Disclaimer: This finally really is the final chapter. It's been a while getting here cause I was writing my other story Viral at the same time I was working on this. No more Terminator stories for me after this (maybe) but its' been fun.

The Importance of Being Protein- Chapter 7

…Except When It Doesn't

Kate gave the wounded man a syringe full of sedative. There wasn't much more she could do for now. She watched her patient fade out and then moved to the next one. She and Allison Chambers had their hands full. She moved around the room, fully involved in being Doctor Kate Connor. Like everyone else, Kate remained totally unaware of the danger that circled them hungrily, keeping unseen in the shadows, waiting for the right moment to strike.

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Marcus slammed the door shut and ran like all the terminators Skynet had ever trundled off the assembly line were after him. He reached the metal stairs just as Perry, Medina and the others, two flights below, disappeared from sight. Pelting down the steps at breakneck speed, he decided his present means of flight wasn't nearly fast enough.

The hell with this, he thought. Grabbing the hand rail, he threw his body over the side and jumped for the landing. It wasn't his best effort and he banged his head hard on the dilapidated drywall.

"Oommpf! OW! Hiss! Oww!" he stumbled to his feet, one eye closed, determined to keep moving. He'd better. By his internal count he had about five seconds before the little gifts he and Medina had left for Skynet's peregrine drones went boom. Repeating his earlier stunt, he managed not to conk his head again, and was about to try for a hat trick when his time ran out.

BLLLLLLLLAAAAAMMMMM!BLLLAAAAAMMMM! The bombs detonated in a continuous string. The already ruined shell of the building rumbled and shook ominously, bits and chunks of plaster raining down on him, some of them not so small. Gripping the rail hard enough to leave finger shaped impressions, Marcus hung on, hoping the steps under his feet didn't buckle. All around him he picked up the pervasive sound of creaking metal. The former hotel casino's death rattle. Whatever structural integrity Judgment Day had not destroyed the resistance plastic explosives had probably finished off. If he didn't want to be buried in the rubble when the place expired for good, he'd better get a move on. Perry, Gentry and the others had already hot footed it thru the underground passages to safety. Marcus had earned the privilege, so he was last out by choice. Glad Kyle's back at base on communications duty, he considered as he ran. Marcus knew his friend. The kid would have insisted on staying behind with him to make sure nothing followed. Probably would have gotten himself in trouble with Perry.

Marcus raced the last fifty or so feet accompanied by a deep sustained overhead rumble. Everything above ground was gone now.

"Wright!" Perry yelled ahead of him from a doorway, "get in here, now!" the officer motioned manically as if he knew something Marcus did not. Good enough for me, Wright thought. Perry was generally the cool under fire type. If the major thought a situation warranted excitement, it most likely did. Marcus put on another burst of speed, throwing his body thru the doorway past Perry.

"Gotta go, gotta go, gotta go right now!" the major spurred, pushing Marcus ahead of him. "Connor's sending an answer to take care of that thing in the sky. We want to be as far away as we can be when it gets here. Trust me!"

That sounded a lot like good advice, so Wright followed it, although he wondered as he ran what weapon John Connor could possibly have that would make a difference against the massive machine poised in the skies above.

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Only four of the half dozen remained. They were a legacy from someone John had only met once and would not mind if he never saw again. The man had washed up on Connor's metaphorical doorstep about six months after John became the de facto leader of the resistance. He didn't come empty handed. In his head were the coordinates for the location of six Typhon missiles.

Ethan Tate occupied his own separate space in John Connor's mind, quite an accomplishment considering some of the people John had encountered in his travels. A lifetime spook, Tate had sacrificed five wives on the altar of a thirty year career with the CIA. He'd somehow live thru the planetary horror on Judgment Day. Too bad none of the ex Mrs. Tate's could say the same, but Ethan hadn't lost any sleep over it at the time or since. Served 'em right for divorcing him.

Back before the world blew up, Ethan Tate was Langley's presence in the Pentagon. The generals didn't trust him as far as they could pick him up and throw him, but, like any good spy, he'd made it his business to learn their business. He learned enough so that once he'd gotten a toe in the door of the world's most famous five sided office building, they couldn't get him out. That was fine with Ethan since a lot of what he discovered had to do with the Pentagon's "black budget."Buried within the DOD's huge annual public allocation and disguised by cloak and dagger code names, the black budget programs were the Pentagon's thong underwear. Everybody knew they were up there hiding in the crack, but no one talked about them. One of them had once been an obscure piece of Air Force fluff called "Skynet." The Typhon missiles were supposed to be another but a funny thing happened on the way to project development. The eight billion dollars of funding for it were pulled in the name of military cutbacks and the whole idea for the missiles shelved. That was the official unofficial story and everybody concerned stuck to it. That they actually came into being but were never openly acknowledged and added to the U.S. munitions inventory was a secret known only to a handful of hardcore uniformed hawks, and inevitably, Ethan Tate. After Skynet killed three fourth's of the earth's humans, The former intelligence agent had taken one look at the initial leaders of what was left and decided they were too fragmented and ego driven to be trusted with something like Typhon. Then they all got blown away and John Connor stepped out of the pack. Ethan considered, studied Connor for a while and made his choice.

