Foreword:

I own no rights to the TSCC chatacters i use, or the Terminator franichise, obviously. Just playing with them a bit.

The story and other characters are mine, however.

This is an english-translated version of my first TSCC fanfic. I decied to do the translation even though i'm not entirelly sure i'm up to the task of having it done well enough. Writing in english means more readers and more feedback though, and that's what i'm after, so don't hesitate in throwing me a comment. All of them will be greatly apreciated, wheter they are positive or not.

There'll be a total of 4 chapters, plus an epilogue. The first one is kinda slow, starting the story, but You can expect things to pick up and tension to rise later on.

And lastly, sorry for my clumsy at times english. Try to be forgiving in this regard. :)

*edit* I made a mistake with a word, that i saw too late. In the first part i used word "bench" when in fact it was supposed to be a desk. Sigh. Hopefully, it was still more or less understandable.

Aquma, 10.06.2010

* Chapter I *

The man sitting behind a desk laced fingers through his hair. It was only 10 pm, yet he already had no strenght for this. War reports and petitions were lying everywhere around, he almost believed that in some magical way, when he finished one, two more popped up in its place. His hard, green eyes skipped over the pile of papers that somehow managed to accumulate on his desk during just one week and he sighed with irritation. Taking one more look at the report he was reading right now, one speaking about weapons and munitions shortage in Greenway camp, he leaned back against his solid, leather armchair, and then finally closed his eyes, listening to the sounds coming from the room next door, trying to relax with crystal clear, sad sounds of Chopin's 20th Nocturne.

Deep down, he knew that his tiredness and lack of concentration had a much greater reason for existence today, then a desk full of overdue reports. He even knew there weren't even that many of them – he recieved paper reports only from camp's leading officers, leaving the the rest to those under his command, who in turn recieved theirs in a spoken form. It helped with the lack of education of many of his field officers, who quite commonly knew more about guns then the alphabet. Paper wasn't inifinite either, anyways. Nothing is infinite in this fucked up world, and nothing comes easily, you have to fight for every damn thing, risk your life for every scrap, he thought bitterly. Today though, not even that fact, usually a prime suspect, was the main reason for his stress. Today his tiredness had a much more personal reason.

Damn 17th march, came through his mind and he sighed hard once again.

When he opened them again, his eyes didn't go towards his desk however, venturing behind wide-open doors to the room next door – his own bedroom, instead. He knew, after all, they were open for his pleasure. She remembered he liked to watch. She remembered everything.

A scene like from a completely different world opened up to his eyes. It didn't fit in any way to the old, worn carpet and battered desk, to the man who was sitting behind it, a man with a scarred chest and tired eyes who sometimes felt at least as old as the almost 160-years old furniture, despite the fact that he didn't reach even a quarter of that yet.

Behind the doors, to a calm rythm of the music, danced a girl. A shirt was tied up below her breasts – my shirt, he noticed momentarily distracted – and tight fitting shorts only emphasized her figure, at the same time still allowing imagination to do its magic. Long, auburn hair was tied, yet a few strings had freed themselves, falling loosely on her face. Big, brown eyes, placed in an uncommon face, were slightly narrowed, as if in a great focus which, for one reason or the other, he found funny.

Ideal, practiced moves were taking her sleepily through the ballet, one fragment after the other and he knew she wouldn't make even a slightest mistake until the very end, when her deceptively delicate body would close like a flower in the very middle of his room. Making mistakes wasn't part of her nature. He saw this scene so many times, he could probably envision every part of it in his imagination and he knew that, if fate allows it, he'll see it many times more still, never having enough. Each time it was the same. Each time the music calmed him, the view soothing his wounds and throwing the ever-present tiredness out of his eyes. Each time, he would feel tears welling up in them, against his will.

He had seen as many firghtening things in his life as those deeply touching. He had seen mothers hugging dead treasures to their chests and soldiers rising up to the battle with his name on their lips. He had seen women in tears, carresing their dead husbands faces and lovers falling into each others embrace after coming back from what they'd imagined would be their dinner with death. He had also seen children, dead inside, looking around with an empty expression, a look that he knew would haunt his nightmares every night, until the very end.

