just to fool myself, to catch myself, to make it real

[communi_kate]

Title: Third Chance (Chapter 2)
Fandom: Terminator: Salvation
Rating: 15
Pairing: Blair/Marcus, established relationship
Summary: Second chapter of four.  

Third Chance

A Terminator: Salvation fan fiction by xahra99

 

Chapter Two:

In which Marcus gets a mission and the New York Resistance get a big, big shock.

 

Marcus walked with his escort down a corridor, up a flight of concrete stairs, down another corridor, and down two more flights of stairs before they finally arrived at another pair of the ubiquitous steel doors.  The metal was stencilled with the red DNA-helix sigil of the Resistance and the enigmatic title of WAR ROOM.

Marcus heard Connor’s voice on the opposite side of the door. His enhanced hearing picked up the words easily even through inch-thick steel plate.

 "We can do this."

"I appreciate the offer, Commander,” retorted a different but equally strident voice. “But that forest is a death-trap. It’d be a death-trap even if it wasn’t crawling with machines. And whatever it is that they've got there, it's not important to keep risking my men's lives. Or yours, come to that."

"At least try."

"What makes you think that your man'll be any different?" asked a third voice.

Marcus's escort knocked on the door. The conversation paused and the vault door creaked open. The solider beckoned Marcus through. Marcus ducked his head to avoid the low frame and stepped inside. His escort did not follow.

Inside, the room was small and cramped. Metal shelving stood stacked against one wall; a relic of the basement’s pre-war years. Maps and charts were pinned to every available surface. A large oval table took up the centre of the room. The entire New York command sat around it; uniforms studded with a constellation of stars and stripes. Connor stood at the opposite end. 

Marcus clasped his hands behind his back. He raised his chin and nodded first at Connor and then at the table. "Commanders," he said politely, but volunteered no more information.  This was Connor's show.

The general seated to Connor's right snorted as he introduced himself. Marcus recognized his voice from Connor’s earlier conversation. “General Babbage. US Army.” He gestured to the rest of the table. “My colleagues,” His voice was brusque and his manner peremptory. “What are you, some kind of marine?"

"No," Marcus said.

“He’s not a marine.” Connor said.

Marcus waited for Connor to explain, but he just nodded and stepped back to allow the table a clear view of Marcus. “Show them.” he said.

Marcus hesitated for a second before he unlaced his gloves. He pulled the mittens off and dropped them on the floor. The metal tendons on the back of his left hand were invisible in the dim light. He held both palms up like a conjuror (ladies and gentlemen, please note, there is nothing up my sleeve) then dug the nails of his right hand into the palm of his left. Blood ran down his wrist and dripped in rosettes on the bare concrete floor. Pain stabbed up Marcus's arm as he ripped apart layers of synthetic epidermis, but the sensation faded in a couple of seconds and vanished completely within a few heartbeats. As Marcus dug deeper muscle peeled away and exposed circuitry in stark relief against the metal bones of his hand. The muscle fibres felt stringy and tough under his fingernails, like dried beef jerky.

Marcus worked until he had exposed a piece of alloy the size of a saucer in the centre of his left palm. When he was satisfied that enough metal had been exposed to make his point, he held up his hand and displayed the gory gleam to the watching New York soldiers.

Chaos erupted.

The generals weren't quite as fast as the Resistance grunts would have been but they were fast enough. Within seconds all of the people in the room except Marcus and Connor had their weapons cocked and ready. Marcus raised both his hands in surrender. Connor stood in the corner with a small smile on his face.

"What is he?" Babbage snarled.

The question was directed to Connor, but it was Marcus who answered. "I'm a soldier of the Resistance," he said.

"You're a machine." Babbage snapped.  He swivelled around and glared at Connor."You brought a robot in here, Connor?"

"Marcus is the reason we were able to destroy the San Francisco base," Connor said evenly. "He's an infiltration prototype."

"He's a Terminator." Babbage shook his head. "I never would have suspected you, Connor. What did Skynet offer you?"

Connor's scowl could have been hacked from a solid block of stone. "Marcus is a Resistance fighter,” he said. “Same as us.”

Babbage’s finger tightened on the trigger of his gun. Marcus could see knuckles whiten all across the room. He sighed and stepped forwards.  The Resistance were fast, but human reactions were no match for a mechanised nervous system. It took Marcus a fraction of a second to reach across the table and seize Babbage’s gun. He removed the clip from the weapon, tossed the clip on the table, rotated the weapon with inhuman speed and placed it back in the general's grasp before the clip had come to a halt.

"If I wanted to kill you," he said, "I would have done it already."

