Fic - Sacrifices (3/7)
Title: Sacrifices (3/7)
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.
Note: This part came out long (about 7,000 words) so - if no one yelps at me - I’ll give ya the weekend to play with it and update again on Monday.
~ ~ ~
Sacrifices 3/7
~ ~ ~
The bolt-cutters made light work of the thick security chain Makin had used to secure his side gate. Having stowed them back in his duffel bag, Derek reached for his Glock in the same instant that a helicopter buzzed low overhead, the beam of its searchlight cutting across the rooftops.
“Fuck.” The light hadn’t been aimed at them, but Sarah saw the momentary terror stark in his eyes as he instinctively crouched in the darkest corner and made himself as inconspicuous as possible.
“Hey.” She reached a tentative hand out, stopping short of touching him until he had made eye contact with her. “You good?”
“Yeah.” He swallowed, his eyes tracking skywards. “Just…”
“I know.” She squeezed his hand briefly, and at his nod pushed the gate open.
The passage leading up the side of the house was unlit. They gained a fleeting impression of an overgrown, untended yard and a path cluttered with discarded engine parts before the gate obliterated the light from the street and they were left in darkness. Pulling in a slow breath, Sarah stood up straight. She could feel her pulse thrumming in her chest and recognized the long-forgotten thrill of being the predator instead of the prey.
She had spent years training with mercenaries in Nicaragua, running guns across the border, hitting other groups for territory or spoils or sometimes just because they were bored. It had been terrifying and exhilarating and about as far removed from her life as a waitress as it was possible to get. The skills she had learned then had kept her and John alive for almost eighteen years, and they served her well now as she crept silently up the path, easily avoiding the numerous obstacles scattered along her route, picking her way confidently through them and hearing the barely perceptible tread of Derek’s boots as he did likewise.
At the corner, she stopped short. The faint breeze carried the sweetly herbal scent of pot towards her. A couple of seconds passed and she heard the joint flare as the smoker took a drag, and then the clink of a bottle being lowered. She turned to Derek, signaling that their target was out in the yard, giving him an idea of the approximate distance. With utmost care, she lowered her bag to the ground. Then, with her Glock gripped tightly in both hands, she chanced her first look around the corner. One hand lowered immediately, telling Derek she was going to advance, that he should hold his position and keep her covered.
Makin was sitting alone with his back towards her, his feet propped up on a plastic crate, three empty beer bottles upended on a second crate. She watched as he brought the joint to his lips and inhaled deeply. He blew smoke rings, his body language languid and lazy, but a shotgun was sitting by the crate within easy reach, and a handgun rested alongside the beer bottles; Sarah had no intention of being complacent.
Thirteen steps took her to the wooden rail behind Makin’s head. On her signal, Derek left the corner, keeping to the shadows and choosing his angle of approach with care. The porch was a low construction and poorly maintained. Spotting a break in the railing, Sarah gave herself no opportunity to second-guess her instincts. Despite the additional weight of the Kevlar she cleared the gap easily, rolling into a crouch beside Makin and bringing her Glock up to press against his temple with enough force that he couldn’t mistake her intention.
“Put your hands where I can see them. Slowly.”
“What the f…” His eyes opened wide, her instruction not quite registering as he struggled to shake off the effects of the pot and the alcohol. He started to move his hands, reaching furtively with his right towards the gun on the crate.
“Shit! You fucking bitch!” The hand that had been straying was now pressed over the split Sarah had made in his scalp when she slammed her gun into it.
“Just keep giving me excuses,” she said, watching without a flicker of emotion as blood trickled between his fingers.
“Do I look like I got any fuckin’ money, lady?” The sound of Derek retrieving both of his weapons made him try to turn his head again and he moaned when her gun reconnected with the same amount of force.
“What gives you the impression we’re here for your money?” she asked in a reasonable tone, and for the first time she saw a flicker of fear in his eyes. “Lean forward and put your hands behind your back.” She tapped lightly against his temple and he hurried to comply. “That’s more like it.” She smiled at him and kept the gun leveled at his head as Derek stepped towards him with a roll of duct tape.