How the spy who came in from the nuclear cold managed to do so with the remnants of a weapons program that was never supposed to have existed stashed in his back pocket Connor might never know and didn't give a damn. One day Tate was there, the next he wasn't, just like that, but when the man was gone Connor had a finite but powerful tool to levy against the machine enemy. With such a limited supply, he only authorized their use when all other choices were closed to him, but this qualified. Sleek and unwavering, one streaked with an efficiency Skynet might have approved of towards a Vegas rendezvous with the AK-3900 that loomed over his trapped wife and her companions.

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"Kate, I need a little help over here" Blair called, trying to restrain the injured man she was tending without causing him further harm. Bruised in a minor way her own self, Williams was helping take care of those worse off than she was.

Before Dr. Connor could respond, medic Allison Chambers was by Blair's side, assessing the patient.

"I'll take care of it" Chambers nodded, drawing what she needed out of her large canvas medical bag. The scavenged item was emblazoned with the barely discernable words "American Red Cross" and a large plus sign shaped symbol.

Blair moved back. Her skills were about air combat, not bleeding, broken people. She had a limited knowledge of field medicine, like almost everyone else, but that's what it was, limited. Assisting with the wounded kept her from fretting too much about Marcus. Where was he? Why hadn't he and the others joined them yet? What was going on?

The battered group of wounded and their caregivers had taken refuge in a small recessed room that would have been considered underground if not for the fact that their roof was mostly missing. The remains of the floor above them was their only covering but it proved to be sufficient. The drones hadn't found them yet. That might be because what was controlling them, the monster AK, had its attention, for the moment, concentrated elsewhere. How soon would that change? What was going on with the group of resistance under fire? How did they fare? The sounds of combat over their heads ebbed and changed, fading then growing louder, then fading again, so it was difficult to tell. Sending someone out to take a look had been vetoed by Kate. Since they weren't mobile, they needed to stay hidden. Posting carefully concealed sentries was the limit of their offensive/defensive capability for now.

A huge roar, the sound of a massive explosion and building collapse several blocks away startled them all, shocking several patients awake. Blair's gut tightened, her anxiety ratcheting skywards. Please Marcus, be alright. I need to see your face, touch you, know you're still in one piece! Please baby, show up! I need to see you! Most people only considered Marcus's machine body. Her heart beat for the man he still was underneath all the Skynet technology. They'd been thru so much. She couldn't lose him now.

Her fears were cancelled when an ill-used door crashed open, admitting first Monica Gentry and her hardest hit squad, then Barnes, Perry and the others in turn. William's eyes combed thru the arriving fighters, desperately seeking that specific face and pair of very blue eyes. She clasped her hands over her mouth and forgot how to breathe for a few seconds when he finally stepped last thru the abbreviated opening. She went to him, winding both arms tightly about his neck. He carefully returned the embrace, kissing her hair. Their universe telescoped to the two of them for a lengthy moment.

"Told you we'd be okay, didn't I?" he soothed gently, caressing her cheek.

Blair gave him a watery smile in return.

"Yeah, your little reunion is real touching and everything, but that beast Skynet sicced on us is still up there, or did you forget about that?" someone vented behind them.

"Not for much longer" Barnes rejoined cryptically. "The cavalry's on the way."

Again Marcus wondered what the reference was to and how much longer they would have to wait for relief.

Not long, but there would be other things to worry about before it arrived.

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"Kate, how fast can you get everybody ready to move?" Barnes asked quietly.

Kate Conner thought for a moment. Reluctant to move any of her patients, she understood there wasn't much choice. They needed to be leaving Las Vegas, and quickly. It would be difficult under these conditions, but that was what they had left to them.

"Allison and I are going to need help but I think we can be ready to go in ten minutes" she replied.

"Okay, get the ball rolling" Barnes told her. "Boss man's air mailing some support."

Kate knew what that meant. She was privy to the Typhon secret. She nodded once to Barnes and then turned to get Chambers attention.

Marcus did what he could to help while trying to keep an eye on Blair at the same time. He was well acquainted with her stubborn streak. Beautiful, smart and independent, his wife would yank out her uterus with a pair of rusty pliers and no pain killers before admitting her injuries were slowing her down. She'd just grit her teeth, clamp down on the pain and keep going until it smacked her in the face, so it was up to him to make sure it didn't get that far.

Gathering up supplies a foot from where Blair was, Marcus's extra sensory hearing detected a low pitched animal grumble. He slowly grasped her arm, eyebrows raised. The unspoken question do you hear that too? The alarmed widening of her eyes told him she had indeed.

"What the hell is that?!" Blair's tone revealed a combination of panic and adrenaline. Her combat psyche was gearing up for a possible fight.

"Something I didn't think we'd have to worry much about with a group this large, but I might have been wrong about that" Marcus conceded. So much had taken place in the interim his and Barnes brief frightening encounter with the tiger had been almost forgotten. At least it had by him. He'd also assumed the tabby would avoid such a large gathering of people, but maybe the sight of so much potential prey was too tempting for the big stripped cat, as frustrated as it sounded, to pass up.

Ignoring her protests he pulled Blair over and behind him so that his specialized physique was between her and the feline, which he could only hear, but didn't have eyes on yet. If the thing pounced, he wanted it to go for him instead of her.

"Hey you know I-" Blair started but didn't get to finish her statement. Using his weight to maneuver her, Marcus backed her away from the hungry sounding snarl, which grew more pronounced, loud enough now to be heard by the others.

