2027

The infiltrator flattened himself against the wall, allowing a dozen officers to pass, and gave them all a curt nod before continuing down the corridor to Connor’s office. He wouldn’t be there, the infiltrator knew that, but his partner would. And it was her, not John, that the infiltrator had been assigned to capture. She didn’t know it, but she was the sole target of Skynet’s attention right now. She would decide the outcome of this war.

The infiltrator stopped short of Connor’s office, saluting the guard there and holding up a report.

“I need to speak with-“

“Sorry sir, General Connor is indisposed at the moment.”

The infiltrator gave the guard a disparaging glare for his interruption, causing him to quell slightly.

“Yes, Private, I am fully aware of this. I’m actually here to speak with Phillips. I assume she’s in there.”

The guard caught the infiltrator’s emphasis on his rank and cleared his throat uncomfortably before answering.

“Yes, sir, s-she’s in there. I’ll call her out immediately.”

“Thank you, Private.”

The guard spoke into the intercom and announced the infiltrator’s presence and a few seconds later the door opened, revealing a beautiful brown eyed young woman. She stepped out into the open, her face lightening at the familiar sight of the infiltrator.

“Good morning Lieutenant.”

“Afternoon actually. We’re in the pm now.”

“Oh… of course, I’m sorry. I guess I just lost track of the time. So… is there something you needed or…”

The infiltrator brushed his fringe out his face and smiled faintly.

“Err, yeah. I was wondering if you might take a walk with me. There’s something I need to talk to you about.”

She frowned slightly at his request and tilted her head to one side before smiling.

“Sure.”

“Great.”

As they chatted about various topics the infiltrator led her willingly to the trap he’d set mere hours ago, a section of the base that was closed off due to a recent cave-in. They stopped outside the section door and she gave him a quizzical look.

“What are we doing here?”

“Remember I said I have something to tell you?”

“Yes.”

“Well it’s something no one else must hear, so we need somewhere… out of the way.”

The infiltrator tapped on the heavy door and she understood his meaning, giving him a coy smile.

“Okay, as long as you promise not to bury us alive down here.”

The infiltrator let out a chuckle and opened the door, allowing her to pass through into the dark corridor beyond. Once inside, the infiltrator closed the door behind him, plunging them into almost impenetrable darkness. It engaged its night vision to compensate as the word “Terminate” appeared in its vision. The slam of the door caused her to spin around in surprise and what she saw made her heart stop: two glowing eyes of the deepest purple she’d ever seen.

“Jason?”

--

Present

Jason paced the length of his room for what must have been the sixty-seventh time. He desperately tried to recall that flash he’d seen with Cameron, but the harder he tried to remember it, the more it started to slip away. It was like trying to hold water in one’s hands, the details trickling through his fingers with each passing moment. Eventually, Jason gave up and plonked himself on his bed, his head in his hands. What little he had learned of himself caused him serious distress, and as much as he wanted to know who and what he was, Jason feared what he might discover.

He wasn’t entirely human, Jason knew that much. There were things about him that just didn’t fit the bill, his five senses being one of them. During his time with the Connors, Jason had learned that he could see twice as far as anybody else, could hear with almost perfect clarity, and could smell things that only canines could detect. Touching an object delivered more than just a physical response to his brain, complicated streams of information would flash through his mind; telling him the object’s exact size and density.

There were other things as well, such as his response to injury. When he’d arrived in 2007, Jason had a bullet wound on his head, but in the space of a day or two that wound had completely healed without leaving so much as a scar. And then there was that incident when his vision had changed at random, showing him the inner workings of all those around him. Jason didn’t know what he was, but he certainly wasn’t human.

Sarah appeared in his doorway and leaned against the frame, her arms crossed together.

“I think it’s time we talked about who you are.”

Jason laughed at her sense of timing and raised his head to look at her, noting the mixed look of annoyance and determination on her face.

“If I knew who I was, don’t you think I’d have told you by now?”

“Would you? Really, we don‘t know if you are a Resistance fighter or not. We just assumed you were when Cameron told us you weren’t a machine.”

Jason looked down at his hands, remembering what he’d seen that swelteringly hot day.

“I don’t have the first clue what I am, Sarah. And I don’t see that changing any time soon. Not unless you have a magical memory drug.”

Sarah allowed herself a small smile before approaching the bed and giving him a weak kick to his shin, causing Jason to jump up in surprise.

“C’mon. If you’re serious about finding out whom you are, I suggest you join us in John’s room.”

Jason raised his eyebrows quizzically and Sarah cocked her head at the door.

