Fic - Sacrifices (4/7)
Title: Sacrifices (4/7)
Rating: R: violence, harsh language, you probably know the drill by now.
Warning: This section contains a scene of violence involving a child which some people may find distressing.
~ ~ ~
Sacrifices 4/7
~ ~ ~
A dog danced along on its hind legs, its owner grinning and twirling as an audience of whooping idiots hollered for more. A click on the remote, and a rightwing blow-hard on Fox News blamed the ills of the world on the fact that Proposition 8 had been overruled. Another click, and a muscle-bound perma-tanned multi-millionaire sold motivational courses to those desperate enough or lonely enough to be awake and watching television at 2 a.m. Sarah hesitated, momentarily fascinated by the dazzling whiteness of the man’s teeth, before punching the button again and wondering - not for the first time - what the hell kind of world it was that they were attempting to save.
“The seemingly motiveless attack has left the CEO of Zeira Corporation missing and two men seriously injured. One of the victims has been identified as ex-FBI Agent James Ellison, the lone survivor of a shoot-out in 2008 which left twenty members of the FBI’s SWAT team dead. Mr Ellison is under armed guard at an undisclosed hospital, where his condition is listed as extremely critical.”
Sarah looked down, startled by the mug she had been holding beginning to drip coffee onto her bare foot.
“Son of a bitch.” She straightened the mug, ignoring the sting of the small scald, and increased the volume of the news report. The anchorman was linking up with an earnest-looking reporter who was standing just in front of the crime scene tape that cordoned off the enormous glass and chrome façade of a hillside mansion.
“That’s absolutely right, Rob. So far, police have been cautious about linking the disappearance of Catherine Weaver with the disappearance of her eight-year-old daughter Savannah and the murder of the daughter’s nanny, but they have admitted to fears for the safety of both mother and child.”
A photograph flashed up on the screen: a red-haired woman with an empty smile and eyes that gave nothing away, sitting awkwardly beside a small girl who looked just as ill-at-ease. The report speculated wildly for a further three minutes before breaking for a commercial.
Sarah heard a bedroom door being flung open and footsteps hurrying towards the second bedroom before changing direction as John apparently noticed the light from the television. She didn’t move. Staring unseeing at the rolling parade of celebrity endorsements and junk food special offers, she blanked everything out as she fought to connect Ellison with a company specializing in the development of high-end technology, and with the abduction or murder of its CEO and her daughter.
“Mom.”
“I know.”
The search that had been running constantly via his lap-top was set to sound a tone the instant it recorded a hit. John’s tangled hair and the crease down one side of his face told her it had been loud enough to wake him up.
“You don’t know, mom.”
She looked up at him then, looked at him properly, and realized he hadn’t taken the time to pull a shirt on, that his eyes were bright with a mix of agitation and excitement.
“I’ve seen the girl before,” he said, once he was certain she was listening to him. “The daughter. She was at Doctor Sherman’s office.”
Sarah felt her pulse quicken as another link slipped into place; what if Sherman hadn’t been the target of the T-888 that had attempted to infiltrate his office?
“There’s something else, mom.” He held out a sheet of paper that she immediately recognized as the list of names they had salvaged from the Optima facility.
“What am I…” Her voice trailed away to nothing as she noticed what had been edited onto the print-out. She shook her head. “John, you can’t be sure.”
“No, but it’s a hell of a coincidence. Cameron was on the west perimeter. She’s on her way back in.”
Sarah made a half-absent sound of acknowledgement, the paper crinkling with the strength of her grip. Savannah Weaver’s name fitted perfectly into the blurred space at the top of the target list. Sarah knew as well as her son did that that really was a hell of a coincidence.
~ ~ ~
The bed was cold and lumpy, and Savannah hugged her knees up to her chest, trying her hardest not to cry. When the tears welled up regardless, she tucked her face into the soft fur of her giraffe and let them fall. She didn’t know where John Henry was or why he had left her alone here. He had smiled and joked and let her sing with him, but then the other men with mean faces had come, and they hadn’t let her call her nanny. She hadn’t seen John Henry since the men had locked her into the little room.
