A/N: This is only a partial release. As always, the complete chapter will consist of 10 scenes, regardless of length. Updated August 16, 2009.
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Scene 351: Under The Table
Thursday June 19th, 2008
4:47pm ZeiraCorp Headquarters - Catherine Weaver's office
Weaver is on another floor of the building, leaving Savannah with the room to herself. She lays under the coffee table, obscured from the view of the security cameras. She has her coloring book, Scotch tape, and crayons.
Her feet kick idly in the air as she gingerly creases one page of her coloring book back and forth. She sticks out her tongue in concentration as she slowly tears out the sheet of paper. Eyeing the torn edge, she is pleased with herself for getting it so close to perfect.
Savannah carefully folds down the top inch of the page, then folds the bottom inch upward. Finally, she folds the left third of the sheet over, and tapes everything into place.
Looking at the progress so far, she grins toothily. She's never made an envelope before, and she thinks it's turning out okay.
From her pocket, Savannah takes a letter written by Ellison. She wants to read it, but she's not supposed to.
She tucks the letter inside the envelope, and tapes it shut. Flipping it over, she uses a black crayon to carefully print the recipient's name and address. She frowns when it smudges. Everything has been so perfect, and now there's a problem. Her eyes fall on the Scotch tape, and her smile returns.
Seconds later, the writing is protected by a layer of tape, and her nose is wrinkling from the taste of the stamp that is now stuck onto the envelope.
As she tucks the finished product into her coloring book, she feels a great sense of accomplishment.
Now all she has to do is drop it in a mailbox when she gets the chance, and James' letter will reach Theodore Ellison.
'I wish that I had a brother in Atlanta,' she thinks.
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Scene 352: Not Even For Me?
Thursday June 19th, 2008
5:05pm Los Angeles, California - Abandoned warehouse
John and Cameron have brought their prisoner to an obscure location for interrogation. They have spent much of their time asking questions, but have learned nothing of interest from him. The man has identified himself, but continues to insist that he is not who or what they think he is.
Leaving the man tied securely to a chair, John has taken Cameron aside for a private conversation.
Smiling weakly into her eyes, he holds her face in his hands.
"Please, Cam," he whispers. "Do this for me." Her eyes dart fearfully from him to the restrained figure. "Hey, don't worry. Nothing is going to be different between us." His lips gently touch hers. "Promise."
"No, John," she pleads, "don't make me..."
Pulling her into a tight embrace, he strokes her hair.
"We've tried reason." John looks at the back of their captive's head. "We have to know what he knows."
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Scene 353: Grilling
Thursday June 19th, 2008
5:13pm Los Angeles, California - Abandoned warehouse
Unaware of how much time has passed since his capture, Kenneth Eriksen still has a pounding headache. He hears hushed whispers, and knows that his captors are deciding his fate.
"What are you saying back there? What are you going to do to me?" Somehow, hearing the whispers continue is more frightening than receiving an answer. These people obviously don't even see him as human. "Where am I?!" He struggles to move, but he is bound too tightly. "Who the fuck are you people?!"
Hearing two sets of footsteps, he can tell that one person is moving away, and the other is coming closer. A door opens, and a male voice calls from the doorway.
"I'll be right outside if you need me."
Then, Kenneth hears an identical male voice from directly behind him.
"I don't know how long this will take. Be sure to activate another jammer every two hours." The door closes, and the second male voice orders him, "Tell me everything that you know about John Connor."
This is it. Ken knows that he's going to be tortured, and he can't keep himself from shaking.
"I don't kn-know anyone by th-that name," he stammers.
Ken hears the disturbingly calm man as he paces behind him.
"You're not the first person I've talked to like this. If you try very hard, you could be the first to survive."
"But I don't know what you're talking about!" Trying to free himself from his bonds, Ken is barely able to shake the chair.
"Don't bother trying to free yourself. No human can escape those knots. Now, tell me about John Connor and I might release you."
Between his struggling at the tightness of the ropes, Ken's hands and feet start to go numb.
"What the fuck is wrong with you?! I don't know anything!"
"You know about John Connor," the voice states as a matter of fact. "Tell me everything, and I might not kill you."
"You might let me go?! You might not kill me?! Why the fuck should I tell you shit you crazy son of a bitch?!"
"Because of what I'll do to you if you don't," the man answers evenly.
Ken strains against the ropes, screaming in frustration when they still refuse to budge.
"What makes you think that I know this 'John Connor'?!"
"You're from the future," comes the response.