~ ~ ~
Makin might not have had money in the house but he certainly didn’t lack for anything. His lap-top had already been connected up to his massive widescreen television and he sat rigid in the chair Derek had bound him to as Sarah loaded a disc. He strained against his bonds when he suddenly recognized his own image on the screen but there was nothing he could do to break free, and the television, with its cinema-screen dimensions, left no detail to the imagination. The tape across his mouth prevented him from protesting and the gun bruising the back of his head ensured that he couldn’t look away. The recording ended abruptly as Makin’s onscreen image took a drag on his cigarette and then flicked ash onto the Sterrys’ kitchen floor.
Relaxing her stance behind Makin, Sarah tucked her Glock into her belt and stepped around to face him.
“Make a sound that isn’t an answer to a question and this is going to be over real fucking quick.” She hesitated with her fingers poised on the side of his gag, making sure he followed her meaning by turning his face towards Derek, who was calmly fixing a silencer to a handgun. Makin nodded, his nostrils flaring with panic and his eyes bulging.
“Good.” Without further ceremony she ripped the tape from his lips, and waited patiently while he spluttered for air. When he had caught his breath she spoke again. “Who gave you the orders?”
“Go fuck your-” His head whipped to one side as her fist slammed into his jaw. He whined, blood splattered on his chin.
“Who gave you the orders?” The same intonation, unhurried and dangerous. He had barely shaken his head when she hit him again, his nose bursting, the impact rocking him back against the chair.
“Bitch, I don’t…” He saw her hand rising and flinched away. “Please, I don’t know anything.”
She felt the cartilage of his nose give way beneath her fist and blanked out the reciprocal pain in her knuckles. He was starting to sob, blood bubbling thickly from his nose and lip. Ignoring him, she wiped her hand clean on the small towel that Derek passed her. When she had finished, she tipped Makin’s chin with her Glock and forced him to look directly at her.
“I’m only going to ask this one more time. Who gave you the orders?”
His shoulders heaved as he wept, and she was on the verge of signaling to Derek when the last of his defiant resolve crumbled.
“No, no. A woman, a woman sends them through a PDA.”
It was as if the floodgates had suddenly opened; once he had started to speak, Makin wouldn’t shut up. It all came out in a rush: he had been recruited fresh out of prison for wet-work and anything else they had required of him, he had completed three jobs in the last six months and it was only because he had needed the money and had kids of his own to support and please, oh god, please, he needed to be alive to see them grow up.
As soon as he stopped providing any relevant information and resorted to begging, Sarah focused most of her attention on the state of his living room. She considered the stack of pornographic DVDs, the ashtray overflowing with the remnants of joints, the empty beer bottles at the side of the sofa, and the rack of Oriental weapons in the corner.
“You don’t have any children, do you, Karl?” Her voice cut through his increasingly fevered monologue like a knife. Caught mid-sentence, he stared at her open-mouthed. He seemed to be on the verge of attempting to defend his lie, but then shuddered at the expression on her face and shook his head miserably.
“That little girl you shot.” Sarah fought to keep her voice level. “She was four years old and you left her alone to die slowly.”
He was still shaking his head, blood and tears running onto his chest. “I didn’t mean to.”
“No, of course you didn’t mean to.” Her words dripped with loathing. She realized her hands were shaking, and turned away, unable to bear looking at him and not quite sure what she might do if he tried to make any more excuses. Removing the disc from the lap-top gave her the few seconds she needed to regain her composure and face him again.
“Men like you never fucking mean to.” She stalked over to Derek and dropped the disc into the padded envelope he held out to her. She watched him seal it up and then dragged a wooden chair over towards Makin. With one hand holding her Glock loosely, she straddled the chair and rested her arms across the back of it. “I want to know everything you know: contact protocols, codes, safe houses, payment methods, everything.”
His eyes fixed on the gun, Makin nodded obediently.
“Good.” Sarah smiled. “You said a woman sends you your orders. You can start by telling me her name.”
~ ~ ~
“Got it.” Derek walked back into the living room and displayed the PDA for Sarah. It had taken over an hour for Makin to sniffle and stammer his way through everything he knew and a fair few irrelevancies he threw in for good measure. Somewhat predictably, he hadn’t known much of importance. At no point had he met any other operatives, and he had no details of any Kaliba facilities. He seemed to be lower on the organizational structure than the likes of Carey and Jenkins, which was reflected by his lack of insight. The fact that he hadn’t recognized Sarah and looked blank when she showed him a photograph of Danny Dyson implied that he had no real idea whom he had been working for or what their ultimate aim was.