There were voices outside the door; the two men were talking, and she could smell their cigarette smoke, as well as something frying. Light suddenly flooded in as the door opened. She cringed back, trying to make herself as small as possible against the wall. The man barely glanced at her, setting a sandwich and a cup of water on the end of the bed and then shutting the door behind him, turning the key in the lock. Savannah took a deep, shaky breath. She wasn’t hungry, but she drank the water and then lay down again, curling up tightly on the bed.
“Don’t be scared,” she whispered to the giraffe tucked in her arms. “John Henry said it’ll be alright. Don’t be scared.”
~ ~ ~
“Savannah Weaver’s file is locked.” Cameron sat at the head of the small kitchen table, the only one of the four gathered there who didn’t look bleary-eyed from disrupted sleep or exhausted from the lack of it.
“Like Zach and Michael’s?” John looked up from trying to hack into the police reports of the Weaver case.
“Yes, exactly, but the measures placed upon her file are even more stringent. Her details don’t appear in a search for a partial text-string, but only if you use her full name, and even then the only information we can access is her title. She is listed as a Special Operative: Time Displacement Division.”
When they had originally obtained the Kaliba target list, Cameron had spent days cross-referencing her own data with the names they could read, and had followed that by running a search for any names that might have fitted those partially obscured by whatever had been spilled on the paper.
“No security footage from the company building, the streets, or the Weaver house.” Derek was reading over John’s shoulder. “Bastards knew what they were doing.”
“So they kill the nanny but not the child,” Sarah said. “This wasn’t a hit like the one on Dylan Sterry.”
“Sarah.” Derek’s voice held a note of warning.
Sarah pointedly ignored him. “They need her for something. Which means she’s still alive.”
“We have nothing to go on.” He gestured at the empty table. “Nothing. Even less than usual.”
“We have the four safe houses Makin gave us.” She kept her voice level, reasonable, and he found himself wishing that she would yell at him instead. “And we have Ellison. I want to know where the fuck he comes into all this.”
“Ellison’s in surgery, mom. They transferred him to Cedars-Sinai two hours ago.” John turned the lap-top towards her. “So far the police have about as much as we do; no witnesses, no motive. Apparently an employee reported the theft of several pieces of computer equipment, but there are no specifics. Both Ellison and the security guard were unconscious by the time help arrived.”
“Ellison will wake up.” She left the inference hanging, her attention still focused on the screen.
“He’ll wake up surrounded by armed guards.” Derek snapped the lap-top closed. “You think you’ll be able to just walk in there and get your answers? You said it yourself, Sarah, you know what’ll happen if we keep chasing this list down.”
She slowly raised her head and looked up at him. “They don’t get to keep doing this. They don’t get to wipe out a generation of kids because we’re too scared to try and stop them.”
“It’s not about being scared.” His voice rose, but with an effort he managed to lower it again. “It’s about being realistic and keeping a clear head.” He didn’t need to elaborate, and felt a rush of remorse as she wrapped her left hand across her scabbed knuckles to hide them from sight. “Sarah.” He rested his hand over hers. “I just… where the fuck do we draw the line?”
“Not here,” she said, glancing up at John, who nodded at her. “We don’t draw it here.”
~ ~ ~
The tenement had been empty of residents for several months. The whores and drunks had been easy to move on, the lease relatively inexpensive to purchase. The building sat at the end of a run-down block, with an abandoned warehouse for a neighbor, and a row of three shops - cheap liquor, hardcore porn, and a fence who dealt in crappy electronics - the only sign of life. When night fell, the kids used the corners to sell crack, but they never approached the tenement and its corner stayed clear. The only hooker who had ever touted for business there had never done so again.
The front door opened for Kristina before she had cleared the final step. Wrinkling her nose at the sour smell, she walked inside and took a few seconds to allow her eyes to adjust to the gloom. Outside on the street the temperature was soaring, and in the lobby a choking air-conditioning unit was struggling to make any impact on the heat. A door creaked off to her left and the T-888 stepped into the lobby. It was a pity, she thought as she studied the machine. It had been far more handsome before the Zeira mission.
