IDF Story Challenge "Just Another Day in Paradise..." (2/3)
Title: Just Another day in Paradise… (2/3)
Fandom: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Pairing: Sarah/Cameron
Disclaimer: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, and all associated characters are not mine...though since Fox abandoned them, rightfully they should be up for grabs.
Summary: This is my contribution to the International day of Femslash’s “A Day in the Life” story challenge. That would make this a day in the life of Sarah and Cameron, set in season 2, though an astute watcher of the show will notice that I took a few liberties such as more or less ignoring the events of episode 3 “The Mousetrap,” keeping John and Cameron in school, and one other thing… but I’ll let you all see that for yourselves *G*.
AN: Big thank you goes out to Revoloss55 for being my Beta on this one and rescuing me from my evil addiction to ellipses, also Inspector Boxer deserves a huzzah for her spontaneous offer to read through this, and give me some much needed feedback. Enjoy!
Despite Casey’s willing cooperation, Sarah cursed the precious minutes it took to get the keys to the woman’s little Neon and then send her away so that she wouldn’t have an audience while she took it home and loaded it with an assortment of guns, charges and ammunition.
Meanwhile, even while she prepared for Armageddon, she was hoping none of this would be necessary. Maybe the shooter was just some maladjusted teen with a grudge and Cameron would take him or her out and that would be the end of it.
Maybe it was all a big misunderstanding…but she doubted it.
As soon as she was back on the road, Sarah retrieved her cell phone and dialled Derek’s number. The ex-resistance soldier had been absent more often than not lately, but he was still her best bet for back up in a situation like this.
He answered on the fourth ring. “Sarah…” he paused to punch in his three digit code, confirming his identity. “What’s going on?”
Sarah responded first with her own code, trying to keep her hands from shaking as she pressed the tiny buttons. “We’ve got a situation…Someone’s got a gun at John’s school and they’re locking the place down tight. It could be just a kid…”
“But it could also be Cromartie.” Derek’s intuition took the same leap that Sarah’s had.
“We don’t know that. John’s okay so far, he’s laying low, Cameron’s checking it out.”
“Shouldn’t the Tin Can be watching John?”
Sarah resisted the urge to snap in response to the venom in Derek’s voice. Thanks to his recent scarcity at the house, she’d been able to keep him from finding out about her and Cameron and this wasn’t the time to blow it by being overprotective, not when she needed him.
“If it’s Cromartie, then she’ll be keeping him as far away from John as possible…and if it’s not, then he’s in no more danger then anyone else.”
“Less,” Derek snorted. “He knows how to duck.”
“First thing I ever taught him.” Sarah agreed, turning a corner and coming within sight of the school. “I’m almost there, I’m going to try and get inside, can you-”
“I’m on my way.” Derek cut her off. Neither of them was comfortable with asking for help, and they both tried to avoid saying the actual words whenever possible.
“Thank you.”
“No problem.”
“Call me when you get here.”
Sarah switched the phone off and parked a half a block down from the school. The police were already swarming around the building like angry hornets and the last thing she needed was to get tangled up with them, but she had to get inside somehow. John was in there, and Cameron.
The thought of Cameron going up against Cromartie alone and without a weapon made her shiver despite the warm California afternoon.
*****
Cameron found the other terminator in the gymnasium. He’d pursued the last security guard through the boy’s locker rooms and out onto the basketball court, where the wounded man had taken refuge under the stands. Blood, in drips, smears and splatters stained the gleaming floor under her boots as she approached, unheard under the cover of the officer’s whimpered pleas.
Cromartie stood in front of the bleachers, gun trained steadily ahead of him, and a picture in his other hand. “I am looking for the girl and her brother. Tell me where they are.”
“I don’t know who you’re talking about!” The man almost squealed, scrambling back as far as he could go under the dubious cover of the wooden seats. “I just started here last week. I don’t know any of the students yet!”
Cromartie pulled the trigger, burying a bullet in the human’s leg and eliciting another panicked scream. “Where is the girl?”
“Right here.”
In the second it took Cromartie to react to the unexpected voice from behind him, Cameron was in motion. A swift kick knocked the gun out of his hands, and she followed it up with another to his midsection that sent him flying back into the bleachers.
Bending down Cameron reached under the seats and dragged the bloody man out from his hiding spot, shoving him none too gently towards the doors.
