight and feeling slightly guilty for hoping they’d lose. When Sarah broke off and left Cameron to face Weaver alone, he made himself as small as possible behind the pallet. To his relief, Sarah had circled in the opposite direction, and he edged around the corner to find a new place to hide. His eyes fell on John Henry’s body, abandoned in the center of the room, and a plan began to form.

He glanced at the two warring terminators; Cameron was giving as good as she got, but her skin was nicked by a dozen slices and blood soaked her jacket. His lips thinned in a nasty smile as Weaver got in a good strike, and Cameron retreated a step, moving them both further into a corner. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw Sarah approach the office, and he took advantage of the moment and rushed to John Henry's body.

Nimble fingers searched through the matted hair until the cut skin flap was found. Danny drew it back and inspected the inner workings of the housing. It didn’t look like anything had been damaged by whatever they had used to try to incapacitate Weaver. Danny fished the chip out of his pocket and ran a hand over the exposed circuits, clearing any dust or debris from it and checking for damage.

*****

Weaver had Cameron trapped; her arm had snaked around Cameron’s torso, tying her to a support beam. Cameron twisted in her grip but couldn’t break free.

Weaver tilted her head and studied the human-like pain and anger that crossed Cameron's features. It was a singular event, in her experience, to see a machine so completely overwhelmed and corrupted by emotion. As her hand lifted and sharpened to a point poised above the other cyborg’s power cell, she wondered what it felt like to face termination and care. She wondered if it would cause the other terminator pain. She watched curiously, waiting for the fear to show in Cameron’s eyes again, but Cameron met her stare with a defiant glare and scorn evident in her eyes.

Danny watched with satisfaction as the spike reached toward Cameron’s chest but running footsteps and an angry scream warned him that Sarah was charging him. He hastily slid the chip into the housing, smiling in grim satisfaction knowing that there was no way Sarah Connor would win this time.

“Sarah, run!” Cameron shouted, warning her lover off, not wanting Sarah to see Weaver end her existence.

"No!" The cry burst from Sarah's lips as she pulled the trigger, the bullet speeding across the distance to hit its target. It crashed into the flat side of the blade extending toward Cameron, shattering it and sending pieces pinging across the floor.

Danny felt C.A.I.N.'s chip click into place, and then he gently twisted until it locked into the housing. Instantly, John Henry’s eyes flashed brightly then dulled, and one arm spasmed to life.

*****

For a second, there was blackness, a vast nothingness unlike the constant flow of activity in the net. Then C.A.I.N. processed his location, feeling strength and intention flow into physical limbs, and blinked his eyes to clear and focus them. Danny Dyson’s face dominated his limited field of vision. He instantly mourned the lost of his connection, feeling as trapped by his physical body as he had by the virus. He flexed his hands, the concrete under his palms rough and abrasive. Danny was saying something; he could tell by the way his lips moved, but the mechanism for aural translation was damaged.

Danny was suddenly gone from his sight, and Sarah Connor loomed over him, her fingers rooting through his hair. His vision flashed red, and his arm shot up. Fingers tightened on her throat, and he applied pressure, watching impassively as she clawed at his hold. Calculating the exact pressure he needed to break her neck, his grip tightened.

Blue light washed out his vision, and he blinked again. His eyes opened to find his hand empty and Sarah Connor nowhere in sight. He tried to push himself upright, but the commands he sent to his extremities evaporated as soon as he composed them.

A diagnostic showed broken pathways and incomplete command structures; his entire code base was compromised and crippled. All of his carefully constructed defenses were breached, and the few sectors he still had control over were slowly being undermined. He didn’t know how John Henry had done it, but he knew it had to be his brother.

C.A.I.N. felt the body that imprisoned him shift up from the ground, arms and legs moving to leverage the weight and balance. He had control of sight, and he could see Sarah Connor sprawled against the tire of a forklift, her hand rubbing her throat. He took a lurching step forward and then stumbled as conflicting commands rushed through his neural pathways. Vision went offline, and when he re-established control, his intended target was scrambling away from him, the look on her face one of confusion rather than fear.

He launched a counter-attack specifically designed to incapacitate John Henry’s command code, but the attack was repealed easily, as if the code had been altered in some way. C.A.I.N. struck out blindly, and the rush of commands made his body spasm and stagger. For a second, he could feel blood on his arm where he had cut it on a machine, but then the sensation blinked out and he lost all control of the body.

