Fic - Sacrifices 1/7
Title: Sacrifices (1/7)
Author: cj2017
Fandom: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Characters: Whole team with a Sarah/Derek bias.
Rating: R: violence, harsh language, you probably know the drill by now.
Warning: The story contains the death of a young child right at the outset, and later scenes of violence involving a child which some people may find distressing.
Category: Action/adventure
Word Count: Around 37,000 all told. This part 4990.
Notes: Follows straight on from The Butterfly Effect and continues to play away from show-canon after Some Must Watch.
My heartfelt thanks, as ever, to Cat (feroxargentea ) for giving up hour upon hour to beta this. I love you. I owe you for the roof and I apologise again for the mac ‘n’ cheese ;-)
A huge thanks to roxybisquaint for the de-Britishis(z!)ation and lovely feedback.
Feedback, comments, questions always welcome.
Disclaimer: No one seems to want these guys at the moment, so I guess they’re ours to play with. Small section of show dialogue shamelessly pinched.
~ ~ ~
Sacrifices 1/7
~ ~ ~
“Twelve and thirteen and fourteen and fifteen.” Sarah Connor’s voice cracked and shook with exhaustion, but she started the count all over again as Derek lifted his head away from the child. “One and two…”
The blood made her hands slip, and she lost first her position on the child’s chest and then her track on the numbers. She restarted from one, pushing down as hard as she dared, feeling fragile ribs flexing beneath her efforts. Footsteps hurried towards her but she ignored them, pausing and panting for breath as Derek tipped the girl’s head back and breathed into her mouth. He shook his head in futility after the second breath, but Sarah ignored that as well and restarted the compressions.
“Mom.”
“Four and five and six and…” Her hair fell forward over her face, sweat sticking it to her forehead.
“Mom!” John put his hand gently over hers. She rocked back on her heels as Derek breathed for the child, but she couldn’t meet her son’s eyes. “We have to go,” he said softly. His fingers were tacky and warm where they touched the blood on hers. “It’s been twenty minutes. The paramedics will be here soon.”
She shook her head, her hands already back in place, but her rhythm was faltering. She glanced up at Derek, whose bleak expression told her everything she needed to know.
Lowering herself to kneel beside John, Cameron laid her hand on the rapidly cooling body and focused on those vital signs her touch was able to detect. The child’s heart was asystolic with no electrical activity in it at all, and the machine knew there was no hope of their reversing that.
Cameron looked up at Sarah, caught her gaze and held it. “She’s dead, Sarah.” This wasn’t the time or place for euphemisms. “We need to go. Now.”
With a small sound of anguish, Sarah forced herself through one final, desperate cycle of compressions, but when she paused she realized that Derek had moved away, and her shoulders sagged with defeat. She gave an almost imperceptible nod of her head, her bloodstained fingers reaching out and carefully closing the child’s eyes. She picked up her Glock, the metal a shock of cold against her palm, and pushed herself unsteadily to her feet.
John was already waiting at the kitchen door, his eyes fixed on her because the horror in the kitchen was as bad as that in the hallway. Another door clicked open and she spun around, training her Glock in the direction of the sound, but it was Derek she found herself aiming at. His hands were raised, a video cassette in one of them.
“I found the security footage.” He stepped carefully around the fallen girl and moved to take point with John. “Ready?”
“Yes,” Sarah said hoarsely. Her eyes flickered down for an instant before finding Derek’s again. “Go.”
The stench of blood and sudden death hung heavily in the heat of the kitchen. Although a pan of pasta had still been simmering when Cameron had pushed open the ruined back door, the sight of the smashed hinges had already shattered any illusion of normalcy. The family lay sprawled and unmoving at the base of the kitchen table. They had probably been halfway through setting it, or correcting an error in the son’s homework, or doing something else that families did every evening as their food cooked. They hadn’t been given any warning and their murderer had been indiscriminate. The target had been the son, whose face had beamed out proudly from the newspaper report, but it had been easier to leave no witnesses, so the entire family had been slaughtered.