“Run.” She instructed, already sweeping up the gun and turning and climbing up the steps towards the recovering Cromartie.
Not waiting to be asked twice, the officer limped as swiftly as possible out of the gym. He waited until he was well clear before pulling the radio out of his belt and calling for help.
*****
Sarah cradled the phone between her ear and shoulder, listening to it ring as she pulled the duffle bag full munitions out of the back seat of the car and slung it over her arm. It rang six times before going to voicemail and Sarah cursed at the soft but flat tones of Cameron’s message, before hanging up and stuffing the phone into a back pocket.
She didn’t really know why she was bothering. If the girl was hunting Cromartie, she’d probably consider it inefficient to stop and answer a phone call, but Sarah couldn’t help herself. Every time she blinked she saw Cameron’s broken and bloody body lying at Cromartie’s feet and the mental image was making her sick to her stomach.
Locking the car, she headed cautiously towards the back of the school where the police surveillance seemed to be the thinnest. She kept to the edges of the property, moving in and out of the narrow line of scrub brush that lined the school yard.
If her memory of the school blueprints that she’d had John print out back when they first registered were accurate, then there was a back wall with a door and a line of windows within fifteen feet of her cover just out of sight of the parking lot. Providing Derek arrived in time to give her a distraction she should be able to get in there.
The door was a write off, it would be locked up tight, and her preferred method of dealing with locked doors was currently on the wrong side of this one and not answering her damned phone, so it would have to be one of the windows. Hopefully they didn’t all belong to classrooms…She didn’t relish the idea of trying to force her way through a crowd of panicking teenagers.
Reaching her chosen vantage point, Sarah crouched down, easing the bag into the long grass beside her and watched the two police officers posted at the door across the yard. All she could do now was wait for Derek to call, or hope for some other opportunity to present itself.
If Cromartie was inside, and Cameron had already found him…She might get there in time and she might not…all she could do was take the first chance that was offered, and hope her little Tin Miss held out long enough to be rescued.
“Kick his ass girlie…” Sarah whispered under her breath.
*****
Derek drove his truck up to the high school cautiously, keeping in mind the fact that it was crawling with cops and he was a wanted fugitive. Damn crazy Connor needed her head examined, wanting to go in there. She should have just told the metal to bust John out and be done with it. It wasn’t any of their concern if Cromartie tore the place apart, so long as he didn’t get what he was after.
Nobody ever asked for his opinion though. Sarah paid more attention to what that metal bitch thought than what he did. John too. Damn machines were taking over already. He supposed that’s why he was keeping Jesse and her mission to himself. He didn’t want to know the specifics, and he couldn’t bring himself to help her directly, but he wasn’t going to stand in her way either, not when she made so much sense.
Derek scanned the parking lot for a space that wasn’t in direct line of the cops, his gaze lighting on a familiar vehicle, and an even more familiar EMT pacing out in front of it.
“Dixon.” He pulled up beside the ambulance, leaning out of the window. “You sure get around when there’s trouble.”
Charley whirled, his right hand going instinctively to his waist where Derek was pretty sure he had some kind of gun stowed. Recognizing the ex-soldier after a few tense breaths, he relaxed back against the side of his vehicle.
“That is my job. What are you doing here?”
Derek snorted. “Same reason you are. There’s a woman around here somewhere with more balls than brains, trying to get herself killed again.”
Charley wilted, rubbing his hand over his brow. “It is John’s school then…I wasn’t sure.”
“Yep.” Derek shut the truck off and jumped out, clapping Charley on the shoulder. “Relax, she can handle herself. If she needs you to give her a band-aid, she’ll call.”
Irritated by the dismissive response, Charley looked up just in time to see Derek disappear behind the ambulance. When he heard the rear doors snap open he swore and followed, finding the other man already rummaging around in the back of his vehicle. “So what are you going to do?”
Slipping into a twin of the uniform Charley wore, Derek shrugged. “Me? I’ve never been much in the brains department either. I’m going to help her get inside so that she and that metal sidekick of hers can do their thing, then, providing I don’t get arrested, I’m going after John.”
Watching Derek do up the buckles of the black and yellow suit, Charley wrestled with himself before coming to a decision. Without a word he pulled himself up into the ambulance and dug out a portable med kit in a bright yellow bag. Slinging it over his shoulder he hopped back down onto the pavement and met Derek’s questioning look with a scowl. “If you’re going inside, my band-aids and I are coming with you.”
