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21:23 - January 23rd, 2020

Twenty-five minutes after they had left the bunker, salvage mission in mind, John and Cameron trudged through the winding networks of tunnels that led from “Bunker 73.” Bunkers were foul places, constantly stained with dirt, leaking water, and eternally cold; but compared to the tunnels the duo found themselves in now, their bunker was a palace. Each Resistance base was surrounded by a labyrinth of uninhabited tunnels. Some routes lead to the bunker, some lead to proximity mines, and some would take you in circles for hours. It was every troop’s duty to memorise the passages from heart. For Cameron this was never an issue.

They were assigned to scavenge supplies from the battlefield wasteland, where machine armies and human guerrillas took turns to meet, “dance”, and be defeated. General Blake was in command of this sector of human resistance, and unofficially dominated the entire west coast’s human forces. John himself was a powerful man within the Resistance. He had command of many fine troops, and carried the respect of a great many more. Yet for this particular mission, he and Cameron would travel unaccompanied

“Why are we entering the battlefield alone, John? If we’d brought just some of your men I predict could have optimised our capacity to return fire, without compromise to our stealth objective,” Cameron spoke up, breaking the otherwise uninterrupted sounds of howling wind and water dripping from the ceiling. John stepped up his pace, to match hers. Once at her side he answered her question, while not letting down the aim of his rifle as he scanned the passage ahead.

“We’re alone because when we’ve isolated a downed HK, I’d much rather you ripped out fuel cells and carried them back back to the tunnel complex, then wait slowly while Rennard cuts them out by torch. We can dismantle the components here, before returning to camp. No fuss and no mess.” He gently squeezed her arm, his hand easily reaching round the entire circumference of her bicep and triceps. She knew that he was talking about her strength, and how she would have to hide it in the presence of John’s men. “It’s the best strategy, right?” She nodded in agreement.

“We can’t hide what I am forever, John…” So far Cameron’s primary asset when trying to pass off as John’s lifelong companion had been “her age.” People had known her since before “Infiltrators” had even been blueprints. As far as either of them was aware, nobody had survived Judgement Day that knew anything about the Time Displacement Equipment. For all purposes, to everybody but them, it was impossible for her to be an advanced infiltrator from the future. But John understood what she meant. Even if noboby ever recognised her machine qualities, there would always be events lurking that would uncover her. Her lack of eating publically, her skill with robotics, her sometimes ruthless efficiency, her combat prowess, her disproportionate strength, and her cynophobia were nothing compared to the impending, incriminating appearances of either Allison Young, or even "Cameron II." When they came face to face with "his Cameron," it would be a day to remember.

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, Cam. Don’t worry.”

“I am worried. The troops will never respect you for lying to them. I’m worried they’ll turn on you, despite all you’ve done, and it will be my fault.”

“Trust me. I’ll find an answer. We survived one nuclear fire, I think we’re tougher than a little stern disapproval,” John reasoned. He was trying, and failing, to make light of the inevitable obstacles they would face, professionally and personally, if the Resistance ever uncovered Cameron’s secret.

John’s position and standing in the Resistance seemed to be at a plateau. Officially his impressive track record was second to none, though John knew that Cameron deserved an equal amount of commendation for her efforts. It was conscious, regrettable decision on John’s part; that Cameron’s many feats of extreme skill and bravery in battle should be downplayed or outright denied. Cameron was already viewed with suspicion and usually looked upon with on sharp glares. If people truly knew how she’d demolished a Centaur tank from the inside with her bare hands or sniped a T-800 with a bent scope, John was certain she’d be met with plasma fire, rather than adulation.

However the deep the suspicion that many soldiers felt about Cameron was not the result of the immense skills that she was noted to possess in combat or engineering. It wasn’t even the due to her occasional, uncanny behavioural slip. Most people lacked trust in her for the same reason that they found something suspicious about John… They both "knew too much." Whenever somebody needed to know something about the machines, or even Skynet’s intentions, they’d turn to this pair of individuals. Between the two of them they were renowned as the “metal lovers.” The derogative term wasn’t meant to be taken literally, and few soldiers would see the funny side if they ever knew just how fitting that description was for the couple. Common opinion was Cameron had always known too much about the machine specifications and that John had too much “unwarranted” faith in them. He alone had pioneered the use of endoskeletons as troops via reprogramming, and for that his standing had suffered. It was like he wasn’t considered “patriotic” enough towards his own species.

