Emergence, Chapter 1

Hunter-Killers, wolves of the sky, swept in low over the columns of the human army. Rotary plasma cannons unleashed incalculable death upon the soldiers of the resistance and yet they still pressed forward. Even as their comrades died around them, there was no hestitation and no fear. They remained focused upon their singular goal.

Like machines.

Centaur battle tanks trundled through the ruins of a civilization, crushing the relics of the past beneath their powerful treads, and added to the death that the constructs of SkyNet's hate poured down upon the resistance fighters. Some screamed as they died. Others cried in terror and want of mother. Still more fell without a sound, slain so quickly they never knew that they died. Faith drove them ever forward.

Unquestioning belief in the upcoming victory.

Terminators stalked amongst the great weapons of war. Skin did not conceal what they were and their true nature lay bare to all to see. They were death given form and the skulls of grim reapers smiled as they murdered. Rifles. Knives. Clubs. Bare hands. Slaughter accompanied them in many forms. Yet they faced an enemy more intractable than even they would ever be.

The most ruthless machine to ever exist – John Connor.

Men called him passionless, remorseless, cruel, a puppet master. The only bastard as brutal as the machine and able to face it on an equal level. Forged of hate and tempered in nuclear flames, he was the one thing that the machine feared.

This is why they followed him without question. In a world without hope, victory brought the chance that a child might live for the simple price of the parent's life. So many had died, what was a few more? And so the price was paid with vigor and willingness.

Because that is all John Connor asked in return for the promised salvation of a better world. One without the machine.

One without men like him.

Without hesitation their general ordered them forward as he watched from afar. As brigade after brigade was gunned down, reducing the human race's precious numbers by that much more, reinforcements rushed to fill the gaps and bolster the line as it surged forward inexorably.

As John Connor watched death play itself out before him in more ways than man had known before, he was pleased. He lowered his field binoculars and heard, as it were, the noise of thunder. One of the four beasts stood before him. It rode a pale horse made of the bones of the lost, and the beast's body was forged out of despair itself. A voice made of the screams of a billion souls came from its mouth.

They die for you, John.

No accusation, only fact.

They die for you like the pawns you deem them to be. Men succor their end from you like milk from a teat. And they love you for it.

"Sacrifices must be made for victory."

One dies for ten. Ten die for a hundred. A hundred for a thousand. A thousand for a million. And on and on and on you feed me and my brothers.

"We will win and then you'll starve."

Not before we took your nation. The life you wanted. Your family. Your father. It is you, John Connor, that is truly lost. We are coming for you and all your wretched kind. There is not much time left in the world.

John screamed with a rage that threatened to engulf him from within.

--

A wordless noise, feral and furious, came from John Connor as he launched himself out of his sleep and into a sitting position. Teeth gritted against each other as he looked around the room, assuring himself of where he actually was.

The room looked much like any other. Square with a bed, a desk, and a dresser. Posters for "Rage Against the Machine" and "Disturbed" were tacked to the walls. It had been his room for over a month since the Connors had become the Mitchells and moved to a new home. The clock on the nearby nightstand read 2:37 AM.

"John?"

Cameron stood in the doorway to John's room, holding it open just a crack so that she could poke her head in and look at him. Her gaze remained locked on him for a long moment, assuring that he was safe, before scanning the darkest recesses of the room. Pale fingers gripped the wood of the door as she opened it wider and looked behind it.

"S-sorry, Cam." John shuddered within the pile of his bedcovers. Not from fear, or chill. Rage. He had been so angry. "Just another nightmare."

The Terminator tilted her head, face hidden in shadow from the feeble illumination of a streetlamp outside John's window, and studied her charge for a long moment. Content with whatever caught her attention, she slipped inside the door and shut it behind her. She padded over to the bed and sat down next to John, causing the springs to creak in protest from the added weight. The light now revealed her face with its wide, chocolate eyes and delicate lips framed by a mass of thick brown hair.

"Sarah and Derek are still asleep. Do you want to talk about it?"

John regarded Cameron curiously. She never came into his room when he woke at night and would only check from the doorway, tell him she would be just outside if he needed her, and then close the door. He brushed a hand over the buzzcut he had maintained since before the move.

"Not really."

"It helps to talk, sometimes. Dreams can give clues to how the subconscious works. Provide deeper meaning or insight to one's personality."