“You sure?” Derek fastened the last clasp and jumped down, passing the EMT on his way back to his own truck. “I wouldn’t want you to tarnish that every day hero image of yours. I’m not exactly planning to ask the cops to look the other way nicely if you know what I mean.”
“Well what are you planning?” Charley ignored the baiting, and followed.
Derek unsnapped the cover over his truck bed and started pulling out charges. “I figured I’d start by blowing up a couple of cars...see if that gets their attention.” He turned to grin humourlessly at a dumbstruck Charley. “You still coming?”
Charley swallowed, eyeing the other man’s handful of explosives. “Yeah…” he managed, focusing on John and Sarah. “I guess I am.”
*****
Once she’d exhausted the ammunition of Cromartie’s small handgun, Cameron quickly lost the upper hand against the larger and stronger terminator. Without weapons or back up, she had only speed and agility against his greater size, strength and reach, and they weren’t enough to keep her out of his grasp for long.
Cameron felt splintered wood pierce her back as she hit the stands for the second time. Her fall drove the edge of the broken seat deeply under her skin, where it caught against the metal of her endoskeleton. Pulling herself free, Cameron ignored the input from her pain receptors and the blood quickly soaking her tank top, managing to roll out of the way just in time to avoid a blow from a length of steel railing that Cromartie had wrenched from the bleachers.
Lurching unsteadily to her feet before he could recover, the smaller terminator used her brief advantage to fling herself at his back and send them both crashing to the floor. Even as they grappled over the primitive length of metal, Cameron knew she was fighting a losing battle. She also knew that Cromartie needed to eliminate her as a threat before he could pursue his primary mission of killing John. Her mission therefore was not to win, but to keep the terminator occupied long enough for Sarah to get to John and take him to safety.
With that in mind, she fought less to cause damage and more to prevent damage to herself, thus delaying the inevitable.
Ripping the metal club out of her hands, Cromartie flipped Cameron onto her back and straddled her, pinning her arms to her sides, in much the same way that she had held the terminator Vick while she pulled the chip out of his head.
Cromartie didn’t have a toolbox, but he didn’t really need one. Holding the steel bar above his head, he prepared to bring it down with enough force to penetrate her metal skull and smash the fragile chip nestled inside.
Cameron knew it was useless to struggle, but she tried anyway, writhing against Cromarties grip, and twisting her head around. As he raised the bar, she squeezed her eyes shut and called up a recent memory of Sarah, allowing the full sensory recall to replace all other input. If she was going to be destroyed, she wanted it to happen with the feeling of her lover’s lips on hers, and soft arms cradling her close, as if she was something precious instead of a soulless killing machine.
*****
Sarah was just about ready to try her luck with the security guards when her cell phone buzzed against her hip. Trying to move as little as possible, she eased it out of her pocket and flipped it open. She looked down long enough to see that it was Derek calling before raising the phone to her ear.
“Talk fast, we’re running out of time.”
“I know. The boys in blue out here are getting ready for some kind of push. I think there’s been contact with one of the security guards from inside the building.” Derek explained quickly, breaking off to whisper something that she couldn’t hear.
“We can’t let that happen.” Sarah responded, ignoring for now the possibility that Derek wasn’t acting alone. “If it’s Cromartie in there then they’ll be slaughtered.”
“Don’t worry. In about two minutes they’re about to have a whole lot more to think about.” The ex-resistance fighter sounded pleased with himself.
“What did you do?”
“Never mind, just be ready.”
The phone went dark in her hand as Derek hung up and Sarah rolled her eyes at his blatant show boating. This was exactly why she never sent him and Cameron on missions together. Neither one of them had any gift for keeping a low profile.
Her suspicions were proven correct when a series of explosions from the parking lot made her flatten herself in the scrub while the two police officers below her shouted and began urgent conversations with their radios.
After a series of hissing and crackling exchanges, one of the men headed for the front of the school at a run, leaving the other alone at the door. This was exactly what Sarah had been waiting for, and she took advantage of the fact that his attention was focused in the direction of the explosions, to sneak across the short distance between them and come up behind him.
A sharp blow to the back of the head with the butt of her 9mm Beretta sent the officer to his knees and Sarah lost no time wrestling him the rest of the way down and then pinning him there with her boot on his neck. Cocking the gun she pushed the muzzle against the back of his head, taking care to stay behind him where he couldn’t see her.