"Tell me that's not what I think it is" Barnes hissed, trying to cover all the angles. He drew his side arm, craning his neck nervously.

"What do you think it is?" Kate demanded.

"RRRRRAAAAAAWWWWWWWWRRR!"

She started violently. "Never mind, I got it."

"We ran into it our first night here" Marcus supplied. "I was kind of hoping that'd be the end of it, but I guess not. How hungry do you think it has to be to risk an attack on a party this large?" he asked Barnes.

"What, what, what is it?" someone voiced nervously, gun in hand aimed toward the sound.

"Tiger" Marcus supplied in a near whisper, still shielding Blair. He turned and angled his head, using his intricate hearing to track the animal as it moved, stalking unseen. "Big male, right Brandon?" he directed the question to Weatherly.

The 51 boss swallowed and nodded several times, intimidated by the tiger's proximity. He'd never been this close to it, having always taken for granted that it wouldn't risk attacking a massed group. "I thi… I think its lair is around here somewhere. I think it uses the… I think it uses the tunnels to get around."

Well, that explained why Weatherly hadn't brought up using the underground passages before now. It also told Marcus how kitty love had slipped up so suddenly on him and Barnes their first night in Vegas.

"A tiger? How did a tiger-?" Kate began to ask.

"Shush, Kate, quiet" Marcus insisted, still employing his superior audio abilities to tell him where the cat was…which right now was behind him! Damn! How had it done that so fast? The thing was incredibly quiet!

He swung around, forcing Blair, who by now had her huge Desert Eagle in hand, to move with him.

"RRRRRAAAAAAWWWWWWWWRRR!"Its' frustrated cry circled the room. Curiously, it sounded really pissed off too. At least it did to Marcus. Probably having trouble deciding which one of us to eat. Decisions, decisions, he snorted silently, with macabre humor.

"Why hasn't it attacked yet? It should have tried something by now" Barnes wondered aloud.

"RRRRRAAAAAAWWWWWWWWRRRMMMMMM MMMMMMMM!" The beast's irritated vocals had definitely switched tone from rapacious to fuming. It didn't sound like it wanted to chow down on them anymore. Now it just sounded mad, Wright thought. Really, really mad. He didn't know what made it change, but it had. Before he and Barnes narrowly avoided a physical confrontation. This time, there'd be blood.

With a final scream of bone rattling rage, the immense animal hurtled towards him and Blair in a blinding blur of orange and black! Marcus pivoted, struggling to rotate the Benelli into firing position and protect Blair at the same time. He stumbled backwards, forcing her to move with him! Marcus fired, but the cat's speed made him miss and before he could adjust the enormous beast was on top of him, knocking the shotgun out of his hands! With Wright, Blair and the tiger so entwined, their armed companions were helpless to intervene for fear of hitting the wrong target.

Smothered by the furry weight and acrid stench, Marcus tried to make himself a blanket over the woman he was protecting, feeling the razor sharp claws carve grooves thru his clothes and skin down thru conduit and wiring right to the metal bones. He couldn't breathe! He couldn't move! He could feel Blair's terror and hear her muffled cries. She was more trapped than he, and he desperately fought for them both against the big cat's might. It was nearly overwhelming! Nothing Wright had ever experienced could have prepared him for this display of pure power. He'd duked it out with all manner of Skynet machinery since his and Connor's battle with the T-800 prototype in San Francisco; nothing the AI had ever produced could touch this! He had to do something. He could feel he and Blair were running out of time. The tiger would soon decide on a final blow. It might not be the end of him. His hyper alloy skull just might be enough protection for his vulnerable human brain and partially artificial neck construction enough to keep him from a killing bite but if it wasn't then the beast would have a clear path to Blair. He couldn't let it come to that.

Teeth bared, Marcus gathered himself aware he would need all the strength he could summon to push the animal off. He heard the scrapeof claws as the tiger's curved stiletto's shredded him again and again leaving his skin in bloody ribbons. The enormous head hovered above him and for a second all Marcus could see were the three inch yellowed canines. He feared his head was about to end up in the cat's mouth but then, by some incomprehensible miracle, it was gone! Fur, fury and all, the tiger was suddenly off of them!

Wright rolled away from Blair, checking visually to make sure she was as unharmed as possible. He lunged for his shotgun but stayed his hand before it reached the weapon. The huge Bengal was no longer interested in him, Blair on any of the other humans in the room. Marcus's eyes flared in astonishment at the jaw dropping sight!

Three feet from where he and his wife sprawled in a bloody, gasping, painful heap, the five hundred pound master of its' domain was ensnared in a do or die battle with the true object of its' ire, a T-800. The final parting gift of Skynet from Area 51, the terminator had followed the humans it was being sent to kill to this spot, waiting for the command from its' AI master to complete the task. Patiently, by order of Skynet, it lingered in a dark alcove, keeping deadly watch on Kate Connor, Allison Chambers and the wounded resistance fighters, a grave, silent menace. The supercomputer desired to wait until the resistance force coalesced back into a single unit before releasing the 800 and redirecting the AK-3900 to a new line of attack. Based upon its' psychological estimation of John Connor, killing Connor's wife might have ascertainable impact upon the human's leader's strategic and tactical abilities for some time to come. Successful termination of the rouge unit referred to as "Marcus Wright" could also have a marked effect on the course of the war, at least in the short term. So the terminator was ordered to hold until the circumstances fit Skynet's parameters. It took more time than preferred, but with its' targets all in one place the AI sent the authorization.