“C’mon, John thinks he’s on to something.”

Jason waited a moment before following Sarah down the hall to John’s room. Inside, John was typing something on his computer whilst Cameron lay on his bed, a tiny flicker of apprehension on her otherwise blank face. John finished his typing and rolled backwards on his chair, stopping next to Cameron with a Stanley knife in hand. He glanced up at Jason before returning his attention to Cameron, who seemed to let out a shuddering breath.

“John?”

Her voice was quiet and soft, and just a little bit pleading.

“It’s okay Cam, no one’s gonna hurt you.”

Cameron’s eyes flicked to the doorway and widened ever so slightly.

“He might.”

John followed her gaze to see Derek standing there and frowned.

“I told you to stay away.”

Everyone glared at Derek, who simply shrugged and crept out of the room, closing the door behind him. Satisfied, John began the incision and cut a semi circle in Cameron’s skin, making Jason wince slightly. Once done, John peeled back the skin to reveal the endo-skull beneath. Fascinated, Jason leaned closer to get a better look and marvelled at the reality of what actually lay beneath that innocent visage of hers. John popped the shock dampener out of place and put it aside, exposing the tab of the chip. As he reached out to remove it, however, Cameron suddenly grabbed his wrist.

“John, I don’t want to do this.”

A mix of emotions passed through his face as he looked into her eyes.

“You want these glitches to stop, right?”

“Yes.”

“Then you have to let me do this.”

John tried prise her fingers away but she squeezed tighter, causing John to grit his teeth against the pain and Sarah to shift in her seat.

“But what if something goes wrong? What if I go bad again?”

“What if I don’t do this and you go bad again? I would’ve lost the one chance I had to fix you.”

Cameron scanned his face carefully, detecting the sincerity in his expression and voice.

“I don’t want to go.”

She spoke in a whisper so quiet that only John and Jason were capable of hearing, the latter looking away uncomfortably, feeling that he was intruding in a private moment. John had to try his very best to keep from showing too much emotion in front of his mother, but it was so hard to do when flashes of Cameron between those trucks kept hitting him. He took a deep, shuddering breath before taking her free hand in his and giving it a reassuring squeeze.

“I will not let anything happen to you, I promise.”

Cameron stared at him for several long seconds before relinquishing her grip on his wrist, leaving red marks where her fingers had pressed against his skin. Slowly, John placed two fingers on the tab and, giving her one last reassuring smile, twisted the chip counter clockwise and pulled it out. The blue glow of her interior faded along with all signs of animation in her eyes. Jason could see the total absence of presence in those eyes, and knew without a doubt, that she was no longer in there.

John took a moment as he examined her chip carefully, checking for any signs of damage or dirt. Satisfied, he rolled over to his desk and carefully plugged the chip into his custom-built CPU interface. He then began applying increasingly large volts of power into the chip until finally accessing her memory records. Unlike Vick’s, Cameron’s mind seemed to be a lot more orderly and John had little trouble locating the memory he was looking for. With a tap on the keyboard, John accessed memory file RX2279#JC but all that appeared was static.

“Huh? What?”

John tapped a few choice keys tentatively but nothing happened.

“That’s strange.”

Sarah leaned closer to get a better look at the screen.

“What? What’s wrong?”

John sat back and pointed at the screen, a frown beginning to form.

“This memory appears to be empty, but it still reads as if it isn’t.”

Sarah gave her son a “translate-that-into-idiot’s-speak” look.

“Meaning?”

“Meaning that this memory has been deleted but a capture shadow is still there. If I can find out the correct trigger, I can get the memory to show itself. That’s the tricky part.”

Jason shuffled and placed his hands in his pockets.

“I don’t get it. What does this have to do with me?”

John peered over the monitor at Jason, apparently having forgotten that he was there.

“Cameron knew your name, though she doesn’t know how. So she was either lying, which I doubt, or she really doesn’t remember, which means that the memory is locked away in here.”

“And you can dig it up? You can get her to remember?”

“Hopefully, nothing’s certain. I don’t want to do something to damage her systems; they’re in bad enough shape as it is.”

Jason nodded slowly and perched himself on the edge of the bed as John began hacking into the memory subroutines. Several minutes passed in total silence, the only sound was the tapping of John’s fingers on the keys. Jason turned his attention to Cameron, who remained as still as a statue. Whatever his past held, Jason knew that she was an important part of it and he couldn’t help but question the nature of their association. After a while, John suddenly let out a small gasp of surprise.

“Whoa!”

