It had been weeks since the transplant. John was still bedridden and had missed the funeral of Marcus. The others weren't sure how the funeral would be, considering what he was, but Blair had decided it was best to burn him, with Thermite, since Skynet could find his grave and use his body for something else; some other frightful project.

But Marcus was a man; he wasn't frightful… He was a man who had given his heart up to save John. And John was living, with a strong heart, thanks to him. Images of Skynet Central were in his mind, mostly of the T-800 there. It looked just like the two who had come to save him before… One came when he was twelve the first time, and another came when he was twenty-one the second time.

But now the machines didn't fool him—he knew they could be reprogrammed, by anyone. But Marcus couldn't; Marcus was different, something new. Or old. How long had Skynet planned this? Temporal mechanics tended to confuse John, and he was already in a weakened state, so he backed out of that train of thought… He knew one thing, which was that they wanted Kyle, and John had given that information to them inadvertently through Marcus.

But Marcus had no idea he was being used. At least, not until the very end… John could only wonder what was going to happen now. Were the 800s going to go into mass production? If so, fighting would be a lot more difficult, and this would outline the true start of the war. The fight against 600s, Harvesters, and Hunter-Killers would not be able to compare to an army of T-800s marching towards them, armed with pulse rifles and their own brute strength.

As John stared at the ceiling of the bunker, his vision started to drift and fade until he was in a dream, only it wasn't really a dream. He was reliving the night in Skynet Central's factory, and the red, glowing eyes of the 800 were burning themselves into his mind. He relived the images of watching the molten metal freeze over it, and trying to restart Marcus' heart while he lay dead on the concrete floor of the foundry.

At the moment that the machine shoved the metal into his chest, he woke up in cold sweats, clutching at where the wound was busy healing itself and realized he felt only a tingle there. He ignored it and looked to his left to see Kate working with some lab samples. "Water, please?"

Kate turned around and smiled at him. "Sure, I'll be right back." He watched her stride off and then placed his head back on the pillow, again staring at the ceiling. The door opened to his right and it was Kyle who entered.

"Kyle? What are you doing here?"

"Well, sir… I was going to ask for your help."

"You want my help with what?"

"It's my brother, Derek. I'd like permission to mount a SAR for him." Kate had come back with John's water, and he was now drinking it as he listened to what Kyle had to say. "I think he's important, not just to me, but to all of us."

"How so?" He took a small sip of his water since his medication made swallowing a difficult undertaking.

"He had been slightly misbehaved when he was younger, so he spent some time in military school. I know he's still alive, because I heard him on the radio, but the coordinates couldn't be tracked precisely. We know he's in the LA zone."

"A Skynet hotspot… It's too dangerous. He can't still be alive." Kyle sat down in a chair beside John's bed. "We can't sacrifice so many men for one."

"I'll go alone."

"Alone? No, you're too important, Kyle."

"Why am I so important?"

John sighed and clutched his chest but it was just itching again. "I've never told anyone about this… Except for Marcus, but you are my father."

"What? How is that possible?"

"Skynet develops time travel technology and sends an 800 back in time to kill my mother before I'm ever born. I send you back to protect her. There you father me."

Kyle was awestruck, and simply watched silently as John opened up a book on the table beside him and handed a picture that was tucked between the pages to Kyle. It was a faded and bent Polaroid, showing Sarah Connor and her dog in the Jeep at the gas station in Mexico. There was that look of sadness and apprehension on her face.

"Is this her?"

John nodded and started to cough, taking another sip of water. "Kate, how much longer am I going to have to heal?"

"It will be a few more weeks at least, John. You need to stay here at least that long. You could be out of bed by next week, but only on short walks. You can't do anything serious until you have fully recovered."

Kyle stared at Kate's pregnant stomach and John chuckled. "It's your grandchild. We don't know what it is yet. If it's a boy, I want to name him Kyle."

"Kyle?" John nodded and coughed a little. The cough may have been small, but it was enough to cause pain in his chest with everything barely holding together. He grunted at the extreme throbbing that was now present but dismissed Kate when she tried to increase his Morphine drip.

"No, there's not enough left. Don't waste it on me. I'm a soldier; I can live through the pain."