The two continued their journey deeper into the maze of connecting tunnels, making their way towards the outermost exit. They were silent for many minutes, notably picking up the pace to make amends for their earlier slow down and chat. As John and Cameron trudged through the accesses tunnel, it was his turn to break the monotonous dripping sound of water.

“Cam…” he softly whispered, extending his left arm to the back of her right shoulder. His voice had changed from its earlier tone and pitch. She could tell he’d been thinking deeply, and was now troubled. She halted, and scanned ahead of them for the possibility of danger; first in regular, then in night, and finally in thermographic vision. Redirecting power to her audition faculties, she determined that nothing was approaching them from ahead or behind. John was safe. She relaxed. She turned to face him, their eyes locked together. Her head cocked slightly at the neck, an affirmation that she was listening to him and him alone.

He sighed deeply. He knew this wasn’t the right time to do be discussing this, but the necessity to remove doubt from his chest in the relative safety of the tunnels outweighed his sense of selfishness. “Back in your future,” John never found it any less ridiculous to say that, “Skynet was growing at a much slower rate than it is now… Wasn’t it?”

Cameron didn’t want to lie. She knew John was not an idiot, and she knew that what he was noticing the reality of their situation more and more everyday. Cameron faltered for a second, trying to think of a way to side-step the issue; but this pause was long enough for John to know that she’d been long aware of the concerns that he was now voicing.


“John… I wasn’t operational as early as 2020. I never witnessed the earlier stages of the war.”

John shuffled closer to her, raising rifle, shouldering it, and freeing up his other hand. “Cam, don’t try and protect me. I know that’s what your doing.” He ran the reverse side of his fingers across her left cheek, before resting them on the tip of her chin. He wanted her to know that he wasn’t angered by her attempts to conceal the truth, but rather touched by it. He always did the same to her. Whenever he was wounded or suffering from the traumatic memories of his past, he tried to remain steadfast, as long as he could. The fact of the matter was that neither wanted to have to lie to each other, even for the best of intentions, but in a world where seeing each other smile was the only escape from reality, how could they not?

“You know the previous dates of activation for the terminator series, and you know the trend. It’s been eleven years since Judgement Day and 800-series are already demolishing us…” He wasn’t finished speaking, nor was he confused about what to say next, yet he paused. He paused to give himself time to walk ahead of Cameron, breaking her contact with his eyes. Deep down this was one of those moments where he wanted to turn off his thick, impenetrable skin, and discuss everything with Cam, but he wouldn’t allow it. Mission first, inextinguishable regret later.

Regardless, Cameron, being the perceptive creature that she was, recognised the signs; the ever so slight change in his voice and in the focus of his eyes. He always feared that, by revealing his state of anxiety before a mission, both of them would become distracted by his veiled sorrow. On a mission, this was always dangerous, and they’d already slowed down enough today.

Regaining his hardened composure, and furthering their journey through the dank network of tunnels, he continued to speak. “My mother could never tell me that much about my father, because she’d spent so little time with him herself… I remember everything, everything, she ever told me about him, verbatim. She said tha-“

“That he was from the year 2029,” Cameron interrupted. She already knew where he was taking this conversation. “Judgement Day took place on August 29, 1997. It was thirty years before the 800-series was deployed.” John was glad she had interrupted him. He wasn’t sure he would be able to voice his feelings without betraying his sorrow to her.

“You remembered all that?” he asked, astounded. He knew she was able to remember anything, but it still didn’t stop him being curious about her decision to not delete information that was only practical in a timeline where she didn’t even exist.

“Anything that’s important to you is important to me, John.” She reassuringly smiled back to him. The corners of his mouth couldn’t help but rise, but there was still the issue of Skynet’s troubling advancement.

“So, you know where I’m taking this, Cam… ‘I’ve’ defeated Skynet time after time, after time… Future after future, but it keeps coming back; stronger, faster, and smarter. I’m not the leader of mankind now. I’m not ‘the messiah.’ In this world, maybe I never will be… Maybe I never will be.”

“You have what it takes to lead your people, John.” Cameron explained gently. “I’ve seen two John Connors in my 'life',” as John preferred her to call her ‘existence,’ "and I know which one I’d rather be commanded by.”

“You still haven’t lost faith in me?”

“Technically, faith’s not part of my programming,” she teasingly remarked. “I never had it to lose… Until you let me grow. And, more than anything else I know, I know I can never lose faith in the man who granted me that gift. ” She smiled. There was no hint that what she said was an elaborate scripted response, rather than a genuine, caring emotion. If somebody had told the brat, who John once was, that the person he was looking at now was the same Cameron whom had once failed to comprehend turning over a turtle, he wouldn’t have believed them.

