Title: Communion

Author: Alex Foster

Category: General

Rating: PG-13

Summary: Ten years on and it wasn’t quite the end of the world yet. John and Cameron are the only ones left in the fight. Character death. First in the 2017 series

Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by Fox. No money is being made and no infringement is intended.

A memory lasts forever.

Never does it die.

True friends stay together.

And never say goodbye.

-Anon.

Noun: Communion

1. Sharing of thoughts and feelings

2. A group with a common faith practicing the same rites

There was a time, John knew, when he wasn’t nearly as good at this. Back against a brick wall he kept his breathing slow and let his dark clothing blend into the shadows around him. The hilt of a hunting knife concealed up his sleeve pressed firmly against his wrist and the familiar weight of a 9mm hung from his hip.

Once upon a time he would have looked at this sort of mission as a failure of his better way doctrine. Becoming what the machines were to stop them. His gaze flicked momentarily from the high-rise before him to the cityscape of Los Angeles beyond it.

Nightlife continued unabated in downtown. There were no factories run with human slaves cranking out Hunter-Killers or Terminators. No rail guns mounted along the Hollywood Hills. No automations walking down burnt streets. Ten years on and it wasn’t quite the end of the world yet.

John felt more than heard the similarly dark clad form come up behind him. His constant companion and the only person left he would trust to watch his back. Cameron’s index and middle finger brushed his arm and she lifted her chin slightly in the direction of the high-rise.

Only two security guards manning the front entrance. No other obstructions detected.

John and Cameron rarely talked while on missions; both had become adept at reading the signs and tells of each other. It was a language owned only by them.

He nodded once. Let’s go

John pushed from the brick wall and moved silently toward the entranceway. He didn’t look back or even wait for Cameron to follow—she was never more than a step behind. John’s feet barely skimmed the concrete of the parking lot; he moved as though born for this type of stealth.

Cameron had a dancer like grace with perfect long limbs. The quietness of her movement belied her strength and heft. Together they completed a ballet of leather and lightweight kevlar and knives slipping from arm sheaths.

This late at night the building was locked but a quick swipe of a forged keycard and the best made security system of 2017 opened for them. The two guards glanced up in surprise, seconds too late, as black ghosts rushed into the lobby.

Cameron knew instinctively to take the one on the right as John moved left. A hand moved for a holstered .38, but John doubled the guard over with a quick jab to the solar plexus. He grabbed the man’s shoulder with one hand and pulled him into a reversed embrace. Immediately the hunting knife was in his free hand.

Severed vocal cords kept the guard from crying out. Hot blood sprayed as John dropped the body to the floor. He knew blood wouldn’t stain kevlar.

John turned and saw Cameron already rolling her fresh kill away from the guard station and front window. Nearest to the door, she reset the security system and locked them in. Brown eyes that held inhuman blue somewhere underneath met his and an image of Sarah briefly sprang unbidden to his mind.

On missions and when they were alone, John had learned not to think about the past. There was too much to remember and he no longer had the luxury of dwelling. For that, he let Cameron shoulder the burden. She was the outsider with no attachment to any of them except him. She could safely remember without the anguish.

John drove the blade back into its sheath and pulled the 9mm free. Cameron followed suit and nodded her understanding. Let’s get this done and get out

They took the stairs because elevators were never safe. Too many ways to sabotage them and they offered no cover or escape from an assault. John could still feel his ears ringing as the other terminator and his mother fired at the living liquid metal dripping through. Stairs were always better.

It was during a raid on a warehouse that Sarah took a stray slug in the chest. The intel had been bad—John never made that mistake again—but it was a choice of going in then or risk losing the Turk overseas. There was irony in the fact a no name lackey managed to do what several programmed machines could not.

Only Cameron’s impressive physical strength managed to pull him away from Sarah’s body as they fled with the Turk. John later learned that while he cried and screamed, Derek had emptied two clips into the lackey’s chest. He would forever wish he could have had that honor.

They hit the stairwell and climbed the steps two at a time. John took point position—he always did on these missions now, and Cameron never raised protest. She followed his orders. Sometimes in the back of his mind he remembered how she would only listen to Her John.

Home life was different after the fall of Sarah Connor. Derek tried for several months to keep up the family unit, but neither his nor John’s heart was in it anymore. Cameron hung in there longer than the humans could. She assumed the role of cook, watching the Food Network to educate herself, and dutifully made breakfast every morning.

John knew she would occasionally leave the pancakes just a little too long over the flame to remind him of Sarah.

Even after the Turk was gone there were other missions. New scientists and computer programs that could unwillingly end the world. The good soldier, Derek understood the need to keep going. His John taught him to never back down or give up. One down, one more to go.

Written over her programmed singled-minded determination, John liked to think Cameron learned something about tenacity from Derek. She honored him as well. Unlike past terminators, she no longer insisted he keep to the safe path. Guerilla warfare required a certain amount of recklessness that she never stood against in him. A true comrade in arms Cameron had his back.