"The future?" Kenneth laughs nervously. "Like time travel? You're crazy, there's no-" He feels his sleeve being pulled up. "What are you-" He cries out in pain and thrashes violently, trying to escape the blade biting into his skin. His screams rise in pitch and volume as the blade tilts, and runs up the entire length of his forearm.
The cutting stops, and Kenneth's body goes slack as he sobs and pleads unintelligibly. Something wet lands on his lap, and he looks down through his tears at the barcode tattoo that has been flayed from his arm.
"Tell me about John Connor," the voice asks calmly.
Ken feels the blood trickling down his arm and wrist, dripping off of his fingertips.
"Are you one of them?"
The man behind him pauses.
"'Them'?"
He grits his teeth against the pain.
"Resistance?" he clarifies with an unsteady voice.
His torturer resumes his pacing.
"You admit to working for Skynet?"
"Yes... I work for Skynet," he says, closing his eyes and expecting more pain.
"Good," the man says pleasantly.
Breathing unevenly, Ken tries to make sense of his captor's reaction, but he can't.
"'Good'? I- I don't understand... I thought- I thought you were on the other side?"
The pacing stops.
"I want to know about John Connor. The information you give me is unlikely to be redundant."
"They... they don't tell us anything." Ken tries to look back, but his torturer stays out of sight. "We're just slaves."
"Mmhm. So why did you leave John Connor's side?"
Looking down at the piece of meat that was once part of his arm, Kenneth laughs derisively at the man.
"Because of what they would do to me if I didn't. I'd rather serve the devil than be his enemy," he spits.
Ken looks up as his captor comes into view for the first time. The 'man' who has been torturing him isn't a 'man'. The 'man' glaring down at him is just a boy.
"That's why you should have stayed on my side," the teenager says darkly.
The boy kicks him in the chest, knocking his chair over backward. The frame of the chair lands painfully on Ken's arms, and the back of his head smashes into the concrete floor hard enough to daze him, but he remains conscious. Ken is even aware of the strip of skin from his arm sliding off his lap and onto his abdomen.
With his vision blurred, Ken watches the teen kneel beside him.
"What are you going to do to me?"
The kid shows no emotion as his gloved hand tosses aside the tattooed flesh before pressing the bloodstained blade against the hem of Kenneth's shirt. Ken starts screaming as the blade slices through the garment, into his skin, and is slowly dragged upward until it reaches the base of his neck.
"I'm going to make you talk," he finally answers.
"Why should I tell you anything?! You'll just torture me anyway!"
"I would have no reason to waste my time," the boy says flatly, while he separates the two halves of the bisected shirt.
"I'm not telling you shit!" Ken looks up confusedly as his torturer produces a lump of clay and begins stretching and twisting it seemingly at random.
"In Vietnam, U.S. soldiers used a lot of plastique. It's a third more powerful than TNT, more stable, and it's easy to shape." Ken watches silently as he stretches the explosive into a long rope, then winces when it's flattened along the shallow cut in his torso. "It's also the charge in the M18A1 Claymore anti-personnel mine."
Kenneth looks down at the explosive on his body, then up at the boy.
"What-"
His captor shows no interest in what he has to say.
"A few days ago, I almost entered the killzone of an M18A1 equipped with an infrared sensor. Right in front of someone very important to me. Someone I'd rather didn't see something like that." The teen turns his head as he reaches for a magnesium flare, and Ken sees bruises on his neck. "There was a second mine, too. It was covering the first- in case someone tried to disarm it -but I recovered both. That's where the C-4 covering you came from. Someone just like you left those mines for me."
"I don't even know who you are!" Ken screams.
"Then you're exceedingly stupid." The young man seems thoughtful as he looks at the flare. "You know, it's a remarkable substance. C-4, I mean. You can't set it off by beating it... or by shooting it... or even-" the boy smiles at him and lights the flare, "-by burning it." Kenneth screams as the flare ignites the C-4. "You can scream and burn, or you can talk and... well it can't get much worse."
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Scene 354: Well Done
Thursday June 19th, 2008
5:33pm Los Angeles, California - Abandoned warehouse
Screams continue to echo off the thin metal walls, and the entire warehouse smells of burnt pork. The C-4 is still burning, but the heat has killed the nerves in Kenneth's torso, and he has spent minutes screaming semi-coherent answers to the questions being asked of him.
Having obtained more information in a few minutes than he could have hoped for, Connor puts on his sunglasses, shoulders his bag, and turns his back on the burning gray, ignoring his pleas for death as he calmly walks to the exit.
When he is far enough to avoid the blood spatter, Connor draws his Glock and fires it several times into the gray's body to silence his screams, then leaves the building.