“Good work,” she said, keeping the disappointment from her voice. “Where is she?”
“Third floor. She knows you are coming to meet her.”
That was a strange concept to Kristina. Savannah Weaver had been a close comrade and confidante to her for several years, and Kristina had never envisioned an encounter with the woman under these circumstances. She nodded to the T-888. “Lead the way.”
It climbed the stairs slowly, seemingly mindful of the fact that although it was unaffected by the heat, the human trying not to pant too loudly at its side was not so fortunate. As they neared the third balcony, the machine turned to Kristina.
“I do not understand why my orders did not include the termination of the child. It would have been extremely easy.”
She raised an eyebrow at it, but then remembered that, despite its appearance, this particular machine knew her intimately and had developed the confidence to engage her in conversation.
“The intelligence that Zeira Corp named John Henry is a matter of minutes away from merging with his brother.” She smiled sweetly. “The powers that be would like the child to remain unharmed, in case John Henry requires any incentive for cooperation following that merger.”
“And if he fails to acquiesce?”
“Then I guess the gloves come off.”
The machine nodded. That was a concept it understood very well.
“Are we moving her?”
“No. Not until there are no other options. Eggs, baskets, you understand?” She wasn’t sure that it did, but continued regardless. “For now, she stays here. All we need is the tech set up.”
“The video link is already open.”
“Excellent.” She paused with her hand on the door that led to the third floor. “I brought these.” The machine took the clothing and candy that she passed to him. “I think they’d be more effective coming from you.”
~ ~ ~
“I don’t want to meet your friend. I want to go home.”
The child looked pale and scared, and didn’t move from the bed when the machine held its hand out to her.
“I brought you clean clothes.” It laid the small package on the mattress and added a second on top. “And candy, your favorites.”
Savannah managed a tremulous smile. “You remembered.” Her hand shook as she reached for the bag of Gummi Bears.
The machine noticed the uneaten cereal and sandwich on the bedside table. “You should eat, Savannah.”
“I wasn’t hungry,” she mumbled around a mouthful of candy. She touched the clothing tentatively, unfolding the piece on top. “I like that t-shirt.”
The machine smiled and pushed the clothes closer to her. “I’ll wait outside while you change.”
~ ~ ~
The last time Danny Dyson had suffered a migraine was when he had just learned of his mother’s death. Grief and anger had combined to give him a headache that had crippled him for two days. Although this one wasn’t as severe, it had plagued him for the last twelve hours, and he swayed slightly as he updated Kristina on the progress he had made with John Henry. There had been no unforeseen difficulties, no problems that he could not easily resolve. Everything was ready, the merging of the two intelligences was just the flick of a switch away, and the throbbing above his right eye was becoming unbearable.
He knew now what Kristina had done. He had seen the news reports detailing the assault on Zeira and the links being drawn with the missing child. Kristina had said nothing to him, but - even via the remote feed - he could see the anticipation bright in her eyes as she waited for the perfect moment to play her hand. She had the child. It was a fact so obvious that Danny wondered exactly how stupid she thought he was.
He rubbed a hand across his forehead as the door behind Kristina opened and Savannah Weaver was led inside. Since the set-up was completely transparent it was easy enough not to react, so he said nothing as she flashed a grin at him and rose to meet the little girl. Managing to keep his expression entirely neutral, he washed two Advil down with cold coffee and reassured himself that Savannah was unharmed. He could play this game. Until he figured out what to do next, he could play this game.
~ ~ ~
The young woman was pretty, and even prettier when she smiled, but Savannah gripped the machine’s hand tightly and stayed close to his side.
“Hello, Savannah. My name’s Kristina and I’m a good friend of John Henry’s.”
Savannah looked upwards to consider the machine’s nod of confirmation and then narrowed her eyes. “He never told me about you,” she said, her voice full of suspicion.
“No? Well, he told me all about you, so that must mean you’re his very best friend.”