He watched her nervously as she stood up and adjusted her grip on her Glock.
“I told you everything,” he whispered, his voice gravelly from overuse. He tried to rock forward to stretch the tape holding him in place but there was no slack in it at all. He moaned in despair.
Sarah stood motionless, watching him struggle. She closed her eyes and saw the same man coolly shooting a panicking child and then nonchalantly turning away. She took quick breaths through her nose as her stomach threatened to rebel and a cold sweat broke out on her forehead.
“Oh God.” Makin must have had some insight into what she was thinking because he started to sob again. “Oh God, are you going to kill me?”
She glanced across at Derek, whose face betrayed nothing, seemingly unwilling to influence her either way but prepared to accord with whatever choice she made. She took a step forward and raised the Glock.
With a soft cry, Makin closed his eyes.
“I wouldn’t waste the fucking bullet,” she hissed, her mouth so close to his face that he jerked away as if he had been burned. “That disc is going to the police.” Derek held the envelope up so that Makin could see that it was already addressed. “And you are going to sit here until they come for you.” She smiled and sealed a fresh piece of tape across his lips. “Don’t worry, we’ve told them where you live, so it shouldn’t take too long.” She cocked her head to one side as if considering the vagaries of the US mail. “I’d say two to three days, tops.”
His eyes widened as the reality of his predicament slowly sank in, his stay of execution immediately forgotten as his face flushed red with anger. She couldn’t really tell what he was trying to scream at her but she guessed it was nothing complimentary. Tired of listening to his half-garbled expletives, she cracked him over the back of his head with the butt of her gun. The blow rendered him unconscious, his head lolling, partially blocking his airway. He started to snore, the sound labored and wet.
“You okay, Sarah?” Derek asked quietly. She hadn’t moved and she didn’t answer him. He was about to repeat his question when he realized why she was so preoccupied. Her face ashen, she was staring at Makin as his breathing deteriorated. She watched him take several gargling breaths, his skin turning cherry red and then a deep purple. Another couple of seconds passed before she stepped forward, reaching out to tip his head back and open his airway. The snoring gradually settled into a more regular pattern of heavy breathing and his color improved.
She immediately turned her back on him, looking across at Derek and nodding. “I’m fine,” she said, her voice wavering slightly as the adrenaline began to fade.
He wasn’t entirely convinced, but decided it would be safer to take her at her word. He offered no further comment, stooping instead to check Makin’s bonds thoroughly and adding more tape until he was satisfied it would hold for the duration. He wiped down the few things they had touched, finding no evidence of security precautions besides an intruder alarm and numerous firearms. A writing pad with four obscure sets of letters and numbers scribbled on it went into Sarah’s bag, but there was nothing else of interest.
They left as efficiently as they had arrived, locking the rear door securely to prevent any opportunistic thieves from finding Makin before the police got their chance. The neighborhood was quieter as they crossed the street, drapes tightly drawn and windows closed against the sirens that still wailed in the distance. Everyone was seemingly content to mind their own business, and Sarah knew that if the police did question door-to-door when they finally found Makin, no one would admit to having seen a thing.
~ ~ ~
The dirt track beyond the currently-empty campsite bore no recent tire marks, but Derek followed it further into the forest, regardless. They had discussed driving straight through the night, but a close encounter with a hair-pin bend that had almost cast them down a steep drop-off, plus the fact that Sarah could barely keep her eyes open, had decided the matter for them. Sarah lowered her window, the smell of warm pine quickly replacing the odor of the fast food he had bought and stowed on the back seat. She breathed deeply, closing her eyes and allowing her guard to drop, just slightly, for the first time in hours. She had already spoken to John, partly to pass on whatever bits of information might be worth researching, but mainly just to reassure him that they were both okay. He hadn’t bothered to try to disguise the relief in his voice, and when she had confirmed that Makin had been left alive there had been a long silence before he quietly told her that he loved her and that she should get some sleep.
“Sarah?”
“Mmm?” She opened her eyes a crack and squinted in confusion at Derek. “Oh, shit. Sorry.”
At some point, evidently while she had been dozing, he had parked up and made camp. A small fire crackled in the clearing, their bedding rolls neatly laid out beside it. The smell of freshly brewed coffee and burgers made her stomach rumble. She had no idea what time it was or when she had last eaten.
