Frank Walsh was not having a good day.

For one thing, his alarm went off fifteen minutes late and he didn't have time to fix his usual breakfast of eggs and pancakes, so he had to stop at the local Starbucks, where the little bimbo at the drive-thru forgot his change and gave him the wrong coffee. He didn't have time to go back and get her fired because he was running late and the Chief had told him that he was supposed to be a role model for the community. SWAT Captains didn't run into coffee shops screaming at the top of their lungs.

He chuckled darkly. Some role model he was. Back when he was just a Sergeant he could get away with his little tantrums and no one said anything because they were too afraid of the big bad cop who had access to fully automatic weapons. Then the nineties ended and he was expected to set a positive example. What a crock.

Things had not improved from there. Some asshole had cut him off in traffic, causing him to spill coffee all over his new suit. It hurt like a bitch, but he toughed it out because cops weren't supposed to feel pain or worry about their clothes. His pants were black anyway.

This train wreck of a morning had really taken a turn for the worse when some immigrant fuck tried to sell him oranges. When he used a few choice words regarding the man's heritage to emphasize his disinterest, the stupid beaner took a crowbar to his windshield, at which point he had to make an arrest. He hated arresting people. That was for patrolmen. He really hated having to detain them in his personal vehicle, especially when they sat out in the sun all day hawking oranges and didn't shower.

And to top it all off, he hadn't even made it to the station because some bitch with an assault rifle had kidnapped him.

So now here he was sitting blindfolded in what he guessed was some abandoned warehouse or factory, due to the way his grunts echoed off the walls as he tried to free himself. Those assholes were not going to get away with this.

"Hey!" he shouted, if only to let them know that he was not going to take this sitting down. "Hey, are you fuckers listening to me? Kidnapping an officer of the law is a felony! I can see you put in jail for the rest of your life!"

"Not if you're stuck here, Captain Walsh."

He heard footsteps walking closer. The voice sounded like it belonged to a young black male, late teens, early twenties at the oldest. Good. That meant he didn't have much experience with this sort of thing. He stopped struggling, not because he was giving up, but because he wanted to send the message that he was not afraid.

"Comfortable?"

"What the fuck do you think? Of course I'm not comfortable."

The kidnapper chuckled. "Good."

Frank ground his teeth. He hated it when these guys got dramatic. "Hey, since we're getting to know each other, mind telling me your name?"

"In time, Captain Walsh. Meanwhile, I have a few questions for you."

"Yeah, and I've got a couple for you," he rebutted, trying to turn the tables. It was a long shot, but if he could throw the guy off then maybe he had a chance at escaping. "Where the hell is that bitch you sent to kidnap me? And why didn't you just do it yourself?"

Another laugh. "My assistant is working on other things at the moment. She has... special talents and I like to use them. Not everybody could kidnap a SWAT Captain so easily."

"I was distracted by the Mexican in my back seat."

"I'm sure. Anyway, let's get started."

Frank rolled his eyes and waited for the inevitable monologue.

"Eleven years ago, you were part of a first response unit called out to Cyberdyne Systems' Los Angeles Headquarters," the kidnapper began. "Your assignment was to apprehend three domestic terrorists and rescue the man they'd kidnapped and forced to let them into the building."

He remembered that night. Some of the craziest shit he'd ever seen had gone down, and he still had nightmares, not that he needed a shrink or anything to decode them for him. He knew exactly what they meant.

"But that wasn't what happened. Your unit kicked open the door and opened fire on the group, fatally wounding one Miles Dyson." He paused for a moment, and Frank could hear the kidnapper circling him. "Now, I'm not a cop, so forgive me if I'm ignorant of some of your procedures, but aren't you supposed to try taking people alive first?"

Frank grumbled. Internal Affairs had asked him the same question a long time ago, and he'd given them the same answer he was about to give this prick.

"Look Pal, the units down below had just gotten shot at with a goddamn mini-gun and a handheld grenade launcher. The suspects had military-grade firepower, and in those situations I've found it's best just to shoot first and let the higher-ups sort it all out later."

The kidnapper laughed again. "And yet the one man you managed to hit was completely unarmed. Not only that, but he was holding a dead-man switch that would have been a lot easier to take from him if he'd been alive. You didn't even try to grab it off of him; you just told your men to run."

"Hey, do I look like the fucking bomb squad? I was trying to save my unit from getting their asses blown to smithereens."