“I don’t want to shoot you.” Sarah reassured him. “But I will if I have to.” She waited for a trembling nod before continuing. “Good. Now, I need you to tell me everything you know about what’s going on inside.”
“White male…looking for two kids, a girl and her bother. He’s shot most of the guards…and he’s got some kind of hostage in the gym.”
“A hostage?” Sarah pressed her foot down harder.
“A student. A girl I think, brunette…guy inside says she came after the shooter. That’s all I know!” He protested as the pressure on his neck increased.
Sarah backed off a little, letting the man catch his breath. “All right. I want you to listen to me very carefully. I’m going to leave you here and you’re not going to move or speak until your friend comes back. Do you understand me?”
He nodded frantically. Keeping the gun trained on him she walked backwards until she reached the discarded duffel bag. Picking it up slowly, she hung it over her shoulder and walked carefully back around the officer on the ground to the wall of the school.
With half of her attention still on the cop, Sarah used the rest to open the bag and exchange her Beretta for a Mossberg 500 rifle. Zipping it closed again, she scanned the available windows at the base of the wall, and picked out one that looked big enough for her to fit through but small enough that it wasn’t likely to lead anywhere conspicuous.
With a last glance to make sure the officer hadn’t turned around, she smashed the chosen window with the butt of her rifle and shoved the duffel bag through first, using it to clear the shards of glass from the edges of the pane before she slid down after it.
Falling into darkness, she dropped lightly to the floor, ending up in a low crouch while she waited to see if her entrance had been noticed. Nothing. Sarah pulled a flashlight out of the bag and flipped in on, sending the beam around the room. A storage closet…perfect.
Easing slowly and quietly to her feet, she stepped over to the door and listened carefully for any sound from the other side. It was silent. Probably a hallway then, the classrooms would be packed with students.
The door opened easily at her touch, revealing the expected hallway beyond, a long corridor lit only by green emergency lights running along the edges of the ceiling. It looked like a setting for a horror movie. Pushing that observation aside, Sarah picked up her bag and slipped out of the closet, closing the door gently behind her.
Neither direction seemed overly promising. Sarah had only been inside the school a couple of times, and never in the basement, so she was more or less lost, but if she could get to the first floor, than she could probably remember the way to the gymnasium
Picking left for no other reason then that was the direction she was looking when she made the decision to move, Sarah shouldered the duffel bag and began walking swiftly down the hall.
Thanks to either intuition or blind luck, she found the stairs hidden behind an exit door after only a single turn. Shining the flashlight up into the stairwell, Sarah could see the switchback of staircases extending up and out of sight in the grey green darkness. There didn’t seem to be anyone on them, so she started climbing, striving to keep her footfalls from echoing up the tall empty column.
At the entrance to the first floor Sarah repeated her listening trick, the last thing she needed was to run afoul of the police, or a group of terrified teenagers. Everything was still deadly quiet. Pushing the door open slowly, she made sure that the muzzle of the rifle went first as she stepped out into the hall.
Intent on looking for trouble at eye level, Sarah nearly tripped over the body lying slackly across the floor.
“Shit!” She sidestepped at the last minute, hissing the expletive through clenched teeth as she knelt to look for a pulse. Nothing but cold clammy skin met her searching fingers. The man was definitely dead. Shining the flashlight past him, Sarah spotted another slumped form about twenty feet down the corridor.
“Just like fucking breadcrumbs.” Wiping her hand off on her jeans Sarah rose and followed the grisly trail through the school. She had a sneaking suspicion where it was leading, and she could only hope that she’d find more than bodies at the end of it.
She was almost at the gym when she found her first survivor. The officer was curled up against the wall, a radio clutched to his chest as if it was the only thing keeping him breathing. Glancing down the hall behind him, Sarah saw streaks of blood leading back to the double doors of the gymnasium. Clearly he’d dragged himself away from his assailant and Sarah felt a small stirring of kinship with the man gasping at her feet.
Realizing that this was the informant the man outside had referred to, Sarah crouched down, conducting a swift examination that her patient didn’t seem to notice. There was a bullet hole in his leg, and another through the bicep of his left arm. Neither injury was lethal, but he’d lost a lot of blood. Retrieving a knife from her bag she hastily cut a few strips of cloth from his pants and bound the wounds as best she could. It was all she had time for, and if she hadn’t had the nagging suspicion that they might need this man later, she wouldn’t have taken it at all.