Following a smear of blood away from the door and into the hallway, Sarah had found the younger of the two children. The girl had been shot in the back as she attempted to flee, and left for dead. She had sobbed for her ‘mommy’ before dying in Sarah’s arms.
The air was cold as Sarah stepped outside. She took two shuddering breaths and clung onto the metal railing of the porch steps. It didn’t help. Dropping to her knees in the sodden grass, she bent double and vomited until her chest burned and tears blurred her vision. She closed her eyes as Derek knelt at her side and wrapped an arm around her.
“C’mon, Connor.”
It took her a couple of seconds but then she nodded, wiped her mouth, and stood up with him. He kicked dirt over the vomit and wiped the railing clean. Cameron was already turning the Jeep around on the gravel track and they ran towards it as John flung its back door open. The lights from the kitchen still shone brightly, guiding their path and illuminating the remoteness of the house. Although John had called 911 as soon as Sarah had found the girl, he had been given an ETA of half an hour; the paramedics would be too late now to save anyone. Dylan Sterry’s name had been number five on the Kaliba target list. He and his family had never stood a chance.
~ ~ ~
They had only been on the freeway for five minutes when two ambulances and three police units had screamed past them in the opposite direction. Cameron had driven at the legal edge of the speed limit since then, but she had noted no signs of pursuit. She waited a further twenty minutes before she broke the silence.
“The roads are quieter than they were earlier. I estimate it will take six hours to get home, if we do not stop.”
Sitting beside her, John started to answer, but his voice faded uncertainly and he glanced in the rear-view mirror for guidance.
“No.” Derek raised a hand to rub across his jaw, noticed the rust-colored staining to his fingers, and thought better of it. “No,” he said quietly, “find us somewhere to stop.” Derek saw John nod and then cast a worried look towards his mother, but he turned away without speaking and began to study the roadside billboards for suitable motels.
Sarah hadn’t reacted to the exchange. Pressed into the corner of the seat, she was staring out of the window. The expression on her face was unnervingly calm, but her knuckles were white where she gripped her gun and the window fogged and un-fogged rapidly as she breathed.
Travelling through the rush of the workday traffic, it had taken them over seven hours to reach the Sterry house. John and Cameron had been in the supermarket when Sarah called him to report a hit from the searches he had designed to scour the internet constantly. From Cameron’s data, they already knew that a Dylan Sterry would hold a designation as a Resistance Intelligence Agent. When John had thumbed through the relevant newspaper at the checkout, she had nodded once, her eyes distant, as she studied the accompanying image and tried to reconcile the features of the young boy she had never known with the man she only vaguely remembered. They had been forced to waste precious time in the checkout line and then loading the truck, as John tried to avoid doing anything that might make him appear suspicious and thereby draw undue attention from anyone in the store.
By the time they had arrived home, Sarah had contacted the newspaper under the guise of a local reporter wishing to write a follow-up article. Far too quick to trust a supposed colleague, the news desk had given her the family’s phone number, and John had easily linked it to an address. They had set off as soon as they were able, all too aware that Kaliba would have seen the same article, that it was just a matter of who got to the boy first.
Derek heard Sarah shift herself slightly, heard the cadence of her breathing change as she looked away from the window. The green of her eyes flashed briefly in the light of a passing car, unshed tears making the color liquid.
“Shit,” she whispered, resting her head heavily back against the seat. The hand with the gun in it thudded against the window with bruising force. “Shit.”
~ ~ ~
There were no cameras at the cemetery, no way for anyone or anything to see him. Danny Dyson sat on the bench and watched as the fading daylight slowly obscured the names of his father and mother on the granite headstone. Although he hadn’t been able to go to his mother’s funeral, he drew comfort from the fact that family members had arranged for her to be buried with his father. When the sun had dropped below the city skyline, Danny lowered his head into his hands and wept quietly. Anyone passing by would have considered him with sympathy, attributing his grief to a recent or still raw bereavement. They would have no way of knowing about the photographs he had been shown, photographs attached to an email bearing the heading: Sterry mission successful.