They stopped at the fifth floor and assumed usual positions next to the access door. John to the left, Cameron to the right, both with a hand on the door lever. More silent communication passed between them.

Ready?

I am

John’s 9mm rounded the corner first and the two black ghosts moved swiftly down the corridor. Empty offices passed in his peripheral vision. Behind him he could sense Cameron pause only briefly to confirm no one was working late.

The quality of John’s mercy was still untainted. The timing of their assault wasn’t just to go unnoticed. Cameron could have swept through during the day while he kept the building in lockdown. The world’s research had yet to develop a weapon that offered a real threat to her.

They buried Derek Reese in the desert of northern Mexico.

Friends of friends of mobsters they killed found him in Tijuana. John tried not to think about the torture Derek went through at their hands. Small comfort when Cameron told him Derek would be able to endure the worst of it because of what the machines did to him in the future.

It was one hundred and twenty degrees when he and Cameron found him staked and abandoned in the desert. Slow death in the heat. John cried for the last time and called Derek uncle for the first. Cameron kept silent vigil and could only watch.

The office at the end of the hall was the target. Through the frosted and textured glass, John could make out a lone person next to single desk lamp.

Afterward they were orphans, but not really. Childhood never really existed for him and Cameron was never a child. On their own they traveled light. Mexico City to regroup, LA, Nevada, a military testing facility in Utah. Wherever their informants said Skynet might develop into a threat.

Sarah taught him well and they rarely stayed in one place very long. They changed identities five times the first five years on the run. Cheap food out of greasy paper bags eaten in run down holes became life.

One year after his mother died, Cameron danced for him the first time. Stunned he stood in the doorway of their small apartment and watched as she slowly turned and moved in time to music. The part of his sharp brain not wrapped in planning their next mission instantly identified the ballet she selected. An adaptation of Les Sylphides by Fokine.

When done she looked at him with eyes too big and brown to belong to a machine and told him she wanted to remember Sarah. They were out of paper and she couldn’t write a note.

John kicked the office door in and moved without hesitation to the man sitting behind the desk

“Robert Legros?”

Wide frightened eyes stared up the barrel of John’s 9mm. “Y-yes. Wh—”

John pulled the trigger once and ended Robert Legros, the future inventor of an AI learning computer’s network core. A silencer muffled the gunshot and John didn’t blink as blood and brain matter splattered against the window behind Robert.

He looked back and saw Cameron watching him. “Time to get the hell out of here?” she asked, almost like Sarah.

“Yeah. We’re done here.” One more off the list. Time altered just a little. John no longer thought he could put off Judgement Day entirely, but after ten years it hadn’t happened yet and every extra day was more precious than the rest of the world knew.

It was after her ballet dance that John understood what Cameron was trying to do. She was turning herself into a collective matrix of ideas, imparted phrases and words, and memories for John that he couldn’t bear to carry with him at all times.

Two years after Sarah’s fall, John woke in the middle of the night from a dream filled with fire and called for Cameron. Of course she came willingly to him. John always knew she would. Reading each other was not new.

She was a machine but possessed warmth and softness. He marveled at the gooseflesh that appeared at his touch. It wasn’t fast or rough—they had real life for that—and John spent hours clinging to her as she held back just as tight. She smelled like home, like school notebooks and pencils, and bacon overcooked. Her tongue held a sharp mint taste because she used gobs of toothpaste in the morning. The future didn’t have such wonderful amenities.

Cameron would moan against his mouth and move underneath him in ways that were decidedly feminine. Such things only intensified what a wondrous creature she was to his eyes.

In the dark as they lay together, intertwined, John Connor and a machine, she whispered the memories he longed to be close to.

Remember Morris and the way his pupils would dilate in my presence? Too bad we never had prom. I would have danced with you even though it is not a socially accepted norm for brother and sister.

John had laughed at that. Incest was just one more messed up thing between them that both somehow found comfort in.

Remember Sarah and Derek and family? Remember ice cream in the park? Playing chess for fun instead of strategic training?

John and Cameron retraced their route through the high-rise, leaving Robert and the two dead guards behind. Three dead in return for maybe another year without factories and camps. His mother might have disagreed, but he and Cameron were on their own now and John could only do his best.

Cameron swiped the keycard again and then left it on the security station. It was of no further use to them and would leave behind a nasty computer virus when investigators tried to reverse the programming to find the hacker.

John’s now expert gaze swept through the dimly lit parking lot as they left the building behind. It hadn’t always been so, but he’d gotten good at this. Hit and fade. Sacrifice one for the good of everyone else. His plan to change the way of fighting, to not just win but prove himself and his species better than the machines, never included this type of attack.

But that was the trade off, John had learned. With each kill to hold back their advance, he became just a little more like them. And it did not escape his notice that the opposite was true for his companion. She rose as he fell. Over the years with each lost hero she gathered another piece of humanity to hold onto for him.

She was his anchor and partner, built from bolts and metal, and always gave him something to return to. When he needed her, she drew upon Sarah for strength and wisdom and upon Derek for decisiveness. Made from the memories of them and years of shared friendship with John.

End