[:TERMINATE PRIORITY TARGETS KATE CONNOR AND MARCUS WRIGHT. PROCEED WITH SUBSEQUENT TERMINATION OF ALL OTHER AVAILABLE TARGETS:]

But Skynet had not factored the presence of the consummate hunter into the equation. This animal had been born after Judgment Day, the result of a mating between two of the conflagration's ultimate survivors. It held no worry of humans, but it had learned to fear and in its' animal manner, hate the undead creatures which replaced them. Lifelike but not alive, the things which looked human but were not roamed the tiger's hunting grounds without reservation, rarely resting, never sleeping, killing any human they came across but leaving all else untouched. Its' intelligence of another bent, the cat had learned very quickly that if it avoided the roving not humans, they would leave it alone to hunt and procreate. That suited it. It did not like them. The not humans were no good for food and stank of something that caused the tiger's guts to roil in confused revulsion. Mostly the male and its' mate, whose territory adjoined his own were able to stay their distance from the not humans. It didn't always work out that way though. There came the day when the young of its mate had wandered blindly into the path of what they would never understand was a patrolling T-800. Their mother had not been near enough to prevent them from obeying hardwired instincts. Both yearling cubs attacked, seeking their first kill. She'd raced to their aid, but arrived too late. Both were dead. The male had later prowled the scene, detecting the scent of his offspring's killer from their mangled corpses. From that time, he had skirted the not humans assiduously, doing everything possible to come into no contact with them. Now he recognized them for what they were, slayers of his kind. His primitive and cunning brain acknowledged the not humans as a threat, to be avoided if possible, but if not, to be fought to the death.

The cat had been stalking the humans for some time, evaluating their potential as prey. They often invaded its' territory, but always in numbers so many that it hesitated to attack. The sticks they held in their hands spat thunder at it and things which burned and caused much hurt. The male preferred prey which was more easily subdued and there was enough of that about that it usually let the humans pass thru unmolested. But it had been some days since its last successful hunt and it was beginning to let go its normal inhibitions. Hunger sublimated caution. It needed to feed! If it could separate and drag one of the smaller ones away before the rest could use their firesticks, it would finally be able to satisfy its raging appetite. So it began following them, hugging the ground and hunching its body to remain invisible, using the rubble and piles of bones and broken, rusted vehicles to camouflage its presence. A hunter nonpareil, the male had no trouble keeping up with its quarry, even splitting off to follow an alternate route thru the darkness of the underground, where it usually slept during the daytime hours, for a while before acquiring them once more. The noise of their conflict was terrifying. It had no way to discern what the AK-3900 was, but instinctively perceived the machine overhead as a thing of danger and stayed hidden from it. Shuddering with agitation, the predator bore witness of the fight, escaping unseen when it had the chance by one of its favored bolt holes to the haven of the tunnels, resuming their trail as they fled into the below.

As their "herd" grouped together again, the tiger selected a victim, determining to separate its smaller choice from the larger companion which stayed close by its side. Preparing to make the kill, the feline was distracted by movement behind its intended meal. The cat's eyesight was far better than its' olfactory. It knew. The movement was a not human.

An intuitive, unreasoning sound traveled from the animal's massive chest, up thru its' throat, erupting outward in the rumbling basso eventually heard by Marcus, Blair and the rest of the resistance fighters. Tiger killer! Destroyer of young! ENEMY! Kill the not human! Protect! Make it no more! The male leapt, arsenal deployed, dismissing both the human it had been intending to make food of and the bigger one, which smelt of a bewildering combination. It savaged the human which was also a not human (?), momentarily enraged at it, then forgot that one to concentrate on the not human. Its' brain drove the command home! KILL THE NOT HUMAN!

Marcus figured every prizefight or MMA match this city had ever hosted all lumped in together would not have equaled this one. It was the ultimate heavyweight bout, the card to end all cards. The titanic struggle froze the openmouthed watchers wherever they stood or lay.

Using all of its tools and muscle the tiger unleashed a frenzy of destruction on the 800. SLASH! BITE! RIP! KILL THE NOT HUMAN!

The T-800 responded to the onslaught, dropping the plasma rifle from its hands to meet the challenge. The machine's computer and heads up display indentified and relayed the information[:Panthera tigris,quantified threat level: Significant: If allowed to continue, the terminator's computer calculated an animal of this mass could do enough damage to severely compromise the 800's mission. Non-optimal. It wrapped tree trunk arms around the cat's mid-section and began trying to squeeze the life out of its attacker. The deadly hug grew tighter and tighter around the clawing, snarling male's body, and despite its ferocity and brawn, began to have an effect. The huge cat started to weaken, its vicious swipes and bites slowing. Its roars and yowls turned from anger to fear as the animal's brain communicated that it was in trouble and that which it had attacked was not only danger to its young but to the male itself! Frantically, the beast tried to escape the constricting grasp, turning its efforts from offensive to defensive in a desperate effort to get away from the not human's killer hold! Bloodied and shredded as it was, the T-800 ignored the tiger's savage squirming, impassively increasing the pressure like a python suffocating prey. Skynet's overriding imperative: TERMINATE.