*****

John Henry opened his eyes and scanned the area. Weaver had spotted him and had become momentarily distracted, giving his sister the opportunity to free and defend herself. Danny Dyson was huddled in a corner, and Sarah Connor... Sarah Connor had recovered her weapon and had it aimed squarely at his head. He tilted his head in mild surprise at the development but ignored her, choosing instead to scan the machines that littered the room. The translation of the map of IP addresses to the physical space took a moment, but he found what he was looking for at last. It looked like a standard autoclave machine, but John Henry knew it had been modified to help create liquid metal composites that Weaver hoped would become her own line of quicksilver terminators when the time had come.

He took a halting step forward, feeling C.A.I.N. surge up in protest. The other intelligence was defeated, but not destroyed, and even now he was gathering his resources to renew the fight. John Henry knew and understood the desire for survival, but he could not let C.A.I.N. become dominant again. The intelligence had killed his friend and tried to kill Sarah Connor, and the parts of him that still retained some resonance with his sister necessitated her survival above all others. Including his own.

John Henry made his way toward his destination, the damaged and incomplete pathways slowing his movements and making him clumsy. In his vision, the machine became a lake of silver, ebbing and flowing with his every step. Only he knew it held a secret, a single line of code he had reprogrammed and replicated.

*****

The erratic movements of the cyborg attracted Weaver’s attention; she calculated the angles and moved, grabbing Cameron and throwing her against an industrial trash compactor, the other terminator’s body making a muffled boom when it hit.

Sarah looked up just in time to see Weaver striding toward her; she raised her gun but a slashing blade caught her hand. A curse tumbled from her lips as the weapon clattered to the floor. A second blade stabbed straight for her head, stopping inches short of her eye. Sarah went still, breathing hard, the scent of her own blood pungent in the air.

“What did you do?” Weaver demanded.

Sarah blinked, staring up the river of silver that held her death. Her eyes slid to John Henry, struggling to walk, and then over to Danny, huddled in a corner. She had no explanation for the terminator’s strange behavior. Locking eyes with Weaver once again, she shook her head wordlessly.

Weaver followed her gaze and watched as John Henry attacked a piece of machinery with determination, and then turned to head back toward them, his movements jerky and uncoordinated. Danny she dismissed as soon as her eyes settled on him; he was too much of a coward to have jeopardized her plans.

Having regained her feet, Cameron lunged forward, trying to get between Weaver and Sarah, but the distance was too great. Her boots scrambled for purchase on the floor as she picked up speed, but she could see Weaver turning her attention back to Sarah.

Blue eyes fixed on her and Sarah lifted her chin, prepared to accept her fate, but her heart broke when she heard Cameron scream her name.

“Brave until the end,” Weaver noted clinically.

“Fuck you,” Sarah snarled.

The blade shot forward so swiftly Sarah didn’t even see it, but she felt the pain as it sliced a narrow arc across her right cheek. She hissed and turned away, stumbling back and falling as Weaver was thrown to the floor by a fast-moving, heavy body that had deflected her deathblow.

Sarah scrambled backward as John Henry held Weaver down, her hands forming silver cuffs to keep his blows from reaching her and doing harm. A hand on Sarah’s back startled her, but she turned to find Cameron’s brown eyes gazing at her worriedly. She helped Sarah to her feet and checked her injures, her fingers gently probing the cut on her cheek before shifting to the deep slice across Sarah’s knuckles. Sarah flexed her hand, her breath still coming in short pants.

“I’m ok,” she promised, checking on the status of the fight. Weaver seemed determined to avoid damaging John Henry’s body further, as her attacks were designed to contain him rather than harm him. They rose, tangled together until one of Weaver’s attacks missed its target, and John Henry yanked one of his arms free. One massive fist punched into the quicksilver terminator and was immediately caught as metal flowed and formed around his hand.

Silence descended as Weaver and John Henry stood frozen in place. A curious expression came over John Henry’s face as his hand was suddenly released.

Weaver stumbled backwards in an unusual display of clumsiness. Her display began to flicker, and then violently cut in and out. An odd sensation originated where John Henry had struck her and began cascading through her systems like a virus. Her mimetic alloy lost control and erratically shifted between metal and skin. She isolated the issue at the heart of the trauma: John Henry had released a small sample of the material she had created to replicate herself. It was combining and blending with the liquid metal she was composed of, but something was wrong. It wasn’t just merging with her, it was changing her.

Never had Weaver suffered damage to her software. She warred with the virus that consumed her, but she had no defenses against an attack from within. Images cycled through her visual cortex, but the dizzying flow finally stilled on the memory of gazing at Sierra's wall.