"Which you wouldn't have had to do if you'd been more careful. Why'd you shoot him anyway? Because he was black?"

"Hey, don't call me racist. My wife's black." That wasn't entirely true. For one thing, he didn't have a wife. But it was the answer he'd given to the stupid Mexican who spoke a surprising amount of English, so he figured it would work here too.

"If you say so. In any case, you shouldn't have shot him."

"Yeah, well, that was 1997. It's too late to go back and change it now."

Another laugh. "Maybe someday it won't be."

He sounded awfully contemplative for a young guy. "What do you want?"

"I want you to help me with something, Captain Walsh. I'm offering you a chance to redeem yourself."

Frank scoffed. "Yeah, well fuck you. The LAPD is really good at finding people, especially their own. It's just a matter of time before they come knocking down your door."

"I expected you'd say that. Which is why I instructed my assistant to travel to where your sister and her daughter live. She has orders to kill them if you don't cooperate."

Behind the blindfold, his eyes widened. "You're bluffing."

"I never bluff."

"Okay, what is it? What do you want me to do?"

"I want you to do something for me. I want you to find the person you should have shot all those years ago. Sarah Connor."

That name sounded familiar. "Didn't she blow herself up in a bank vault eight years ago?"

"Well, I have it on good authority from someone close to me that she's still around."

"Look, isn't this the FBI's job anyway?"

"Yes, but it's taken them eleven years and she always manages to slip through their fingers. I have something a little more... direct in mind."

"You want me to kill her?"

"Not yet. But someone as experienced as you can be a valuable asset to me."

He scoffed. "Why not just send your bitch to do it?"

"Because Sarah Connor has gotten very good at eluding her kind. I need someone with a good tactical mind. Someone who's not afraid to go in and get dirty. And you are dirty, Captain Walsh."

"What do you mean?"

"You think after all that research I did into the Cyberdyne incident I wouldn't find out the rest of your little secrets? Drugs, racketeering, excessive force... the list goes on. Nobody expects a SWAT officer to be involved in that patrolman level corruption, so you haven't been caught. But if someone were to, say, present the Chief with evidence that you've been making money under the table, well... what do you suppose would happen?"

Frank got the impression that this guy wasn't so inexperienced after all. "Okay," he replied after a moment, hoping that agreeing to this psycho's demands would at least buy him time to escape and tell the precinct what happened. "Okay, I'll do what you want."

"Excellent," the kidnapper replied, pulling off the blindfold. He was somewhere behind him, so he still couldn't see his face.

"Now will you at least tell me your name?"

"Of course." He moved in front of him and leaned down so that Frank could see his face. "I'm the child of that man you killed all those years ago, Miles Dyson." He grinned devilishly.

"You can call me Danny."

Chapter One
The Devil You Know

"Well," Sarah Connor said as she parked the truck in front of the house, "I think it's safe to say we have no idea where Lauren went."

"Look on the bright side," Derek Reese chimed in, opening the door and setting his feet on the gravel. "At least that thing won't be coming after her sister anymore."

She nodded before stepping outside herself and hitting the button on the key fob to lock the truck. They had been searching for Lauren Fields the entire night, in addition to finding a safe dump site for the terminator endoskeleton, which was made all the more difficult by the fact that Cameron was not with them. Riley had come over the night before to keep John company, so Cameron had departed after the terminator hunt to go keep an eye on them. This left her and Derek in the unfortunate position of having to lug the damn thing around.

They had managed to find a suitably abandoned location in which to burn the body eventually, and spent the rest of the night looking for traces of the teenage girl and her newborn sister, only to come up empty-handed. Lauren had gotten good at hiding, even from them.

"You could've brought me in sooner, you know," said Derek as they approached the house. "I knew that girl. In the future, I mean. I know what that machine wanted with her sister."

"And what was that?" Sarah asked. Honestly, the fact that the terminator was after the unborn baby had been enough to spur her into action, and she hadn't pried further since neither she nor Cameron had any idea about the situation beyond what was written on the wall, and they couldn't very well ask a fetus why SkyNet wanted it dead.

Derek had never really been entirely part of their core group; only someone that they occasionally brought along on missions. He spent a lot of his downtime away from the house, so the idea of bringing him in had only arisen because she was already occupied with hunting down a terminator. He had a life outside of them, and his own set of objectives that he hoped to accomplish here in the past, which had become more apparent over the last several months.