The human spectators to the once-in-a-lifetime contest got a rude reminder that they'd not been forgotten by Skynet when a dozen peregrine drones zoomed in thru the gaping spaces in the roof, spinning at them with red blasts of killing laser fire. Marcus, Blair, Barnes and the rest of the resistance force fought back against the murderous little machines, joined by the group from Dreamland. The room resounded with the sounds of battle with the roars and cries of the tiger/terminator combat as backdrop. With inhuman persistence, the drones pressed the attack, blending into a swarm as more and more of them were added to the fight by the AK-3900 which would soon be directly over them again.

Coughing as her lungs rejected the choking smoke Kate Connor aimed and took out the drone descending on the helpless patient she was defending. Bits of metal flew off the ruined machine as it crashed to the floor, forever dark only to be replaced by another and then another! The things were a damn never ending story! They had to evacuate, she knew, but pinned down like this were all but helpless. Hurry John, she pleaded silently to her husband as she killed another drone. We need that help right now! They were out of time.

If persons long wed really did learn to read one another's minds, then John Connor read his wife's over the distance that separated them. Kate had barely completed the thought when the Typhon missile he'd sent to her rescue finally came streaking out of the east to penetrate the hull of Skynet's whopping automaton with explosive punishment! Kate held her breath. Would it be enough!? It had to be! But would it!?

She needn't have worried. The resulting destruction bore fruit beyond all imaging. The Typhon missiles drew their name from the mythological hundred headed Grecian "father of all monsters." This modern child of war did him proud. For three interminable seconds nothing happened. Then the missile's multiple warheads detonated throughout the interior of the AK like the venomous tendrils of their ancient sire, laying waste to everything in their path. They triggered an irreversible domino effect that devoured Skynet's innovation from within. It no longer dispatched drones and as it died those already released were now without direction and became easier to pick off. The humans gained the upper hand but they weren't going to get the chance to get happy about it.

Searching as he blasted the last drone, Marcus's extraordinary eyes picked up the parent vessel. About a half a city block away, its forward movement had ceased. The monster craft wobbled alarmingly in the air and he could see a faint glow overtaking the superstructure. CLICK! Uh oh. He'd seen something else created by Skynet die that very same way, recently. This was going to be much, much uglier than an exploding terminator.

"Grab everybody and everything you can and go, go, GO! MOVE! GET BELOW! GET BELOW!" he bellowed. "That thing is going to come down right on top of us! We gotta get underground, NOW!"

The dire urgency in his voice was enough to spur his listeners into action. Unquestioning, they abandoned what gear they had to so those who were able could help anyone unable to get mobile under their own power. A flood of people flowed thru the entrance to the tunnels, heading down, burrowing for their very lives into the bowels of the earth.

Covering their retreat, Marcus spared a fleeting look over his shoulder in time to see the T-800 toss the mortally injured Bengal to the side like a gutted stuffed animal and scoop up its plasma rifle. The terminator refocused on the only other enemy present. The only thing standing between it and the fleeing, tattered, low on ammo resistance fighters and expatriate Area 51's. That would be me, Marcus thought grimly. Well, isn't that special. He knew he had a mountain of misdeeds to make up for from his past but sometimes he got the feeling karma was enjoying the job just a little too much. The eight started for him but had barely taken a step when an unholy groan issued from the enormous machine in the sky. Giving up at last, the thrashing vessel turned on its side and plummeted. The leading edge of the doomed ship arrived, bulldozing the building's skeletal remains. The terminator forgot Marcus as it calculated its odds of survival determining them to be less than ten percent.

"What are you doing Marcus?!" Blair shouted at him from about fifty feet ahead. She waited with David Perry and three other resistance fighters, unwilling to go any further without him. "Run! Come on!" she waved frantically, wincing at the pain it caused her bruised ribcage.

What the hell am I doing? Marcus considered, giving himself a mental kick. Does a building literally have to fall on your dumb ass!? Run stupid! He ran, checking behind him for the terminator, but there was nothing. Maybe it didn't make it out, he thought hopefully. Maybe karma decided to take some time off after all.

The traumatized hulk around him creaked and shuddered, the building surrendering to the inevitable as he reached his wife and Perry. The group pounded down several flights of creaking metal stairs as the enormity of a total structural collapse took place above ground. Clouds of billowing smoke and flame mixed with huge chunks of metal, plaster and concrete the like of which had not been seen since Judgment day ballooned upwards as the AK pancaked and burned, becoming the Bengal's funeral pyre. The fire burned for hours.