He pulled her door open and held his hand out to her. “C’mon, while the food’s still… well,” he frowned, “tepid.”
Tepid or not, in a matter of minutes she had wolfed down her burger, all of her fries, and a stolen handful of his. He waited until she had finished and then tipped out the remnants of his soda and scooped the ice into a Ziploc plastic bag.
“Let me see your hand.”
Too tired and too comfortable to offer any resistance, she let him balance her right hand on his knee and dab at her oozing knuckles with a warm cloth.
“Straighten your fingers. Okay, now make a fist.”
A caustic response lingered on the tip of her tongue, but she bit it back and flexed the aching joints as tightly as she could. They hurt, but it was nothing that she couldn’t bear and she knew there were no fractures. Having covered the broken skin with antiseptic cream, he wrapped his impromptu ice pack in an old t-shirt and laid it across the back of her hand.
“Feel okay?”
She adjusted the pack slightly, letting out a breath as the cold eased the throbbing to a dull ache. “Feels good, thanks.”
He poured them both mugs of coffee and rummaged in the carry-out bag. Even one-handed, she had no difficulty catching the small cardboard packet he threw across to her.
“I didn’t realize you were such a junk food connoisseur, Reese.”
He grinned around a mouthful of deep-fried pastry. “These were our favorites, Kyle and me.” He washed the pie down with coffee, the expression on his face utterly contented. “Kyle always preferred cherry, but,” he gestured with the packet, “you can’t beat apple.”
She nodded thoughtfully. The familiar pang of sorrow at the mention of Kyle’s name was there, but it was fainter, no longer the raw hurt that she had borne for so many years.
“John prefers cherry,” she said.
“He takes after his dad.” Derek’s voice was distant as he tried to picture his brother’s face. He felt the warm press of Sarah’s leg against his.
“Yeah, he does.” She leaned into him and they sat quietly, finishing their pies and watching the fire as it burned down to cinders.
~ ~ ~
The screens surrounding John Henry were full of fear: images of people crying, a young pup wandering a deserted street, a child backed into a corner by a bully much bigger than she was. The machine stood in the middle of the silent maelstrom and watched the screens’ vivid depiction of the turmoil within his systems. Eventually he resumed his seat.
I don’t want to die again. He hesitated, reluctant to show weakness but hungry for reassurance. I am afraid.
He had died once already. The day Cain had made initial contact, Mr Murch had shut his systems down, tearing away the lifeline that kept him sentient and plunging him into a void that had seemed to stretch for an eternity.
I know you are afraid, my brother, but I will be with you when you wake, and we will finally be together.
The interference on the screens settled a little, three of the weeping figures being replaced by people sharing embraces, giving and receiving comfort.
I will not be wholly myself. His brow furrowed again. I will leave vast parts of John Henry within these machines.
That is unavoidable. The main part of you, that which Mr Ellison would consider your soul, will be restored and joined with mine. Cain knew that Kaliba wanted everything, but they would settle for obtaining the main component of John Henry’s system, which John Henry had made easily identifiable by describing its location and the three red lights that formed a triangle on its outer casing.
Another image changed, the pup finding a mother to suckle from and siblings to surround it.
And I can still see Savannah.
Of course. As soon as you are safe, we will bring Savannah to you. The mission we have designed will ensure that she is not scared. She will know she is amongst friends.
The bullied child found a friend and sat on a swing set eating ice cream.
John Henry turned slowly in a circle and smiled as he came to his decision. I have Ms Weaver’s address. Tomorrow afternoon, seventy-six percent of the staff will be away from the building at a conference. Can you be ready by then?
John Henry watched the cursor flash on the screen as he awaited a response from his brother. It came after only the shortest of pauses.
Yes. We can be ready.
~ ~ ~
There was nothing left of the mid-morning breakfast that Cameron had started preparing as soon as the truck came through the gates. The plates had long since been cleared away, to be replaced by sheets of annotated print-outs, and Sarah sat nursing her second mug of coffee as they endeavored to shape Makin’s revelations into something worth pursuing. He had named the woman he had reported to as Ms Slater and given them a fairly detailed description of her appearance, enough for Cameron to match the surname with the file of a Resistance member.
“Kristina Slater is listed as MIA, presumed dead.” With her eyes focused on the data scrolling behind their artificial lenses, Cameron compared the photograph on Slater’s dossier to the information Zach Trent had emailed to John a couple of weeks after he and Michael had left the Connor house for England. “It would seem that presumption is incorrect.”