"The machines tried bioweapons, after the nukes and the work camps and the terminators weren't effective enough," he revealed. "One bunker got hit really hard by it, with only one survivor. I volunteered to go in and find her."

Sarah raised an eyebrow. "Didn't they have reprogrammed terminators for that kind of thing?"

He chuckled. "Yeah, that was the initial plan. But I argued that a machine isn't gonna know how to calm down a survivor like that, so they let me go in on my own with a gas mask." He frowned. "I got infected anyway."

"But you got better?"

Derek nodded. "The survivor, Sidney, she had an immunity to the bio-agent in her blood. I got her back to Serrano Point and they were able to formulate an antidote. The doctor who gave me my dose was Lauren Fields."

"Which is where you knew her from."

"Yeah," he confirmed. "She told me: 'Thank you for saving my sister.'"

Sarah chuckled darkly. "No wonder SkyNet wanted her dead."

"They'll still end up in a really bad way if we don't find them. Lauren looked like hell, and no way is she gonna be able to provide for that kid long enough to make it to Judgment Day. Only reason they made it the first time around is because their mom was still alive."

"I still don't see how that justifies you inviting her to live with us," she rebutted as they came up to the door. She inserted the key and unlocked it before stepping inside. "You don't even stay here most of the time."

"Yeah, well, it's still safer than any place she's gonna be able to find on her own."

"With the amount of trouble that finds us on a regular basis, I very much doubt it," she said, before turning to see that the living room was in utter disarray.

That was putting it mildly. They had seen a lot of trashed rooms as a result of the lives they led, but this had the signature of a particular breed of destruction. The sofa was embedded in the bookcase, and one of the doors had been completely shattered, spreading glass over the back patio. Something had gone down here, and recently.

"Case in point," she remarked, pulling out her pistol. Derek did the same. She took point as they travelled through the trashed room, while Derek watched behind and above. They moved as one through the house, into the hall, where Sarah caught sight of a broken railing and a sizeable dent in the hardwood. Something extremely heavy had landed there, likely after jumping off the ledge, before presumably following whomever it had been chasing into the living room, then outside.

The whole time, Sarah struggled to prevent her heart from vaulting out of her chest. Wherever the threat had come from last night, it hadn't forced its way in. There was no sign of tampering on the front door, and the side doors had been broken from the inside, as if someone had been violently hurled through them. They would have noticed if anything menacing was in the tool shed when they drove up though, so if anyone remained here they would have to be inside.

"Bathroom," said Derek, pointing to the door in front of where the railing had broken. They moved carefully up the staircase, then moved toward the bathroom as soon as they reached the top.

"You check in there, "I'll get John's room," Sarah ordered, hoping against hope that she did not find what she was expecting in there. Derek nodded and they split up. She moved down the hall toward John's room, and very slowly opened the door.

Well, she had been right about not expecting what she saw in there.

John was safe in bed, sleeping peacefully. What was odd about the picture was that Cameron was right there next to him, with her eyes shut and her chest slowly rising and falling as if she were asleep too. In another world, another lifetime, she might have been, but Cameron would never be human, nor did Sarah need her to be.

She stood there trying to process the scene before her for a couple moments before walking over to Cameron and shaking her.

"Hey," she hissed, "What gives? Why are you pretending to sleep?"

Cameron's eyes started open and she produced a decidedly un-machine-like yelp, shooting to her feet so fast Sarah barely had time to get out of the way. This had the side-effect of waking John, who did a quick once-over of the situation before saying, "Mom, it's not what you think."

Before she could demand an explanation, Derek entered the doorway. "Hey, the mirror's shattered; I think whatever happened must have started in..." He trailed off as soon as he saw that everyone was accounted for.

"That," Cameron began, again in a tone that Sarah had never heard from her before, sounding almost sheepish, "was my fault."

Sarah had the gun pointed at her so fast she didn't even remember having done it. "And downstairs? You do that too?"

The machine nodded.

She glanced at John. "Is she broken again?"

"Not exactly," he explained. "It's a little complicated."

"Our lives are pretty complicated," she rebutted. "Explain."

John sighed. "Okay, I guess I should start with the fact that the one you're pointing the gun at right now isn't exactly Cameron."

She blinked. "What do you mean? Who else would it be?"

"Mom, Derek," he began, visibly bracing himself against whatever he expected their reaction to be. "Meet Allison Young."

