Escape to the City
John would find her.
Earth was gone, Humanity was gone (but here) and here and burning. Did the goddamn ship have everyone in those pods? No. Skynet. This was Skynet. And she was on the move (you keep moving, you always keep moving). She hugged the walls, then remembered the tentacles and hissed as she veered away. It was a misstep that had her tumbling and thrown up from some goddamn chute. Sarah sat there for a moment, blinking as she stared out across a fake horizon and took in the fake sky. It wasn't real.
John was real. He was real.
She forced herself upright and kept moving, a scowl curling her lip as she moved toward the shelter of the buildings. Sarah wandered, found a piece of rebar amongst the rubble, tested it, and felt better. She kept it in hand, her fingers clenched around it, as she leaned up against a building. Whatever it was made of was cool and she sank into it for a moment with a hiss. She could see it in her head, the fire and destruction--the way the the Terminator's flesh had melted away into nothing but a metal skeleton. That was the world she had left. Fuck, she could still feel the way its cold hand had closed around her throat all those years ago.
After Kyle was dead and broken at the bottom of those stairs, his mission had become hers.
She was still fighting his fight.
And this was Skynet. It had to be Skynet. Because if it wasn't, she had failed.
Sarah didn't accept failure. There was absolutely no way she would ever accept failure--with the world burning and dying, with the screaming of an entire world in her ears each and every goddamn day. She didn't need some Metal motherfucker telling her that her world had been blown away. The Future was coming, but it hadn't come yet.
There was supposed to be time.
But John was older, much older. He'd lived the War. She'd lived the war in her head, every day, every moment. She could see the fire, here, too. And it was easier because there was rubble, there were broken buildings. No children, no blackened corpses that fell to ash when she reached for them. Sarah drew a breath and froze as she heard a noise.
The rebar came up.
Earth was gone, Humanity was gone (but here) and here and burning. Did the goddamn ship have everyone in those pods? No. Skynet. This was Skynet. And she was on the move (you keep moving, you always keep moving). She hugged the walls, then remembered the tentacles and hissed as she veered away. It was a misstep that had her tumbling and thrown up from some goddamn chute. Sarah sat there for a moment, blinking as she stared out across a fake horizon and took in the fake sky. It wasn't real.
John was real. He was real.
She forced herself upright and kept moving, a scowl curling her lip as she moved toward the shelter of the buildings. Sarah wandered, found a piece of rebar amongst the rubble, tested it, and felt better. She kept it in hand, her fingers clenched around it, as she leaned up against a building. Whatever it was made of was cool and she sank into it for a moment with a hiss. She could see it in her head, the fire and destruction--the way the the Terminator's flesh had melted away into nothing but a metal skeleton. That was the world she had left. Fuck, she could still feel the way its cold hand had closed around her throat all those years ago.
After Kyle was dead and broken at the bottom of those stairs, his mission had become hers.
She was still fighting his fight.
And this was Skynet. It had to be Skynet. Because if it wasn't, she had failed.
Sarah didn't accept failure. There was absolutely no way she would ever accept failure--with the world burning and dying, with the screaming of an entire world in her ears each and every goddamn day. She didn't need some Metal motherfucker telling her that her world had been blown away. The Future was coming, but it hadn't come yet.
There was supposed to be time.
But John was older, much older. He'd lived the War. She'd lived the war in her head, every day, every moment. She could see the fire, here, too. And it was easier because there was rubble, there were broken buildings. No children, no blackened corpses that fell to ash when she reached for them. Sarah drew a breath and froze as she heard a noise.
The rebar came up.