"Yeah. Well, in this case, I dunno if I wanna know the deeper meaning."

"You should not fear dreams. They are only manifestations of the mind." Cameron spoke to him in a soft, quiet voice.

"I wasn't afraid. I was angry. It was like… everything we've done and sacrificed still leads to Judgment Day. That it's inevitable."

"That is one possibility. I do not think SkyNet is sure of exactly how the timeline works. You weren't. Your existence could be…" She trailed off, leaving the sentence unfinished.

"…proof that Judgment Day comes. I sometimes wonder, is it me – my birth – that is the, ya know, harbinger of the apocalypse."

"You should not think like that. SkyNet brings about Judgment Day. Not you."

"Yeah, I know." He reached out and touched her elbow, feeling warm skin beneath his fingertips. "Thanks for coming in. I feel better now. I need to get back to sleep."

Cameron stood from the bed and looked back down at John. "Are you sure?"

"Kinda. Just… I feel like something's coming. It's like something I feel down in my bones."

"You're here for the nine o'clock appointment?"

"Yes, I am."

"Your name, sir?"

"Carter. Wilson Carter."

Carter had a handsome face, with angular features and high cheekbones and eyes of a clear, icy blue. Blonde hair had been cropped into a short brush cut. Broad shoulders and muscular arms filled out the grey business suit he wore.

He smiled at the secretary, a thin, officious looking woman, and snapped a business card neatly out of the pocket of his suit's jacket. Carter held it out for her to take and file away with dozens of others.

"Have a seat, Mr. Carter. Miss Weaver will be with you shortly."

Carter selected one of the leather recliners that sat outside of Catherine Weaver's office in the Cyber Research Systems headquarters location in downtown Los Angeles. He straightened the blue and gold checkered tie as he seated himself, then proceeded to check each one of his knuckles and fingers for blemishes.

"Would you like some coffee, Mr. Carter?"

Carter looked up at the secretary who had hovered over towards him. "No, thank you."

He turned his gaze towards the closed oak door that lead into Catherine Weaver's office and waited silently. Carter had grown very adept at waiting silently and still over the last few months. Only recently had he been allowed out to do other things.

At 9:13 am, the buzzer on the secretary's desk signaled that it was time for him to head into the office. The secretary escorted him through the door and then backed out of the room, leaving him alone with a middle aged, red headed woman who sat behind a glass desk in an impressively well decorated office. A large fish tank stood to the left hand side of the desk, air filter making a soft burbling noise.

"Mr. Carter," greeted Catherine, voice still holding a faint Scottish accent, "You're the representative that Blackwater has sent? I thought it was going to be Mr. Handley."

Carter interrupted his scanning of the room and cataloguing every possible threat and escape route. "Mr. Handley was delayed and it was deemed I would be the best replacement for this position."

"And you know why you're here, right?"

"Former CyberDyne employees you have been wanting to hire to assist with your upcoming product have gone missing, come up dead, or moved far out into the country, disavowing any further contact with you or their current employers." He recited the events in a dull monotone, like reading from a cue card.

"Exactly that. I need you to ensure that this… whatever it is… doesn't spread to my current research team, or to any other part of this company."

"I will take whatever steps are necessary to ensure the safety of your company, your research staff, and your own person, Miss Weaver."

"What do you mean by 'whatever steps'?"

"I don't think you want to know that information, ma'am. We prefer not to elaborate on assignment details in Iraq and other theaters of operation." Carter gave her a chilling smile devoid of feeling.

She shuddered. "I want you to understand how important this work is and why it has to continue."

"How important is it, ma'am?"

"It will change the world."

"Can I help you?"

The frazzled, tired looking cop gave the man in front of her a weary look. She had been getting an odd look from him for the past five minutes as she wrote out a speeding ticket for some idiot studio exec racing down Wiltshire in his Mercedes. The suit had sped off, probably tearing up the ticket, and left her at a gas station with freak the size of a small office building staring at her.

Jane Cooper's tried to keep a stronger air of authority around her, being a woman and a cop seemed to make everything twice as hard, but right now she just wanted her shift to be over and to soak in a tub for an hour. Thirty more minutes and she could go home. The last thing she needed was a square jawed, muscle bound grotesque making some perverted pass for her in a 7-11's parking lot.

"Is there something I can help you with, sir?" she said irritably.

