Fic - Sacrifices (2/7)
Title: Sacrifices (2/7)
Rating: R: violence, harsh language, you probably know the drill by now.
Warning: The story contains the death of a young child right at the outset, and later scenes of violence involving a child which some people may find distressing.
~ ~ ~
Sacrifices 2/7
~ ~ ~
Danny Dyson’s condo was state of the art. It had voice-controlled appliances, a beautiful view, and a power-shower guaranteed to work every stress-induced kink out at the end of the day. It had also been designed, built, and fitted out by a firm of Kaliba associates, which undoubtedly meant that there was surveillance equipment throughout the rooms. Initially Danny hadn’t really considered that to be an issue. Utterly loyal and essentially married to his job, he had accepted the security measures as a necessary precaution and managed to live quite contentedly without thinking about them. Over the past couple of days, however, he had found himself thinking about them a lot. They were the reason he had abandoned his lap-top and his Wi-Fi connection, his internet access and the comfort of his own home, and crossed town to sit in a poorly-lit public library with no air conditioning.
He looked up as a shriek of laughter from the group of schoolchildren to his left was quickly muffled behind an oversized textbook. The library was busy with students and older academic types, and he had had to wait to use the machine he was now seated in front of. The machine was slow and cumbersome to operate and the articles were difficult to pull into focus, but it was not connected to any network, which meant that his research would be completely untraceable. The heat in the building was becoming uncomfortable, but he loosened his tie and forced himself to keep reading.
Hours later, when the light was fading outside the large, ornate windows, Danny wiped his eyes and tried to convince himself that the tears in them were wholly related to how tired he was. His hand shook slightly as he closed down the last article he had found concerning his mother’s death.
His initial, illicit search of the Kaliba archives had given him a mission timeline for the T-888 that had been sent to assassinate Sarah Connor during her brief period of incarceration. It had also given him the name of the FBI agent in charge of the investigation into his mother’s death. What it hadn’t told him was how Connor had managed to find Deacon Research and Development, a Kaliba facility hidden in the middle of nowhere that she claimed an upload from the T-888 had led her to. According to his search, that upload didn’t exist, but then data was easy to manipulate, and if the upload had, as Connor alleged, contained footage of his mother’s murder, it was unlikely that anyone at Kaliba would have wanted him to see it.
In the witching hours before dawn as he lay sweating and shaking in bed, he told himself that it was only natural for him to have doubts. In choosing to ally himself with Skynet, he had signed up to the wholesale destruction of the human race. What was the life of one child or even that of his own mother when compared to that? And yet the nightmare had tormented him since the murder of Dylan Sterry. It was simple and vivid and unchanging in its detail. Sarah Connor stared at him, blood running down her face to splatter on the floor. When she spoke, her initial anger had drained from her voice, leaving only sorrow in its place: “What the hell happened to you, Danny?” The answer he gave in the nightmare was always the one he had given the day she had asked the question. “You happened to me, Sarah.” It neatly absolved him of responsibility and justified every choice he had made. None of this was his fault, none of this would ever have happened had she not blasted her way into his home and put a bullet into his father. Years later when she had returned to kill his mother, she had further reinforced his belief that he had nothing left to lose. Sarah Connor had turned him towards his fate; all he had done was follow the path she had set him upon, and the fact that he was working in direct opposition to the woman who had murdered his family had served as extra incentive. For months, that reasoning, coupled with Skynet’s extravagant promises of his role in their future, had been enough for him.
Danny and his mother had often argued about Connor and about his father’s work, and those arguments had become increasingly frequent and vicious as he had grown older. Eventually he had distanced himself from his mother, and more gradually from the memory of his father. It was easier once he had accepted a scholarship at an out-of-state college; after that, he had rarely returned home. Young enough and arrogant enough to reject everything his parents had ever taught him and to put his faith entirely in his own theories, he had made the decision to safeguard his own life by joining the side he was sure would be victorious. His father had shown weakness by acceding to Sarah Connor’s demands, and then paid the price when she had betrayed him. Danny had been certain that he was stronger than his father, and when he had started his work with Kaliba he had looked forward to the inevitable moment when he would face Connor again.
“What the hell happened to you, Danny?”
Leaning back in his seat, Danny closed his eyes as he felt the familiar throb of a tension headache beginning to take hold. That moment hadn’t exactly been what he had anticipated, and ever since then the foundations upon which he had set his beliefs had started to show cracks.