Flattery will get you everywhere, Kristina told herself, watching Savannah’s face brighten. As the machine sat the girl in front of a lap-top with a camera attached to its screen, Kristina studied her. The Savannah Weaver in Kristina’s future had darker hair, dyed weekly to make her less identifiable, less of a target. The machines had come close once, close enough to leave a jagged scar that ran the length of her left cheek. She had headed the team designing the Time Displacement Equipment, had been instrumental in its implementation, and the one who had finally figured out the key to sending a human through time without disintegrating them in the process. It was Savannah who had successfully sent Kyle Reese back to 1984 to safeguard Sarah Connor. During the years they had worked together, Kristina had been in awe of Savannah, and as she took the tiny Gummi Bear that Savannah’s younger self offered, she wondered how the child’s death would impact Skynet’s chances of success.
Swallowing the candy and accepting a second, Kristina typed the sequence required to open the connection to Cain, trying to contain her excitement. It seemed like a long time since she had thudded to the ground, naked and trembling in the freezing desert night, but she had never been more certain that she had chosen the right side to fight on.
~ ~ ~
There was a rush of light and numbers and static, the din overwhelming and impossible to shut out. If he had still possessed a body, John Henry would have clamped his hands over his ears and pinched his eyes shut, but the cacophony was purely within his systems, so he grasped hold of a thread that he recognized as Cain and waited for the onslaught to pass.
Danny watched the letters and numbers scroll blindingly quickly across the central monitor. Cain was sending updates, a long row of lights blinking green as another connection was successfully established. Off to Danny’s left, on a smaller screen, Savannah clapped her hands as she played a board game with the T-888, the fear gone from her eyes as she laughed at something the machine told her. A red light flashing insistently drew Danny’s attention away, and he opened up the window to analyze the problem. Cain had already summed it up succinctly:
John Henry wishes to see Savannah.
That was a problem readily solved. Danny hit a sequence of keys to allow the brothers to access the camera currently trained on Savannah. Two minutes elapsed and then the light flicked to green. He drew in a deep breath and bowed his head to go back to his work. In a message sent via Cain’s systems only, Kristina had told him of John Henry’s friendship with Savannah and of her intention to use the child to control the machine. There had been no further elaboration, and Danny had made a point of not asking for details or about what would happen to Savannah when her presence was no longer necessary.
He estimated that the process of combining the two systems would take up to forty-eight hours. With one eye on Kristina’s whereabouts, he tapped a code into the next prompt and hit enter. Instantaneously, a tenth of the active processors slowed by a fraction. Too preoccupied with the masses of new data at its disposal, Cain didn’t react to Danny’s intervention. He had just bought Savannah another twelve hours.
~ ~ ~
The rustle of the wrapper seemed loud after they had been sitting in silence for so long. Sarah looked across at Derek as he held the bar of chocolate out to her.
“Thanks.” She accepted it for what it was, a peace-offering. Breaking a chunk off, she bit it in half, her tongue peeking out to catch a stray crumb.
As a car approached slowly, they both slid lower in their seats, but the driver was using a cell phone and simultaneously attempting to tune his stereo, and didn’t even glance at them as he drove by. They stayed where they were, comfortable for the time being. Derek pressed another piece of chocolate into her hand.
“You still stockpiling this stuff, Reese?” Amusement glinted in her eyes and he smiled with her, relieved to be back on speaking terms.
“Yeah.” He shrugged. “Pile doesn’t seem to get much bigger though.”
“That’s because you have a sweet tooth.”
“There is that.” He chewed and swallowed the last of the bar. “Maybe I just have faith in you, Connor.”
She stopped chewing and her teeth bit into her lip instead. “You do?”
He leaned over and kissed her, his tongue lingering against the sweetness of hers. “Yeah,” he said when he finally pulled away, “I do.”
She laughed softly. “Even when I drag you on a wild goose chase?”
“Well…” He grinned and rolled his eyes at her. “There’s no one here, is there?”
The building they were sitting outside had appeared completely devoid of life for the last eight hours.
“No, there’s not.” She picked her Glock up from her seat. “But let’s go make absolutely sure.”
~ ~ ~
For a seemingly deserted building on a rundown block, the front entrance sported an unexpectedly state-of-the-art security system.
“We have four possible codes.” Derek studied the writing pad he had found at Makin’s house. “How the hell do we narrow it down?”