"John, please, let me…"

"No," He immediately interrupted, "Please. Save it for those who truly need it."

She simply walked away, grabbing John's water glass to refill it. John sighed and rolled his head back into the pillow almost to the point of the headboard being in full view.

Kyle silently exhaled Derek's name but John still heard it, and he looked at Kyle, who was deep in thought. "Take whoever you need. Go, find my uncle and bring him back. Alive, and that's an order."

Kyle stood up and saluted John before walking off to prepare a team for the mission.

John drifted back into his dreams again, and this time it was more peaceful. It was just his mom, and him, living after their defeat of the T-1000. It was peaceful, even though they were on the run. It was so because she was there for him, as opposed to now when he no longer had her.

He remembered that day at her grave, Judgment Day. The T-800, Kate, and himself… He remembered that entire event and relived it in his dream. It stopped at the bombs falling and being in Crystal Peak with Kate. This woke him up in a fury of sweat and he reached out for Kate, who was again working with lab samples.

She rushed to his side, taking his hand. "John? Are you okay?"

"No! I just want it all to end. But I can't. It's just all so hard…"

"John, I need you to calm down. Please. You'll hurt yourself." John sighed and just drifted back to sleep.

The ruins of the Los Angeles area were cold with the day's overcast, that covered Kyle's five man team while they moved silently, watching for any machines in the area. Continually they scanned the radio, as Derek's distress call had become more frequent and they were able to track it every time it was broadcasted. The signal was moving south, and very slowly, so he had to have been on foot.

The team had reached an open street and they were using hand signals to direct each other. One of them had spotted a T-600 in the distance, and presumed that it hadn't spotted them yet. One soldier was carrying a rocket launcher and had it trained onto the machine, prepared to fire.

Kyle turned to one of his men. "Do we have visual ID?"

"Yes, sir, we have visual ID. Terminator target identified. Rocket boy wants permission to fire."

"Permission granted." The man holding the rocket launcher acquired lock-on and fired the rocket, which adjusted itself in order to hit its target. The explosion obliterated the target, leaving only shrapnel behind. "You can bet they heard that. Let's try to get into one of these buildings."

They quickly crawled inside of one that looked as if it could survive the close flyby of an HK and promptly hid. But no HK came anywhere near the building, only another 600 walked close by it, but it did not scan the building. What was it doing?

It stood there, and when one of the soldiers moved slightly and knocked a small can down, the loud ring of the tin on concrete attracted the attention of the machine. On its HUD was the vision of the building's interior through the dust covered window. Its circular targeting cursor moved over the general area of the officers' hiding spots, with the text indicating, "permissions://Human forms identified, no Skynet operatives are in this area. Permission to fire granted."

The 600 then switched to a grenade launcher as its active weapon and began firing the explosive shells into the structure, causing a cloud of smoke to build up through which it again scanned for human forms. It was able to detect movement patterns in the smoke and decided the best course of action was to crash through the glass, into the building and pursue its targets. The smoke was causing issues with its optical sensory units, however, and it did not anticipate the coming attack on the targeting module at the base of its skull, which caused it to sporadically and haphazardly fire its grenade launcher until the destruction caused the entire ceiling and floor above to collapse on top of the machine, crushing it.

Luckily, Kyle's team had managed to escape all of the destruction unscathed and were all worried about this drawing even more attention to themselves. They quickly moved on south, again chasing Derek's signal until they reached a destroyed bridge with no visible way around it. "Now what do we do? How are we going to find Derek now?

"We can go around."

"How, rocket boy?" He found a 600 skull and kicked it over the broken edge of the overpass in anger. "That is my brother out there! He represents hope for us. We have to find him, and now this. We survived those two machines, and for what? Nothing but a broken bridge and it's the only one within miles!"

"Sir, I have some good news."

"Yeah, what is it?"

"I know where he is. We don't need the bridge."

"Why don't we need it?"

"He's at the Griffith Observatory." Morale had instantly improved for Kyle as he ordered the soldiers to move.

"I lived there once, at the Observatory, so I'm pretty familiar with it." They began the three hour journey from their position down an abandoned highway littered with scrap and half destroyed cars. Human bones also lay everywhere, with some crushed, presumably, under the heavy weight of a ground HK's tracks or a 600's foot.