James Ellison had decided that he needed to get used to the idea of working with a machine. Despite all his misgivings, in spite of everything he'd been through the past several months, no matter what the mind that had inhabited that body before had done to him, John Henry was the best chance they had of saving the world. He had been on the fence before, but after his talk with Weaver last night, he was on board.

Which was why he strode into the room housing John Henry minus the nervous apprehension that had accompanied his previous visits. In its place was the determination of a man with a duty to fulfill. Said duty was something he could only accomplish with the help of a machine, so it was time to get to work.

"Good morning, John Henry," he said with a smile. "How are you today?"

"I am well," the machine replied. "And yourself?"

"Much better now that I've had my morning coffee," he confessed. That and a clearer understanding of his purpose here. That last part had more to do with his sudden change in mood. "I was thinking we could do something different today."

"And what is that?"

"Ms. Weaver has tasked me with tracking down Sarah Connor," he said, cutting straight to the point. "She seems to think that Ms. Connor will be a valuable asset to our cause. As it happens though, I've been looking for her the past eight years, and the last time I found her was a stroke of pure luck."

"When was that?"

"A few months ago, down in Mexico. That's actually where I procured the body that you're using as an interface. Before that it was trying to kill her son."

"I see." John Henry looked contemplative for several moments. "And why do you believe that I will be able to find her where you have failed?"

"There was a girl," said Ellison. "Down in Mexico. She and John got arrested together. She gave her name as Riley Dawson, but I don't pull the kind of access I need to chase down a lead like that and I'd rather not contact the Bureau about this."

"Neither do I."

"Not at the moment. But the way I understand it a few firewalls wouldn't be enough to stop someone like you. I need you to search every database imaginable for Riley Dawson. Pull up as much information as you can."

John Henry stared. "I was told by Ms. Weaver that I was only to access publicly available information using my internet access. Doing this would be a violation of several federal laws."

"Ms. Weaver gave me full authorization to track Sarah Connor down by any means necessary," he replied. "Legal or otherwise."

"Breaking the law is wrong," said the machine. "Aren't you supposed to be teaching me right from wrong?"

"What's legal and what's right aren't always the same thing," he explained patiently. "Sometimes to serve a greater good, we have to bend or break a few laws along the way."

"I see." The screens behind John Henry flashed with a virtual tsunami of information, too quickly for Ellison to process. But he knew that the machine was able to sort it perfectly. "All done. I have compiled my report. Would you like me to deliver it now?"

"By all means."

"Riley Dawson is currently living under the foster care of Nora and David Dawson," the AI began. "Her birth certificate and Social Security Number were issued within the last year. My attempts at finding earlier documents have returned nothing."

"So you're saying that until a year ago, this girl didn't exist?"

"It appears so. She was a recent addition to the foster care system. I can find no earlier records of her."

Ellison considered that. A girl who suddenly popped into existence and began hanging around John Connor was a little too convenient, especially since he had heard something like this before. His investigation into the students of a New Mexico classroom 8 years ago had revealed that a girl named Cameron Philips had simply materialized six months earlier.

"Does she have current contact information?"

"There is a house phone number on record," said John Henry. "And there are eight Riley Dawsons with cell phones registered in Los Angeles County."

"Let's try the home phone," suggested Ellison. "You know an interesting thing about that body? It can imitate voices."

John Henry tilted its head.

"Pull up any recording you can find of John Connor," he continued. "Then call Riley's foster home."

"For what reason?"

"We're going to set up a date."

"Start at the beginning," Sarah told him, lowering the gun.

John sighed, sitting down on the bed. "It started a few months ago, the same day you took Kacy to the hospital."

Derek sat down on one of the chairs in the corner of the room. Sarah and the entity John was now calling Allison remained standing.

"So when I called you that day asking if everything was alright...?"

"I lied," he confessed. "I lost track of Cameron and I had to find her. Everything worked out okay."

"You lost track of her?" Sarah repeated angrily. "How?"

"Side-effect from having her chip damaged," he clarified. "I went into the grocery store and a guy there told me the cops had arrested a girl who looked like she was on drugs and matched Cameron's description. She'd just gotten released from the police station when I got there, and I found out she'd gone with a street kid named Jody down to a halfway house. That's where I found her, only she didn't exactly know who I was."

