Sarah slept badly, dreams half remembered dragging her back to consciousness over and over until the sun rose and she gave up on the whole thing. She rubbed her eyes, and swung her legs over the edge of the bed. Everything hurt, she was dirty and gross and had nothing to change into; but those were problems she could deal with. On the other side of the room, Pops sat exactly where he had positioned himself last night, and the sitting part worried her. In the eleven year she had lived with him, he had never sat, it was part of the whole nuclear power core and never needing to sleep or be tired or do any of the inconvenient things that plagued ordinary carbon based lifeforms. She didn't think it was an affectation, either.

Behind her, Kyle caught her wrist as she tensed to stand. "Let me look at it first?"

Glancing over her shoulder, she met his eyes, bright and sincere. It was a request, not an order, and she thought she might love him for it. With a sigh of feigned resignation, Sarah scooted back onto the bed. "Look, then."

She nudged him with her elbow and he rolled to his feet with easy grace, carding fingers through his hair until it stood wildly on end. "I hate sleeping in boots," He mumbled and squatted down in front of Sarah. His fingers were gently and deft as he rolled the denim up over her knee and frowned at the bandage he had tied over the gruesome injury last night. The pale blue cloth was pristine, unstained by blood or sub-cutaneous fluid. "Huh," Kyle sat back on his heels and glanced at Pops' back. "Think he can hear us right now?"

Sarah shrugged; what did it matter either way? She had learned the hard way when she was a little girl that it was impossible to keep secrets from a hyper-intelligent, perpetually vigilant protector

Kyle didn't share her experience, that she knew, but he seemed to catch on to her thoughts and nodded. "We'll discuss it later, then." His eyes flicked to the dirty cotton covering her abdomen and then returned to working free the knots on her bandage. "How do you feel?"

"Like I need a shower and a change of clothes," Sarah groused and her stomach rumbled. "And breakfast."

Kyle nodded in agreement with all three things. "Just another minute and we can go check those out." He freed the cloth covering with a final tug, wadding the strip of fabric in his hands, then tossed it to the side and ran his large hands over her calf, glancing up at her face.

"How does it look?" Sarah twisted, impatient to see for herself, but unable to contort her torso into a position that would let her view the wound in her current position.

"It doesn't hurt?" Kyle queried, pressing his palm over the rigid red and black lattice that had grown over the missing chunk of muscle overnight. He pulled his hand away and studied the stinging pink indentations they left on his palm.

Sarah considered the question, "Not exactly." She struggled to find an accurate description. "It's a little sore, like I was standing on that foot for a really long time." Tugging her leg out of Kyle's gentle grip, she pulled her leg up and ran her fingers over the exit wound. Her expression froze at the alien sensation there, and she forced her leg into a position where the site was bared for both of them to see clearly. "What the fuck? What's happening to me?"

Looking at it made Kyle's skin crawl, it was much worse to look upon in daylight than when he had made his preliminary examination; it hadn't looked to horrendously artificial. Now it was clearly a grid of sharp right angles, threaded through with hair-fine blood vessels that pulsed visible to the naked eye. "I'm glad you're okay." He glanced back at Pops again, still motionless at the table.

"You call this okay?" Sarah raised her voice, "This is definitely not okay!" She rolled away from him and scrambled off the bed. Stumbling, leg heavy and somewhat unresponsive, she caught her balance against the wall and limped across the room. "Pops? Pops! You wake up right now, old man!" She caught herself on the broad shoulders that came halfway up her chest and shook him violently. "Do you hear me? I said wake up!" She screamed at the unresponsive Guardian until her voice cracked and fell back to a normal register. "That's an order." There was no response and she sagged against him, thumping his back with unrestrained frustration. "Asshole."

Kyle approached slowly, making a vague affirmative sound in his throat, and offered her his hand. "Let's go get supplies, okay? You'll kick his ass that much better once you've had breakfast and a shower."