Sarah, who’d been absent-mindedly fiddling with a loose thread on her shirt, snapped her head up, causing her neck to crick.

“Have you found something?”

“I think so, but it’s complicated. I can’t access the memories from the outside, only Cameron can get them to resurface.”

Jason let out a sigh of frustration, knowing how fickle Cameron could be… but how could he possibly know that? Jason looked back at Cameron’s inert form and was struck by a torrent of images, thoughts, and voices. He almost slipped off the bed in surprise, but instead jumped to his feet and backed against John’s wardrobe, his eyes fixed on Cameron. Both John and Sarah exchanged looks of mutual confusion before getting to their feet. Sarah was the first to speak.

“Jason?”

“I remember… her. We… I…”

“Jason, tell us what you remember.”

Jason looked from John to Sarah to Cameron before stumbling out of the room.

“I can’t… I… I need time to… make it all fit.”

He closed the door on them and closed his eyes, letting out a long breath as his heart pounded in his chest. Slowly, he staggered down the hall and went downstairs where he borrowed one of Derek’s jackets before leaving out the front door. A short cab ride brought him to the sight where he had arrived from the future, the displacement crater apparently undisturbed in the five days since its creation. Jason knelt down within the smooth circle and closed his eyes as he forced himself to go over everything that he’d recalled in that bedroom.

He now knew how he and Cameron were connected, and part of him wished he didn’t. Memories of seeing her in the future stabbed into him like the broken shards of a mirror, and without all the other pieces, they cut him up inside. He remembered watching her run down a dark corridor, but he didn’t know why. He could see her crying and begging for mercy, but he didn’t know why. He could feel the gentle snap of her neck, but he didn’t know why.

The sun became lost to the clouds as a single drop of rain landed on his face, followed by another, and another. And as each one made contact with his skin, another memory returned to him, and then another, and in no time at all; he was caught in a shower of recollection.

--

The rain hammered on the windows as John carefully twisted the chip clockwise and reattached the shock dampener before flattening her skin and hair back over the incision. He’d been successful in restoring her chip’s integrity, though she’d never be same as she was before the explosion, but John wasn’t convinced that that was necessarily a bad thing. Just like before, he smoothed her hair down, but this time, he wasn’t afraid of her knowing. Cameron’s eyes flicked open as a soft whirring noise came from deep within her cranium. She looked up at John, who had ceased his affections and gave him a curious smile.

“You didn’t kill me.”

“Of course not, I promised, remember?”

“I do.”

Her eyes seemed to mist over as she looked past John, her mouth opening slightly.

“Cameron? What do you see?”

She suddenly snapped her head back at John with such speed that he almost jumped out of his skin at the sight.

“Jason, where is he?”

“He had some flashes, I think. He’s gone out to-“

“We have to find him…”

Cameron sat up, her face awash in alarm and emergency.

“…now!”

John was startled by her behaviour and cautiously got to his feet, his eyes locked on Cameron.

“Why? Wha-? I don’t understand… Who is he?”

Cameron dropped her gaze to the floor for a moment before slowly looking back up into John’s face.

“He’s the man who murdered me, John.”

--

A clasp of thunder roared overhead as Jason rocked back and forth, his arms and legs tucked closely to his body. His mind was in total chaos as images swirled like a maelstrom in his mind, causing untold destruction to everything he thought he knew. And then, when he felt like the world was going to implode on him; Jason remembered… everything.

“This is what you are.”

“I can’t see anything.”

“Things are never so simple.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“No one knows me like you do.”

“Surrendering to emotion is death.”

“The line must be drawn, John.”

“We’re all just floating.”

“It’s never enough.”

“Why can’t I stay?”

“All that I know is gone. I am me, that is all that matters now. All that ever mattered…”

The voices fell into complete silence and the storm passed overhead, but the rain continued its pointless barrage on his back. Jason Corvain drew up his HUD for the first time in almost a week, his peripheral showing a 3D image of his fully-restored hippocampus. He stretched his arms out and stood to full height, his head turned upwards as his body became his again.

The designation “I-950” flashed across the darkness of his closed eyes as he lowered his head and let out a breath, exercising his lungs and flexing the muscles in his arms and legs. Satisfied that everything was working at optimal efficiency, Jason finally opened his eyes, a smile touching his lips as he accessed his mission directives. He glanced down at the puddle that had gathered in the crater he stood within and saw a darkened reflection of himself, violet eyes staring back at him out of the shadowy image.


To be continued…


Next: Chapter Six: One of Them
Previous: Chapter Four: Glitches