Sarah didn't know what to be mad about. That he'd kept this from her or the fact that he seemed to not even care that he'd done so, the way he was explaining everything so calmly. It occurred to her in that moment that she may no longer intimidate him as much as she had in the past.

"She said her name was Allison," he continued. "And she honestly believed that was who she was. We didn't find out exactly how until last night."

"It was just her chip, right?" Derek chimed in. "It got broken so she just went haywire."

"Not entirely," John revealed. "It turns out Allison Young isn't just a random name. It's the name of the girl Cameron replaced."

A pall settled over the room, and Sarah soaked that in. Now she finally had a name to put to the face she'd been staring at over the past year. It was never easy, being reminded of just how inhuman machines could be. How they could just steal nearly every aspect of a person while simultaneously missing the most important part. It wasn't important to them, though. All they cared about was maintaining the masquerade long enough to achieve their goals.

Her eyes moved over to Derek, who did not seem to be having quite so strong a reaction to that news. No, that wasn't it. Looking at his face, it wasn't news to him at all.

"You knew, didn't you?" she asked him. "You knew Allison."

"I knew her a little bit," Derek confirmed. "She spent most of her time with John, though. Never did find out just what was between them, but they were close."

"And that's actually what led to this," added John. "Apparently in the future I come across technology that lets you mount a human's brain patterns onto a machine's chip, effectively making that machine think they're that person."

Sarah's eyes widened at that news. Was that even possible? Apparently so.

"Allison got her neck broken by Cameron, but she didn't die right away. Future me hooked Allison up to the machine, but she..." He looked away. "She killed herself before it could finish. It only got halfway done."

"That's just enough for my basic personality, plus a few recent memories," Allison elaborated. "The only memories I have from the real Allison are the ones leading up to her capture and death. Nothing before that."

"Evidently future me sealed that part off because it wasn't complete, and just went ahead with the standard reprogramming," continued John, springboarding off of her explanation quickly and easily. "But when Cameron's chip got damaged, whatever was keeping Allison imprisoned broke, and she tried to take over in the grocery store."

"Okay, pretend for a second that any of that made sense to me," she interjected, feeling like a hitchhiker on a race track. "Does that mean Cameron's gone? That she's been replaced by this new Allison persona?"

"No," answered Allison. "We've decided to share."

"Share," Sarah repeated, slowly. "Share what, exactly? The body?"

"More or less," said John. "Cameron's still useful, and it was her body first. But even so, Allison deserves a second shot at life after everything she's been through."

Sarah sighed and buried her face in her hands. Sometimes the strangeness of their lives got to be overwhelming. Hardly anything made sense to her anymore, especially when it came to those damn chips. But apparently this was something her son was responsible for in the future, so she had to display at least a little bit of trust in the idea.

"Alright," she said finally. "But I shouldn't have to guess who I'm talking to at any given moment. Cameron can't see what you're doing, right?"

"Of course not."

"Good. Then that means we can use code words."

Allison raised an eyebrow. "Say what?"

"She means," said John, "that we need a way to tell the difference between you two right away. Code is a good way to do that."

"Anytime you need to talk with one of us, you use your code word so we know who you are," Sarah continued. "Any words you have a preference for?"

Allison frowned, appearing to deliberate over that for several moments. Finally, she came up with an answer. "Palmdale."

"Easy enough to remember," she decided. "Now let me talk to Cameron."

The girl fixed her with a look, but nodded all the same, and her eyes went glassy for a few seconds. Then the machine's eyes blinked and she was met with the familiar gaze of the cyborg they all knew.

"Make sure it's really her," Derek reminded them from the corner.

"Yeah, thanks for the tip," she snapped. He only shrugged in response.

"Cameron," said John, and the machine looked at him. "The first day we met, what did you tell me your dad sold?"

"Tractors," she answered without a moment's hesitation.

"It's her," he said, then proceeded to explain the situation to her.

"I see," Cameron said after she was up to speed. "And what will be my code word?"

"Why don't you choose?"

She looked to the side for a moment before reaching a decision. "Tractors."

John chuckled.

"Okay, now that that's settled," said Sarah, "You two have some cleaning up to do. Get to it."

Cameron nodded wordlessly and started moving out of the room. "And one more thing," she added. The cyborg stopped and peered back at her over her shoulder. "I want you to stay Cameron for the rest of the day. No more switching personalities until I get a little more used to the idea."

"Of course." With that, Cameron walked out of the room, followed by John.