Her lips twitched, a smile despite all the fear and anger. "I don't want to kick his ass," Sarah pouted, but pushed herself away from the unresponsive Guardian and retied her hair in a ponytail. She picked the pockets of the leather jacket draped over Pops' chair, coming up with a keyring and wad of cash. "You're being awfully calm about this whole thing."

"I could run screaming through the streets if you prefer," Kyle made a halfhearted grab at the keys as she tossed them in the air, but Sarah's reflexes were sharp. "But that would go against all my reasons for being here."

Sarah stuffed the keys and cash into her pocket and unlocked the door. "You're not chained here, you know." She rubbed her bare arms as the cold morning air hit. "This can't have been what you signed up for."

Kyle tugged the door shut behind him and kept pace with her back to the car. "I signed up to deal with whatever happens." He swung into the passenger seat as Sarah clambered behind the steering wheel and dragged the rear view mirror down to her level. "I never thought this was going to be an easy assignment."

His quiet, self-deprecating chuckle eased something tight in Sarah's chest, and she threw the car into reverse, backing out of the dirt lot in front of the motel and speeding down the empty highway in the bright morning. "So what didn't you want to say where Pops could hear you?"

Kyle hesitated, then spoke, "Don't you think it's a little weird that your Guardian didn't stop to check on you once after you'd been shot yesterday?"

Sarah opened her mouth, snapped it shut and stared hard at the road disappearing into the horizon before them. "Just because he didn't say anything doesn't mean he didn't check. I don't require constant reassurance that I'm not about to drop dead, you know."

"There's a difference between constant reassurance and making sure you don't get left behind when your leg gets shot out from under you." Kyle frowned at the scenery outside and touched her hand where it lay on the armrest between them.

Sarah squeezed his fingers and flashed him a quick smile. "He didn't need to, you had it under control. He kept the Intelligence Engine from falling into Cyberdyne hands. I think it was an adequate division of labor."

"'Adequate' is a funny description," Kyle snorted, "I'd hate to see what you thought unsatisfactory looked like." He squeezed her hand again before she took it back.

"Ha-ha," Sarah rolled her eyes, "I thought you and Pops had come to some sort of understanding, anyway."

"We did," Tires squealed as she took a hairpin turn and Kyle tightened his grip on the armrest. "But that was about a different topic. If you're okay with how it's worked out, then I'll drop the subject, but something about this feels off."

"He was sent back to protect me. He's on our side." Sarah closed the conversation as they pulled into the small parking lot of a gas station.

A gambling man, Kyle put a heavy hand on Sarah's shoulder as she moved to unlock her door and exit the vehicle. "Is he really? Or is he on the side of whomever sent him back?" Kyle removed his hand as she flashed a lightning-quick glare at him and hopped out of the car.

It was an ugly, insidious suggestion and Sarah did everything in her power to ignore it, and Kyle, as she marched into the small convenience store attached to the gas station. It was a lucky find, the breakfast sandwiches still warm and not particularly soggy. She tossed them on the counter beside the one open register and added an assortment of non-perishable snacks and bottles of water while Kyle put together two coffees from the urns out along the back counter. The groggy, apathetic teen behind the counter didn't blink at her erratic behavior or filthy appearance, just took the bill and counted out change with the minimum required effort before going back to his phone. Kyle crowded her space, just a little, bagging their purchases and Sarah leaned her elbows on the counter. "Excuse me," She waited, fixed smile fading as the youth tookhis time to look up. "Are there any surplus stores around here?"

The attendant blinked languidly, taking time to process the request. "Uh, yeah, next town over down the highway."

Sarah nodded a brusque thanks and gathered up her purchases, cold shoulder wearing out as she stalked into the sunshine and then had to juggle egg and cheese sandwiches, boiling hot coffee in flimsy paper cups, and plastic bags of groceries with Kyle's assistance. The last of her bad temper disappeared as they ate in relative quiet, disrupted only by the occasional car speeding past on the highway. His arm was warm against her shoulder and she leaned into him. It wasn't Kyle's fault that he was suspicious, she could only imagine what his life had been like prior to 1984. Nothing she had heard led her to believe there had been anything pleasant about it beyond his friendship with John and the thought made her unaccountably sad.

