SCC Fic: Delilah - 4.0
Series: Delilah
Chapter: 4.0
Author: aelysian
Summary: Hers is only one of many: stories, lives, pasts and futures. Cameron Phillips' life is a coil, a twist of time unraveling, the end chasing the beginning. Cameron origin fic.
Delilah - 4.0
4-1
Undisclosed Location, 2026
The first thing he hears when he finally comes to is silence. No roar of HKs flying overhead, no heavy footsteps of their metal guards, no music. The silence is deafening and his head aches in relief. His body is a little slower, coming alive with jerk that reminds him of how stiff and sore his muscles are. Everything hurts, a deep, dull pain that promises to last.
“I think they’re gone.”
Derek forces himself up and realizes it’s day. Daylight and alive. A vague memory of a late night horror movie with zombies flickers across his tired brain. And then he sees it, dry eyes immediately focusing on the plain slab of metal and wood, its shape welcome and familiar, rousing an ancient instinct.
He shakes off the fatigue, the thinning veil of encroaching insanity, the music. Whirring, whirring, whirring.
“What is this, a game?”
Bullseye. Derek takes the axe, squeezing the rough, ashy wood in fingers, tight to fight the tremor. Heavy and crude and freedom. They’re done, used up, discarded…lab rats running blind in daylight. He doesn’t doubt that they’re still watching. They were always, always watching.
“Yeah. It’s always a game.” And it’s time to get back in it. The axe swings and bites into the wooden floorboard. He tosses it to the man on his left and chains rattle.
Metal bastards.
4-2
Jesse Flores is eating dinner - to be distinguished from lunch by portion size - when she hears about the new metal. It's important to be aware of all cyborg units and Sarah's voice hints at something more interesting than another scrubbed triple eight.
Sarah's good at telling a story, weaving together a pretty picture from truth, speculation, and the threads of gossip that always seem to pass through her hands. Something about Transfer 46 and some mechanic; it's a distraction from the fact that she hasn't seen Derek for weeks and that her dinner's unusually gritty.
And then Connor's name grabs her attention and she starts paying attention. Connor, the chair and a girl metal. Female cyborgs weren't unheard of, but they weren't common either.
Jesse can hear the anxiety in the other woman's voice when she tells her about the tin girl that lives in Connor's quarters, tin footsteps that echo day and night. Sarah doesn't like it and Jesse doesn't blame her. She can't. Because when she wonders if she'd be able to tell, if she hadn't known what Queeg was, if she'd…the thought that the machines were capable of that level of imitation was unnerving. They could be anyone, anywhere…her stomach turns and she fights to clamp down on the familiar tremble of panic.
She grips her spoon so her knuckles go red and then white, the smooth hard curve of its edge reassuring under her thumb.
Sarah laughs uneasily and tells her that the tin girl is pretty, the suggestion heavy in her voice.
Jesse focuses on that. Connor. He wouldn't lead them wrong. He keeps them alive. She had to remember that, she tells herself to calm the tremors and tries not to wonder where Derek is. Master the fear.
She breathes deeply, evenly, the inhale the perfect balance to every exhale. She shrugs, nonchalant.
Connor wouldn't lead them wrong, wouldn't lead them astray. He wouldn't and besides death, shit for food and Skynet, that's one of the few certainties Jesse has left.
4-3
She patrols the section of the base that houses Connor's quarters every three hours, walks up and down every corridor, passing the human night shift whose eyes follow her warily. They speak in lowered voices that are meant to be inaudible but she's an infiltrator model and eavesdropping is only the beginning of what she does. There are words like 'metal' and 'bad' and 'crazy'. She classifies them as a level five threat and moves on.
John is restless in his sleep when she returns, the thin blanket tangled at his feet. He is perspiring and agitated; dreaming, she concludes.
Cameron takes three steps to stand beside his bed, her brow furrowed even though there's no one to see the perturbed expression, and tells him to wake.
He merely shifts and does not respond otherwise.
She's not supposed to touch humans without tactical cause but she reaches down anyway, grips his shoulder firmly and shakes once, twice. He jerks awake, his eyes eyes darting from side to side before focusing on her face. She can see the uncertainty in his pupils, can hear it in his voice like it's a question when he says her name.
"You were dreaming," she says. "You seemed upset."