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His arm around his exhausted sleeping wife, Marcus Wright stared into to the fire, seemingly hypnotized by the dancing flames. He wasn't under any kind of spell. He just had a lot on his mind. Like what was he supposed to do about Brandon Weatherly and his happy little group of Skynet collaborating cannibal refugees from Area 51? What should he tell Connor? How much should he tell Connor? How much should he tell any of them? Did he have the right to keep all or part of the truth from Connor or anyone else? Was it right to do that? Moral quandaries were relatively new territory for him and he had no idea what to do about this one. The problem of Barnes was especially difficult. How did you tell a man that he'd unknowingly consumed part of one of his former comrades? What was Marcus supposed to say "Uh, Barnes you know when your girlfriend screamed 'I want you inside me!' she didn't mean it the way you thought she did." The Marcus of that other life had been cold enough to say exactly that but he wasn't that man any longer in so many more ways than one. He couldn't look Colonel Anthony Barnes in the eye and smugly break the news that Barnes had made a meal of someone he'd once known and fought beside. Marcus knew he didn't have that in him anymore, that Marcus was long gone and good riddance to him. What about the rest of them, the rest of his fellow resistance? It had been a slow evolution, and there were still those who would never welcome him, but mostly he felt a part of the whole, like he'd finally been accorded a place among them. What would happen if he, Blair, Barnes, Kate and the rest returned to their home base with Weatherly and his group in tow and then it all came out? And he was sure it would. There was zero chance something like that would not eventually reveal itself, even if he chose not to. Marcus thought he knew what the reaction would be from the resistance fighters when the fate of their family and friends at the hands of Brandon Weatherly and the Area 51ers was discovered. His own dark history included murder. He understood why, pre-Judgment day, when someone was accused of that crime, it was said they had bodies on them. It was because that's how it felt. The load never lightened and it would never go away. Every time he opened his eyes to begin a new day of his new life, the weight of those three bodies and all the other deaths he was responsible for settled down on him all over again. He didn't want that for any of his new friends or family, they already enough to carry thanks to Skynet. So what was he supposed to do? What should he say? How did he handle this? As certainly as he held the woman he loved in his arms he would have to tell them all something, but what? He rested his head against the cool rock and closed his eyes, not sleeping, but thinking.

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"Mr. Wright we need to talk."

Marcus opened his eyes to find Brandon Weatherly standing over him, looking guarded. Wright stared coolly at the principal source of his deliberations. The silence stretched out, making Weatherly uncomfortable. The former leader of Area 51 looked away.

"Please" the scientist added, turning the statement into a request.

I'll just bet I know what you want to chat about Brandon, Marcus thought to himself. "So talk" he replied to the other man.

"Privately, please" Weatherly said, beginning to twitch nervously. "It's…please" he repeated.

Taking his arm from around Blair, Marcus gently eased her to the ground without waking her, leaving his jacket behind for her to use as a pillow. The two stepped far enough away to have a one-on-one conversation but weren't totally isolated.

"This is as private as its going to get Weatherly" Marcus informed the other chilly. "Whatever you've got to say spit it out."

Weatherly had a couple of false starts, mouth opening and closing without saying anything. Clearing his throat he tried again. "I need to ask. What…what are you going to tell John Connor about us, about what…about Area 51 and, and what happened to you and Colonel Barnes while you were there?"

Crossing his arms over his chest Marcus gave the man a look that in the past had made some others want to turn and run. Brandon Weatherly looked ready to take flight. Nice to know I still got it, Marcus reflected with cynical amusement. "Well, now, Brandon" Wright didn't bother to soften the hostility in his voice, "what do you think I should tell him? Huh? Connor sent me and Barnes to find out what was eating his missing troops" Marcus told Weatherly, noting the barely detectable flinch at the word "eating." "The man wanted to know why his soldiers kept disappearing without a trace once they hit Groom Lake. And guess what? I found that out, so give me one good reason why I shouldn't tell him. You turned our people over to Skynet for it to use as lab rats! You knew what it would do to them, what kind of hell they would be put thru, what kinds of torture and you did it anyway. You suckered them in, letting them think the place was really back in human hands and then turned them over like the whipped little traitors you are." Marcus's reply was totally without mercy. He hadn't been this furious about something in a good while. You think you know what I know, Brandon, Marcus mused, but you don't.

"We did what we had to" Weatherly belatedly tried to bluster. "We did what that damn AI forced us to do!" he insisted. "We had no choice, our families were hostages! You…you don't know what it…you, you can't, you can't know what it was like, what we had do to survive. You can't-besides, your Colonel Barnes, he killed Kim!" Brandon Weatherly blurted, trying to go on the attack. It was a weak one, something that never worked with Marcus Wright. "He murdered he-!"

"Stop!" Marcus hissed from between clenched teeth. He and Barnes would never be pals, might never have more than a distant wariness around one another, but Marcus knew the truth. Barnes was no murderer. "Barnes didn't kill her and we both know it. I'm not for sure who did, but my money's on that whack job Kayla. After she did Kim, she tried to do the same thing to me."

"K, kk, Kayla tried to kill you?" Weatherly appeared genuinely surprised. He was confused. He'd known Tracey didn't make it out of Area 51 but hadn't had the chance to find out why.

"Yeah Brandon, she did" Marcus moved up, getting into Weatherly's face. "Only she didn't get that far. One of your T-800's snapped her neck like a dry twig before she got the chance to make the first cut."

"They weren't our-" Marcus's words sank in. "How, how much…what do you know?"

Wright was acid and blunt. "You mean did I find your terminator body shop? See your people buzzing around like worker bees? Yeah I did. Tell me something Brandon, did it stop with routine maintenance or did you get naked and go down on 'em while you were at it?"

"How dare you-" Weatherly's choked reply was full of guilty rage. The color returned as his face reddened. "I told you we did what we had to, what Skynet forced us to do!" The scientist forgot himself enough to grab at Marcus's clothing, a bad idea.