He had seen more then he would've liked and he didn't have many tears left, yet for some reason her dance still brought him to their threshold. Each time she danced, he was barely holding it together.

So little of that left, in this fucked up world., he tought tiredly.

The man's heart cried while the girl continued dancing, swimming on the sounds of Chopin like a swan. She seemed completely focused on the music and rythm, her body yet another instrument, paying homage to the great composer.

An avatar of beauty.

An avatar of grace.

An avatar of paradox.

Suddenly, probably seeing his agitation, she stopped, with one leg still in the air. Hear head tilted slightly to the side, eyes focusing on him, taking in every detail instantly.

"John? Is everything alright?", she asked quietly, letting the music get ahead of her.

"Y...yes.", he answered after a brief moment, winning over his hoarse throat, "Yes, i'm alright. I'm sorry for getting you out of rythm."

Corners of her lipes turned up ever so slightly, in a smile noone else would've probably noticed. "It's nothing", she whispered and with those words she shot forward, her body a blur of speed, composing unnaturaly fast into required ballet forms. In just a few seconds she crossed the gap between her and the rythm, suddenly once again flowing into it, fitting the music like a favourite dress, with the slightest of smiles still on her lips.

Like forewarding a movie, crossed his mind and he asked aloud, "Couldn't you just have started from this moment...?"

"I could have.", she answered without stopping, "but the dance woudln't be complete then." Her body whirled around gracefully one last time and then she slowly, lazily fell to the carpet next to his bed. "It should be complete." , she added, "Dance is the hidden language of the soul."

Yes, the man smiled inside, there's probably more truth in that then you imagine.

Sometimes it really shocked him that noone else saw in her, what so visibly was there. Perhaps it's because i'm the only one looking for it, a tought came through his head. For a while he just sat there, silently, watching lost in thought as she stood up and moved, without a trace of fatigue – obviously – to his side, freeing her hair on the way. Coming closer she stood behind his armchair and looked over his shoulder.

"Greenway.", she commmented emotionlessly, looking at the page lying on top of the pile of papers. "It's the second time in 83 days and 13 hours they ask your for weapons."

"They've had a rough couple of months.", he answered, drumming his fingers on the armrest.

"More like loose triggers."

He sighed.

"They lost a lot of weaponry six months ago, during the attack on the factory, remember?", he reminded her in a tired tone, "On my command. It's my responsibility to support them with whatever they might nee..ee... d..", the last part of his sentence was cut off by a sudden touch of her hand on his neck. Eh, Johny... Nearly a quarter-century of aquaintence and you still jump like a teenager around her. Worth a laugh.

"You are tired, John.", said the object of his thoughts matter-of-factly, putting her hands into slow, circulating movements massaging the muscles of his neck. "And hungry.", she added, furrowing her brows. "You shouldn't work this much."

"It's not that.", he answered resigning himself to her agile hands. "Not today."

Uncomortable silence flooded the room for a while. The man quite obviously had no desire to pursue the topic that was as natural as it was inescapable, tommorow being what it was. In the midst of work he somehow evaded thinking about it for almost the whole day, but John knew that the evening would bring it with its wind. It was like that every year, for the last six of them.

"It's... tommorow.", she started at last.

"Yes."

Velvet silence descended upon them again, for longer this time.

"I'm sorry, John.", he heard finally.

"It wasn't your fault."

"It was. If i was faster. If i managed to get on the trajectory..."

"No, dammit!", he growled, stopping her, probably a little harsher then he intended, "How many times do we have to go through this? You coudn't have done anything! Anything! That's just the way it is. This is war... she knew it. She taught me this herself. She taught me ... that people die in a war."

Last words made him drop his head helplessly. Esspecially around me.

"Even if you managed...", he added quietly after a while. "Even if you made it on time, this damned date would've meant the same to me. The only change would be the name on the tombstone."

