A/N: Season 2, "Allison from Palmdale". John's POV. Part 2/2.

The Name Game (Part 2)

When the cops showed up at the halfway home, I panicked, immediately thinking that they were after me or Cameron. Thankfully, though, that was when she slipped out the back with Jody and they took off, heading north, and I followed them from a safe distance.

That's what happens when you spend your whole life running from people, you know. You always think that somebody's after you.

Well, the security guard's threat of having the police arrest me for stalking and harassment might have had something to do with it too.

They traveled on foot, so I had to stop pretty often and wait for them to get ahead. But there were plenty of cars for me to park behind at first, and then, when we entered a wealthy neighborhood, I waited for them to turn a corner before I approached again.

As I followed them, I noticed that Cameron didn't look the same as before. Her movements were stiffer. She stood up straighter. I hoped that meant that she was beginning to remember who and what she really was. The more she remembered, the more likely it was that she would let me take her home and I could fix her before Mom found out about any of this.

Unless, of course, she reverted and tried to kill me again.

But I was really pulling for that non-violent option.

I was only a couple of houses back when Jody turned and led Cameron up a walkway, so it was easy to pull up in front of the house, behind them—just out of sight, unless they turned around. I really hoped that they wouldn't turn around. And I wished that I could hear what they were saying. What were they doing anyway?

They stopped on the front porch and Jody opened the mailbox, digging around inside for something. Then it clicked. She was looking for a key. This was a girl who spent most of her time hanging out at halfway houses. They were going to break in, probably to rob the place.

This wasn't right. I should stop them. I should get out of the car, walk up there, and…what? Ask them not to do it? Cameron would kick my ass.

As if to prove this point, she calmly walked up to the door, grabbed the handle, and pushed the door open as easily as if it there was no lock on it at all. Then both girls disappeared inside, closing the door behind them.

With Cameron out of sight, I felt more anxious than ever. I wasn't just waiting for my opportunity to try to persuade her to come home again. I was keeping an eye on her, too. She was my responsibility now. I saved her. I said that she was good and she was fine, and if she wasn't and she hurt anyone, then it would be my fault.

The minutes dragged by as I watched the house. If there was trouble, I had to be ready to jump out and run in there to stop it, not that I was sure I could stop Cameron if she was going to make trouble. If things took a turn for the worse—I didn't want to think about it. I didn't have a tool kit to stop her or even a weapon to slow her down. I was completely unprepared for that possibility.

When I saw Jody through the front window, I didn't think much of it at first, but then I saw her back up and Cameron stepped in front of the window, too, and she grabbed Jody by the throat.

Damn it!

I threw the car door open, jumped out, and ran up the lawn as fast as I could go. I had to get there in time. Oh, please, Cameron, don't do it!

When I ran through the front door, Jody was lying on the ground, unconscious, or so I hoped. Cameron turned to look at me, but she didn't say a word.

"No, no, no. What did you do?" I asked, running over to look for myself. Oh, please, don't be dead. Please, please, please, don't be dead! "What did you do?" I repeated, crawling around to feel for a pulse at her neck, praying that it wasn't broken.

"We have to go," she said emotionlessly.

Come on, I need a pulse or some other sign of life here. Tell me I wasn't wrong. Tell me I wasn't wrong about her, about everything.

"John!"

I looked up, angry with her for telling me that she was different—that she was more than a machine whose only purpose in life was to destroy.

"We have to go," Cameron insisted coldly.

As mad as I was with her, I was so much angrier with myself for believing her. How could I have been so blind?

"Did you kill her?" I demanded—afraid that I already knew the answer.

But Jody suddenly gasped for breath below me, coughing slightly, and Cameron turned to go.

"Apparently not."

I looked down Jody, whose eyes were wide open with fear and confusion, and wondered how badly she had hurt her. I wanted to stay and make sure that she was all right, but Cameron was walking out the door. So, with one last look at the girl on the floor, I jumped up and followed.

I had to go. There was no telling what Cameron would do or where she might go if I didn't. Plus, someone was going to have to take responsibility for what happened to Jody, and it just couldn't be us. We had to stop Skynet. We couldn't do that from jail, or worse, dead. We had already seen that terminators had no trouble infiltrating prisons.

So we climbed into the truck and drove away in silence, heading for home.

I must be crazy. Why do I keep defending her, lying for her, protecting her?

She almost killed that girl. Jody was just a normal, teenage girl—not even a threat—and Cameron almost killed her.