John sits up, swinging his legs over the side of the low bed to perch on its edge. This is not what she intended. John should be sleeping.
"Nightmare."
"Bad dream," she amends. "Was it about your mother? I hear people call out for their mothers when they're sleeping."
John doesn't want to think about what she hears when she walks the base at night or about his mother. "No."
Cameron doesn't say anything, but she moves to sit next to him on the bed and carefully mimics his posture. He stares at her, but he does not object so she does not move.
Her knee touches his a moment later and even though he knows it's deliberate, he can't quite stop the tiny smile.
"My father," he says without really meaning to, as if she had coaxed it from him with her silence - or maybe with the touch of her knee against his. It's the first time he's mentioned his father in years; for all anyone's concerned, Sarah Connor's conception had been near immaculate.
"You don't talk about your father."
"That's because he's dead." Twice - three, four, five, a thousand times - over now? Kyle Reese is always dead, John Connor is always the leader and Sarah Connor is always some weird mythical cross between Wonder Woman and the Virgin Mary for everyone except him. And Cameron is…
"Is that why you dream of him? Because he's dead?"
Everyone dreams of the dead, he thinks. Of mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers, husbands, wives…the dead are everywhere, living in the dreams of the survivors. Haunting. His dead haunt his dreams even as they walk the tunnels, their lives and deaths twisted into knots around the fingers of John Connor. He animates them for as long as he chooses, the master puppeteer, the Dr. Frankenstein of the fourth dimension. His monster, his creator, his god next to him, touching at the knees and shoulders. Skynet and hope taking the form of a not girl.
He made her he thinks, and the irony that shapes the loops of time that is his life never fails to make him a little dizzy. She makes and he made and somewhere in there fits Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese and others along the way, the living dead, pulling his strings from across time.
His silence has exceeded the upper limit. "John?"
Her voice breaks him out of his disjointed - self-indulgent, Sarah Connor's voice echoes through memory - train of thought.
"Yeah." Maybe it's the lack of sleep or the dreams. Maybe it's the loneliness and solitude. Maybe it's the fact that it's her, right here, with him. Maybe it doesn't fucking matter because he's John Connor damn it, and who's going to know or question why? Sarah's voice is ringing warning bells in the part of his mind that's still sixteen years old but Sarah's dead and you can't stop me now, Mom. Not this time.
John reaches over and takes her smaller hand in his, tightly. It isn't until she squeezes back that he releases the breath he's holding.
4-4
Serrano Point, 2025
The power plant is clean in a way no human camp is; score one for the machines. It smells weird, like if the infirmary was located in the mechanical wing. Industrial chemicals and hot steel. She likes it. Not that it really matters; they ship out in six hours. The U.S.S. Jimmy Carter is the closest thing she has to a home, a world contained by metal and the Pacific.
Perth will be warmer and the base will smell like dirt. Spared the level of devastation wreaked upon the Americas, Europe and most of Asia, Australia had recovered the fastest, as far as they knew, though their population is too small and the distance too far to adequately supply the decimated human race. But there is hope in that fragile earth and hope - and John Connor - is all they have going for them.
Jesse sits at the lone table, watching the others and wonders what use the machines would have had for a chair.
One of her new crewmates, the tall one with the easy, cynical smile ambles over, dropping his pack next to hers. “Dietz,” he says, as if he knows she can’t remember his name.
“Flores.”
He takes the seat opposite her, straddling the metal frame that seems a touch too small for him, resting his arms across the back of the chair. A battered flask appears, from some well concealed pocket. He offers her a bitter, caustic taste with a smile that stretches moonshine wet lips and changes his face completely.
The shitty alcohol burns its way down but she smiles anyway.
4-5
John Connor thinks in loops and circles and spirals. He thinks in time and when he shows her this she begins to understand why he leads the humans, why Skynet wants him dead, why she's here. He charts his moves across time and space and she thinks of chess and dinosaurs.
He is more than human but she doesn't think he understands because only one side of his mouth moves upward when she says so.
She drafts him weaponry and generators and asks him how a species can be capable of birthing Skynet and still have so many flaws in their defences. He reminds her of the nuclear apocalypse and shows her the TDE. She takes to the room and asks him about grand pianos and the tyrannosaurus rex.
She's more than machine but he doesn't tell her so because it's not time yet, even as it sizzles the air in blue. Time shifts here and her orbit trembles.
