Terminator: Extinction Chapter 4: 03 Third Chapter, a terminator fanfic

"PRIMARY OBJECTIVE: ENSURE THE SURVIVAL OF SKYNET "

"ALERT: OBJECTIVES IN JEOPARDY"

"BOOTING…"

His internal clock told him that thirty-one years had passed, but to T101 it was like waking up from an afternoon nap. Immediately on high alert, he opened his eyes and scanned for the reported threat to his mission.

Three figures clad in light brown fur stood in front of him. One, only a boy, stood closest to the chamber's entrance and held a sandstone lamp filled with burning fat. The ghostly fire illuminated the two other men. These were larger and older than the lamp carrier was and they were violently thrusting spearheads into T101's chest area. He looked down to asses the damage and was puzzled by what he saw.

His torso had been completely painted with red ochre and he noticed a small statuette of a female figure hanging from a cord around his neck. A crazed, high-pitched chant echoed through the cave. He only now noticed the huddled, hooded figure standing next to the boy, moving his arms and body to a rhythm only he could discern. A thick curtain of smoke hung around him. T101 did not have to understand what the figure was shouting deliriously, he soberly concluded that there was some sort of ritual going on. These figures were obviously human and they had decided on ritually destroying him. The hooded man had to be some sort of shaman or wizard.

The boy saw T101's movements first and uttered a loud yelp and backed up against the wall in fright. The Terminator wasted as little time as he could with these humans, he had no need for ritual. He could not be seriously damaged with spears, but he had noticed his torso was punctured and shredded, ruining his skinjob. This violation of his camouflage was unacceptable. With a lightning-fast move, he grabbed the nearest spear from its owner's hands and thrust it into the other spearman's chest. This one fell with a groan. The shaman, seemingly oblivious to what was going on, kept on screeching and dancing. T101 ripped the statuette from his chest, snapping the leather cord, and threw it at the man's hood, hard. It impacted with a sound not unlike a bird cracking a snail's shell. The shaman fell and was silent. The boy wailed with wide-open eyes and fell to his knees.

The disarmed man was stilled stunned in amazement and fright at T101's sudden animation when the Terminator grabbed the man's left wrist and heaved him into the air as if he was made of straw. With his right hand, T101 grabbed the man's long, curly black hair and crushed the head to pulp against the wall. The corpse fell to the floor, blood and brains oozing from the cracked skull. T101 turned around to finish off the boy when the room went black. The young man had finally dropped the lamp and was now crawling through the narrow causeway and his escape. T101 switched to night-vision and went after him quickly. It was not hard to follow him: the boy was screaming frantically in terror and left behind a trail of urine droplets. Still, he was fast and his tiny form worked to his advantage. By the time T101 had reached the end of the causeway and raced to the cave entrance, the boy had escaped. It was night, but with his night-vision still on, the Terminator could see the boy clambering up a hillside, a good distance away.

He did a quick analysis and concluded that hunting down the human would cost more of his precious energy than it would gain him in security. Understanding human psychology, he decided on keeping future explorers out by scare-tactics. Strategically, he placed the two spearmen's' bodies close to his chamber, with spears symbolically embedded into their chest cavities. He beheaded the dead shaman and lay it down in front of the two others on its back, head gripped firmly in the cold, dead hands.

Before he resumed his position in the chamber and switched off again, T101 noted that while he had been turned off, the damage to his databanks had somehow grown more severe. System analysis told him it was a faulty subroutine, stuck in a loop and which could not be cancelled. T101 calculated that he might not be able to sustain system functions for the thousands of years he needed. The mission objectives however, could never be betrayed. Even if he at one time would become unable to function, his robotic technology might still be found one day and this way he might still contribute to Skynet's survival.

T101's red, glowing eyes dimmed and piece returned to his tomb.

Outside in the dark, a small human boy huddled under a bush, whimpering softly as he held his teacher's token to his chest, hoping he would make it back to camp before he was discovered by wolves. It was still a two-day trek. Under his breath, he swore to every power that he knew, that he would one day return to that cave and destroy the evil spirit that the night had conceived in the Mother's womb. The monster that had killed his teacher and their two guardians. With a corner of his reindeer hide tunic, he started to clean the gore off the statuette until he feel asleep and dreamt death and terror.