"I'm sorry I upset you." Kyle's words broke into her ponderings. "I was, I am, worried. About you, our son, the end of the world." He sighed into his coffee, then took a drink, grimacing at the scorching heat.

"Hey, it's okay," Sarah managed to form her mouth into a convincing smile. "Pops is… Pops. He's not evil."

Kyle shook his head, "He's a Machine; they're incapable of 'evil'." He wrapped his arm around her shoulders, giving Sarah plenty of time to pull away. "Shit, you're freezing."

"It's not so bad, now," She wrapped her hands more tightly around her hot drink. "We better get moving and find that store. I'd like to be back when Pops wakes up." Snorting inelegantly, she added, "Whenever that is." Sarah climbed back into the truck and cranked up the heater. "I think Skynet sounds pretty evil."

Kyle considered the non-sequitur, connecting it back to their conversation from thirty seconds ago. "There's no inherent moral code behind artificial intelligence, not according to any of the accepted theories from 2029, anyway. If all you can do is follow pre-programmed algorithms and outcome-category-analysis models, then everything you do is pre-determined by the original programmer; they're the ones who carry moral culpability."

Sarah felt like the vast majority of that went over her head, but nodded anyway as they pulled back onto the highway. "Like Asimov's laws of robotics."

Kyle considered the comparison, "Same general idea, I guess. And none of that is to say that what humanity's suffered at the hands of the Machines is okay, everything they've done to us is objectively really horrible." He couldn't suppress a shudder at the memory. "A few crazy bastards figured out that if you could incapacitate a Terminator without damaging too much of the physical structure, you could pry open the skull and remove a chip about the size of your thumbnail. Replace it with a bit of wire and a transmitter and you could control that unit directly." He shifted in his seat, "We owed our victory against Skynet to those guys and their robots. It really made me re-evaluate what we were fighting." He blew out a long breath and Sarah reached for his hand, squeezing his fingers. "Whether Pops is good or bad depends entirely on whoever sent him back. I guess that's the point I'm trying to make."

Sarah scrunched her nose as she thought about it. "He's had years to do something bad and he's never done so. Not once. I figure if he hasn't done anything yet, he probably never will. If that assumption is proven wrong I'll figure it out when I get there."

His thumb stroked along her knuckles. "We'll figure it out," Kyle corrected her and Sarah didn't even try to suppress the smile that bloomed on her lips.

The surplus store was just opening up when they finally found it, hidden around back behind a shiny new ranching store. Exploring it was good fun, especially since they eventually found everything they needed, including an emphatically incurious attendant. There were sturdy dark clothes in the approximate right size, thick canvas jackets, duffels, and cast off weaponry dating back to the Gulf War with the necessary ammo still sealed in dusty green crates. Sarah resisted the urge to change right in the store; clean clothing would be that much nicer after she had showered. Still, it was something concrete to look forward to and she fidgeted impatiently as the old man, ex-Marine by the faded blue ink on his arms, rang up their selections and had the audacity to wink at her as he surrendered the old ARs in their hard plastic cases. "You kids be good now. I haven't made the news in forty-some years and I've no desire to start again now. Understood?"

The old man barked at them and it triggered something in Kyle, an old memory, an old friend and he snapped a salute. "Yes, sir!"

The clerk, such as the word applied, narrowed his eyes at Kyle and then relaxed, reading some sign known only to him. "Infantry?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good boy," The old man nodded, one kindred soul to another. "You know what we called you lot in the Marines, back in my day?"

"Same thing they call it now, sir?"

The geezer grinned and shook Kyle's hand. "Won't wear your ears out repeating it, then. You and your lady-friend stay safe, now."

Sarah waited until they were out of the store and on their way home before asking, "So what do the Marines call the Infantry?"