He didn't say anything more, allowing another slight moment of silence to stress his words further. On the outside, there was almost no reaction. He did feel, however, that her fingers suddenly stopped their movement on his neck. It was only a moment, several seconds at best, before she resumed her massage. But it definitely was there.

They remained like that for a while, this time neither of them feeling the need to speak. The girls hands worked efficiently, sucking fatigue out of his body, piece by piece, replacing it with a sleepy comfort.

And then, when he was already swimming away at its tides, after a long and hard – oh, how fucking hard – day, a dull, electrical crackle filled the room and the intercom station on the nearbly wall came to life, talking in an unsure, kinda frightened voice of Larson, one of John's lieutanants.

"General? We... we've got a problem. I think you need to see this."

He opened his eyes, sighing and suddenly seeing the bottomless, brown pools of her eyes just inches from his face. How many times did i tell her not to do that...

He was tired, had a bad day and he absolutely didn't want to go anywhere, but he knew that his lieutanant woudln't bother him without a really good reason. Noone did. He even missed that, sometimes.

"I'll be there shortly, Larson.", he said finally, hoping the intercom's 10 second auto-response would still catch him, and then, just to the girl standing above him, he added, "It seems it's going to be a long night."

"No, John. Nights are relatively short, this time of the year.", she responded matter-of-factly.

Typical.

"I meant that i'm probably not going to sleep much today.", he explained carefully.

"Oh.", she tilted her head funnily, turning the corners of her lips slightly up again, "Thank you for explaining.", and when he was already starting to smile she added "you need at least six hours of sleep to remain fully functional."

Getting up, he rolled his eyes. Yes, mom. And then cursed himself, scowling, for sticking fingers into old wounds.

Damned 17th march.

And the last thought that accompanied him when they were leaving, carefully locking the doors behind them was wheter what he saw in her eyes when the intercom returned him to the earth from the brink of sleep, really was a genuine concern.

Eh, Johny, Johny...

Private Liam Craig was new here, came with a transport of troops just two days ago. Perhaps that was why the Carey Base, located in an old salt mine one of the biggest outposts of the resistance in Kansas, was still one big – and fucking scary – question mark for him. Guys from his new squad tried to comfort him, reassuring that there are multiple, more or less hidden, exits and the whole structure is so stable that no form of outside bombing short of a nuclear blast can harm them and so fortified that taking it with infantry force wouldn't be easy, despite that though, Liam had his doubts.

There simply was something very unnerving in living under hundreds of tons of stone. It wasn't even the lack of sun or living under the earth. No, Craig had spent most of his life, like the majority of the people he knew, under the earth. Only after arriving at Carey, teasingly called "Undermountain" by its inhabitants, Liam learned that the amount of this earth can make a whole world of difference.

That's why it's quite easy to assume that the base itself amounted to around half of the reason for his unnerved pacing back and forth right now, looking as if he haven't had the slightest of ideas about what to do with himself at this exact moment in time and space. The other half was his sheer, pure, gigantic unluck.

Because how else can you explain a fact that just after two days, he encountered something like this?

"Calm down, Craig.", said lieutenant Larson, standing nearby. "General will be here soon."

"Uh-uh.", the private mumbled, lacing fingers through his blond hair and trying very hard not to look at what was hanging on the light mast – the physical manifestation of his fucking bad luck, as he already started to call it. He succeeded quite well, that's probably why he easily saw that the strange view had started to draw in some spectators. Here and there, people were whispering pointing at the mast, a group of four soldiers standing near a wall started to laugh after one of them pointed a finger at it and gave some kind of comment to his friends.

Liam wasn't in a funny mood. It was a bad, a really fucking bad day. And just when he started to see the one positive side of it – the fact that things couldn't really get that much worse until it ends, reality once more kicked him in the ass.

He blinked several times. Great. He was loosing it.