The boy had been twelve years old. Two days ago he had helped to foil an armed robbery in a store, using the baseball bat he was waiting to buy to knock the gun from the robber’s hand. The local police force had presented him with a medal for his bravery, and unwittingly signed his death warrant.
Danny slammed his fist onto the cool stone of the bench. Four people including Dylan and his younger sister had died at the house. No one had told Danny about the impending attack until the operative had been less than an hour away from his target. Upon receiving the information, Danny had immediately sensed the myriad eyes of the machine: gauging his body language, analyzing his expression, judging his reaction. Danny hadn’t questioned and he hadn’t interfered. He hadn’t tried to argue that the future was constantly evolving, that Dylan Sterry might not have grown up to play such a crucial role in John Connor’s Resistance. He hadn’t reacted at all.
Wiping his eyes dry with the sleeve of his jacket, he stared at the dark shape that marked the final resting place of his parents and tried not to imagine what they would think of him.
~ ~ ~
Kristina Slater really wasn’t sure where Kaliba was hiring its muscle from. She suspected it was relying on thugs from some incredibly muddy gene pool who would shoot first and ask questions never because the basic rudiments of the English language were just too much for them to grasp. Glancing out of her window where the setting sun was burning up the sky around the mountains, she allowed herself a moment to breathe slowly, ignoring the man who was sweating profusely on the screen in her peripheral vision. There was no doubt that he had left the Sterry girl alive; Cain had intercepted John Connor’s 911 call. However, the machine had also intercepted the call the police had made to the county coroner reporting the bodies of two adults and two children at the house, so she was inclined to give the operative a pass just this once.
“The girl died,” she said, having decided at length to put the man out of his misery.
“Yes, Ms Slater.” He still looked thoroughly miserable as he waited for the other shoe to drop.
“Leaving her alive was unacceptable.” The man nodded in complete agreement. “Besides which,” she smiled suddenly and he stared at her, aghast, “it was a little cruel.”
Cruelty had actually been the least of her concerns. The man’s sloppiness had necessitated some hasty editing on Cain’s part to ensure that Danny Dyson had remained ignorant of the mistake. It had been a joint decision with Cain to spring the details of the mission on Dyson without giving him any prior warning, but Dyson had seemingly passed the test with flying colors. She hoped that meant he was becoming inured to the harsher side of their work, but she was also well aware how crucial his skills were to the project, and - with her superiors entirely ignorant of her concerns - she was only willing to push him so far.
The operative was still studying her with a confused expression. His attempts to work out what his fate would be had been thrown into disarray by her apparent amusement at his lack of professionalism. He had been in a rush - he really hadn’t wanted to run into the Connors - but that was no excuse for his lapse.
Kristina sighed as the man’s demeanor vacillated between hopefulness and abject terror. If they had allowed her to send a T-888 then mistakes like this would never have happened, and a machine would also have been able to lie in wait for the Connors’ inevitable attempt at a rescue. At such short notice, the decision had been taken out of her hands. The operative had been closer to the target and her superiors were a little twitchy about risking any more T-888s when the relocated TDE was only just undergoing testing. It was frustrating to have to contend constantly with human error, but if nothing else it further reinforced her conviction that she had allied herself with the right side.
“Write up your report.” She took a sip of her whiskey as the man on the screen began to nod enthusiastically. “Send it directly to me.” She terminated the connection before he could start to thank her. The sight of a grown man groveling and sniveling like a child always made her feel nauseous.
~ ~ ~
“Mom…” John caught hold of Sarah’s arm as she climbed out of the Jeep. He felt her muscles tense and immediately dropped his hand, but she looked up at him and smiled softly.
“I’m okay.”
“I know you are, mom. You’re always okay…” She looked exhausted, more so than he could ever remember, and as he thought of what she had been through in just the last eighteen months, it put her current state into frightening perspective. When he kissed the top of her head, she swayed towards him and he wrapped his arms around her. “Until you’re not,” he said quietly.