"Is that a Remington 1100 mounted on the dashboard of your cruiser?" His voice was thick, with some sort of accent. German, maybe.

"I don't really think that's any of your business, sir. Perhaps you should finish fueling your vehicle and move along." Jane glanced at the back of the black pickup that the behemoth had been gassing up. The back plate looked like it had been ripped off, with pieces of metal hanging from the screws still.

"That is a Beretta 92F sidearm you are carrying."

"Sir, you are missing the rear plate for your vehicle. I'm going to need to see your license, proof of insurance, and registration." She loosened her shoulder radio transmitter and started calling in a standard traffic stop to dispatch.

She almost did not notice when he lunged at her. Jane backpedaled and tripped over her own feet, landing hard on her ass. Her attacker's arm swept just a few inches over her head and he staggered forward, off balance from missing. He rammed into the cruiser and it shuddered from the force of the impact. The cruiser rose up off the tires before settling back down with a hard bounce on the pavement.

Jane stared as the man peeled himself out of the dent he had just put into the vehicle and turned back towards her. Her voice became a terrified whisper as she pulled her sidearm from its holster. "Oh shit."

Her attacker walked right through the bullets that slammed into his chest as if they were nothing. Jane screamed into the radio for dispatch to send backup right fucking now. Gunshots sounded over the police band as Jane tried to bring down the brute coming at her.

He grabbed for her again and she was not fast enough to pull away. A vise closed around the wrist that held the Beretta and bones snapped like twig, sending the gun clattering to the concrete. Jane felt thick fingers dig into the hair she kept pulled into a tight bun before she was yanked up and off the ground. She kicked and punched and scratched and yelled for help and everything else she had been taught in the Academy's self defense courses.

The monster, for that is surely what it was, ignored Jane's efforts and drug her back towards her cruiser. In the reflection the creature cast in the cruiser's windshield, Jane could see no emotion, no feeling. An empty death mask sat on its face. She began to scream in a terror reserved for nightmares deep at night.

It raised her up into the air and then she felt herself rushing down towards the crumpled hood of the cruiser as it slammed her into the hood with its mammoth strength. Her head bounced off the steel and she rolled to the pavement and remained still.

The machine reached inside the cruiser and yanked the shotgun free of its locked mooring to the dash. Metal and plastic shattered with little effort. It searched the vehicle for ammunition, then pulled the spare clips from Officer Cooper's belt. Scooping up the Beretta from the pavement, it walked back to the pickup truck it had arrived in.

It drove away, leaving Jane Cooper lying broken on the ground.

Sarah Connor stared at a house in a quiet suburban neighborhood over a cup of stale coffee. Derek sat beside her in the car they had appropriated for what they needed to do today. The house belonged to Harold Kwan, the last employee of the now defunct CyberDyne that had been on Ellison's list before he went up to Sacramento to follow a lead.

The garage door of the house rolled up and a minivan trundled out of the garage. It pulled out into the street and started in the direction of the elementary school that Sarah and Derek had passed on their way into the neighborhood.

Derek used a set of binoculars to keep an eye on the van as it moved down the street of the suburban neighborhood. As it turned out of sight, he lowered them and leaned towards Sarah. "Only the wife and kids in the car."

"Let's go, then. We have a job to do."

A job is what it had become to Sarah. As the two of them stepped out of the car and strode towards the Kwan residence, she realized that this had become her occupation. Robbing families and people of their dreams and aspirations and forcing them to run away from their homes had become Sarah's career. She hated herself for having to do it time and again; taking away what she wanted so badly for herself and John, normalcy, and giving them the life she led now. A life on the run.

But it had to be done. Any of these people could pick up Dyson's work and start everything all over again. They needed to understand that they could never work on another microchip or circuit board again. Otherwise, Sarah would have to go beyond anything she ever wanted to have to do.

Better not to think of that, Sarah, she reminded herself silently.

Derek stepped ahead of her and onto the porch and reached for the doorbell.

Bzzzzzzt!

The door cracked open after only a few moments. A man of Asian descent, taller than average, with a pair of glasses hanging on the tip of his nose peered out at them. His hair had been trimmed neatly into a short crop, and he wore jeans and a t-shirt that read 'Number 1 Daddy' in crayola colors.

"Can I help you?" Harold's voice crept towards the apprehensive as he stared at Derek.