Kyle snorted through his nose, "I have no idea. Marines fell out of use pretty quickly once Skynet was controlling 91% of functioning military hardware. I thought it made a good exit line." Sarah snickered at his self-satisfied smirk and they finished the ride him in peaceful camaraderie.

.

.

She bee-lined for the shower when they arrived back at the motel. Her leg was starting to hurt significantly more than it had earlier and Sarah was forced to admit, to herself at least, that she probably should have asked Kyle to drive them back here. Still, she had gotten home with both body and pride intact and the warm water would help heal the rest of her non-physical ills in the short term. The spray stung where it hit her skin and she stayed under the water just long enough to scrub off the blood the grime before limping out and cocooning herself in a towel. She got no peace even in that for someone pounded on the door loudly enough to make her jump in surprise and lunge for a knife that wasn't there.

"Sarah! Hurry it up! Pops is awake!" Kyle shouted and she yanked the door open, pushing past him and dripping water in her wake.

Pops was definitely up, moving around the counter where the boxes containing the intelligence engine were where he had left them. "I have had an epiphany." He declared as Sarah padded into the room. "We have enough information gathered here to observe Cyberdyne remotely. With proper hardware we can run an optimized search without the logistical risks and requirements of being on site."

"That's your epiphany?" Sarah tried not to make her question come out too obnoxious, but failed if Kyle's smirk was anything to go by. Pops gave her a flat, unimpressed look; definitely obnoxious then.

"No. That is merely our next step, to be acted upon once you are done dressing yourself. The epiphany is that once we are in a position to observe Cyberdyne remotely, we can use their internal archives to modify the acquired intelligence engine hardware and run a reverse engineering analysis to determine where the original release went wrong."

Kyle thought about the plan for two entire seconds before voicing his opinion. "That's a terrible idea. How do you know it's not the improved version that kicks off Judgement day?"

"Because I was not here to build it."

"If it's a different timeline then how would you know?" Kyle challenged.

"You do not know otherwise." Pops countered, reasonable.

"Maybe not," Kyle's concession surprised Sarah. "But, man, you got to know this has 'Bad Idea' written all over it. The last thing humanity needs is two Skynets loose. We might as well launch the missiles ourselves at that point."

"That is hyperbole." Pops turned to Sarah, "What is your opinion, Sarah Connor?"

Sarah glanced between the two men. "I think your idea puts us in an arms-race with Cyberdyne, one where they have all the advantages." She thought through her next argument carefully before continuing. "Our goal is to stop Cyberdyne from rebuilding Skynet and I don't really see how trouble-shooting what they did wrong achieves that goal. Could we use that remote surveillance you mentioned to sabotage their current efforts? That might be better."

"Definitely better," Kyle approved.

"It will depend on the security measures they have in place." Pops responded with a sharp look at Kyle. "But it is an adequate strategy, if it is your preference."

"It is," Sarah adjusted her grip on the towel to dig through the pile of bags on the unused bed and began pulling on fresh clothes. "Do we need anything for this surveillance of yours? It's a hike to any sort of shopping center from here."

"No," Pops studied her antics as she shimmied her jeans on under the towel. "There is a place I know of outside Seattle that will fulfill all our needs for this stage of the project."

"Seattle?" Sarah grimaced, "Why are all your hideouts an eight hour drive away from our current location?" She waved Kyle off as he opened his mouth. "Go shower, I won't let him leave without you." The act was maintained until the bathroom door clicked shut behind him and the sound of running water filled the room. Sarah dragged her shirt on and sat down on the bed, her elbows digging into her knees. "You scared the shit out of me, Pops. What was that?"

The Guardian looked slightly ashamed. "In spite of my material upgrades, I am still running on the original model 1000 nuclear battery cell. It still has many years of operational capacity left but its output is capped to ensure longevity. Last night's analysis of the data we extracted from Cyberdyne took all my available processing power." He reached out and patted her wet hair like she was nine years old all over again and in need of whatever tactile comfort her could provide. "I am sorry you were worried. It was not my intent."