"And if I didn't trust Marcus, I would never have brought him here." Connor said.

 Babbage's expression changed to one of speculative assessment. “Maybe,” he said. He gestured to the other soldiers without taking his eyes from Marcus. “Drop your weapons. Do it.”

The Resistance complied.

Babbage slid the clip back into his own weapon and replaced it in his belt. “I think you’d better explain why a machine seems to be on our side,” he said. “Now.”

Marcus did his best to comply. He kept details to a minimum, unwilling to explain more than was absolutely necessary. Connor occasionally interrupted to clarify a point or add detail. Once he unbuttoned his shirt to show the other soldiers the scars where the T-RIP had slammed a metal bar through his chest.

"Why’d you do it?" Babbage asked Marcus much later, when he had finished. 

"Salvation." Marcus said quietly.

The old general frowned. "What for?"

"I fucked up. Badly.  Ruined my old life. I thought Cyberdyne would be my second chance. Turned out I was wrong. Turned out I helped them, even if I didn’t know it.” He waved a hand around the bunker. “Turned out I helped Judgement Day happen. I want to make amends."

"If we decide to trust you," one of the other generals said, "how do we know that you won't go straight back to Skynet and tell them everything?"

Marcus turned his head to face the woman. He kept his movements slow and unthreatening. No need to put them on edge, just when they'd finally started to relax. "You don't," he said. "Guess you've just got to believe me.”

"Connor trusts him," somebody said. "That’s good enough for me."

"If you had anybody else who could survive this mission, then I wouldn’t be offering Marcus’s services." Connor said.

"You need our permission before you do anything." Babbage pointed out, rather grumpily. 

Connor shrugged. 

A small woman with the double star insignia of a pre-war major general cleared her throat.  "What if it all goes wrong?" she asked. "Is there any way we can stop it?" She paused and looked at Marcus. "Stop you. No offence meant."

"None taken," Marcus replied.

Connor nodded. "There was-there is-a signal. A hidden frequency. But it acts as a location beacon that any Terminator can detect.” His face was grim. "That's how we lost General Ashdown."

Babbage glanced at the bunker’s concrete ceiling. "That sub was hidden beneath several hundred feet of water."

"The aerial was topside." Connor told him. "We should be safe."

"I think we’d all feel better if you agreed to a demonstration.” Babbage said.  He glanced around at the Resistance. “Agreed, gentlemen?”

There was a chorus of agreement. 

Connor glanced at Marcus. Marcus nodded. Connor retrieved a plastic handset from his pocket. "Ready?"

Marcus gritted his teeth. "I'm ready."

The last thing he saw was Connor's finger pressing the control, then blackness. He woke up on the concrete floor seconds later.

"Impressive." Babbage said.”Does the signal travel far?”

“Far enough.” Connor said. “Marcus?”

Marcus rolled over. “I’m all right.” There was a metallic taste in his mouth and his head ached. He crawled to his knees and rubbed at his temples. The pain subsided within a few seconds and he rose to his feet.

Babbage glanced around the room. "I think we've all seen enough," he said. "We'll put it to the vote. Everyone who is in favour, say aye."

There was a chorus of agreement. Babbage smiled. "The 'ayes' have it. This meeting is dismissed."

The soldiers pushed back their chairs and filed out of the room. Connor and Marcus turned to follow as the last man left the room, but the orderly outside blocked them with a raised hand. “I need some more information.” Babbage said from behind them. "You stay."

Connor nodded calmly. He took a chair opposite Babbage. Marcus sat down nearby. He heard the shuffling of feet through the metal door as the New York command left the corridors.

Babbage steepled his hands on the table and fixed them both with a gimlet gaze. "One last concern. I’ll find somebody to brief both of you before we leave. We don’t send anybody-and I mean anybody-on a mission unprepared.” He jabbed a finger at Marcus.  "But I won’t have you mixing with our people. I’ll find you somewhere to stay. It won't be for very long. A day, at the most, before you go."

"Okay,” said Marcus. “But I want to say goodbye to Blair."

The general frowned. "Blair?"

"Blair Williams.” Connor said. He leaned over and whispered in the General’s ear. Babbage’s eyes narrowed and then widened. "You -oh. Well, of course. That can be arranged. Under supervision, naturally."

Marcus saluted. “Sir.”

Babbage frowned at the sloppy gesture. "You weren't military, were you? Before Judgement Day?"

Marcus frowned. "The Army didn’t take crims back then."

"We did," Babbage corrected. "Of course, that depended on what you were in for. Now, we take everyone."

"You didn’t take murderers." Marcus said.