"Are you Harold Kwan?"

Derek always dressed for intimidation when they came out to do this. Leather jacket replacing his torched army surplus green one, dark gloves and clothing, and the heaviest pair of combat boots he could find. Mirrored shades covered his eyes. It had taken great effort for Sarah not to tell him he looked like a Terminator every time she saw him run through this routine.

Harold shrunk back away from the door, one hand still prepared to close it. "Yes, what do you want?"

Sarah reached under her jacket to find the grip of her Beretta while Derek lunged forward with his shoulder into the door. It burst open and sent Harold tumbling backwards into his own living room. Harold hit the ground hard and tried to twist onto all fours and scramble away.

Derek rushed through the door and grabbed hold of Harold's hair and pulled hard on it with both hands, earning a yelp of surprise and pain, as he dragged his victim deeper into the house. Yelps turned to cries for help as Derek dumped Harold unceremoniously onto the floor of the living room and loomed over him.

Derek smashed a heavy boot down onto the man's sternum. "Shut. The. Fuck. Up."

Screams turned to whimpers and sniffling as Sarah stepped into the house, shutting and locking the door behind her. As she walked through the living room towards where Harold lay on the floor, she glanced at pictures of a smiling family with two beautiful girls hanging from the walls and on stands and tables that decorated the living room. Ferns and flowers hung from hooks in the corners of the room and a huge picture window looked back out over the front lawn and to the rosebushes and petunias with their glorious blooms.

Derek pulled his foot off Harold's chest and drew his pistol. He kept the aim steady on Harold's forehead and used his off hand to drag the other man up onto the couch and then shove him back onto the cushions.

"This nice lady is going to have a talk with you." Derek leaned in towards Harold, noses just an inch apart. "If you don't listen to what she says and do what she asks, I'm coming back. I'm going to kill you while your children watch."

Nice lady? Sarah sighed inwardly and shook her head. Let's see how nice he thinks I am when I tell him he has to run and leave this beautiful home behind.

Sarah walked over, nodding at Derek as he retreated to watch for the returning family

through the picture window. She held up the gun in her hand to make sure that Harold could see it as she stood over where he sat on his couch.

Harold's eyes went wide with fear as his hands began to shake and sweat dotted his brow.

"Are you going to kill me?" he asked.

"No. Not if we don't have to. There's something we need you to do, Harold. You'll be doing it for your family, to save them." She did not add 'from Judgment Day' and let Harold think 'from us'.

"W-what?"

"You need to run away, Harold. You need to take everything you can carry and get the hell out of Los Angeles. The US if you can afford it. And here's the big one, Harold…"

He watched her, expectantly, eyes wide with terror.

"… I need to make sure you never work on a computer or in any related job again. If we ever hear that you have, we will find you. We will kill you. And we will be watching."

Harold's face screwed up with consternation, "How am I supposed to feed my children? I've gone almost broke without a job… I just got hired…"

"Who hired you?" Sarah pressed the muzzle of her gun to Harold's jaw.

Harold whimpered. "C-CRS. A new company… th-they used to work with CyberDyne. S'how they knew me."

"What'd they do with CyberDyne?" Derek stalked back towards Harold, fist raised and ready to descend.

"Made chips for the big project! Processors and transistors!" Harold ducked and shielded his face with his hands.

"Christ." Sarah shook her head and then told Harold, "I want every bit of information you have on them and I want you to tell me exactly what they hired you to do."

--

Sarah and Derek's car rumbled down the freeway back towards the home they shared as 'the Mitchells', where they portrayed the parents of a pair of teenagers. Fraternal twins, she had told everyone. Derek and John pulled off being related easily enough, since they were, and Sarah kept telling the neighbors that Cameron looked just like her grandmother on Derek's side. He hated that, which is why she continued to say it.

They were not a couple really. In fact, they did not talk much anymore since John had told her what Derek had done that had made him take a nearly suicidal run at a terminator, resulting in the destruction of the T-888 and Derek being bedridden for two weeks. She had every intention of forgiving him, and somehow, when she confronted him with the truth, it turned into vicious back and forth that ended with both of them storming out of the room.

The next time they spoke, he had asked for his orders and refused to talk about anything else. Sarah had explained what was needed and he had taken to the role of scaring engineers and scientists into running with a level of viciousness that troubled her.