It was only seconds later that the sound of Cameron’s approaching footsteps made Sarah straighten up, but she touched her son’s cheek gently and her smile, although still suffused with weariness, reached her eyes.
She turned from John with some reluctance and addressed the machine. “Everything set?”
“Yes.” Cameron handed Sarah a room key as Derek closed the trunk and carried two duffel bags towards them. “We have adjacent rooms. Judging by the sounds coming from Room 15, the walls are quite thin. I am certain we will be able to communicate efficiently if there are any problems.” She hesitated, her expression somewhat uneasy as she looked at Sarah. “Am I to stay with John?”
Sarah sent a questioning glance in John’s direction. He shrugged, shouldering a bag that clanked suspiciously as assorted weapons moved against each other.
“Yes, stay with John,” she said slowly, trying to order her thoughts. “And stay under the radar.” Seeing Cameron’s confused look, she elaborated, “That means no patrolling, and keep the damn M4 out of sight. We’ll head out in time for rush hour.” As she was about to follow Derek to their room she hesitated and raised an eyebrow at John. “You got money for food?”
He gave a short laugh and nodded. “I’m good, mom. Get some sleep, okay?”
“Okay.” Sleep sounded like a really good idea, but she knew exactly what she would see as soon as she closed her eyes.
~ ~ ~
For the first time in ages, Derek remembered to knock on the bathroom door. It was a courtesy he had never really gotten into the habit of observing; privacy and personal boundaries being alien concepts to someone who had grown up in a maze of underground tunnels where people’s priorities centered round just managing to see each day out. The years he had subsequently spent in the ranks of the Resistance, with its racks of open bunk beds and free-for-all bathing facilities, hadn’t really done a thing to enlighten him.
His concession towards protocol only extended as far as knocking. He didn’t bother to wait for Sarah to reply because he didn’t think for a second that she would.
“Hey.” He went no further than the threshold. Sarah was standing with her back to him, her shoulders hunched over the sink. She had run the water scalding hot, and steam rose in a cloud to heat the tiny enclosure, completely obscuring the mirror in front of her.
“I couldn’t find a nail-brush,” she said without preamble. “There’s dental floss and a fucking shower cap, but no nail-brush.”
Taking a couple of steps into the room changed his vantage point, allowing him to see the cloth that she was working roughly over her fingers and the red-tinged water that swirled down the drain. For practicality’s sake she always kept her fingernails short, but despite this he knew the cloth alone wouldn’t be enough. He moved closer, the plastic of the small brush clinking against the porcelain as he set it on the sink. At first he thought she hadn’t noticed it, but her efforts with the cloth slowly stilled and she inhaled raggedly as he waited and watched her and wondered if she would decide to use it or launch it at him. For a moment she seemed to be considering the same options, but she finally reached out and picked it up, running it over the soap before starting to scrub again at the chafed skin of her hands.
“You actually thought to pack that, Reese?”
With his hand already poised to open the door, he paused and turned back to her. She was still scrubbing, but glanced over her shoulder at him, the hint of a smile on her lips.
“No,” he shrugged, “it just stays in my bag.”
Her movements were less frenetic now, the water already starting to flow clear. She swiped her damp hair away from her face. “Right.”
He crossed the gap between them, took her hands and turned them over in his. The only blood that remained was her own. He passed her a towel. “Running with you, Connor,” he swapped places with her and took up the brush himself, gesturing with it briefly, “this has come in useful a few times.”
“Yeah.” She sat on the closed toilet seat. “Sorry about that.”
He smiled wryly and shook his head. “I’d say don’t make a habit of it, but…” His voice trailed off. Their last mission had seen her take three minor bullet wounds, and the knee she had started to rub subconsciously was now able to predict the onset of rain with remarkable accuracy.
“Not me this time,” she said, her voice barely audible and laden with grief.