The general looked surprised.

"I said we were mostly military," Connor said hastily, as if continuing a previous conversation he'd had with the general "Mostly. Not all. I'm not. But Barnes is; you've met him. Williams and Reece, they're not either."

"Recruiting from the military has certain advantages,” the old general said drily. "Soldiers tend to go where they're told, and stay where they're put. Civilians tend to make things messy.” He sighed. “Wish you were ex-forces. Both of you. It'd make my life easier."

"I'm hardly a civilian." Connor said.

Babbage frowned. "I don't know what you are, Connor. You and your men, you’ll follow my orders as long as I don’t tell you to do something you don't like."

Connor smiled. He glanced at the digital clock on one wall and pulled his medication from the breast pocket of his jacket. "Then I've got a simple solution for you."

"What?"

"Don't tell me to do things I don't like without a damn good reason." Connor said around a mouthful of pills.

Babbage laughed. He turned to Marcus. "So, how about you? Will you do what I tell you?"

Marcus shrugged. "I'll do what Connor tells me to. And he told me you need some computer program. That I've got to save some men."

“Yes.” Babbage nodded. “The Blue Ridge programmers. Back when we still had contact with them we set it up that we'd exchange their software for asylum. Thought we might get them out. But things have changed."

"How?" Marcus asked.

"They've gotten worse."

"How worse?" Connor asked dangerously.

"Much worse.” Babbage said bleakly. “They’re in the middle of nowhere, and the whole area is crawling with machines. One man might be able to get in, with the luck of the devil." He glanced at the shards of metal visible in the shreds of Marcus's torn glove. "A man of your talents might even be able to leave. But there is no way in hell anybody else will survive. I've tried it. Hell, I've sent men. Good men. So get the program, get out, and don't even try to bring them back with you."

"You'll leave them to die.” Connor said coldly.

Babbage looked insulted. "There's no choice.”

"I'll get your program." Marcus said. “If I can save the men as well, that's a bonus."

Babbage tapped his fingers on the table. "You've got a soft heart for a machine."

"I'll get it.” Marcus repeated. “But how I get it is up to me."

“If you don’t do it my way, you won’t do it at all.” Babbage said. He looked resigned.

“I’ll try.”

“Then do. And I hope to God it works.” Babbage said. He stood up and limped to the door. “This way, please."

He returned Marcus to his escort. The soldier showed Marcus to another underground room, and then he locked him in.

Marcus had expected to enjoy the solitude. Instead, it unnerved him. He hadn't realized how much his short stay in the base had accustomed him to human contact. There were a couple of guards outside the cell. Babbage had emphasized that they were there for Marcus's own protection. But they didn't try to talk to Marcus, and Marcus didn't try to talk to them.

It seemed like a long time before the door to the cell opened and Blair slipped inside. The fluorescent light glinted from her leather jacket and set off the strip of dye streaked across her eyes.

"I always wondered," he said as she opened the door, "why you wore the makeup."

Blair looked startled. "Makeup? Nobody wears makeup anym-" She paused and touched the band of colour. "You mean this?"

Marcus nodded.

"Warpaint," Blair said succinctly.

"Who're you fighting?"

Blair grinned. "Everybody who thinks you're a robot, not a person."

"You must be busy."

Blair just shrugged. She glanced around the dingy room and changed the subject. "They should at least have put you somewhere nicer."

"I don't need somewhere nicer." Marcus said. It was true that the only piece of furniture in the storeroom was a chair and that the floor was bare concrete, but it was no worse than most of the base dorms. “Did Connor tell you about the mission?”  He made room on the chair for Blair, and she sat down beside him. It wasn't exactly comfortable, but the warmth of her body against his more than made up for it.

Blair nodded. "He asked me before you left," she explained. "I told him I just wanted you back in one piece. We're all soldiers, Marcus. We do what we have to.” She ran a finger down his arm. "But that doesn't mean we can't have some fun between blowing up as many of the bastards as we can find." She leaned closer to kiss him, closing her eyes. The spiky black fans of her eyelashes blended with her face paint.

After they were finished she said "Don’t get yourself killed.”

“That’s up to the Terminators.”Marcus said.

Blair gave him a long look. “It’s up to you as well. Don’t do anything stupid.”

“I won’t.” Marcus promised, and thought that he meant it.

Blair kissed him again. “Take care of yourself, you hear?" she said, and slipped out the door as quietly as she had entered.

The guards came to fetch Marcus not long after.