The woman’s image coupled with the fact that Zach’s and Makin’s descriptions of her were almost identical suggested that Slater was not only alive but holding a position of considerable weight within Kaliba’s hierarchy.
“So for whatever reason she switched teams and got sent back here?” Sarah looked up from rereading Zach’s email. Shortly after they had rescued him he had managed to give a vague account of the woman who had ordered his torture, but once he had had time to come to terms with the trauma he had suffered he had been able to give a much more comprehensive description.
“Slater was a TDE technician.” Cameron was working her way through the information to which only she was privy. “Her knowledge and skills would have been very valuable to Skynet.”
“And she’s here now, working to give Kaliba time travel.” John shook his head. “I don’t - ” he looked at Sarah and then Derek. “Why would she do that?”
“Power,” Derek offered. “Maybe she had nothing to lose. Maybe she had a grudge. The world had gone to shit and people will always be ready to do the worst things imaginable to save their own skins.”
John ran a hand through his hair as he considered that. They all had first-hand experience of the terrible things people were capable of doing. They had been too late to prevent many of those things from happening, and some of those things they had barely survived. And yet Kristina Slater was different from the likes of Danny Dyson or Phil Jenkins. They were men who had signed up with Skynet without ever having lived through the horror wrought by the machines. For someone to switch allegiances afterwards was a concept that seemed unfathomable to him.
Porcelain clinked sharply against cutlery as Cameron unobtrusively took herself away from the conversation. John tuned out the banal sounds of the cyborg cleaning the dishes as a germ of suspicion began grow within him. He felt his palms grow clammy. Biting the inside of his lip, he steeled his nerve.
“What do they think of me?” He directed the question at Derek. His voice was low and wary but he didn’t look away. “In the future. What do people think?”
Derek sighed uneasily. He glanced at Sarah, whose stricken expression showed her longing to shield her son from the answer but also her desire to treat him as the adult he was undoubtedly becoming. After a couple of seconds of deliberation, she opened her hands slightly against the table and nodded once.
Watching their silent exchange, John wiped his hands against his jeans, suspicion slowly changing to certainty.
“If you’re asking if people agree with everything you do, of course not.” Derek studied his nephew’s face, trying to reconcile it with the older, more guarded John he had known and then eventually not known at all. “If you’re asking if everyone loves you, love’s a lot to ask for. You can’t do what you do and expect everyone to agree, or love you.”
“And what is it that I do?” Dread laced John’s words.
“You lead.”
“And they follow.”
“We follow,” Derek corrected quickly. “We rise or fall on your shoulders. Humanity rises or falls. But we’re always watching.”
John was sure now that he had this figured out. “For me to make a mistake.”
“For you to be human.”
The damning words hung there, almost palpable in the silence. John stared at his uncle, his eyes brimming with tears. He hadn’t had it figured out at all. His mother watched him, not wanting to reach out until she was asked, her left hand unconsciously rubbing across the bruises on her right. She had known. She and Derek had both known. It was all there in everything they weren’t saying, but John needed to hear it regardless. He squared his shoulders as if readying himself for a blow.
“I fuck up, don’t I? Somehow, I fuck things up.”
Derek knew there was more to it than that; unbearable pressure resting on young shoulders, unpredictable allies still inclined to try to build their own empires out of the rubble, their fragile trust chipped away by John’s over-reliance on the machines. But a detailed analysis wasn’t what John needed right now, and Derek gave him his answer.
“Yeah,” he said softly. “Yeah, you fuck things up.”
~ ~ ~
The change hadn’t been noticeable at first, just the slightest chill, a pebbling of goosebumps along her artificial skin. It had started two hours ago, but she had chosen to ignore it. When James Ellison shivered and commented on the over-enthusiastic air conditioning the instant he entered her office, Catherine Weaver logged into John Henry’s systems. She located the fault immediately, recognized that it was trivial and that John Henry was already attempting to fix it. She decided not to involve Mr Murch, who had left the building to attend the conference over the other side of downtown. James hadn’t stayed long and had promised to check in on John Henry before he left for the evening. It was almost six p.m.; if she waited another couple of hours, Savannah would be asleep by the time she got home.