Sarah smiled up at the grizzled old face, full of trust and love. "It was weird; you made Kyle bug out a little. He warned me to be careful of you."

Pops patted her head again before pulling his arm back and letting it dangle awkwardly at his side. "You should be careful," He agreed. "You are a reckless girl sometimes, my Sarah, and we will not be able to protect you from everything."

She rolled her eyes at that; the speech hadn't changed significantly in the ten years he had been reciting it. "You're talking about yesterday. What I did was a rational decision, given your various preoccupations. If you disagreed, you should have done something differently."

Pops dismissed the idea with a wave of his hand. "I told him to protect you. He was not completely inept."

"Such praise!" Sarah mocked him, then repented. "It was so you could take care of the intelligence engine, right? What's it do?"

"I do not know the specifics, but if the Dysons want it then they should not have it. Lie down, it is time for your medical exam."

She complied, a dutiful daughter, and rested her hands at her sides until he loomed over her and nodded that she could move. "Well, Doctor Pops? Anything I should know?"

Pops frowned, but did not take the bait over the childish nickname. "You sustained grave trauma to your abdomen. There is significant internal damage to your liver, gall-bladder and abdominal muscles. Your uterus and intestinal tract are," He hesitated and glanced her over again, "Entirely unaffected."

Sarah crossed her arms over her stomach as though to do so might mitigate some of the damage. "Is John okay?" The name was self-evident; she had never had to stop and ponder what she might name her child, it was foretold from the time she could remember that she would have a son and he would be named John.

Pops nodded, still staring. "From the damage patterns, it appears that the nanos created a protective shield ahead of the impact, protecting your child and exacerbating your injuries at the trauma site."

"I feel fine," Sarah muttered, but pulled up the hem of her shirt to glare at the angry bruise and red mesh imprints. "So John saved himself?"

"It could not have been intentional."

"Why not?

"Because," Pops reasoned with a glacial sort of inevitability, "It would have required detailed knowledge of events that had not yet occurred in this timeline and relied on enormous improbability." He nudged the collar of her shirt aside, touching a rough fingertip to the silvery scar from where John had cut her. "The activity of the microfluids has increased 25-fold." The cloth sprung back into place when he pulled his hand away. "The exponential increase is interfering with my diagnostic capabilities, but there appears to be a minor increase in overall particle density."

"You mean it's started growing." Sarah was not going to panic over this, it would accomplish nothing, but her heart persisted in trying to burst out of her throat. "Is there anything you can do?"

Pops stared at her for several long seconds, inscrutable. "It does not have to be a bad thing," he said at last. "There is a high probability that it saved John Connor's life. It may save yours."

Sarah blew out a long, shuddering breath. "At what cost? Look at what John became: an agent of Skynet. I can't let that happen to either of us." She wrapped her arms over her abdomen again, it was becoming something of a nervous tic. "Pops, I'm scared."

"It will be okay," The mattress sagged as the Guardian sat beside her and pulled her into a carefully planned hug. "Nothing will happen to you while I have the power to prevent it." The sound of running water cut off abruptly and he let her go. "When we get to the new location I will take some biological material from you. It may be that in a controlled environment we can determine what is causing these changes in your ability."

Sarah snorted and wiped her dry eyes. "You make it sound like I have any control over this." She pulled herself together as Kyle emerged from the bathroom in a cloud of steam, wrapping a towel around his hips.

He glanced between the two of them, "Did I miss something?"

The look Kyle gave her, confused and concerned, disarmed Sarah quite thoroughly. "The contamination is getting worse." It was a small victory that her composure didn't crack as she delivered the news.

"Not much worse," Pops countered, "But without concrete data we cannot predict the risks or possible outcomes."

Kyle absorbed the news with relative calm. "Is this something Cyberdyne might have information on?" He dropped beside Sarah on the bed, unknowingly filling the spot Pops had just vacated and wrapped an arm around her waist.

"It is possible," Pops allowed for the possibility without indicating how remote it might be. "Get dressed, Kyle Reese. We should leave soon."