The flight to North Carolina was only slightly more interesting than his cell. There were no windows in the helicopter.  It was a bumpy ride. The ‘copter rose and dropped abruptly every so often as it jinked to avoid enemies that Marcus could not see. They landed only after a long and unexplained detour. The doors slid open to reveal the cracked tarmac of an ancient parking lot, and Marcus was left (he tried not to think of it as abandoned) with a plastic coated map and a brusque "See you in a few days."

He stood in the sun and watched the rising bubble of the helicopter blink in the sun as it flew off into the mist. When the 'copter was out of sight Marcus walked out onto the road, where he drew a battery-operated radio from his pack, placed it on the blacktop and settled down to wait.

The Moto-Terminator arrived in about fifteen minutes. As it slowed to investigate the source of the music, it slammed into the thin steel cable Marcus had stretched between two trees.  The bike skidded into a thick tree trunk with a shower of sparks that sizzled in the damp undergrowth. Marcus leapt on it and held it down with all his strength while he fumbled for the jack.  The Moto-Terminator bucked like a mule and Marcus had a few nasty seconds before the data stick Babbage had given him slid home and the bike whined its way into quiescence.

Marcus let go of the Terminator and checked it over. Despite the sparks, the bike seemed relatively unscathed by its collision with the tree. He collected his pack and straddled the bike. Once aboard, he reached down to press a button on the USB port. The drive uploaded a copy of his directions directly into the bike’s machine cortex. The Moto-Terminator hummed to life, and Marcus sped off.

He missed the Midwest’s straight roads immediately.

The Carolina roads were narrow and they twisted and turned like a snake’s backbone.  The Moto-Terminator bounced over cracked tarmac and tree roots, but the tires absorbed the impact and the bike kept on its course. By Marcus’s reckoning he had travelled sixty kilometres before the road petered out in a tangle of kudzu.

The bike was moving fast enough that Marcus had only seconds to react. He instinctively jammed his foot down on a brake pedal that wasn't there. The Moto-Terminator raced towards the vines until Marcus remembered the USB stick. He reached down and pulled it out. The bike’s brakes automatically locked. It spun to a halt in a cloud of burning rubber, the front wheel a hand's breadth from the vegetation. Marcus slipped the USB stick into his pocket. He produced a screwdriver from his rucksack, leaned down and jammed the shaft into the USB slot. The tool would keep the Moto-Terminator quiet until he returned.

If I return.

Marcus dropped to the bike to the floor as the machine’s exhaust dispersed. He took a deep breath of fresh air. The contrast with New York's sooty smog was overwhelming. The mountain air was cool and moist. It smelt of chlorophyll and mould and winter rain and a thousand other smells Marcus probably could have analysed if he’d wanted to, one molecule at a time. It smelt alive.

He shouldered his rucksack, checked his map, and walked into the trees.

Marcus discovered immediately that walking through an old-growth forest was much more difficult that crossing a desert. In summer, it would have been impossible.  Even in winter, his feet slipped on moss-caked roots and his leather jacket snagged on thorns. It was too cold for mosquitoes, and Marcus wasn't sure if what passed for his blood these days would be appetising to them, but he was thankful for their absence. Dead branches crumpled beneath his feet as he checked his compass and moved on.

He saw no machines.

When it got too dark to travel Marcus followed his map to the wreckage of a cabin where he holed up for the night. The hunter-killers’ thermal imaging worked more effectively at night-time. Even though Marcus’s own vision was much improved these days, he took no chances.  The cabin looked like it had once been somebody's summer retreat. It had one room and only three remaining walls. The corner of a rusting refrigerator protruded from the wreckage. It was too far gone to stink, but Marcus left it alone. He unrolled his sleeping mat next to the rotting stumps of a kitchen table and slept for a while.

When he woke in the morning the sky was smoke-grey and cold as ice. Rain pattered down among the trees. Drops of water pearled on Marcus’s jacket as he left the shack. A trail headed in the right direction, and he followed it.

He had been walking for about an hour when he noticed a movement further ahead on the trail. He froze, motionless. A trickle of water ran inside his jacket and dripped down his neck. Marcus didn’t move.

Upwind, a doe sniffed the air. Finding nothing amiss, she stepped out onto the trail. A pair of tiny fawns quick-stepped around her hooves. Rain glistened on their coats. The grey sunlight shone wanly through the tissue paper of their ears.

Marcus held his breath.

The deer jumped off the trail into the thick underbrush, and they disappeared. The sight encouraged Marcus. A single man’s heat signature would be hard to distinguish from the thermal radiation emitted by large animals. He glimpsed a stag before he had walked another kilometre. This one did not move. It gazed at Marcus incuriously as he passed. He ignored it.