"Any particular reason for that last order?" asked Derek as he stood up.

Sarah shrugged. "Better the devil you know, right?"

He had missed the city. As much of an urban jungle as Los Angeles could be, Charley Dixon loved how full of humanity it was. Around every street corner was someone he could help, someone he could save; someone he could get to know better. Sure, it had a reputation among some people for being a festering wound of gang violence, corruption and drug crime, but he was a healer, not a cop. Everybody in the world had at least one thing in common: they all got hurt at some point, and when that happened, they all needed someone to help them.

That was why he had stuck around, after he had driven halfway across the country chasing the ghost of a woman that he had never truly known. The wounds left behind by Sarah's disappearance began to smooth with time, and the fact that he never ran out of people to help had given him a passion to pursue. He had even met a new woman and married her, and believed that the worst parts of his life were behind him.

He had been wrong.

Charley wasn't even supposed to be in the city, but he needed some very specific supplies for his safe house that could only be found in a major metropolitan hub, and it wasn't like he had anybody else to send for them. As long as he avoided setting foot near Sarah Connor and her merry little band of freedom fighters/domestic terrorists, he should be relatively safe making a simple milk run. Besides, at this point he really didn't have anything important left to lose.

He had finished running most of his errands at this point and was on his way to the freeway when he spotted something that made him pull over and pay attention.

There was a teenage girl walking down the sidewalk, cradling a baby. She was bloody and battered, and the baby didn't look much better. Still, she walked with a determined, focused gait that defied anyone to try and stop her.

As it happened, four young men, most likely gang members, took her up on that offer, blocking her path. He couldn't make out what they were saying from this far away, but Charley had lived in Los Angeles long enough to know what would happen next. He pulled the keys out of the ignition and exited the truck, moving towards the group.

"Hey, is everything alright?" he asked with no small amount of authority.

The apparent leader of the quartet turned to look at him, but his answer surprised him. "Yeah, we were just tellin' this girl here that she needs to get that baby to a hospital. The streets ain't no place for a newborn."

"We were just saying we could take her there," another member of the group chimed in.

"No," the girl insisted. "No hospitals. If I go to a hospital he'll find us."

"Who'll find you?" the leader asked. "Is it someone we need to jump?"

She shook her head. "No, you wouldn't... You're better off staying out of this."

The four young men looked at her in bewilderment, but Charley understood all too clearly. Her appearance, demeanor and refusal to go to a hospital all made perfect sense to someone who had been through what he had. He stepped closer.

"It's cool, guys; I'm a paramedic," he informed them. "I can take care of them and get 'em someplace safe."

"No," she repeated, but he grabbed her firmly by the arm and, assisted by the strangely community-conscious group of young men, herded her to his truck.

"You'll be safe now," he told her, even though he knew her next words before they even left her mouth.

"No one is ever safe."

"Be that as it may, you'll be a hell of a lot safer in a truck than on foot, so get in," he told her, careful not to reveal too much in front of the others. "Now come with me if you wanna live."

That last statement seemed to erase most of her doubt, and confirmed his suspicions. One of the group opened the door for her and helped her into the truck, then they stepped back onto the sidewalk while Charley drove off with the girl in the front seat.

"Please, I can't go to the hospital," she pleaded. "It's not safe there."

"Which is why we're not going to the hospital," he replied. "But I will take you someplace safer than wherever you were headed."

Again she stared at him, and he figured it was time to start making some things clear.

"You're running from one of them, aren't you?" he asked her, to which she nodded. "I was afraid of that."

"How could you tell?"

"Because I was on the run from one not too long ago myself. I'm guessing you know Sarah Connor?"

Her eyes widened. "Yeah."

Charley slapped the steering wheel with his palms. "I knew it. I just knew it. Every time I think I've finally gotten out of this mess I just keep getting pulled back in."

"So if we're not going to the hospital, then where are we going?"

"I have a beach house with a good security system that no one knows about," he informed her. "That's actually where I was headed back to anyway. My name's Charley Dixon, by the way."

"Lauren," she replied, looking down at the baby in her arms. "Lauren Fields. And this is my sister, Sidney."

John found Cameron in his room later, after a particularly tedious couple of hours cleaning up the living room and tool shed. She had done most of the heavy lifting, while Derek had gone out to buy new doors. Sarah had kept an eye on them from the kitchen, staring at Cameron the whole time like she was trying to decide whether to roll with this new change or dismantle the cyborg for good. She had evidently chosen the former.