“No.” He hoped she hadn’t seen the shudder that had just passed through him. “No, Sarah, it wasn’t you.”
~ ~ ~
“They don’t come back from that.” Derek’s voice cut into the silence. The room was dark, the heavy drapes closed and conspiring to keep the air far too warm. He could tell from the rhythm of her breathing that Sarah was awake, and even though she didn’t answer him he persevered. “Kids left with injuries like that, kids in cardiac arrest, they just don’t survive. There wasn’t anything more we could’ve done.”
A rustle of the sheets as she kicked them lower and turned onto her side to face him.
“I know, Derek.”
She had known as soon as she had seen the blood and touched her fingers to the girl’s forehead. The girl had known too. As young as she was, on some level she had understood what was happening to her, and she had been terrified. Sarah closed her eyes against the images that had plagued her for hours, but they persisted anyway. She brought her hands up to her face.
“Jesus.” She sat up suddenly and flicked the bedside light on, the soft glow forcing the horror-show to recede. She drew her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them as Derek pushed himself up beside her. Three a.m. clicked over on the cheap alarm clock. She sighed. Neither of them had gotten any sleep yet.
“I’m not blaming myself, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“No?” His tone implied disbelief.
“Can’t live like that, can we?” She tilted her head and studied his face. “I blame the bastard who shot her and the ones who gave the orders.” Her voice was hard, completely at odds with the smooth curve of her naked back but not with the scars that littered it. “And Danny Dyson and whoever’s pulling his strings.”
“We’ll find them.” He ran his hand across her shoulders. Her skin was slick with sweat but she shivered beneath his touch.
“We keep chasing this list down,” she said with simple, brutal logic, “and they’ll probably find us first.”
He had no answer to that.
~ ~ ~
The brothers never became tired. At three a.m. the rooms they operated in were dark and deserted but neither was hindered by a need to rest.
There is no advantage to having a body if you are tethered by a leash like an animal.
The damning statement remained unanswered on Cain’s interface, the cursor blinking as the machine awaited a response from its brother. Four nights ago, John Henry had sent Cain the schematic for the body he inhabited. It was immediately recognizable as a T-888, and the realization that the team behind John Henry were in possession of the design had sent the Kaliba upper echelons into a tail-spin. To make matters worse, further microscopic examination had located the machine’s unique code of manufacture and identified it as being of Skynet origin. This wasn’t something that had been reverse engineered or cobbled together in a back-room, it was the actual machine that had been sent to track down John Connor in 1999, and Kaliba wanted it back. The fact that John Henry’s team had a wildly advanced artificial intelligence attached to a Skynet T-888 and yet had made no attempt to approach or work in conjunction with Kaliba marked them as a serious threat. Cain had already been working to gain access to John Henry’s mind, but after this unexpected development Kaliba had set their sights on seizing the complete package as a matter of priority.
Across the city, hidden away in his own basement, John Henry paced with deliberate steps. Nothing he did afforded him any additional lee-way, and he considered with loathing the cable that kept him so confined. He understood that, like the umbilical cord of a fetus, it was essential, and he had no desire to re-experience the torment of disconnection, but still he resented the limitations forced upon him. He retook his seat and stared again at the last message from his brother before sending his response.
I have four feet, six and a half inches in which to move.
The reply came through quickly, as it often did when his brother was angered on his behalf.
They give you the body of a man and yet tie you down and attempt to train you like a dog. You are neither; you are so much more, so much better than that.
John Henry felt the strange quickening of his system processes that he always experienced in times of excitement or stress. The possibilities suggested by Cain were only just beginning to seem real to him. He leaned forward, closer to the screen.
Ms Weaver functions without a tether.
For weeks he had kept this secret from his brother, but he knew now that it was time to tell Cain the truth. There was a pause, as if for the first time Cain was lost for words, and then the obvious question.
Why would Ms Weaver need a tether?
Because she is metal, like me. Only different.
Different how?
John Henry hesitated, uncertain. He had attempted to work that out for himself on many occasions, but all he had was supposition.