There seemed to be a lot more wildlife these days. Terminators didn't bother killing deer the way they did humans, and they didn't have to eat. There weren't enough humans left to make the wildlife wary, except around Resistance bases. One of the things Marcus had learned over the last month was that you could tell when there was a camp around by how nervous the game were.

I've got a long way to go, he thought.

He checked his map to confirm his suspicions. It was nearly a hundred kilometres to his destination.  The trek would have taken a human marine four days. Marcus hoped to do it in two.

He had travelled fifteen kilometres when he reached the river.

The river was marked with a thin blue line on Marcus’s map. Close up, it was nearly a quarter-k wide, wider if you counted the marshes on each bank. Marcus paused on the bank to check his map and his boots sank inch-deep in swamp mud. The map only confirmed what he already knew.  The camp was on the other side. 

He waited for a while, but nothing happened. The only ripples that marked the river’s surface were those of raindrops. It seemed that the stream contained nothing more threatening than trout.

Marcus hoisted his pack above his head and waded into the water. The soft mud under his feet gave way to pebbles as he got deeper. The water was cold at first, but Marcus acclimatised quickly. He expected to swim the centre, but the river stayed shallow. Waves lapped at his chest. He was about three quarters of the way across before something brushed his leg.

At first, Marcus didn't think too much of it.  The movement was too fleeting for him to learn much from the contact. The second touch, a heartbeat later, was less tentative.

The third stroke sliced his leg open.   

Marcus instinctively dropped his pack. He ducked under the surface and spread his arms wide; searching for the Hydrobot that he knew lurked in the depths. Chill river water rushed over his cropped scalp. His left hand touched something tubular that whisked away as soon as his fingers found it. He came up for air and tried again.  This time his hand closed on a slick, jagged spine. He held the Hydrobot at arm’s length and worked his left hand down the body of the machine until he felt the tail taper down to a vicious spike. Ducking deeper, he brought his boot down hard on the point where the Hydrobot's body met its spiked tail. The spike snapped cleanly off and sank to the bottom.

The Hydrobot thrashed wildly.  It jack-knifed, arching its entire body, and cracked like a whip. Its truncated tail hit Marcus in the belly. He folded and fell backwards, gasping for air in a cloud of bubbles. He expected to hit the hard rocks of the riverbed, but fell instead against the soft shape of his pack. The Hydrobot’s serrated spine drew blood from Marcus's hands, but he did not let go. The pack gave his a sure footing. He pushed upwards, and his head broke the surface of the water.

Marcus gasped for air. Droplets of murky river water sprayed from his mouth. He groped with one foot, felt the soft outline of his pack and jammed his leg through its straps of the pack so he didn't lose it again.

The Hydrobot lunged out of the water, showering Marcus with spray. Its metal mouthparts missed Marcus by inches. He dodged, groping desperately in his jacket for something he could use to kill it. He found nothing, and swore.

Shit.

Taking a deep breath, he and submerged himself for the second time, dragging the Hydrobot under with him. He reached towards the riverbed, hoping for a heavy stone he could use as a bludgeon. His hand closed on water. The Hydrobot twisted in Marcus’s hand and sank its mandibles into his arm.

Marcus gritted his teeth.  The ‘bot worried his sleeve like a dog. He reached out for a second time. This time his knuckles grazed against a rock. Marcus grabbed the stone and pounded into the head of the Hydrobot, over and over again. When there was no trace of movement left in the lithe body he let the rock drop from his fingers and released the machine. It slid out of his hands and sank in a trail of bubbles.

Marcus took a long, shuddering breath. He hooked his pack up with the toe of his boot and lifted it out of the water again. His hands left bloody prints on the canvas. The bag was soaking wet and much heavier than it had been. Marcus threw it on his shoulder and crossed the river. He slogged through the marshes and up onto the other bank, where he collapsed onto his ass in a pile of weeds. After a while he rolled over and began to sort through his kit. The bag was supposed to be waterproof, but everything in it was soaked. Marcus picked up his gun and watched as water dripped out of it.

 I'll be fine, he thought, just as long as I don't find any more machines.

He was less than a hundred yards away from the river when the first aerostat showed up.

The next eighty klicks were a nightmare.

 

To be continued...

Comments

[shades-children.livejournal.com]

Oh, leave it on cliffhanger, will you?! What happens next?

I reiterate everything I said before - interesting plot, spot-on characters, and good old-fashioned writing. I am a little concerned that Babbage is a bit of a pushover, but as long as he's not a character of significant importance, I'm fine with that.

Can't wait to read the next part.