A sudden crash from behind the doors at the end of the hall sent Sarah scrambling to her feet. She left the man where he lay, snatched up her rifle and the bag and sprinted for the gym.
Abandoning any pretence of stealth, Sarah hurtled through the doors just in time to see Cromartie holding a steel bar over Cameron’s head. The girl lay frighteningly still, trapped between him and the cold, gleaming floor. Heart beating painfully against her ribs, Sarah had a fraction of a second to aim before she let fly with a stream of bullets at his upraised arm.
*****
Cameron was jolted back into awareness when the weight on top of her suddenly shifted, followed less than a second later by the sound of gunfire as she returned her external sensors to full power.
Snapping her eyes open she took advantage of Cromartie’s momentary distraction and twisted underneath him. Belly down, she braced her hands against the floor, pushed back and heaved the other terminator off of her. Bullets thudding into him with the sharp clang of metal on metal, Cromartie lost his grip and fell to the side, giving Cameron room to roll out of fire range and spring lithely to her feet.
“Cameron, catch!” The familiar voice brought the metal girls head around with a jerk, and she plucked the Glock 17 out of the air, swinging it around to fire on Cromartie in a single smooth motion.
Still firing, she slowly backed up until she was standing beside Sarah, covering the other woman while she bent to dig around in the bag for more ammunition.
“You should run.” Cameron stepped deliberately in front of Sarah as Cromartie regained his feet.
“I’m not leaving you.” Sarah snapped another magazine into the Mossberg 500 and fired at the steadily advancing terminator to underscore her point. “We take him down, and then we both go.”
“What about John?”
“He’ll be a lot safer with Cromartie dead!”
Then there was no more time for conversation as the terminator closed in on them. Without a weapon he was forced to use brute force, reaching past her gun to grab Cameron’s wrist and jerk her away from Sarah.
Tossed aside, Cameron hit the floor hard but managed to get back on her feet in time to see Cromatie lift Sarah by the throat and snatch the rifle out of her hands. Turning, he brought the gun around to bear on Cameron but she was already inside his guard, pressing the Glock right up against his metal skull and firing directly into his chip casing. At such close range the bullets tore through the already damaged endoskeleton, penetrating the protective shielding and irrevocably destroying Cromartie’s brain.
Cameron wasn’t fast enough to catch Sarah before she fell, but she managed to keep the dead weight of the terminator from landing on top of her. Shoving Cromartie’s limp body away from them both, she dropped to her knees beside Sarah.
The other woman was unresponsive. Her eyes were closed and her pulse, when Cameron found it, was weak and thready. Cameron ran her fingers over Sarah’s head, looking for any damage she might have sustained when she fell. Not finding anything there, she gently probed her throat for injury caused by Cromartie while he was holding her up. Everything seemed more or less intact, and when Cameron pressed a hand to Sarah’s chest she could feel her breathing.
Reaching both arms underneath her lover, Cameron easily lifted the other woman off the floor, cradling her closely against her chest. She’d only taken a few steps when Sarah started coughing, clutching at Cameron’s shirt as her eyes fluttered open.
“What…Cromartie…did we..?”
“Cromartie has been eliminated.” Cameron reassured the woman in her arms, stopping and setting Sarah back down on her feet when she began to struggle. She kept her hands on Sarah’s waist though; ready to snatch her up in an instant if she looked like she was going to collapse again.
“I need to see!” Sarah pushed against Cameron’s chest until the terminator stepped aside, sliding her hands around to support Sarah from the side so that the woman could get a good look at Cromartie’s crumpled body.
Pulling away, Sarah stalked across the floor, stopping beside the metal corpse to give it a good solid kick in what was left of its head. Then she turned and fled back into Cameron’s arms, wrapping her own around the girl as tightly as possible.
“I thought he was going to kill you.” She murmured against Cameron’s blood-soaked shirt. Her usual stoic façade disarmed for once by the close call and the after-effects of oxygen deprivation.
Gently stroking Sarah’s tangled hair, Cameron held her close. For now their fight from this morning was forgotten. It wasn’t over…but neither of them wanted to argue semantics when they could have just lost each other permanently.
“He didn’t.” She breathed reassuringly, lowering her head to place a soft kiss on Sarah’s temple. “We are safe.”