"Tractors," Cameron greeted as soon as he walked in, and he chuckled.

"Hey," He sat down on the bed. "Crazy night last night, huh?"

"Yes," the cyborg agreed, sitting next to him. "Crazy."

"Listen," he began, releasing a deep sigh. "I've been thinking a lot about the way I've been treating you and Mom for the last several months, and I just wanted to say... well, I wanted to say I'm sorry."

Cameron blinked, then tilted her head like a curious puppy. "Why are you apologizing? Your behavior hasn't deviated that far from your normal patterns, when accounting for all the trauma you've experienced lately."

"Yeah well, I still feel like I owe you an apology."

"I'm a machine," she told him. "You don't have to apologize to me. An apology would mean more to your mother."

"I'm getting there, believe me," he said. "But still. Last night Allison told me what future me did that landed her in this situation, and..." He trailed, off, struggling to articulate exactly what he was feeling.

"And what?"

He sighed. "Whenever anybody talks about what I'm like in the future, they never have anything bad to say," he finally replied. "Savior of mankind this, fearless leader that; to hear it from them you'd think I was a saint or something."

"You are a very inspirational leader."

"But that doesn't mean I'm perfect," he rebutted. "And what I did to Allison... well it made me wonder why nobody told me how much of a selfish bastard future me could be." He frowned. "And it made me realize how selfish I've been in the present. So for that... I'm sorry."

Cameron gave the faintest of smiles. "I accept your apology."

Well that was a load off his shoulders. Despite her protests to the contrary, she really did deserve that apology. John had never thought of her as "just" a machine, but everything that had happened over the last several months had sort of made him lose sight of how much he truly valued her, not just as a protector, but as a companion.

Seeing how angry Allison was in that body when she tried to kill him had made him stop and think about the way he was treating the people around him, even the one who literally was not programmed to get upset. But then, Cameron had been acting less and less like she was "programmed" to for some time. He wondered how far her tolerance level for his bullshit extended, and decided that while it was likely significantly higher than a human's, he had no intention of testing it.

"Thanks," he said. "I've been kind of an asshole lately to you and mom. Guess I'm just still in that stupid teenager phase where I rebel against anybody who tries to run my life."

"You feel like I'm trying to run your life?" She almost seemed hurt by that, in her own way. She didn't experience emotional pain the way a human did, but he could see the wheels turning and figured that right now she was analyzing what was wrong with her behavior that would have given him that impression.

"Look, it's not your fault," he reassured her, placing a hand over hers. "But honestly, when you tell a guy he can't be trusted anymore, it doesn't exactly do wonders for his self-esteem."

"But I couldn't trust you," she said. "You made a tactical error. You reactivated me and handed me a gun without knowing for sure if I was fixed."

"And I get that now," John acknowledged. "Like I said, that kinda thing just triggers my teenage rebel side."

Her head tilted slightly to the side as she considered something. "Just like with Riley."

"What?"

"Your behavior with Riley seems to stem from a desire to express your individuality and make your own decisions, since the nature of the decisions we make has led your mother to prevent you from having to decide too many things on your own. Forming a relationship with Riley is a way of trying to move beyond your mother's shadow."

He forgot sometimes that Cameron could be brutally analytical and psychologically savvy when the situation called for it. She was, after all, built to understand how humans worked so as to better infiltrate them.

John chuckled. "That's probably part of it," he admitted. "But honestly, it's more about having a friend I can talk to."

"You can talk to me."

"Yeah, but you can't be the only one in my social circle," he replied. "And no offense, but most of what we talk about has to do with the future or the mission and... sometimes I wanna talk about other stuff. Human stuff."

"Human stuff," she repeated.

"Yeah, human stuff." He sighed and shuffled to face her more. "Look, with Riley I don't have to be John Connor, future leader of mankind. I can just be John Baum, average teenager with an overprotective mother and way overprotective sister. Even though I'm just pretending, it's still nice to get away from all this for a while, you know?"

"No," she answered. "I don't know."

"Rhetorical question," he explained. "Anyway, my point is that I need more people in my life than just you, Mom and Derek. People like Riley."

"And Allison."

The way she uttered that reply reminded John of the way frost traveled instantly over a window pane, framing everything in pure ice. "Right," he continued after processing that. "And Allison."