In the middle of the great mining cave walked a teenage girl, nonchalantly carrying a heavy assault plasma rifle on one shoulder. It wasn't just any teenage girl too, but one that looked quite cute and decidedly hot. Waves of long, auburn hair flew behind her back with each step of long legs, clad in very tight shorts and a slightly too big shirt tied below her breasts left quite a lot, quite interesting things, to be seen. Normally, Craig would feel kinda ashamed to stare at a woman's breasts like that, but he felt no shame now. My hallucinations, my pleasure, he thought with satisfaction. The strangest thing, though, his brain left him for the very last, because the woman's feet were clad in...

Uh-uh, definitely ballet shoes., he ascertained nodding his head back and forth. He knew how they look, one time when he was still a tunnel rat he had an occasion to visit a small shop, with a whole mannequin in a ballet set. He never actually saw any parts of it on someone, though. Especially in an army base. I'm going mad, he summarized happily. He was almost relieved. Now it really couldn't get any worse.

Perhaps, if he wasn't so absorbed in experiencing his new found madness, he would've seen the details that didn't fit eariler. He would have seen the tall, heavily built man with short dark hair who walked next to her. He might have seen how most of the soldiers subconsciously straightened when he came by, or how some of them saluted him without a word – a gesture of respect. Perhaps he would've even seen how one of the four soldiers standing near the wall scowls and spats, looking at the girl with hate, just right after the strange pair passed him by.

Preoccupied as his mind was at this moment, though, it had to take a note of those facts, sooner or later and when it finally did, Craig blinked again, his brows coming up.

"Oh.", he said, finally doing the math, "Oh..."

"Yep.", answered lieutenant to his right, watching the boy's reaction with a funny expression, "That's general Connor..."

You've got to be kidding..., private thought, shifting his gaze from the man to the girl and back.

"...and his metal.", Larson finished, giving the boy a pat on his shoulder.

...me.

They marched straight to the place where Larson was stationed. Well, almost. It took them a while longer because, before they got here, Cameron insisted – of course - to get suitably armed, which in her case usually meant picking up the largest and most dangerous killing tool she could find in the vicinity and take with her. If barely. Infiltration model, he rolled his eyes, Advanced one. Skilled in hiding in the crowds. He himself didn't expect any weapons-requiring problems but who was he to ignore her opinion. Her expertise, and some kind of cybernetic paranoia, he added in his thoughts, saved his life more times then he could remember, after all.

When they came out of a corner and saw the reason for the whole uproar, he thanked her in his heart and decided she might have been right. It wouldn't be the first time.

On one of the many light masts hanged a crucified endoskeleton.

Well, not exactly, perhaps. Still covered in blood, viciously skinned shape dangled about 5 feet above the earth. Somone probably hooked his scull on some outstanding element of the mast, which coupled with a pole inserted behind his back to straighten his arms made him look like a caricature of a christian cross. A very haunting look. Even from this distance Connor could recognize the familiar features of a T-888, one of the most advanced models serving in the base after re-programing. There were three of them here.

They started in that direction, skipping growing groups of bystanders on their way. He heard one of the soldiers standing near the wall – private Draill, if his memory was correct – mumbling faintly "metal bitch" and spatting with contempt, when the passed him. He made a mental note to make suitable adjustments for latrine cleaning duty for the next week. Two weeks, if his saliva landed anywhere but on the rocky floor.

When they came closer his attention was caught by the fact, that besides the bulky figure of Dwight Larson, which he recognized easily from afar, there was another person at the scene. A young soldier, practicly a boy still, with light hair and a friendly face, who looked at them with a clear anxiety, moving nervously around, as if he didn't know if he was going to orgasm or suffer a heart attack. Cameron, John concluded. She had that effect sometimes, especially on boys his age. Been there, done that.

When they finally arrived he threw a careful, critical look over the place, before the big lieutenant could speak though, he raised a finger, turning more or less in the direction they came from.

"I see that some of you have too much spare time!", he roared on full volume, causing both men standing nearby to jump slightly, observed by a curious cyborg. "One minute from now, each and every one of you is going to be where he or she should, or expect that i'll make sure that tomorrow your legs will be so deep up your ass, they will gladly take you there of their own free will!"