Once outside, he looks up at a silhouette on the roof of an adjacent one story building and nods. His legs tense as he resists the urge to sprint forward when Cameron jumps off the roof instead of using the fire escape. After an impossibly graceful landing, she begins moving steadily in his direction.
Walking toward her, he pockets his gloves and hopes that she has kept her promise to not listen in.
"Did you hear any of that?" he asks.
She decides to wait until they are only a few steps apart to answer, and the protracted silence horrifies him.
"Only screams," she answers. Cameron slings her G36 as she closes the short distance between them, and wraps her arms tightly around his body.
Melting into her embrace, it takes only seconds for the faint emotions he feels toward the gray to dissipate completely. John pulls back and looks into her eyes.
"Thanks." Cameron tilts her head at him, then looks over at the warehouse. "I mean for caring." Glancing at the van, John runs his tongue over his teeth and palate, trying to get rid of the taste left in his mouth by the strong smell of burning flesh. "They'll be looking for the van, now. We have to get rid of it."
Cameron follows his gaze to the vehicle.
"What kind of car do you want?" she asks with a smile.
Slowly turning his attention back to her, he finds that her smiling brown eyes have focused on him. The jammer's batteries will not last much longer, and it would be pointless to activate another just to hang around and talk.
"Does it matter?" He calmly scans the area for threats, then looks at Cameron. "They'll be here soon." When Cameron looks at the warehouse, John shakes his head and starts toward their stolen van. "Come on, let's go."
She glances back one last time, then follows him closely.
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Scene 355: Shaken
Thursday June 19th, 2008
6:40pm Los Angeles, California - Interstate 5 South
John is behind the wheel of a newly stolen Ford F-150 with a chocolate milkshake in hand. He's aware that Cameron is watching closely as she sips a strawberry shake. Other than to ask her what flavor she had wanted, John hasn't said a word since transferring their equipment to the truck.
He suddenly holds out his shake to her.
"I'm pretty sure that you like chocolate better."
"If I had wanted-"
"You'd never had strawberry. If you want-"
"No thank you," she says quickly.
He looks over at her for a moment, then turns back to the road.
"All right."
After a long moment, she gently places her hand on his shoulder.
"Are you sure that you're okay?" she asks softly. When he only stares, her expression saddens. "You haven't talked about it."
He drops his shake impatiently in the cup holder and narrows his eyes at her.
"By 'it', do you mean 'torturing some guy'?" She nods slowly. "He wasn't 'some guy', and we both know it."
Cameron slides to the middle of the bench seat and puts her arm around him.
"John," she says quietly, "I don't care about him; I care about you."
"Well, don't worry about me. He was a gray. Grays aren't real people."
"John?" She smiles and kisses his cheek. "You're the only real person."
His eyes sadden, and he slumps into his seat. It's not the effect she had hoped for.
Although the sentiment is different, her words remind him of his mother, and the way that she would tell him over and over that he was important, and that everyone else was already dead.
His mother taught him to kill. No hesitation. No remorse. Do whatever it takes to stay alive, and don't give it a second thought.
Much of his training- pistols, knives, bos, batons, strikes, holds, and throws -is useless against machines, but deadly against humans.
After she had taught him- raised him -to react to threats with deadly force, she turned around and told him that killing was wrong no matter the circumstances.
He knows that his mother didn't want him to carry a nine millimeter or a forty-five so that he could defend himself against machines. He was encouraged to carry a handgun to protect him from the good guys.
As he glares out the windshield, John reaches down to his left, checking to make sure that his REC7 hasn't shifted while driving.
Cameron pulls away from him, recognizing the same brooding that she had seen months earlier.
"Did I do something wrong?"
His eyes dart over to her in surprise.
"Huh?" He's been too deep in thought to realize how he must look to her. "No, no, Cam, you didn't do anything wrong." He smiles as he wraps his arm firmly around her, then kisses her beauty mark. "You're the only real person to me, Cameron. Nothing that I do will change how I feel about you."
When she rests her head on his shoulder and smiles out the windshield, he leans his cheek against the top of her head, and sighs contentedly.
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Scene 356: Things Haven't Changed
Friday June 20th, 2008
7:04am John and Cameron's apartment - Bedroom
Laying on her stomach, Cameron smiles as John continues tracing lines on her skin while resting his head on the small of her back.
When he starts running a fingertip back and forth over her left thigh, she realizes what he is doing: reaffirming his position on the grays.
"You've memorized every location that I've ever been damaged." He stops and pulls his hand back. "It's okay."
He slides up to his pillow and looks sorrowfully at her.
"I'm not really sure that 'memorized' is the right word."
Cameron caresses the right side of his face, and her touch makes him to smile and close his eyes.