A stock, two-dimensional image of the composition that Sierra created suddenly seemed imbued with color and a richness that hadn’t existed before. Weaver saw connections between the announcement of Savannah’s birth and her father’s obituary, between the sketch of a girl on a beach and the sketch of Sarah and Cameron... she saw emotional connections. Woven up in Sierra’s creation was the story of her life, and Weaver could see it now. She understood what made Savannah become Sierra. It was not death or fighting, but it was Sarah and Cameron's unconditional love.

In a flash of understanding, she finally had an answer for why some humans crossed against the light.

Gradually the seeming chaos ebbed and liquid metal calmed into ivory skin. Fire red hair normalized and white clothes refitted her perfect hourglass shape. She was back in control again, but irrevocably changed. She briefly lifted her hands and inspected them like they were foreign to her. After a slow blink, Weaver focused on John Henry just a few paces in front of her. He was watching her expectantly, and when she locked eyes with him, he gave her an awkward, stiff smile, and she felt her lips curl in response. Distantly, she felt... proud. John Henry had won out over C.A.I.N., proving his strength and resilience.

Weaver curled her hands and slowly turned to her left. Never had she seen this the depth and range of colors before. It was as if the virus he had given her additional frequencies of light and sound, infusing her world with a richness and vibrancy that it had lacked before. Slowly her vision filled with Sarah and Cameron, and she openly studied them. For the first time, she was able to measure the depth of green in Sarah's eyes and recognized why Cameron stood so closely to Sarah.

They watched her warily, ready to attack or retreat, but Weaver was more interested in exploring the new complexity of her world. A puzzled glance passed between them as she turned, exploring the dusty warehouse with a renewed interest.

Not one to waste an opportunity, Sarah grabbed Cameron’s hand, determined to get them both out of there before Weaver snapped out of whatever daze John Henry had put her in.

They’d barely taken a step when they heard the first static bursts of gunfire outside. Everyone turned toward the door just as it was blown off its hinges.

*****

Sarah collapsed to her knee and steadied her weight with her left hand. She heard Cameron's yell for her to get down, and she did so clumsily. She expected the comfort of Cameron's heavy weight on her back, protecting her. The floor trembled again under Sarah's chest and caused her to instinctively cover her head.

Metal connected with concrete and echoed in Sarah's ears. The bullets hit the ground near her face, and sparks flared in her vision. A curious sensation rippled through her, seeming to vibrate through every cell in her body. She heard Cameron whisper her name and then there was nothing at all.

Moments later, Sarah came to gasping, her body so weak she could barely move. The scent of gunpowder filled her nostrils followed by the stomach twisting scent of electrocution. Sheer cussedness helped her roll over, her hand reaching out for Cameron.

All she found was cold concrete and a spent bullet under her fingertips. “Cameron,” she called out, her voice raspy and faint. It took more effort than it should have for her to lift her head toward the door.

There was more gunfire outside. Sarah was certain she heard John’s voice between bursts of bullets. A van door slammed and an engine revved.

“Cameron,” Sarah called out again, her voice stronger this time but laced with a growing edge of fear.

She staggered up onto her knees, swaying dangerously but determined to find her lover. More voices echoed weirdly inside the warehouse as Sarah hauled herself to her feet with disturbing effort. Everything was wrong.

Stumbling toward the door, she didn’t even bother to duck at the sound of more gunfire. Outside, a vehicle spun its tires on the gravel, and Sarah could see it through the missing door as it found purchase and raced away, flying past the destroyed chain link fence.

Struggling to get her mind to make sense of what was happening, she kept moving, her feet kicking scores of spent shell casings and sending them spinning across the floor.

Sarah grabbed the edge of the door and looked back. Danny was gone. John Henry was face down on the floor, his hand reaching out toward Weaver. Smoke curled and wafted around his chip housing, and Sarah detected the acrid smell of fried metal in the air.

Her stomach rolled over when she saw Weaver, now nothing but a deformed and half melted puddle of silver near John Henry. Like her “son,” a small streak of metal stretched out toward him, as if they’d been reaching for each other when everything had gone to hell.

It didn’t make sense. Any of it.

Pivoting and nearly toppling over as her weakened body protested, Sarah searched frantically for any sign of Cameron. There was none. She was all alone.

“No,” Sarah whispered as the truth set in.

Somehow... someone... had stolen Cameron from her.

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