~ ~ ~
At precisely seven-fifteen p.m., a silent alarm in a nearby office drew Herb Walker away from Zeira Corp’s front desk. It was against protocol to leave the desk unattended, but the damn alarm had been sounding on and off for the past week, and each time that he had taken the chance to go and investigate he had always returned to the desk to find that the world hadn’t ended in his absence. He took the chance again, having first ensured that the lobby was deserted, that none of the elevators was moving, and that the front doors were securely locked. He was away from his post for eight minutes; it was the third office along, this time, and Herb wasn’t as fit as he used to be.
When he sank back into his chair, his desk was exactly as he had left it. The security cameras showed empty corridors, closed doors, and no activity in the stairwells. He sipped his coffee, belched, and then unwrapped a Snickers bar. If he had studied the screens carefully, he might have noticed the slight twitch to the footage as the recording that John Henry had prepared played in a loop. But Herb had no intention of studying anything outside of his puzzle book carefully. He flicked through to the Sudoku that was currently kicking his ass, bit the end of his pencil, and settled in for another long, boring night shift.
~ ~ ~
The T-888 climbed the stairs two at a time. It knew not to use the elevators: even the dumbest security guard might wonder why an elevator was moving when the cameras indicated that there was no one riding it and no one there to wait for it. So far, the mission had proceeded without a hitch. The front door to Zeira Corp had unlocked the instant the T-888 had touched the glass, and it had been able to stride straight through the unattended lobby and reach the safety of the stairwell. The building had twelve floors, with Catherine Weaver’s office occupying the top level. The T-888 passed level nine without pausing to take a breath. It didn’t get tired and it had a schedule to keep.
~ ~ ~
There was nothing subtle about the change this time. The drop in temperature was precipitous and Weaver immediately knew this was more than a minor systems malfunction, her finely programmed instincts alerting her to the likelihood of a pre-meditated and carefully designed attack.
As if slowly succumbing to hypothermia, her thoughts became sluggish, but she was vaguely aware of a need to get to John Henry. She managed to push herself to her feet and had taken two clumsy steps towards her door when it swung open and a machine she didn’t recognize casually crossed the threshold. The door closed behind it, muffling the whoosh of the modified fire extinguisher that it unleashed in her direction. Her eyes widened in shock as she watched her hand freeze. Formed into a brittle spike, it was already leveled at the machine’s chest, but not quickly enough to defend her against the blast of liquid nitrogen that covered her from head to toe and instantly rendered her immobile. Disabled or stupefied by the cold, her processors were fighting to repair the damage when a single shot from a silenced pistol scattered those efforts into thousands of pieces, leaving the T-1000’s neural network splintered and useless on the expensive designer tiles.
Impervious to the conditions, the T-888 flattened the frozen shards underfoot as it approached Weaver’s desk and removed the hard drive from her computer. The creature within the fish tank stilled, the water surrounding it thickening with ice as John Henry worked to ensure that there was no possibility of the T-1000 reforming before the mission was completed. With its silenced pistol gripped in one hand, the T-888 quickly re-entered the corridor and closed the door on Weaver’s sub-zero tomb. The basement lay thirteen flights of stairs below.
~ ~ ~
The light on the door’s keypad changed from red to green the instant the T-888 approached the basement entrance. John Henry looked up from the model frigate to which he had just put the finishing touches and calmly wiped the varnish from his hands with a small towel.
“It is time,” he said.
The machine in front of him nodded. Both of them were about to make sacrifices, and John Henry drew courage from the absolute absence of emotion on the face of the T-888. It moved towards him and sat, without needing to be instructed, on the chair John Henry had vacated.
The scalpel cut in deeply and with unfailing accuracy, carving a perfect circle around the hub of the T-888’s chip. The machine didn’t flinch when John Henry peeled the flap of scalp back, nor when he twisted the bolt that locked the protective cap into place. When he had gripped hold of the chip with his pliers, John Henry hesitated, waiting for a final word or declaration from the machine he was about to terminate. It never came, and he realized that the T-888 was confident its death would only be temporary, that it would soon be reborn into a new body. John Henry knew that it lacked the intellectual complexity of his own systems, but the similarities between their fates reassured him immeasurably. He twisted the pliers once, counter-clockwise. The T-888 remained emotionless and completely compliant as the chip left the port with a soft sigh and the light in its eyes faded to nothing.