But her chip was messed up. She wouldn't have done it if her chip wasn't messed up.

Right?

"That was my last get out of jail free," Cameron observed.

"Damn right," I confirmed through clenched teeth. I felt like such an idiot.

I couldn't let her run around attacking innocent people, or worse, killing them. If it ever happened again, I'd have to take action. I didn't want to think about what that entailed.

My eyes flickered to her face, trying to find some trace of remorse or compassion. There wasn't any. Her face was vacant in a way that was different from her usual blank expression. I couldn't explain how it was different, but it was. It wasn't her.

Cameron's hand reached up and played with a necklace that I hadn't noticed before. As a matter of fact, I was pretty sure that I had never seen it before.

"Where did you get that?" I asked, wondering if her and Jody had stolen it somewhere.

It took her a moment to answer, but then she said flatly, "I got it at this awesome thrift store in Echo Park." I glanced at her warily, unnerved by the sound of her voice—because that was different, too—and I wondered if I was making a big mistake by keeping this a secret.

Maybe I should just…no. I couldn't tell Derek or Mom. They'd kill her without a second thought. No judge or jury, just the executioner. She might as well be scrap metal as far as they were concerned.

They couldn't help her anyway. Neither of them knew anything about fixing computer chips and that was all that Cameron needed. I just had to fix her chip and everything would be fine again.

"Cameron?"

She turned her head to look at me, looking strangely vacant in a way that thoroughly creeped me out.

"Yes, John?"

What happened back there? Are you dangerous? Has your chip been damaged beyond repair? Will it just keep malfunctioning like this until some day I turn around and it's not even you anymore? Are you really the Cameron I know or is that just the Cameron that I see?

And if the essence of who you are is so dependent on the stability of your programming, is it even possible for you to have a real personality, or will you constantly be evolving and changing into someone else?

I couldn't ask her any of that. Not now. Not when she was like this. Maybe never.

"Don't tell Mom or Derek about anything that happened today. Okay?"

"Why?"

Because they'll torch you faster than you can say, "Tin Girl Bonfire".

"Just promise me you won't," I replied as I pulled into the driveway and put the truck into park. I turned and stared at her, wondering if I would be able to tell if she lied to me. Her empty eyes locked onto mine.

"I promise."

Silence filled the space between us as I studied her face, looking for some sign of whether or not she really meant it. There was no telling by her eyes. It was like there was nothing there. The rest of her face was relaxed, her mouth slightly open, almost slack in a way that looked completely unnatural.

After another moment, I nodded in assent. "Okay."

Then I unfastened my seat belt and climbed out of the car, making sure to lock the doors once Cameron hopped out of the other side.

I felt like I was going to throw up.

Cameron was still malfunctioning. I could tell just by looking at her. That meant that there was a very real possibility that she could become a threat.

What happened next would determine whether or not Cameron was a danger. If she walked inside and didn't say a word, then I could be almost certain that she was dangerous and I had better start thinking about what the hell I would do if she decided to kill me again. If she broke the promise as soon as we were in the door, then I would know that it was still her.

The real Cameron would never knowingly put me in danger, even if it meant that she had to die.

As I followed her up the back steps, I tried to decide which outcome I thought was worse. Both were completely horrifying. Either way it looked like I would lose her.

I couldn't lose her.

"Hey. You're home late," Derek commented, looking away from the television as we walked in the door.

I swallowed nervously. It didn't escape my notice that he was regarding us, specifically Cameron, suspiciously.

"Yeah, well, we, uh, had a lot of shopping to do. Right, Cameron?"

"Affirmative," she replied.

She lied. I almost breathed a sigh of relief. I wasn't ready to watch them burn her. I didn't know if I ever would be. I hoped that I never had to find out.

"If you did so much shopping, then how come you don't have any bags?" Derek asked, raising an eyebrow as he stood up and folded his arms across his chest.

No bags. Oh shit. We didn't buy anything. We didn't buy a single freaking thing!

"I got this necklace from this awesome thrift store in Echo Park," Cameron said, holding it up for him to see. Derek leaned forward to get a better look at it and narrowed his eyes.

"You spent all day shopping and all you got was that necklace? I thought you were going to the grocery store."

"We were, but I wanted to go to Radio World, so I dragged Cameron along with me, and then we just wandered up and down the boulevard, looking around some of the stores," I answered, a little surprised at how easy it was to lie right to Derek's face. I felt kind of guilty about it, but then I remembered his words in the chapel, "But she's nothing but wire" and I felt better. I'll be honest. That pissed me off.

