My Brother's Keeper

Dallas, Texas
A Skynet research facility
Monday, May 12, 2009

"The significant problems we face today cannot be solved by the level of thinking we were at when we created them." -Albert Einstein, physicist, Nobel laureate (1879-1955)

"We shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and success of Liberty." -John Fitzgerald Kennedy in his Inaugural Address

At 3:45 am, they walked in the dark, quiet solace of a little used state road surrounded by the seemingly endless Texas sand. Skynet's need for isolation once again worked to their advantage.

A triple eight with sunglasses, a spiked haircut and sharp, cut features led the approach in. Cameron followed.

John Connor was securely isolated. Sarah Connor was safely away and unaware. Derek had given the order for the mission.

Deuce spoke with either a German or Austrian accent saying, "The objective is inside. Nothing has left the facility in the past six hours." Both read their internal HUD images to the objective inside, fully grasping the maps and most probable guard routes..

Cameron was almost envious of Deuce. The machine ideal walked before her, something her Dark Father actually had not designed her too be. He was perfect, methodical, emotionless, and in the form once worn by Uncle Bob, a model 101.

Deuce was not Uncle Bob, the terminator had famously died stopping Cyberdyne years ago. However, Cameron felt oddly connected to this electronic being.

It was as if she was pretending to be one with the only other terminator to protect John Connor. It was an odd feeling for a machine, but it was there.

Her deeper thoughts were punctuated by the screaming guard that Deuce threw to his death, as easily as a world series pitcher tossed a fastball. There would have to be acceptable casualties here. Further, the area had to be clear before the techcom teams arrived in 53 minutes.

Everyone inside would be a Skynet employee, fully guilty of plotting against the human race knowingly. The preternatural temporal nature of the research had painted the blood on the hands of the grays here.

Even so, the entrance was unusually brutal. The large caliber, special rounds needed to be saved and protected.

Thus, the two terminators advanced, while the chorus of their entrance was more savage than usual. Crushed bones and screams replacing the typical gunfire.

Hand to hand replaced their normal preference for firearms, more often than they would have chosen. Cyborgs weren't built to be cruel, after all.

Cameron and Deuce moved like Derek had taught all of his soldiers. Like military attack squad, rather than nearly invulnerable machines.

They moved in covering each other. They minimized their attackable silhouettes. They hung to the walls, watching corners and attack angles.

The unexpectedly professional advance worked to their advantage. The grays inside were less than combat worthy or careful.

Cameron smashed another guard's head against a wall. Deuce simultaneously lifted another up and fatally snapped that Gray's spine against his knee.

Moments later, a researcher met the end of Cameron's knife. Deuce covered with a M16A4 Assault Rifle filled with special rounds.

In the next hallway, Deuce measured distance, slung the machine gun, and pulled a reserve pistol to dispatch of three running grays. Cameron covered with a M1014 Combat Shotgun loaded special rounds.

Cameron called, "Target One", even as Deuce finished his last pistol shot. Speed trumped salvage, so she put the uranium depleted shotgun round right through the enemy T888's head, in an eye blink. Fires from the unusual round and the phosphorescent chip coatings burned from inside of its mutilated head of a machine that looked just like the one she had once sealed in a nuclear bunker.

Deuce called, "Target Two". The crack of the M16A4's round left a matching wound in the newer enemy T888's head. This one no longer wore Cromartie's original face.

Cameron gave the signal that her target was terminated. Deuce gave the same signal.

Knowing from Intel that there were no additional T888 bodyguards in the facility, both switched ammo for the primary target. They also took their respective kill's M4 Carbines in the event there were any soft targets left. They simultaneously checked their internal HUD maps again.

The corridors wound down with darkness lit only by emergency lights. Even at this late hour, there were gray researchers still on station. The hallways lit as one after another was gunned down by the recently acquired M4s.

The last room of the hallway opened underground into a room the size of a Basketball court. Inside was a series of jet engines and the familiar smell of JP5 fuel. The chamber's doors had perfectly sealed away the vibration and noise of the time machine beyond.

The jet engines screamed from the complex the dead grays had worked in. The smell of the aircraft fuel was overwhelming and the air was hotter than it was in the rest of the compound.

Blinding flashes of light erupted in the room. The jet engines were running.

Deuce halted. Ever the perfect, unemotional machine, Deuce scanned the situation.

Cameron looked at the situation as well. The primary target was tying to escape.

She had to be aware of the primary points of the bubble pad. Anything other than flesh that entered the bubble would be destroyed.

The turbines began wailing louder. The fumes and fuel smell became more powerful, as the room became hotter, as the safely distanced turbines built up to three hundred degrees. Vibration that would subtly rattle the teeth of the average human began filling the whole room.

Electrical static began to raise the little hairs on Cameron's skin. Her body was lightly shaking. The pad's temperature began to quickly rise.

Cameron raised her volume beyond that of what a human could project. She taunted her target, "You know we aren't going to let you go anywhere."

Louis Rhone simply called back into the darkness with the same inhumanly raised volume, "Well, you know I simply must use this device, before you destroy it. Thanks to the temporal fields already up, it will be a few minutes before you can safely physically damage the machine again. Unless, you want to take most of Dallas out with you."