He looked again at the addresses he had copied down from the phone directory. Agent Auldridge, the FBI agent responsible for investigating his mother’s death, had spent more than two months in hospital after being severely wounded during the massacre perpetrated by the T-888 at the Los Angeles County jail. He had later accepted a disability pension from the Bureau. By all accounts, Auldridge had had a promising career in front of him before Sarah Connor entered his life, and if nothing else Danny was hoping that that sense of kinship might encourage the retired agent to speak freely to him. The fact that Connor had been officially declared dead would give Auldridge little reason to hold back. The sheet of paper in Danny’s hand contained four possible addresses, and two of them were local enough for him to reach that night.
Pushing his chair away from the desk, he stood up and offered it to a young girl, who smiled sweetly at him. He smiled back, an automatic response that felt strange; it was so long since it had happened. The girl’s smile faltered, to be replaced by a wary frown as she studied his expression. He picked his jacket up and turned his back on her. The first address on his list was less than five miles from the library. Keeping his head down, he hurried across the street to the unlit corner where he had parked his car.
~ ~ ~
The smell of gun oil hit Derek as soon as he pushed the door open. The single light in the garage wasn’t strong enough to reach the bench against the far wall, and he could see the track of the wire that Sarah had used to jerry-rig herself a lantern. Her boxing gloves were slung haphazardly over a piece of wood and dark patches stained the back of her gray tank top. She hadn’t turned her attention away from the bench, but she hadn’t attempted to shoot him either, so he figured it was safe for him to approach.
“You missed dinner.” He slid the foil-covered dish towards her, and she nodded in acknowledgement but continued to work the cloth across the rifle she had dismantled.
“John find anything on the tape?”
Derek leaned against the bench, his arms folded. “He wasn’t sure. The camera outside caught the guy’s truck. He may be able to pull up the plate. He got nothing from the inside.”
They had all seen the tape, but it was John who had volunteered to do the close work on the recording. The security footage from inside the house had shown a white male in his late thirties and approximately six foot in height. There was nothing extraordinary about his appearance, nothing that would make him stand out in a crowd. He had murdered the family of four without hesitating, and then lit a cigarette before leaving.
When Sarah didn’t reply, Derek added, “I told John to take a break.” After spending most of the day watching the tape frame by frame, John had looked absolutely shattered at dinner.
Sarah glanced up sharply, as if irritated to learn that precious time was being wasted, but then seemed to consider the task that her son had assigned himself and set her cloth down. “I’ll take another look at the tape later.”
“Yeah?” Derek took up the cloth and the gun and exchanged them for her dish. “I was hoping you’d get some sleep later.”
She shrugged and peeled the foil aside, revealing macaroni congealed in thick cheese sauce. She felt her stomach roiling in protest. After a couple of minutes of pushing the food around with her fork and ignoring his pointed looks, she finally relented and took a mouthful. It tasted better than she had expected and she raised an eyebrow.
“You make this?”
“Naw, the metal.”
Half the serving disappeared in a matter of minutes, but he pretended not to notice, focusing his attention on reassembling the weapon. Something moved in his peripheral vision and he squinted sideways to see Sarah waving her fork at him, a piece of pasta speared alongside a piece of overly-pink meat.
“How the hell does she know to put hot dogs with mac ’n’ cheese?” She sounded genuinely astounded.
He started to laugh quietly. “I think she read the serving suggestion on the packet.”
“Oh.” Sarah looked slightly abashed. “Yeah, good point. I guess I never get past the part where it tells you to add water.”
“You actually read the instructions, Connor?” He shook his head in disbelief. The last time she had tried to cook mac ’n’ cheese, the pan had been so utterly destroyed that it had been thrown out with the garbage.
“I read them.” She chewed thoughtfully, refusing to rise to the bait. “I just don’t tend to follow them.”
“Yeah.” He clicked the body of the rifle back into position and began working more oil into its bolt mechanism. “Knowing you, that sounds about right.”
He smiled at her and she gave him a withering look followed by a small smile.
“Thanks for dinner.”
He nodded once before turning back to his task. “You’re welcome.”
~ ~ ~
A light flicked on as soon as Danny stepped into the front yard. Somewhere deep within the house a dog began to bark, and instinctively he knew that he was in the right place. People didn’t tend to survive an encounter with a machine, but those who did left the experience with a very different perspective on life. That was something else that he and Auldridge would have in common. A camera made a soft whirring noise as it swiveled to focus on his approach. He pressed the entry buzzer and wondered how many thousands of dollars had been spent on the specially-reinforced front door. He knew a T-888 would be able to destroy it in less than five minutes, but he appreciated the owner’s need to feel secure. The bolts on the door slid aside one by one and he realized with a sudden shock that he hadn’t been asked to identify himself, that whoever was about to open the door had actually recognized him.