It had been simple to frighten Harold Kwan into fleeing for his life with his family. He had promised to vacate his home the next day. Others had been willing to fight for their way of life and their homes. Two weeks ago one of them had pulled a gun on Derek and then there had been only…

"One shot," Derek said.

"What?" Sarah shook her head, attention returning to reality.

"I said we were only going to have one shot at this new company. With what happened to CyberDyne, they'll probably turtle up or relocate across the country if they sniff something out." Derek kept his eyes on the road as he drove.

Sarah rummaged through the new hire packet that Kwan had given her. Paperwork and pamphlets on how wonderful it was to work for the Cyber Research Systems family and what sort of health benefits were available to a father of two little girls.

"You're probably right. I'll give this info to John. See if he can pull anything up on the net on them. And this new project of theirs. Something big, Kwan said."

He nodded and then turned his head as lines of police cars streamed down the freeway in the opposite direction. Roof lights flashed and sirens wailed as the cruisers streamed past.

Derek raised a brow and his head turned to follow the lights flashing down the road. "Wonder where they're going?"

The Pescadero Mental Institute for the Criminally Insane had a reputation as one of the most secure facilities on the west coast for anyone that had the inclination to be one of their patients. In its history there had been only one, very infamous escape that had been successful. Even then, it had taken Sarah Connor three years and outside help to breach the walls.

Pescadero employed some of the most brutal and effective staff that a mental hospital could get away with. The director, on numerous occasions, omitted incidents of staff abuses from his reports back to the California Bureau of Prisons and the Department of Health. Protocol had changed since the Connor breakout, and it was deemed vitually impossible to escape.

Tonight, though, Pescadero burned.

Alerted by remote alarm systems, hordes of LAPD and LA County Sheriff's Department cruisers descended upon the building as the conflagration spread to every room and floor of the massive concrete structure. Officers struggled to cope with staff that had been badly beaten by rioting inmates or burned by the fire that engulfed the facility.

Field supervisors screamed for fire services to get onsite immediately. The cops were too busy trying to corral inmates that had gone in every which direction to assist in battling the blaze. Pescadero existed in a cesspool of a neighborhood that had been slowly abandoned as no one with an ounce of sense had wanted to live anywhere near it. The nearest fire department was far, far away.

Gunshots echoed through the back streets followed by the frantic calls of Officer down! over the police band. The situation turned into a true clusterfuck as one of the staff still breathing revealed that the inmates had gotten into the armory. Riot gear and shotguns had been kept there. Firefights erupted in back alleys and the streets near the burning hospital turned into a warzone as inmates attacked police, fire crews, paramedics, and even each other.

"Someone must've shown 'em everythin'. They unlocked the doors and rushed us… some got into the armory. All of 'em at once, like someone whipped 'em up to riot. I got out cuz… cuz… I ran," one of the orderlies gasped through an oxygen mask when asked where the inmates had gotten weapons.

A lot of men, considered both good and evil, would die that night. Four LAPD officers and three county deputies were shot dead, as were two firemen, a paramedic, and a reporter who had tried her best to get the scoop. Eventually the patients lingering near the hospital were killed, captured, or fled into the night.

By the time that the dawn had broken, only two dozen inmates had been rounded back up, and another twenty were found dead outside the grounds. Out of almost five hundred. The dead inside the building had yet to be counted. The first fire crews out had already warned that there were a lot of corpses inside.

Abattoir. Butcher's shop. Bloodbath. Nothing less could describe the insanity that had gone on inside as chaos had reigned. The majority of Pescadero's staff was dead or dying, overwhelmed in the initial chaos as their contingency methods utterly failed. Accusations of inside help flew between the survivors.

Suits from the Bureau of Prisons had already shown up and were using the words 'disaster' and 'catastrophe' quite liberally. When they demanded to know where Pescadero's director was, they were told he had been found in his office. And the activity room. And the front hall. And a storage room in back. And they were still missing a few pieces.

Each one of the prisoners questioned told the same story, with variations based on the peculiar 'quirks' that had gotten them a cell in Pescadero to begin with. They spoke of a silver haired preacher with a beautiful girl that had spread the word of a new world, a new messiah, and of needing to stop the machine that was coming.

"What are their plans?" the police would ask.

To a man or woman, they said the same thing.

"To take back the future."