Neither Cameron's internal HUD, nor Deuce's internal HUD successfully isolated the primary target location. Sound waves were too prevalent in the room for a successful tracking.

Cameron and Deuce covered each other and scanned the darkness. However, there was no telling what form the T1001 had taken or where it truly was.

Cameron simply stated, "We aren't here to destroy. We're here to capture and dismantle the time machine. You just gave us the tools for the first repeatable temporal operations the resistance has ever been able to conduct before 2026."

Still hidden by the overwhelming noise and the darkness, Louis taunted, "What would you even do for missions? You're a bunch of retarded monkeys."

Cameron reported, "Mission one: terminate Louis Anthony Rhone, born at 3:05 a.m. on October 28, 1994, Rush Medical Center, Chicago Illinois. Normally, I abhor the death of a small child, but I'll make an exception in your case. The rest of the known grays will follow, Father can start getting used to his chess pieces disappearing before he can use them, just as father has done to the resistance for years."

Louis Rhone sneered, "You idiot machine, you don't need to travel in time to attack targets in the past."

Cameron replied coldly, "I know. I terminated the younger you, in this timeline, a month ago. You will not exist again in this natural time line, or any other."

Harnessing the more mocking tones of her adoptive mother, Sarah, Cameron smiled and added, "How does it feel to already be obsolete, genius?"

Louis Rhone roared. He leaped from the ceiling onto Cameron, suddenly and unexpectedly, as a silver mass, ruining an safe firing line for Deuce.

As he retook humanoid form, Louis was faster and stronger than Cameron. He was virtually immune to damage. Mathematically speaking he was the assured winner of the fight.

However, reality wasn't always about who had the apparent advantage. As Derek was so fond of anonymously quoting, "It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog."

Louis Rhone's crimes against humanity were endless. Nor, where they limited to this timeline.

Louis Rhone had raped and killed John Connor's wife, Kate Connor, and their children. He had been part of the conspiracy that had killed the version of John Connor that had saved Cameron. He had tried to kill the current John Connor. He had tried to kill Sarah Connor. He had tortured and mutilated Cameron directly. There was the blood of tens of thousands of others staining his soul, billions if he were allowed to expedite the next Judgment Day.

There was nothing else that walked the earth that Cameron wanted to see the destruction of, half as much. Louis was right on top of her trying to kill her.

Louis fought like a physicist. He went for logical overwhelming force and direct killing attacks.

Cameron fought the way Derek had taught her. Using his strength and momentum against him, turning Louis's anger into missteps.

She watched his eyes and form. She braced, parried attacks, and fought with every ounce of her being.

Louis fought mistakenly thinking he was an unstoppable nuke. Cameron countered lethally, with all the grace of a dancer. Deuce covered perfectly and methodically, waiting for the kill shot.

Louis's form exploded from one fist or knee shot after another. The damage lasted only seconds before he reformed, but it looked as if Cameron were repeatedly striking a pool of silvery water.

The room changed slightly. If they had been human, the noise of the time machine would soon hurt their ears. The vibration would jar their bones and the light would be blinding.

Deuce halted. Ever the perfect, unemotional machine, Deuce scanned the situation. Cameron's reaction was different, her fathers cold rage boiling within, she ignored the changes and focused only on the target.

Deuce re-centered on the firing line he had never truly given up. He moved positions trying to minimize the risk to Cameron and take the shot.

Flashes of light began blinding Cameron's sight. Gravity increased beneath her pulling her down. Her skin burned from electrical shocks. Vibration jarred her whole body.

Even so, tracking Deuce, she moved Rhone's body into firing position. Like a hammer driving a nail, she set him up for execution by her T888, model 101 companion.

Deuce was able to get the first shot off. Rhone screamed an alien screech as part of his body mass withered from the thermite laced round that hit his left arm.

The lights began flashing brighter and faster. The pad and air rose to over a hundred degrees Fahrenheit.

Deuce loudly advised, "Disengage." Time was running out until the machine sent whatever was on the pad to some time currently unknown.

Cameron considered and assessed. Deuce was right, with the machine they could simply track whenever Rhone had gone too. They could even arrive before him and set a trap.

She eased up. She calculated the most logical path to safely leave the pad.

Rhone moved body using Cameron as a shield. Loudly taunting, "First, I'm going to kill Sarah, before your even there to protect her."

Images of what Rhone had done to Cameron on that metal table flashed in her mind. Then she visualized poor Sarah in her place. Her father's rage swelled within her.

Rhone "Then I'm going to take my time playing with young John. It's going to take him days to die."

Deuce yelled, "Cameron, time is almost up."

Something cold and alien snarled inside Cameron. The inhuman part her father had gifted her with at her creation. Images of John dying yet again flashed before her mind and she touched a depth of machine rage, unrestrained and unlimited by: body, flesh, or anything a human mind could comprehend.

The only other being capable of such hate at that second was her Dark Father, Skynet. In that moment, Cameron made her choice, she'd push Rhone into the bubble's edge and destroy the bastard forever.

What was once TOK-715, swelled within her. Her grip was absolute at that moment. Ignoring several times Earth's gravity, she irrationally lifted Rhone up targeting his destruction, whatever the cost may be.

She was simply out of time. The bubble collapsed in a spray of light. The gravity well moved through the 4th dimension.

In an eye blink, it was not the what or the where that had changed. It was the when...