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Chapter: 4.0
Author: aelysian
Summary: Hers is only one of many: stories, lives, pasts and futures. Cameron Phillips' life is a coil, a twist of time unraveling, the end chasing the beginning. Cameron origin fic.
Delilah - 4.0
4-1
Undisclosed Location, 2026
The first thing he hears when he finally comes to is silence. No roar of HKs flying overhead, no heavy footsteps of their metal guards, no music. The silence is deafening and his head aches in relief. His body is a little slower, coming alive with jerk that reminds him of how stiff and sore his muscles are. Everything hurts, a deep, dull pain that promises to last.
“I think they’re gone.”
Derek forces himself up and realizes it’s day. Daylight and alive. A vague memory of a late night horror movie with zombies flickers across his tired brain. And then he sees it, dry eyes immediately focusing on the plain slab of metal and wood, its shape welcome and familiar, rousing an ancient instinct.
He shakes off the fatigue, the thinning veil of encroaching insanity, the music. Whirring, whirring, whirring.
“What is this, a game?”
Bullseye. Derek takes the axe, squeezing the rough, ashy wood in fingers, tight to fight the tremor. Heavy and crude and freedom. They’re done, used up, discarded…lab rats running blind in daylight. He doesn’t doubt that they’re still watching. They were always, always watching.
“Yeah. It’s always a game.” And it’s time to get back in it. The axe swings and bites into the wooden floorboard. He tosses it to the man on his left and chains rattle.
Metal bastards.
4-2
Jesse Flores is eating dinner - to be distinguished from lunch by portion size - when she hears about the new metal. It's important to be aware of all cyborg units and Sarah's voice hints at something more interesting than another scrubbed triple eight.
Sarah's good at telling a story, weaving together a pretty picture from truth, speculation, and the threads of gossip that always seem to pass through her hands. Something about Transfer 46 and some mechanic; it's a distraction from the fact that she hasn't seen Derek for weeks and that her dinner's unusually gritty.
And then Connor's name grabs her attention and she starts paying attention. Connor, the chair and a girl metal. Female cyborgs weren't unheard of, but they weren't common either.
Jesse can hear the anxiety in the other woman's voice when she tells her about the tin girl that lives in Connor's quarters, tin footsteps that echo day and night. Sarah doesn't like it and Jesse doesn't blame her. She can't. Because when she wonders if she'd be able to tell, if she hadn't known what Queeg was, if she'd…the thought that the machines were capable of that level of imitation was unnerving. They could be anyone, anywhere…her stomach turns and she fights to clamp down on the familiar tremble of panic.
She grips her spoon so her knuckles go red and then white, the smooth hard curve of its edge reassuring under her thumb.
Sarah laughs uneasily and tells her that the tin girl is pretty, the suggestion heavy in her voice.
Jesse focuses on that. Connor. He wouldn't lead them wrong. He keeps them alive. She had to remember that, she tells herself to calm the tremors and tries not to wonder where Derek is. Master the fear.
She breathes deeply, evenly, the inhale the perfect balance to every exhale. She shrugs, nonchalant.
Connor wouldn't lead them wrong, wouldn't lead them astray. He wouldn't and besides death, shit for food and Skynet, that's one of the few certainties Jesse has left.
4-3
She patrols the section of the base that houses Connor's quarters every three hours, walks up and down every corridor, passing the human night shift whose eyes follow her warily. They speak in lowered voices that are meant to be inaudible but she's an infiltrator model and eavesdropping is only the beginning of what she does. There are words like 'metal' and 'bad' and 'crazy'. She classifies them as a level five threat and moves on.
John is restless in his sleep when she returns, the thin blanket tangled at his feet. He is perspiring and agitated; dreaming, she concludes.
Cameron takes three steps to stand beside his bed, her brow furrowed even though there's no one to see the perturbed expression, and tells him to wake.
He merely shifts and does not respond otherwise.
She's not supposed to touch humans without tactical cause but she reaches down anyway, grips his shoulder firmly and shakes once, twice. He jerks awake, his eyes eyes darting from side to side before focusing on her face. She can see the uncertainty in his pupils, can hear it in his voice like it's a question when he says her name.
"You were dreaming," she says. "You seemed upset."
John sits up, swinging his legs over the side of the low bed to perch on its edge. This is not what she intended. John should be sleeping.