The reaction was instant. Here and there you could hear some mumbling and whining but after a while the main cave was as empty as it should be at 11 pm o'clock. Content, Connor turned to the men waiting for him, seeing the young soldier straightening involuntary under his sight. He even stopped looking at the ballet shoes-clad terminator for a little moment.

"At ease, boy.", he said to the youngster, and the addressing Larson. "What have we got here?"

"It's the one from the machine room, sir.", the soldier answered.

"Greg?"

"Ehm... well, yes.", general didn't miss the slight hesitance, but it wasn't anything strange. His custom of giving names to the machines serving under him was, to say the least, a little unpopular.

"Poor Greg.", Cameron suddenly spoke.

All of the men's eyes turned in her direction and there was a moment of uncomfortable silence between them. The cyborg tilted her head slightly, looking at them with a "what did i do wrong?" expression on her face.

"Poor.", agreed Connor for the sake of decency.

"Ekhm.", his lieutenant coughed. "His chip is missing, sir."

"Signs of combat?"

"No.", the officer shook his head. "The endo isn't damaged."

"Electricity.", said Cameron circling around the mast, getting a closer look. "Someone electrocuted him with enough power to cause a restart and used this time to remove his chip and deactivate him permanently."

"It wasn't here, then.", the general concluded. "Perhaps in the machine room."

Cameron just nodded her head.

"Him?", Connor pointed his finger on the blond boy, who suddenly paled, possibly misunderstanding the question.

"He found him, sir."

The general's green eyes turned in the direction of the youngster. He raised his eyebrow questioningly. When the boy still didn't get it, he finally asked. "Do i have to wait much longer?"

Liam Craig first paled, then reddened and when Connor was starting to suspect he'll go through all the colors of the rainbow, he finally answered.

"Well... Mr. Connor, it was..."

"General.", Cameron corrected helpfully.

"Uh.", the boy sighed, the older man rolling his eyes, "General Connor, Private Liam Craig reporting for duty.", he straightened and saluted.

"I'm happy for you.", his commanding officer disregarded, trying not to show his irritation. "Now tell me. How did you find him, Craig?"

"Not much to tell, sir. I was getting back from my friends in a different squad, from... hmm... integration activities."

As if i didn't know you're playing poker and drinking hooch in C-2 barracks each saturday...

"...when i saw something hanging on one of the masts.", the boy continued, "I came closer and found him. In the present state."

"What time was that?"

"About 40 minutes ago, sir."

"Have you seen anyone or anything strange?"

"No, sir. Not a single soul nearby.", the youngster scratched his head.

"Anything to add?"

"No, sir."

Connor turned to the lieutenant once more. "We have to check the machine room...", he started.

"John...", Cameron's voice interrupted him.

"General", mumbled the private under his nose, earning such a look from her that he very much regretted it, almost shrikinging under the gaze of a suddenly Very Scary Robot. Still clad in ballet shoes. Cyborgs had a damn good hearing.

"John... he's got something in his mouth.", Cameron returned to the topic at hand, moving towards the endo and quite unceremoniously attempting to unclench his jaw. The effect was a bit different then intended, because the jaw gave resistance, which ended in a loud jarring sound, and finally its separation from the scull.

Craig's eyes widened.

Yep, Connor thought, moving closer and taking a look at what his friend had in her hands. Only the heart attack possible for him now.

He took the crumpled paper bundle from her and spread it over, tipping what was inside on his hand.

"That would be our chip.", he said sadly, looking at the fragments of destroyed hardware.

He put it back on Cameron's hand and then gave a longer look at the paper itself, noticing something written on it.

"Beware of false prophets who come disguised as harmless sheep but are really vicious wolves."

...read the cyborg over his shoulder.

"Oh fuck...", John Connor commented, "Oh for fuck's sake..."

Afterword:

Hope You liked it. In the next chapter things are going to get a bit nasty, there will also be some real action. Slightly less Jameron, though.

Carey is a real place in Kansas, or so google told me. I've never been there, living in Europe my whole life, so be patient with my imagination :).

If You have the time, please write me a review or two. Would really apreciate knowing what You think.

Aquma, 11.06.2010