“Agent Auldridge.”
The man facing Danny was gaunter than he had appeared in the newspaper reports and was leaning heavily on a cane. He seemed to relax slightly when the huge German Shepherd dog at his heel stopped growling and began to wag its tail.
“Danny Dyson.” Auldridge took the hand that Danny held out to him and shook it warily. Danny’s eyes flicked to the shotgun that the retired agent had propped up against the door jamb, and then to the handgun he had tucked into a shoulder holster. “Old habits die hard,” he said, following Danny’s gaze. “I’m assuming this isn’t a social call.”
“No.”
Auldridge stepped towards the shotgun but made no attempt to pick it up, making an open gesture to Danny instead. “Then I guess you better come in.”
~ ~ ~
“It is very unlikely that he will know anything.” Cameron scrolled down the DMV page until she reached the section displaying the license holder’s registered address.
“Put his picture back up.” Sarah was scrutinizing the black and white image frozen on their television screen. The security video was only of average quality and the grainy picture flickered slightly as the VCR held it in place. The man had spun around as the girl had tried to run, and his face had been perfectly captured by the camera above the kitchen door. “It’s him, isn’t it?” She didn’t really need the machine’s facial recognition program to confirm that he and the man identified on the DMV page as Karl Makin were one and the same, but she drew in a breath when Cameron nodded.
“John knew you would ask me to do this.” Cameron cast a troubled look across the living room towards John’s bedroom. “He was concerned you would attempt to go and find this man by yourself.”
“I won’t,” Sarah said quietly. She had tried to sleep, but sleep had brought its usual nightmares and she had been working on the footage since she had woken up hyperventilating and soaked through with cold sweat. Hacking the DMV database was beyond her level of expertise but Cameron had somewhat reluctantly agreed to help.
Sarah’s reassurance didn’t fool the machine for a second; Cameron was familiar with the concept of semantics.
“You’re going to go with Derek.”
The image on the television screen suddenly moved, the pause feature on the VCR timing out without warning. Sarah watched as Makin took careful aim and shot the child once in the center of her back. He turned away casually, his hands patting his jacket pockets as he searched for his cigarettes.
Sarah licked her lips, her mouth dust-dry. “Yes, I’m going to go with Derek.” As much as she wanted to, she couldn’t tear her eyes away from the screen. “And we’re going to find out exactly what that fucker knows.”
~ ~ ~
The cup of coffee in front of Danny had long since gone cold. It rested on a low table beside a file marked MISSING PERSONS DIVISION: DANIEL M. DYSON and a second, far thicker one bearing the heading HOMICIDE: TARISSA L. DYSON. Auldridge sat nursing his own cup, but his attention was solely focused on the younger man in front of him.
“I guess I can get rid of your file, then.” Auldridge’s accent was a strange one, and his voice bore none of the cocksure confidence that had been the trademark of the press interviews he had given immediately after Sarah Connor’s arrest. “You gonna tell me where you’ve been?” He tapped Danny’s file with one finger. “Not that it really matters. Pretty much everything related to Connor, and that includes your disappearance, was sidelined when she died at the jail.”
Danny looked up sharply and realized too late how closely Auldridge was gauging his reaction to that statement. He shifted awkwardly and said nothing.
“I’m not stupid, Danny.” Auldridge opened the thicker file onto a photograph of Sarah. Standing in front of a gray wall, she was holding a prisoner number, her eyes hollow and exhausted as she stared straight ahead. “No DNA, no remains to cross-reference with dental records. Just a pair of handcuffs looped around a bed rail, but it gave the Agency enough of an excuse to close the book on her. We’d already fucked up so much…”
Another photograph: Sarah’s face discolored with bruises, stitches clustered thickly above an eye that was swollen shut. This time she barely seemed aware of the camera.
Danny sucked in his breath. “Jesus. The machine did that?”
Auldridge didn’t even attempt to feign ignorance. Until tonight, Danny had been missing for almost a year. He hadn’t attended his mother’s funeral or made any attempt to contact her before her death, and he certainly wasn’t giving the impression that anyone had been holding him against his will. Auldridge had always prided himself on having excellent instincts. Right now, those instincts were telling him that Danny Dyson was neck-deep in shit that was directly related to the machines, but they were also telling him that Danny had gone to great lengths to find him, and Auldridge wanted to know why.
“No, two cops decided to mete out their own version of justice on behalf of the two security guards who died with your mother.” He leaned back on the sofa and patted his dog’s flank. “Now why don’t you cut the crap, Danny, and tell me exactly why you’re here.”