Marcus pushed him off roughly. Weatherly fell. Marcus stood above him, eyes narrowed. "Did it force you to put humans on the menu too?" he grated savagely, almost loud enough to be overheard. He watched Weatherly's face go white as the Dreamland leader realized how much of the complex's secrets Marcus had scoped out.

"Yeah, that's right Brandon" Marcus sneered as the one time head of the Groom Lake facility cowered at his feet, "I found your frozen stores too."

Weatherly shook. Their confrontation started to draw a crowd.

"Marcus, what's going on, what is this?" Kate's question, from behind him. Barnes was there too, and Blair, wiping the sleep from her eyes. Resistance and the Area 51ers gathered round, the two groups seemed leery of drawing too closely together.

Marcus's disgust welled up threatening to stifle his self-control. He reached down and easily hauled the two hundred plus pound Weatherly to his feet with one hand. He shoved the Dr. in the direction of some fellow 51 alumni. Startled they barely caught him. The hell with it, Wright thought, maybe it's better to let it happen sooner than later.

"Why don't you ask him?" he told Kate, jerking his head in Weatherly's direction.

"I'm asking you" Kate stressed the last word. Her clear blue eyes cut into Marcus.

"Kate, I-"

"Look out!" Brandon Weatherly screamed, throwing himself at Kate, tackling her to the ground a split second before the crimson heat of the T-800's plasma rifle filled the space where her body had just been.

It's clothes in rags, and the majority of the skin on its' face and body either missing or hanging in bloody strips, the terminator stepped in the open, weapon blazing, programming driving it to fulfill the mission given to it by Skynet. Portions of its hyper-alloy endoskeleton glinted in the firelight as it reacquired Kate with its baleful glare. Marcus closed with it, grappling with the machine hand to hand. He knew he wasn't as strong as the eight but was trying to give the others time to mount a defense. It threw him off and he landed with a painful thud on the hard ground. He pushed to his feet, bloodied, to rush back in.

Hammering away with his M4, Barnes shoved Kate forcefully out of the line of fire. Blair grabbed Connor's wife pulling the red headed doctor further to safety behind a large rock. The pilot fired, the Desert Eagle's deep throated bark sounding repeatedly.

PPPPFFTTTTTTTTTTTT! BLAAAAAATTTTT! PPPPFFTTTTTTTTTTTT! BLAAAAAATTTTT! BLAAAAAATTTTT! BOOM! BOOM! The resistance armament blasted at the terminator full on, every round rocking it with lethal intent. The 800 was blocked for the moment from making a further attempt at killing Kate but refused to go down despite the incredible assault it was under. A heavy round from someone's weapon blew off the hand that clutched the rifle and both hand and gun went spinning off into the darkness. Undeterred, the T-800 rushed the nearest human, disarming the man with contemptuous ease. It gripped the firearm in its massive paw, head swiveling, red glowing eyes searching for and finding its primary target. It started for Kate again, ignoring everything and everyone else. Bits of blood and skin flew off it, rounds pinging like pinballs. It wavered under the impact but did not stop so intent was it to terminate Kate.

BLAAAAAATTTTT! BLAAAAAATTTTT! BLAAAAAATTTTT! BLAAAAAATTTTT! PPPPFFTTTTTTTTTTTT! They kept at it.

"UUuuuggggghhhhh!" Marcus charged it again but this time not unarmed. In a single leap he was on top of the 800. Jamming the Cestus III thermate grenade he had cupped in a palm into an exposed cavity in its neck with every ounce of force he could call on, he pulled the pin, arming it, and rolled away. In a brilliant flash, the device activated, turning night into noon, temporarily blinding the human defenders. The four thousand degree mini sun created by the grenade fused the terminator's internal circuits, melting the CPU into slag. The machine went dark and toppled like a timbered redwood, finished.

Blair holstered her gun and rushed over to Marcus, while Kate and Allison Chambers tended to the fresh batch of wounded created by the fight. They didn't have long. Kate's would-be assassin was a loner that, incredibly, had made it out of the collapsed building and tracked them all the way from Vegas, but if it had broadcast its position, others would be on the way. Night travel was a huge risk, but they had no choice so once they were patched up enough, they made the trek.

Four hours hence, holed up in the pitifully bedraggled scraps of a small outlet mall, the contused, lacerated combined group of resistance and Dreamland castaways waited anxiously for the assistance promised by radio. Some slept, others prepared rations or helped any other way they could.

Marcus was awake. He didn't really feel the need for sleep and had the ability to put it on hold for several days if necessary, so he did that now. He kept watch from a narrow window of what had once been the manager's office of a discount store. Wright knew who's office it was because the manager, or, more correctly, what was left of the manager, was still there when he inspected the room as a possible lookout spot. Flesh long decayed or eaten away by hungry critters, the skeleton still wore moldy ragged black pants, what had not for many years been a white buttoned shirt and a bedraggled orange vest bearing the discount chain's logo. The filthy shirt had dark brown stains that Marcus recognized as blood and the ribcage was punctured with holes. It looked as if the man had mistakenly viewed his office as a refuge when Skynet turned the machines loose after Judgment Day. Or maybe other humans had done it. No one would ever know for certain. Wright bent to read the faint lettering of the plastic name badge.