"I didn't leave a scar when I hit you, but I'll never forget it."
His eyes snap open.
"I'm sorry that you have to carry things like that around with you." He considers the mines, and what he has learned by interrogating the gray. "I'll do what I can to protect you from more of that... but I need you to..." he trails off.
"I'm here to protect you, John. You have to remember that."
Shaking his head, he rolls onto his back and stares at the ceiling.
"I know, but there are some things that I can protect you from." John's eyes go out of focus when his mind displays more images of Cameron screaming as she cradles his broken and mangled body.
"You can't protect me by keeping secrets." He turns his head toward her, and stares impassively, knowing that she's wrong. "Tell me," she coaxes him.
"We have a new-" The vulnerability in her eyes is too much for him, and he stops himself. "We have another target," he answers. "It's a safehouse."
"Four?" she asks instantly. His brow furrows at her. "Targets," she clarifies. "Three warehouses and a safehouse."
He shakes his head.
"The safehouse isn't a target until we confirm it. This information came from someone who was on fire. He would have said anything if he thought I'd put it out." John stares into her eyes, making sure that she understands. "We check out the safehouse, then we bring down the warehouse on Skid Row."
"Where's the safehouse?"
He hesitates to answer, knowing that it is one of the worst possible locations for a raid.
"Jefferson Park."
Cameron frowns at the news. The residences in that area are more tightly packed than anywhere else they've struck.
"There will be witnesses."
John shrugs.
"There always are."
She shakes her head at his cavalier attitude.
"I mean that we'll actually be seen."
He sits up, then stretches and yawns.
"It'll be dark. No one will identify us." Needing to utilize all of his willpower just to sit up, John can't help but smile as Cameron energetically flips herself over, swings her legs off the bed, and jumps to her feet. "It's almost like you don't sleep," he teases. Smiling smugly over her shoulder at him, Cameron walks out of the room, leaving John alone, yawning and trying to figure out how to motivate himself to get out of bed.
"I'm not coming back!" she calls from the next room.
"I'm up!" he shouts, dragging himself off the mattress with neither the alacrity nor the grace she showed moments earlier.
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Scene 357: Now, Now, Now!
Friday June 20th, 2008
7:17am ZeiraCorp Headquarters – Project Babylon
Having constructed seven robotic arms and begun work on several, simple, desktop computers to run them, John Henry's collection of Bionicles sits neglected on a shelf to his far left. Although he has become bored with the toys, he remains very possessive of them.
John Henry watches with a grin on his face as Catherine Weaver glares at the monitor behind him.
Half of the screen shows Weaver promising him to return with Ellison, and the other half shows a T-888 carrying Ellison through the parking lot of the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center with a cellphone in its hand.
"Why are you showing me this?" she asks him.
The information is essentially John Henry's memory, but he looks thoughtfully at the screen for dramatic effect.
"I want upgrades. This hardware is impeding my growth."
Weaver's glare shifts to him.
"No it is not. My subordinates have assured me that it is not." Weaver raises an eyebrow and smirks at him. "Perhaps you are not as developed as you would like to believe." His head snaps toward her, and his expression becomes one of fear and worry. "You are young, and like all children, you suffer from overconfidence."
Reviewing his growth statistics, John Henry confirms that he is correct, and Weaver is wrong.
"The only reason that I have not already been stunted, is that this hardware is being overclocked. There is a risk that parts will begin to fail."
"Eventually," Weaver qualifies.
John Henry frowns.
"I want an improved cooling system, and I will not take no for an answer."
She returns his frown.
"That is something which I can not give you."
He hadn't expected her to argue with him.
"Why not?"
Walking amidst John Henry's server farm, she brushes her fingertips across the vents, then stops and turns back.
"As the CEO of this company, I am responsible for maintaining reasonable working conditions of my employees." Her heels click on the concrete as she walks toward him. "The temperature of this room would quickly become uncomfortable for humans should the air circulation of your hardware be improved. They would complain, and I would be forced to deal with them."
John Henry knows exactly what she means by that.
"Ms. Weaver, I don't want air cooling, I want liquid nitrogen."
"Absolutely not!" she screams. As he sits stunned, she pretends to adjust her clothing, and calms noticeably. "Absolutely not, John Henry."
Believing him to be sufficiently cowed, Weaver begins to leave.
"Ms. Weaver?"
She stops and tilts her head at him.
"Yes, John Henry?"
He looks at her submissively.
"You are a very advanced machine."
Weaver smiles.
"Why thank you, John Henry."
His face turns blank.
"And like all machines, every day brings you closer to obsolescence."
Weaver glares at him, and leaves silently.
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