"So when did you go to Echo Park?"

I sighed in annoyance and narrowed my eyes at him. "Why do you need to know? Are you going to interrogate random citizens to see if my story matches up? Since when do I answer to you, anyway?" I challenged him, feeling anger rush through me. "I'm not a child anymore. I can have friends and hang out on the boulevard and do everything else that normal people do!"

I am so sick of everyone treating me like I'm a little kid. I have a news flash for them: I'm not one. Little kids don't have machines sent back in time to kill them. They don't have to worry about saving the future of mankind and they never have to shoulder the burden of people dying because of them.

"Come on, Cameron. I'll show you that computer program I was talking about earlier," I said angrily. Then I turned and mouthed "Play along" to her before I headed upstairs. She obviously understood because a second later, I heard her footsteps behind me and Cameron followed me up to my room.

When I closed the door behind us, I wished that I had a lock so that I could fix her right then, but someone could walk in. We had to wait.

"What is it, John?" she asked, tilting her head and staring at me.

"I want you to come back tonight, an hour after everyone else has gone to bed. Okay?"

Cameron paused as if she was thinking about it. "Yes."

"Great. If you just spend most of the evening in your room, away from Mom and Derek, they won't figure out that something's up and we'll be in the clear."

She tilted her head. "What do you mean—that 'something is up'?"

I rolled my eyes. "It means that something's wrong."

"I know," Cameron replied. "But what exactly do you think is wrong?" I stared at her in disbelief.

"Are you freaking kidding me?" Of course she wasn't. Even the real Cameron almost never did that. "You lost your memory in a grocery store, got picked up by the police, forgot who you were, forgot who I was, broke into someone's house, and almost killed an innocent girl!" I ranted in hushed tones, well aware of the ears that could be listening beyond my bedroom door.

After all that, was she trying to tell me that there was nothing wrong—that everything was just fine now? Was that what she thought a "get out of jail free" meant?

"Your chip is messed up, Cameron. You're still malfunctioning," I told her.

She stared at me blankly for a moment, but then she said, "Yes. I am still malfunctioning. But it's all right, John. I can repair the damage internally."

Since when?

I swallowed, trying to remember if I had ever heard of a terminator being able to do something like that.

"You can do that?" I asked uncertainly.

She nodded. "My operating systems are highly advanced. I ran a few tests while we were in the car to see how extensive the damage was and all of the readings showed that everything can be repaired internally." Cameron paused. "It will, however, require me to shut down for a few hours, so I would like to start as soon as possible. That way I will wake up by the time the others go to sleep and you will never be left completely unprotected."

I laughed, though it was somewhat hesitantly. That certainly sounded like Cameron. I studied her discreetly, taking in her posture and her expression again. She did seem a little different from earlier. Already, she looked more like herself.

But could I trust her?

I took a deep breath, closing my eyes, and thought about it. I was taking a big risk.

Still, if it turned out that I was wrong, I could just fix her chip tomorrow, right?

"All right. Go do your self-repairs and forget what I said about coming back tonight," I decided. She nodded and left my room, closing the door behind her.

I flopped back onto my bed and sighed.

I really hoped that I was doing the right thing and that her repairs worked, if there really was such a thing. She seemed to object to the idea of me tinkering with her chip, which was unnerving in and of itself. Wasn't her first priority always to protect me? If there was a possibility that she was dangerous, shouldn't she be volunteering? I mean, she flat out told me off for saving her back in the junkyard.

But maybe fixing her chip is different. It doesn't just affect her memory or her personality. It's the core of who she is.

If it were me, I wouldn't want anyone messing around with mine either.

Yeah. Maybe that was it. That was a perfectly logical conclusion—even more logical than the other option, the one that didn't happen.

Cameron didn't lie to me because fixing her chip could interfere with her mission. Her programming didn't revert and her mission priority isn't to terminate the leader of the human resistance, me, John Connor.

I had to believe it. I was betting my life on it.

A/N: First of all, I'd like to give a big shout out to grab bag, my very awesome beta-reader. She seriously improved the quality of this fic. :) GB, you rock. Secondly, I'd like to thank the academy...ha ha ha. Yes, anyway, most of John's POV is how I think he was actually thinking, but that extended scene of mine is just a theory of how it could go/could have gone. The writers so often surprise me. :) Oh, if John's "I'm not a child" speech looks a little familiar, it's because I made it really similar to the scene with him and Cameron in "The Mousetrap". Thought it'd be a nice tie-in.