They had stopped under the warning from 'rocket boy' as he stared through the digital binoculars he was using. "Three 600s, looks like they're building something. Here, take a look."

Kyle took the device and stared down the highway as he and the team hunkered down behind a partially crushed and completely rusted car body. He saw them putting what seemed like random parts together. "We have to stop them. This can't be good."

He ordered his men to move into more tactically sound positions and form a plan. They decided to scout the nearby alleyways to find a way to surround the machines without being seen, and they promptly began to run between the buildings, using their digital map devices to navigate through the ruins around them. They were all in a position to fire until one of the 600s made a deafening noise and looked directly at 'rocket boy', firing a grenade.

Chaos, smoke, damage… Luckily, rocket boy had managed to escape before the grenade came within an unsafe proximity. The 600's HUD displayed "scan://Target status Terminated." as it scanned the area where he had been. All three of them had begun to scan the surrounding buildings for more targets, but they couldn't find anyone.

This allowed Reese's team to use the element of surprise, which they did as they unleashed gunfire that the machines could not locate. Once they had stopped to reload, the 600s randomly fired into the surrounding buildings, but one of them was unable to stand upright as it had been hit in its statocystic balance sensor and was unable to determine its angle and elevation in relation to the ground. The remaining two had managed to hit, by sheer chance, one of Kyle's soldiers and kill him.

Suddenly Kyle felt a hand touch his shoulder and, by instinct, had pointed his shotgun at this person's face. "I'm not here to hurt you. Come with me if you want to live."

Kyle's faced had a puzzled look as he listened to the voice and stared at the goggles and handkerchief covering the man's face. "Derek?"

Before he could answer, gunshots rang out through the floor of the parking garage they were in, but luckily they were ducked behind a pillar. Neither of them said anything as they both ran to escape the hail of bullets. Eventually they had escaped by rappelling down an elevator shaft and running into an alleyway.

The man pulled off the goggles and cloth to reveal his face. "Yeah, Kyle, it's me."

"What were you doing there? We were looking for you."

"Yeah, I know. I've been tracking you."

"What? But your signal's coming from the Observatory."

"I left my radio there. Put it on a loop. So what? I figured it would divert Skynet to the Observatory, and it is. Saw some HKs heading that way earlier."

"I need to get my men."

"Your men?"

"Yeah, I'm part of the Resistance now."

"So, you've jumped on Connor's bandwagon, too?" Kyle was surprised at his brother's response. "Hey, bro, three 600s… Not safe."

"I'm aware of this, but I can't just leave the four of them behind." Kyle walked away and after a second Derek decided it was best to follow. They could still hear the gunfire during their entire conversation, so they knew it wasn't over.

Out in the street, only one 600 hundred was left standing and Derek thought of an idea, which he moved to implement. Taking a grenade launcher from under his long coat, he began firing at the machine, hitting it every time. The explosions were damaging and it fell down with its upper body removed from it lower.

Slowly, it inched its way toward Derek, who realized that he was out of ammunition. He knew he'd have to rely on the gunfire of Kyle's team, or fight when the machine entered the lower level of the parking garage with him. Even though its movements were slow, it had quickly advanced on him and was nearly within its arm's reach.

Derek knew this thing had the strength to throw him around like a rag doll, so he began backing away until he was behind a pile of dirt that he knew the machine would have to crawl over to reach him. It performed precisely as expected, and once it was over the dirt, a magnetic mine leapt out and attached itself to the chassis of the machine, exploding shortly after. Derek was ducked behind a pillar in order to avoid the dangerous shrapnel.

Shortly after, the team had regrouped along with Derek in order to bury their dead comrade in a makeshift grave. After this had been done, they began to advance back to Connor's base at Crystal Peak.

Little did they know that an Aerostat was tracking them, scanning their every movement and planning to acquire Kyle Reese for termination. On its HUD, it focused on Kyle Reese, with the text displaying "scan:// TARGET IDENTIFIED AS KYLE REESE. MISSION ACQUIRE FOR PROPER TERMINATION BY ANOTHER UNIT."