He leant over to Cameron’s forehead and kissed it caringly. She was his rock. She had been the most stable person he could depend upon, but with each passing day she continued to prove that there was no limit to how complete she could make him feel.

They continued yet further through the network of tunnels. Right, left, straight across, and another right; seven-hundred metres later, they had found their portal to the Wasteland.

Before them stood, a large steel grating, haphazardly jammed shut and sealed with a magnetic lock device. It wouldn’t stop a terminator, as Cameron had noted many times before, but she recognised the psychological benefits of having a sense of false security. This was one reason why humans, even to this day, still carried 9mm weaponry, despite the obvious ineffectiveness against the thousands of machines that were hunting them.


Cameron began to type in the security code for the door’s magnetic lock. It was powered by a miniaturised T-800 fuel cell, another idea that she’d brought to the resistance. The lock deactivated with a strained buzz and hollow clunk. She pushed the door open effortlessly, a feat which would have taken some strain for a human, even one such as John, to accomplish.

The world outside was mercilessly cold. It was night; the only time that serious infantry movement could be accomplished. Cameron may have had no trouble with the switch between being a diurnal creature to a nocturnal one, but when John had first made the transition, many years ago, it was a huge bookmark in his life. It was one of the moments where the reality of his life truly kicked it: ‘This is your life and there’s no going back. Suck it.’

Many hours later, the pair had returned to their humble living quarters, at “bunker 73.” The majority of the salvage they had obtained had been given to Resistance engineers, human ones, to facilitate the reconstruction of tanks. Nobody had much fuel left after Judgement Day, and even less was available now. The Resistance had to make do with whatever small scraps of chemical energy they could. If a tank couldn’t be fuelled solely by gas, then perhaps the combination of scavenged Skynet power sources and the remaining stocks of gas would one day allow humans to force the final offensive against Skynet.

As Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” played quietly in the background, Cameron sat on the cold floor of their room, wearing nothing but a grey bra above her waist. Were she human she would be shivering uncontrollably now, which would have sabotaged John’s attempts to stitch her outer dermis. He was sitting on a box of ammunition, which gave him height enough to carefully sew up the wounds she’d received earlier. They were nothing extreme, by her standards. Merely rips of skin and embedded shrapnel from stray metal that was torn off from a downed HK, as Cameron ripped into its hull and tore out the power cells. Their mission had been a success, "and then some".

“How’s it coming along?” John asked.

“Won’t be much longer till this unit and its modifications are fully operational, John.” Cameron replied in a matter-of-fact manner. She had mistaken John’s concern for her own wounds with his, less important, professional interest in the project she was working on. Mirroring the image of John tending to Cameron, she was simultaneously repairing and modifying a badly bloodied and burned, T-800 infiltrator. Little of its flesh remained in recognisable condition, but its endoskeleton was what was important to the Resistance right now. It didn’t need to fool anybody of its inner nature any longer, unlike Cameron. John shook his head slightly, and leaned closer to Cameron’s ear.

“I meant how is my medical treatment holding up? Any shards left under your skin that I missed?” he inquired. Cameron paused for a minute, looking blank and ramrod stiff as she focused her mind on detecting the presence of foreign metal in the area of her spine. She relaxed and turned to meet John’s concerned face with her own appreciative expression.

“Everything’s perfect. Thank you, John.” Her softness caused his face to glow with happiness, which only grew more satisfied when she kissed him delicately on his lips. Their kiss was relatively short, but not due to a lack of desire or love on either’s part. They were at work now. Play had to wait a while longer.

John walked over to the iron bars that hung from the ceiling and aided in the betterment of his physique. Despite the plasma burn wound on his bicep, he John hauled himself up to the ceiling. Thirty full reps with each arm. John had become a “fanatic self- improver” during this war, and Cameron never quite got over the awe of how much he’d physically changed since 1999. She continued to continue her work on the T-800 chassis. It wasn’t fair for her to idly stare in wonder at John, while his muscles continued to burn and throb in the name of the war effort.

General Blake had forbidden John from reprogramming terminators beyond a certain, fixed number of units. Given this strict order, John decided that if the quantity of scrubbed Ts wasn’t his to expand, then the quality of each unit would have to increase. Cameron was adding crude, scrap plating to the endoskeleton’s armor. She also simultaneously tinkered with an additional set of arms for this particular unit, which had been graciously supplied by a T-800 that she’d turned to scrap earlier. She wasn’t so sure this modification would be accepted fully by the T-800 CPU, especially as it had not had its chip-learning restrictions disabled.