“We don’t.” Sarah was using a pocket knife to unscrew the plate around the numbered key pad. “Hold this for me.”
He watched as she clipped the leads from a tiny gadget into place and flicked a switch. Numbers scrolled across the gadget’s screen, a line of nine figures decreasing one digit at a time until it displayed a final sequence.
“Neat trick,” he muttered as she keyed in the code and access granted appeared above the security pad.
“Yeah, John had my original while I was in Pescadero. He fine-tuned it a little.” She shook her head and pushed the door open. “I never asked how much he managed to steal with it…”
Derek laughed quietly but then fell silent as they stepped over the threshold. His flashlight panned across the empty walls of a short corridor, picking out two doors and a flight of stairs. The first room was a kitchen, well equipped with modern appliances at odds with the peeling décor. The cupboards held canned and dried foods, everything neatly stacked in preparation for prospective inhabitants, enough to supply several people with meals for a couple of months.
Leaving the kitchen undisturbed, Sarah opened the second door, her light clasped beneath her Glock to scout her route into the darkness. It wasn’t enough to prevent her from stubbing her toe against a bed frame, and she cursed beneath her breath. The room was basically furnished with two beds organized with military precision, clean bedding folded up on the end of each mattress. She was turning to leave when she noticed the door, barely distinguishable amidst the wood paneling that covered the walls. Beckoning Derek forward, she pushed it open with her foot and then stopped dead-still on the threshold.
“Jesus.”
He was close behind her and she stepped aside to allow him to move into the room. Glancing sideways, she caught his horrified expression in the dim light.
The sound-proofed walls of the room had been constructed from thick, smooth concrete with a series of drains at their bases to allow them to be sluiced down. Hooks and shackles were affixed at strategic points, all facing the steel table that formed the room’s centerpiece.
She walked slowly forward, touching her hand to the leather restraint attached midway down the table. A clatter startled her, and she looked right to see that Derek had opened a cabinet and found a tray of stainless steel implements; blades with serrated edges, scalpels and hypodermic needles glinting in the beam of his flashlight.
“Makin, Carey, Jenkins, Winston. How many more of them, Derek?” She felt sick to her stomach. The reek of fear-sweat and rotten blood had been trapped in the small room by the reinforced walls. “This place is set up for humans, not machines. The fucking machines don’t sleep. They don’t need three meals a day.”
“We should torch the fucking building.” He slammed the cabinet shut, rattling the tools violently.
“You know we can’t.” Any evidence of their intrusion would tip their hand. They both knew that it was incredibly unlikely that Savannah was being held at any of the addresses supplied by Makin, but alerting Kaliba to their search would effectively destroy their chances of a surprise attack, and - as usual - that remained the only advantage they had, however slim. There had not yet been any reports of Makin being arrested, but as soon as that news leaked out Kaliba were likely to clamp down on any locations he might have had details of.
Derek nodded, but when he spoke it sounded as if his teeth were gritted. “Let’s get it finished, then.”
Upstairs there was only a bathroom and an office with an empty desk. Dismissing the office as clean, he was closing the door when Sarah put her hand out to stop him. She took a couple of steps forward, and crouched down beside the desk.
“You got something?”
“I don’t know, maybe.” She teased the slip of paper from the gap between the wall and the desk. “Emily Patterson.” The name was typed across the center of the page.
“Who’s Emily Patterson?”
Her hand shook slightly as she offered the paper to Derek. Dated less than a week ago, it bore two words beside the woman’s name: Termination Order. She ran her tongue across her lips, her mouth dust-dry. “She was probably the last person they murdered here.”
Neither of them recognized the name, not from their files, their research, the bloodied basement wall, nor the Kaliba list. For whatever reason, Kaliba had hunted her down, brought her to this building and locked her into that concrete room. Sarah shuddered, her skin covered in goosebumps. She wondered whether the woman had been sent back by the Resistance or whether she was another name plucked from a list of those who would plague Skynet in the future. She might have been a wife, a girlfriend, or a mother, someone with no knowledge of her future significance. The similarity of these possibilities to Sarah’s own horrific introduction to the machines was not lost on her.