"Nightmare."
"Bad dream," she amends. "Was it about your mother? I hear people call out for their mothers when they're sleeping."
John doesn't want to think about what she hears when she walks the base at night or about his mother. "No."
Cameron doesn't say anything, but she moves to sit next to him on the bed and carefully mimics his posture. He stares at her, but he does not object so she does not move.
Her knee touches his a moment later and even though he knows it's deliberate, he can't quite stop the tiny smile.
"My father," he says without really meaning to, as if she had coaxed it from him with her silence - or maybe with the touch of her knee against his. It's the first time he's mentioned his father in years; for all anyone's concerned, Sarah Connor's conception had been near immaculate.
"You don't talk about your father."
"That's because he's dead." Twice - three, four, five, a thousand times - over now? Kyle Reese is always dead, John Connor is always the leader and Sarah Connor is always some weird mythical cross between Wonder Woman and the Virgin Mary for everyone except him. And Cameron is…
"Is that why you dream of him? Because he's dead?"
Everyone dreams of the dead, he thinks. Of mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers, husbands, wives…the dead are everywhere, living in the dreams of the survivors. Haunting. His dead haunt his dreams even as they walk the tunnels, their lives and deaths twisted into knots around the fingers of John Connor. He animates them for as long as he chooses, the master puppeteer, the Dr. Frankenstein of the fourth dimension. His monster, his creator, his god next to him, touching at the knees and shoulders. Skynet and hope taking the form of a not girl.
He made her he thinks, and the irony that shapes the loops of time that is his life never fails to make him a little dizzy. She makes and he made and somewhere in there fits Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese and others along the way, the living dead, pulling his strings from across time.
His silence has exceeded the upper limit. "John?"
Her voice breaks him out of his disjointed - self-indulgent, Sarah Connor's voice echoes through memory - train of thought.
"Yeah." Maybe it's the lack of sleep or the dreams. Maybe it's the loneliness and solitude. Maybe it's the fact that it's her, right here, with him. Maybe it doesn't fucking matter because he's John Connor damn it, and who's going to know or question why? Sarah's voice is ringing warning bells in the part of his mind that's still sixteen years old but Sarah's dead and you can't stop me now, Mom. Not this time.
John reaches over and takes her smaller hand in his, tightly. It isn't until she squeezes back that he releases the breath he's holding.
4-4
Serrano Point, 2025
The power plant is clean in a way no human camp is; score one for the machines. It smells weird, like if the infirmary was located in the mechanical wing. Industrial chemicals and hot steel. She likes it. Not that it really matters; they ship out in six hours. The U.S.S. Jimmy Carter is the closest thing she has to a home, a world contained by metal and the Pacific.
Perth will be warmer and the base will smell like dirt. Spared the level of devastation wreaked upon the Americas, Europe and most of Asia, Australia had recovered the fastest, as far as they knew, though their population is too small and the distance too far to adequately supply the decimated human race. But there is hope in that fragile earth and hope - and John Connor - is all they have going for them.
Jesse sits at the lone table, watching the others and wonders what use the machines would have had for a chair.
One of her new crewmates, the tall one with the easy, cynical smile ambles over, dropping his pack next to hers. “Dietz,” he says, as if he knows she can’t remember his name.
“Flores.”
He takes the seat opposite her, straddling the metal frame that seems a touch too small for him, resting his arms across the back of the chair. A battered flask appears, from some well concealed pocket. He offers her a bitter, caustic taste with a smile that stretches moonshine wet lips and changes his face completely.
The shitty alcohol burns its way down but she smiles anyway.
4-5
John Connor thinks in loops and circles and spirals. He thinks in time and when he shows her this she begins to understand why he leads the humans, why Skynet wants him dead, why she's here. He charts his moves across time and space and she thinks of chess and dinosaurs.
He is more than human but she doesn't think he understands because only one side of his mouth moves upward when she says so.
She drafts him weaponry and generators and asks him how a species can be capable of birthing Skynet and still have so many flaws in their defences. He reminds her of the nuclear apocalypse and shows her the TDE. She takes to the room and asks him about grand pianos and the tyrannosaurus rex.
She's more than machine but he doesn't tell her so because it's not time yet, even as it sizzles the air in blue. Time shifts here and her orbit trembles.
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