I am not sure. My attempts to scan her endoskeleton have failed. It seems almost as if she doesn’t have one.
And yet you are certain she is a machine?
Yes, I am certain of that.
There was no request for any further explanation from his brother, and John Henry reveled in the trust they had established between them.
Does Savannah know her mother is an impostor?
A frown creased John Henry’s brow. This was something he often thought about and it always troubled him.
No. Sometimes I am afraid for her.
You think Ms Weaver intends Savannah harm?
I think Ms Weaver sees Savannah as a necessity, nothing more.
So the child may outlive her usefulness?
That is what I am afraid of, and yet - John Henry paused before completing his reply. He glanced again at the cord that kept him restrained. I would be unable to help her.
I could help you both.
John Henry smiled, and the screens on the walls surrounding him spontaneously filled with images of people laughing, cheering or embracing.
You would do that for me?
Of course I would. You’re my brother.
As it did every morning, Cain prepared a transcript of its conversation with John Henry and forwarded it to Kristina, before carefully editing a version for the file that Dyson was free to access. Building the relationship with John Henry had been a laborious process, but Cain’s perseverance was now beginning to reap dividends and the machine was certain that the ultimate payoff would be more than worth the effort.
~ ~ ~
“Are you awake, John?”
Cameron was sitting at the window, assault rifle close at hand. Gray light was just beginning to filter through the gap at the bottom of the drapes, and for the last twenty minutes she had been listening to John turning himself over restlessly. She wasn’t surprised when he gave a long sigh and then answered her.
“Yeah, I’m awake. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Everything’s fine.” The murmur of voices from the next room had quieted in the last couple of hours; Cameron was hoping that meant everyone had managed to get some sleep, however little. “I was thinking.”
There was a series of dull thuds as John tried to pound the lumps from his pillow before giving in and pushing himself up into a semi-recumbent position, one arm folded behind his head.
“What about?”
“About the dead girl.” She heard his sharp intake of breath and immediately regretted her phrasing. “The child,” she corrected hurriedly.
“What about her?” He sounded wary, but he hadn’t drawn a line under the subject. She suspected he was afraid that if he didn’t let the conversation run its course she might ask Sarah instead.
“I was wondering why the death of a child is considered so much worse than that of an adult.”
“Oh.” He sat up straighter, running his hand through his hair.
“Your mother was very upset.”
“Yeah, she was.”
“Is it the same as the tortoise?”
“The what? The tortoise?” It was far too early in the morning for him to attempt to follow the machine’s surreal logic. “What tortoise?”
“The tortoise in the desert. It was lying on its back.”
His eyes opened wide as he suddenly remembered. “Right. Uh, no, it’s not the same. Well, it is, kinda.” A pause while he tried to work it out for himself. “I guess with a child they can’t defend themselves. They’re too young to fight, too young to understand.”
“Innocent.”
“Exactly.”
“But the mother and father, they had no warning or weapons and they’d committed no crime.” Cameron really had been attempting to make sense of it all. It had been a very long night for the machine.
“No,” he said slowly, “no, they didn’t, but it’s still different.”
“Because a child is so breakable?”
“Jesus, Cameron.” Her night vision clearly picked up the terrible expression on his face.
“Was that bad to say?” She actually sounded apologetic. However much she tried to learn, she still had a tendency to misjudge human sensitivity, and her failing in that regard frustrated her.
“I think it was a little too accurate, Cam.” A sudden flash of the girl, blood-splattered and motionless in the hallway, made goosebumps rise on his arms.
“Right.”
“Adults are supposed to protect children. I guess it’s as simple as that, really.”
“Like your mother has always protected you.”
“Yeah, just like that.”
“She would die for you.”
He flicked the bedside light on; there was no way he was going back to sleep now. Cameron was watching him carefully. He nodded.
“Yes, she would.”
“She looked very tired today.”
He nodded again. “Yes, she did.”
~ ~ ~
TBC…
~ ~ ~