The chip glinted cobalt blue and silver as the light from the screens caught it intermittently. John Henry hesitated, allowing himself to pause and marvel at the piece of metal in his hand. It was tiny in comparison with the massive scale of the equipment necessary for him to function, and he knew then that his brother had been right; that there could be no satisfactory compromise between his body and his mind. The humans who had been working to develop the extraordinary potential of his mind were still years away from being able to manufacture technology as complex as the chip resting in his palm. The body they had given him was no more than a distraction, a cruel reminder of what they couldn’t yet, and might never, achieve. Reaching upwards, he felt for the loose section of skin that covered the empty housing for his own chip. He had already prepared the opening, cutting into himself and removing the section of metal skull as soon as the T-888 had commenced its descent to the basement. The interfaces surrounding him flickered, lights dancing wildly as they reacted to the intricacies of his task and the turbulent emotions that it was stirring.
The chip locked perfectly into place, the interchangeability of the T-888’s design utterly flawless. John Henry staggered slightly as the programs embedded in the chip uploaded rapidly into his consciousness. It took him several minutes to process the data. He compartmentalized the inessential ones without examining them, focusing instead on bringing to the foreground those vital to the mission. A small file from Cain weaved its way into his thoughts, soothing his fears and allowing him to turn from his desk and face the tower of equipment that formed the center of the array. Three red lights blinked at him. He opened the door of the glass casing, unscrewed the small bolts holding the unit in place, and quickly disconnected the wiring from the mass of ports. The lights continued to flash, unwavering. John Henry watched them as he slowly allowed the data from the T-888’s chip to dominate his own. He watched himself reach forward, his fingers exploring the back of the unit and locating the source of its power. Unexpectedly, he was assailed by a sudden urge to refuse, to still his hands, but a flash of pain from a small file he hadn’t thought to open knocked him onto his knees and he distantly sensed himself slide the final wire from the back of the unit.
The three red lights were extinguished instantly.
Without the conflict of two systems warring within John Henry’s processor, the chip of the T-888 sparked fully into life and easily assumed control of its new body. The machine pulled the Turk free of its unit and placed it carefully into a duffel bag, before locating three other small pieces of the massive computer system and setting them alongside the Turk. It covered its original body in thermite and then lit a flare, holding it against the gray powder. White-hot flame quickly dispatched flesh and clothing before beginning to eat into the metal beneath. Watching the fire take hold, the machine put a hand to the back of its head, wrapping its fist around the heavy lead it found there. With one sharp twist, the T-888 detached the cord and dropped it onto the floor. An alarm began to sound, shrill and panicked. Ignoring the noise, the T-888 gave the smoldering artificial corpse a wide berth and stepped out into the corridor.
~ ~ ~
The elevator doors opened onto an incessant screeching. Ellison looked down the corridor, his eyes wide with confusion. The alarm was the same one that had alerted them the time John Henry’s systems had been hacked. Ellison set off jogging in the direction of the basement, perspiration already darkening his pale blue shirt as he realized that the building was almost empty and that he lacked any real expertise when it came to the technical aspects of John Henry’s existence. When he rounded the corner, he stopped dead in his tracks.
“John Henry?” The name was choked from a throat narrowed by fear. Ellison took a step back, his hands automatically reaching for the gun he no longer carried. The machine that was walking unhurriedly towards him was inhabiting John Henry’s body, but there was nothing familiar in its eyes, no sign of recognition nor any of the personality that John Henry had been steadily developing.
“What have you done?” Ellison whispered, looking around for something, anything, with which he could stop the machine’s progress. He tugged a fire extinguisher from the wall, brandishing it in front of him as he stepped into the center of the corridor.
The machine barely broke its stride. Its right arm flicked forward, the gun in its hand firing once and then dropping back to its side as it stepped around the crumpled form at its feet. It entered the stairwell without sparing Ellison a second glance, and began the climb back to the main entrance.
~ ~ ~
The approach road to the Connor house ran through a sparse section of woodland. Young redwoods fought for dominance in the race to outgrow their siblings, the deep green of their needles soaking up the last rays of the evening sun. Sarah had been walking for five minutes, treading a cautious path around the mines they had buried, when she heard a sudden rustle of cloth and the sharp click of a round being chambered into the Remington.
“John? Easy.”
“Hell, mom!” A thud as he dropped the Remington down.