“No one’s ever safe.” Sarah refuted, but the catechism lacked its customary fervour, and she tilted her chin up to catch Cameron’s lips with her own. The kiss had far less of passion to it then a need for comfort, reassurance that they had both in fact survived to fight another day.
Cameron recognized that need, learning a little more about being human as she returned the intimacy in kind, making no move to deepen their kiss nor move her hands from where they rested chastely on Sarah’s back. For now this was enough, and more than enough.
They might have stayed like that for hours, but duty called in the form of Charley Dixon, who after parting ways with Derek so that the other man could find John, had paused to finish the patched up on the officer in the hallway and then followed the trail of blood into the gym. The EMT barely registered the motionless form of Cromartie. His attention was all on his ex-fiancé, held snugly in the grip of the terminator he’d dubbed the ‘very scary robot’, their mouths pressed together in what he could only assume was a completely voluntary kiss.
Dropping his med kit with a thump that caused the two to break apart, Charley made a strangled attempt at Sarah’s name, but barely managed a choking wheeze. Taking a deep breath, he tried again.
“Sarah? What the hell is this?”
Pulling the rest of the way out of Cameron’s arms, Sarah took a couple of steps away and shrugged. “None of your business is what it is. What are you doing here?”
“I came to help!” He bent down, scooping the spilled medical supplies back into the bag and trying frantically to process what he’d just seen.
“I didn’t ask for your help.” Sarah snarled defensively. Before he’d turned his focus to the bottles and packages on the floor she’d seen the flash of disgust that had cut through the confusion and shock on his face. Despite wishing that his opinion didn’t matter to her, Sarah couldn’t help the curl of nausea and shame in her belly, and she wrapped her arms around herself, taking another step away from Cameron.
“Fine!” Charley flung the last roll of gauze back into the bag and zipped it closed. Stiff with shock, anger and revulsion, he turned to leave.
“No!” Cameron, silent until now, stepped forward and reached a hand out towards him. “Please. She requires medical attention. I’ll go.”
Charley stopped and turned, his pride struggling with the need to give aid wherever it was required. Really looking at Sarah for the first time he saw the slowly developing bruises on her throat, and realized from the stiff way she was holding herself that there was probably damage he couldn’t see.
“All right…” He managed stiffly when Sarah didn’t contradict the terminator. “But just so we’re clear, I am not okay with this.”
“I’m not asking you to be.” She replied wearily, turning to address Cameron mechanically. “Cameron, the officer outside the door, he has a radio. Tell him…shit…tell him…”
“I will inform him that the man who assaulted him has escaped.” Cameron interjected. “Then I will create a diversion to draw off the police.” She levelled a neutral gaze on Charley. “You will allow Derek to use your vehicle and a stretcher to remove Cromartie’s body…It must be destroyed.”
“I’m with you there.” Charley nodded. “He’s already in one of my suits, looking for John.”
“I’ll call him.” Sarah slipped her phone out of her pocket, and toyed with it, finally looking up at Cameron, her eyes conflicted. “Be careful…?”
“I will.” Moving swiftly now that they had a plan, Cameron stripped Cromartie of his clothing and pulled his body over to the doors, so that at a glance from those about to flood the school, he would be invisible behind them.
After ducking out to make sure the security guard made his call, she dressed hurriedly in the other terminators clothing, adding a dark hooded sweatshirt from the locker room and tied up her hair. Running with the hood of the sweatshirt up to shadow her face, she would hopefully be indistinguishable from the description given out by the guard.
While Cameron was making her preparations, Sarah let Derek in on the situation, and he agreed to go back for the ambulance and bring it around the rear entrance to the gymnasium once Cameron had drawn off the police. Sarah and Charley would go with him and when Cameron was certain she’d evaded pursuit she would meet them back at the house. She updated John as well, and he assured her he was okay to leave with the rest of the students when they lifted the lockdown.
Ready to go, Cameron turned to take a last look at Sarah before plunging out the back door and into the night. “Wait until they are all gone.” She cautioned.
Sarah nodded and the door slammed behind the terminator. A heartbeat later she closed her eyes as shouts and gunfire rang out from the parking lot.
“Hey.” Charley laid a hand on her shoulder and squeezed gently. “It’ll be okay.”
Unable to reply Sarah just looked at him, and after a moment he lowered his eyes first.