"Bob Stepanovich… Welcome, How May I Enrich Your Shopping Experience?" he recited. "You can get out of my chair Bob" cracked Marcus. Divesting the indifferent Bob of his long time perch Wright settled in to wait for first light and their hopefully boring ride home. He was thinking some boredom might be a beautiful thing right about now.

"Help, someone please" One of the Area 51 women pleaded. Kate Connor responded automatically, bringing her medical bag. "Please" the woman asked, "can't you do something for him, anything?" she begged sadly. The surviving members of his group had been gathered around him for hours, talking softly, apparently engaged in some sort of debate, which was now over. They parted to make room for Kate.

"Him" was Brandon Weatherly, his head resting cradled in the woman's lap, labored breathing testament to his agony. A gaping hole in his lower left side still bled slightly. He'd taken the shot from the terminator meant for Kate. Out of pain meds, Kate could only administer a sedative, but Weatherly resisted.

"Get Wr..Wri…Wright…I need to talk to Wright, please" he gasped, the effort costing him dearly. The dying Weatherly knew his life was measured in minutes.

"You shouldn't be trying to talk to anyone" Kate admonished softly. "You need to save your strength" she added, giving false comfort, all she had left for her patient.

"For what?" Weatherly managed a bitter snort of a laugh. "I ain't gonna need it much longer anyway, we both know that doc. Please get him for me, please."

Kate sent for Marcus. When he arrived, Weatherly used much of his waning energy to insist the others back off so only Marcus could hear his whispered words.

"Wright, Wright you gotta listen to me. Please you gotta listen" Weatherly could feel his last seconds slipping away.

"I'm listening" Marcus told him shortly, unsympathetic. "What is it? What do you want, Brandon?"

"Most of 'em…m,mm, most of 'em…" He gasped motioning with his eyes to where the Area 51's stood clustered together, "Most of…em, th…th..they did…they didn't know. N…no..not all of it. They didn't know about what happened to the resistance people we took in. Th…they…didn't know. And the…they didn't…know…ab…about the mmmm….meat…wha…what th…they were eating…Please, you gotta believe…mm….mm…me! Most of the ones…that did…they're dead now..The others, they didn't know…Not the kids, they…didn't know. You gotta believe me."

"Let's say I do" Marcus whispered back. "What about it? What do you want me to do with it?" He was disinclined to do this man any favors.

"The…they want to lll, le…leave. Go…on their own…not back with you to your…ba…ba…base. Please, let…'em go. Pl…ple…please, let…let..'em go, please. Don't say wha…wha…they didn't know…I swear mmm…most of 'em didn't know" Weatherly gasped out. He plucked at Marcus sleeve, a pink froth appeared at the corner of his mouth, his eyes rolled back in his head and Brandon Weatherly died.

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The approaching transports (ground this time, the loss of three gunships was an expensive transaction) appeared like growing black dots on the horizon. The resistance forces gathered for the journey home, readying the wounded to be loaded first. Marcus watched for a moment then turned to look in the other direction, seeing the remainder of the 51ers heading into an uncertain future.

Following a lengthy and occasionally heated confab involving Kate, Barnes, Perry, Gentry and Marcus, the decision had been reached to allow the ex-Dreamland occupants to go their own way. Although their complicity in the disappearance of the resistance platoon's had been confirmed by Marcus and grudgingly admitted to by a couple of the 51's, some hard facts still had to be faced. Gentry pointed out the logistical headache of dragging twenty-five prisoners back to their home base. And after we get them there, she further argued, what's next? Put 'em on trial? Then what, stand 'em against a wall and shoot 'em, even the kids? The base had a stockade, but no serious penal facility to speak of, so that possibility was dismissed out of hand. Someone else brought up the problem of determining which of the Dreamlanders were most guilty. Leaving out much of what he'd discovered, (like the cannibalism) Marcus put forth Weatherly's dying declaration that the majority of the 51's were mostly clueless about what had befallen the resistance troops. Barnes glared at him, thrown by Wright's defense of people that had probably only been prevented from killing the Colonel by Marcus's timely rescue, but in the end did not object. Marcus saw them off, wondering what he was releasing into a world that had trouble aplenty already. He'd resolved his personal conflict by deciding to tell Connor all, omitting nothing. It had been his and Barnes original mandate and Marcus figured he owed the resistance leader the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Connor could make up his own mind how much to tell the others. Marcus would step out of it after that.

Over her half hearted protests, Marcus picked Blair up, carrying her in his arms to the waiting transport.

"I can walk you know" she muttered, head resting in the crease between his shoulder and neck.

"Yes, I know" he replied, "but do you really want to?" he teased.

She snuggled closer. "No, um um" she mumbled.

Marcus grinned and kissed her ear. "Hey" it hit him suddenly, "you cut your hair!"

Blair raised her head to look at him and then over his shoulder at Kate. Williams rolled her eyes. "Now he notices?" she said to Kate in a long suffering tone. Kate laughed, shaking her head.

"Well" Marcus rejoined, somewhat defensively, "I have been a little busy."

THE END

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Author's note: Well that is it. All she wrote, literally. Hope you liked it. I did. Reviews are always welcome. As I said before, pretty sure this is it, but I have thoroughly enjoyed writing these stories. One more thing: Just-A-Crazy-Man, if you're out there, gimme a holla. See ya.