“You should get some rest, John. In two days we’re scheduled to assault the auxiliary HK production plant, eleven kilometres east of bunker 71. We need to be ready.”

“I know, Cam. I know… Future-General Connor reporting to sleep,” he chortled, before throwing himself onto the unsanitary mattress that he yearned for after every night out in the Wastes.


She had planned to keep working longer than this, but two “natural” impulses within her artificial brain were berating her for resisting. She wanted to enjoy her time with John and she wanted to comfort him till and throughout his sleep. Ultimately, her emotions won the battle, and she resolutely covered the T-800 skeleton in a white cloth, and rose to her feet from her cross-legged pose.

She, unlike him, did not muster the courage to throw herself onto the bed. She knew the addition of her weight in such a violent manner would be the straw that broke the camel’s back. Instead she teasingly sat at the opposite end of the bed, stroking his toes until he could no longer hold in his affection. He sprung up with catlike speed, even catching her hypersensitive reactions off guard. Wrapping his arms around her, he tried to wrestle her back to his side of the bed, which she only pretended to resist. If she was serious there was no way he could ever overpower her, but she loved to tease John as much as any girl would. His playfulness melted her tin heart, as it would any fleshy one. A heart’s a heart; no matter what it’s made from.

When she’d succumb to John’s wrestling of her, and found herself under him, Cam wrapped her arms under his own and locked her hands behind his neck. The tables were turned, and now she was the one imposing her will upon him. It didn’t matter. They both desired the same thing equally. Their lips and tongues fused once more, this time passionately, rather than with the tenderness that they’d displayed while waking or working. Her flexible legs wrapped around the back of his bent knees, forcing him to slip ever closer onto her.

Like a jigsaw they fitted together perfectly, in every possible way; physically, emotionally, and spiritually. However you judged them, they were the pinnacle of a complete relationship. If anybody ever complained that the pieces of their affection were not meant or could not fit together, all evidence to the contrary would suggest that individual was blind or heartless. During this time the music slipped, appropriately into Tchaikovsky’s “Romeo and Juliet’s Overture.” Neither of them would notice this or feel the significance; they were too lost in each other. Everything else disappeared.

Neither of them let up, until only Cameron could physically continue their dance. Both human and machine rested on their sides, eyes each staring into the other’s. As their clothes lay strewn across the floor, the bed cover was the only remaining protector of either’s modesty. John was fast succumbing to the effects of sleeplessness, of being only human. Cameron had no such weakness, and John decided to take action to prevent her leaving him to prepare for war.

“Promise me you’ll stay here tonight. Let the T-800 and the rifles stay as they are. They’ll be plenty of time tomorrow to prepare for the strike on the HK factory,” John pleaded, as his hands weaved their way into Cameron’s.

“I don’t want to leave you now, John, but as I don’t need sleep, I should prepare… I can’t let anything happen to you in the strike,” was her reply. Everything she did may have been to help John, the love of her life and provider of her unparalleled freedom of mind, but Cam often saw the bigger picture where others would give in to what they desired. This didn’t alienate John, but rather endeared him to her. Despite being “born” as the most efficient killing machine ever, her willing compassion to those she cared for, even when such concern denied her pleasure, was unmatched.

“Earlier you said you trusted my ability to become the leader of the resistance; to strategise Skynet’s defeat, right?”

“Of course,” Cameron confirmed, confused as to what this had to do with whether she should rest at his side for the next few hours or continue to work.

“Then I deem it strategically advisable that you deserve a rest, Cam,” he lovingly reasoned. “Stay here, with me, tonight. War’s not going away soon… and neither am I. I’ve made it through future after future with geniuses reprogramming terminators around the clock, and we’ve never truly won in the long run. What I never had in all those instances… what I need now… is the warmth of a beautiful love at my side. You complete me, make me fight harder. I love you, Cameron Phillips. I’m going to defeat Skynet completely this time, and it won’t be thanks to you reprogramming terminators. It’ll be thanks to your love.” He cupped her cheek with his free, left hand, and then proceeded to run his fingers through her soft hair.


Words could not express the sense of purpose he imbued her with, nor his centricity to her entire life. She could only, appropriately, respond with a warm embrace, as she curled herself against and around him. Pure, amorous silence dominated their room as John fell asleep with Cameron in his arms.