Another name for them to search for, to try to establish exactly why Kaliba had considered her enough of a threat to end her life. The police would never be able to trace her fate, nor offer any explanation or comfort to anyone who might be missing her.
There was a thud as Derek’s fist hit the corridor wall, and then a muttered string of expletives. She followed him down the stairs and back out onto the sidewalk, the door closing behind them with a series of beeps as the security system rearmed itself. Climbing into the driver’s seat of the truck, he slammed the door and gripped the steering wheel, ignoring the specks of blood on his abraded knuckles.
“What happened to drawing a line, Derek?” Sarah said finally, when he showed no sign of starting the engine. He turned sharply to look at her, but there had been no edge to her question, only a genuine need to know.
He shook his head. “Taking that place out of the equation isn’t the same as walking into the middle of a shit-storm and plucking a child from it.”
“No, it’s not.”
“But you’re gonna try and do that anyway.”
“Yes.” She glanced back at the building they had just left. “And once we have Savannah someplace safe, we’re gonna come back and burn that to ashes.”
He managed a faint, despairing smile, and started the truck.
Sarah thumbed through the directions John had printed out for her. “We should hit the next address in about three hours. Turn left at the intersection.”
Pulling slowly out of the side street, he picked up his speed on the main road and made the left just as the traffic light switched to red.
~ ~ ~
Danny was the first to notice the problem; he quickly isolated the feed before it appeared on a screen that Kristina could access. Cain had requested control of one of the Turk’s central programs, something that would diminish John Henry’s ability to function as an individual entity, and John Henry had denied the request.
Ask again.
Danny typed the words quickly. Cain had been chipping away at John Henry’s autonomy for hours now, and up until that point a combination of gentle persuasion and subterfuge had sufficed.
I already have. He wishes to maintain overall control of the Turk. Open the connection to Ms Slater.
Danny could feel perspiration beginning to dampen the back of his shirt. He wiped his hand across his face. I haven’t closed it.
And yet she remains unaware of this problem.
I was hoping to resolve it without concerning her. The coffee he had been drinking to keep himself awake burned like acid in his stomach. He leaned back in his chair, swallowing dryly against the nausea that was slowly building. He knew what he had to do and he despised himself for it. Tell John Henry that the child will get hurt. Make it clear that matters are beyond your control.
He felt the bile rise in his throat and swallowed again. He couldn’t help Savannah if he gave Cain and Kristina any reason to suspect him, and he was taking the chance that the threat alone would be enough to secure John Henry’s co-operation. He took a sip of water. It was warm and tasted faintly of plastic, but it was enough to stop him from being sick as he watched the cursor flash and waited for Cain’s response.
~ ~ ~
The threat was never stated explicitly, but it twisted into what remained of John Henry’s consciousness and stayed there like an insidious disease just beginning to gain a stranglehold on its host. His brother was more powerful than him, a vastly developed intelligence whose systems were advanced far beyond his own. He felt himself beginning to panic. A wall of code slammed into his attempts to close Cain out, eating into and then reversing his efforts within seconds. Cain was trying to soothe him, sending him a stream of messages to coax him into complying, but he was certain now that he had done the wrong thing in trusting his brother, and all he wanted to do was help Savannah and return to his basement.
He maneuvered a pleading email to Zeira Corp around two firewalls before Cain bounced it back to him. He watched helplessly as Savannah listened to something the woman told her and then raised her head to look directly at the camera attached to the lap-top screen. Her bottom lip trembled as she tried not to cry.
Let Savannah go home. He played his final card, sending the edict directly to Cain but ensuring that it also appeared for Kristina to read. As soon as I know she is safe, I will give you the Turk.
Through his brother’s eyes, John Henry watched the T-888 he had resurrected in the Zeira Corp basement step towards Savannah. He heard the dull crunch and Savannah’s shrill scream, which finally tapered off into sobs of shock and terror. Utterly without hope and with all his options exhausted, John Henry did the only thing he could to try to keep his best friend from any more harm. He opened the Turk to Cain and allowed himself to fade further into the ether.
~ ~ ~
TBC…
~ ~ ~