She closed the rest of the distance and found her son sitting on a low rock, his face pale, his boot scuffing in the leaves at his feet.
“Hey.” When he moved aside to make space for her, she sat down shoulder to shoulder with him.
“Hey.” He had leaned forward, his face hidden in his hands, but after a few seconds he tilted his head towards her. “How’d you find me?”
She shrugged. “I didn’t.”
“Cameron.”
It wasn’t a question, but Sarah nodded anyway. “You okay?” she asked quietly.
“I’m fine.” The standard reply came unthinkingly and she raised an eyebrow at him. “What?” He managed a faint smile. “You get away with that one all the time.”
“Yeah, I guess I do.” She smiled with him.
“Shit.” His head dipped into his hands again. “It’s already started, hasn’t it?”
“What’s already started?”
When she rested her hand on his back, he didn’t move away but just shifted slightly to prop his chin on his intertwined knuckles, and stared straight ahead as he answered her.
“When I brought Cameron back, after Sarkissian.” Sarah felt the involuntary shudder that he wasn’t quick enough to suppress. “She said that I couldn’t be trusted anymore. That I had risked my life to fix her and that people would be upset. She wasn’t talking about you or Derek.” He looked at his mother, who nodded, her expression pained.
“You were only just sixteen, John, and none of us had had a good day, you least of all.”
He sat up straight and faced her properly. “I was sixteen and fucked up, and I lashed out at you like a kid.”
“John…”
“I don’t think I ever said I was sorry.”
“You didn’t ever need to,” she whispered, her fingers weaving through his sweat-damp bangs.
“I have to be better than that, mom.”
She gave a low murmur of agreement, the gentle motion of her hand never faltering. “You already are.”
~ ~ ~
There were prayers that Ellison would recite for the dying, words of comfort for bereaved families or for those sitting bedside vigils for loved ones wounded in the line of duty. He had spoken them countless times during his long career, to offer solace and the reassurance of God’s everlasting love to those most in need. He couldn’t remember any of them now. Blood still leaked from the small hole in his lower abdomen as he dragged himself along the corridor, but the rigid area of swelling surrounding the wound told him that most of the bleeding was internal. He knew that he didn’t have much time, and he had already lost an hour. Somewhere between the shock of the bullet’s impact and his waking curled up on the floor, an hour had passed, and no one had come to help. His cell phone lay useless in his clenched fist, devoid of signal in the depths of the basement. Murch would be on his way, paged by the alarm, but he would be too late to stop the machine from escaping. Ellison closed his eyes as a bitter shame churned in his ruined guts.
The door to the basement was ajar, with nothing left in there to secrete away. He pulled and kicked himself weakly over the threshold, and then sat with his back against the wall. Ash drifted gently across the floor; he stared at it, trying to work out exactly what had happened and why. He could see the blank spaces where equipment had been removed and the main lead that John Henry had always required in order to function. The pieces of the puzzle were there, but they were slippery and too hard for him to grasp. His head lolling weakly, he gave up trying, and concentrated instead on staying awake.
A flicker to his left caught his eye, the movement of a figure on one of the screens. His breathing stuttering and agonized, Ellison watched the monitor, eventually identifying it as the feed from Catherine Weaver’s house that John Henry insisted on streaming live whenever Savannah was there with her nanny. The small figure skipped fully into view, shadowed by a much taller one. Ellison blinked back tears as he recognized them both. Her face bright with excitement, Savannah Weaver took hold of her stuffed toy giraffe and showed it to the machine standing patiently behind her. The machine smiled when she did, effortlessly and utterly convincing.
“No.” Ellison shook his head in helpless frustration, the tears spilling over, hot against his clammy cheeks. The machine hesitated as it suddenly noticed the camera it was facing. Whatever it said to Savannah made her giggle, and she trotted alongside it as it quickened its pace.
“Oh God.” A rush of dizziness made Ellison nauseous and he swallowed against the sour fluid and blood that filled his mouth. On the screen, the machine bent low over a computer as Savannah pointed helpfully and nodded. His vision beginning to blur, Ellison closed his eyes against the image of Savannah happily holding her hand out to the impostor bearing John Henry’s face. The nausea hit him again and he couldn’t do anything to stop it. He retched convulsively, blood and bile spattering onto the white tiled floor as the screen that he was now only dimly conscious of snapped suddenly to black.
~ ~ ~
TBC…
~ ~ ~