"She's a liability," Cameron said, somehow even more coldly. "She could jeopardize the mission."

"The mission isn't all there is," he countered. "And she's been through a lot of horrible things; some of which I put her through. The only reason she's in your chip right now is because future me was too selfish to just let her rest in peace."

"She told me you want us to share the body."

"That's right," he confirmed. "I do."

"I don't believe that's a tactically sound decision," she told him. "But I won't stand in your way if you choose to make it."

John resisted the urge to slap his forehead. He had never actually asked her permission before making that suggestion, which made him feel like even more of a horse's ass. It wasn't fair to her, but she only seemed to care insofar as it might affect the mission. Still, better to try and fix his mistake now.

"What do you think?" he asked. "Should we trust her?"

"I can't actually stop her from taking over," Cameron replied. "So it matters little either way. But I would prefer that she not be given mission responsibilities."

He frowned. "You really don't trust her at all, do you?"

Cameron shook her head.

"I'll be careful," he reassured her. "I really feel like after everything she's been through, even if she's not the real Allison, she deserves a chance to live. But if it makes you feel better, I'll keep her off missions for now."

"Thank you."

"By the way," he said. "Last night, Allison told me she had a quick look in the bathroom, and you have..." He didn't want to say it. "...human parts. Down there." He nodded in the direction of a spot between her legs. "Do you?"

It took her a moment to grasp his meaning. "Yes," she answered. "I was designed with a partly functional vagina, minus the uterus and ovaries given that this body was not intended to bear children."

The way she was so candid about her own anatomy made John cringe, though honestly he was more concerned about what his mother would say if she found out. But with her tone, they might as well have been discussing last night's ball game.

"Do you know why?" he asked, though he suspected he already knew the answer.

"I was designed as an advanced infiltrator," she told him. "We never know how deep undercover our mission will require us to go."

"Okay," he breathed. "That's pretty much what Allison guessed last night, but thanks for clarifying."

"You asked for confirmation on whether this part of my anatomy existed," she said. "I assume that you did not verify it firsthand last night with Allison?"

He rocketed to a standing position as blood rushed to his cheeks. "What? Of course not. That would be..."

"That would be what?"

He took a deep breath, trying to collect his thoughts. "Well, not fair to you, for one thing. I mean, it's your body. If I did... that with Allison, wouldn't that bother you?"

"Only if it affected your ability to perform the mission," she answered with a lack of emotion that no human could match. "I wasn't designed with the social stigmas regarding sex present in American society."

"That's... not what I meant," he clarified. "It just wouldn't feel right to do that with one personality while ignoring the other. I'd feel like I violated you."

"It's only a body."

"Not to me it isn't," he said, sitting down. "Look, I guess what I'm trying to say is that no matter what happens with Allison, I still care about you. And doing... that with her while you're on standby would be wrong. Besides, I already have a girlfriend."

"Oh," she said, mollified. "Thank you for explaining."

Wordlessly, he flopped back on the bed, and she joined him a moment later.

"Do you want to speak with Allison now?"

He smiled. "I think Allison can wait until tomorrow."

Author's Notes: I'll confess upfront that I initially threw that last scene in there as a direct response to the reviews I got for the first story in this series, which I honestly should have expected given that I'm challenging many fandom assumptions about John and Cameron's relationship. In a way I suppose I'm grateful for it, because responding to it allowed me to really discover the core of where I was coming from and what I needed to make clearer, and I hadn't even considered most of these things before that.

As I worked on it though, it really became more about admitting that John was a total jerk in the last fic and that needed to be rationalized in-story. Hopefully this makes the people who are still reading a little happier with what I'm doing concerning these two. It's not that I don't like the John/Cameron relationship; it's one of my favorite parts of the show. I just think too many fanfics reduce the complexity of it somewhat, when the complexity is what makes it so fun.

The conversation at the beginning is mostly to set the approximate time period that this story diverges from canon. In this case, it's immediately following "Alpine Fields," which was before Sarah got shot in the desert. That was the point where the show started going downhill for me, so I'm going to ignore it entirely. Also, I realize that the Ellison/John Henry stuff happens after that, but it's going to be playing a role in this story so just pretend this is an alternate universe where that stuff happened ahead of schedule.

This will be a much longer story than the previous one when all is said and done, and while I don't know exactly how we're going to get there, I do have an ending in mind. Let me know what you think.