Danny took a gulp of his stone-cold coffee. He had been expecting the question and he had an answer prepared in advance.
“I’ve been told things and I’ve been shown things,” he said carefully, “but I want to hear it from someone who has no ulterior motive, no stake in any of this anymore. I want you to tell me whether Sarah Connor killed my mother.” He set his cup down, willing his hand to remain steady, and then met Auldridge’s cool gaze.
“What did they promise you, Danny?”
The question caught him off-guard. “Who? I don’t…” he stammered.
Auldridge wasn’t swayed for a second. “The ones building the machines. Those monsters who live and walk and play among us, and are planning to bring an end to everything.”
For a full minute Danny just sat in silence. This wasn’t the way the conversation was supposed to go. He had hoped to trade on his role as the victim in all of this, and he wondered desperately if that would still work.
“It wasn’t my fault,” he whispered, shaking his head. “I didn’t ask for this. They found me.” As soon as he said it he knew how childish, how inadequate his words were. By working on his father’s theories, he had opened the door; all Skynet had done was walk in at his own invitation.
“You’re pathetic.” Auldridge’s voice was quiet, yet all the more damning for its lack of volume. “You think I don’t know Sarah Connor is alive? I never spoke out, never contradicted the party line, and you know why?” He didn’t wait for Danny to answer. “Because she’s the only one who can stop this, who can stop people like you.”
He stood up and knocked the files to the floor with his cane. More photographs spilled out: Tarissa Dyson lying dead beside her bed, a look of horror frozen on her face; an annotated image of a cable tie discarded next to a pool of congealed blood; and - stopping just short of Danny’s boot - a close-up shot of Sarah’s naked back, gloved hands on her shoulders helping her lean forward so that the contusions covering her could be recorded for posterity.
“Oh God,” Danny moaned, closing his eyes tightly. Tears leaked down his cheeks and he brought his hands up to them.
“No,” Auldridge said, regarding the younger man dispassionately. “No, Sarah Connor did not murder your mother. All the evidence we had was circumstantial. Connor told me it had been a trap, a ploy to lure her and John to your house, that they were going there to help you.” He wouldn’t have thought it was possible, but as he watched Danny’s face it became even grayer. “The autopsy confirmed that your mother had died at least twenty hours before Connor got there.”
Danny opened his hands. “Then why?”
“Because it was convenient to blame her. Because no sane person would ever believe that sentient machines are going to destroy humanity. Because turning Sarah Connor into nothing more than a psychotic killer with a grudge against your family makes people feel safer.” Auldridge clicked his tongue once and his dog obediently padded to his side. “I don’t feel safe,” he said. “I know what’s coming and I pray every night to a fucking god who doesn’t seem to be listening that she can stop it.” He touched the gun in his holster. “If I thought that killing you would help, you’d be dead already. But it won’t, will it?”
“No.” Danny actually sounded as if he had considered that himself, and Auldridge softened his tone slightly.
“You can take the file if you want it. Connor’s testimony regarding your father’s death is in there as well.” When Danny reluctantly nodded, Auldridge shrugged. “For what it’s worth, your mother was worried sick about you. You were all she had left. That’s what she said, over and over: ‘My son is all I have left’.” Auldridge shook his head. “You should go.”
Danny gathered up the scattered pieces from the file and pushed himself unsteadily to his feet. He felt sick and scared and utterly alone.
“Thank you for your time,” he said, the manners his parents had instilled in him automatically coming to the fore. As he opened the front door, he heard Auldridge laugh once, the sound humorless and hopeless.
~ ~ ~
Dropping the wet towel onto the bathroom floor, Kristina wrapped her robe loosely around herself and wandered into her bedroom. She sat with her back against the bed’s headrest, ignoring the crumpled sheets and lingering smell of sex as she opened her lap-top. It took her over an hour to read and reread the mission that Cain had planned out in meticulous detail. When she was satisfied that every eventuality had been addressed in the brief, she opened a link to Cain, shivering at the small thrill of excitement that coursed through her.
Are you certain that John Henry will allow this?
The response from the AI was immediate: Yes, I have already confirmed that with my brother.
He must trust you a great deal.
He does, and he is eager to see the child’s safety assured.
Kristina laughed aloud, wondering whether the machine truly appreciated the concept of irony. I will run it up the chain of command, but I cannot see there being a problem with this. You have done excellent work.
Thank you.
Edit the report for Dyson.
I already have.
She closed the connection and forwarded the proposal to her superiors. With so few T-888s at her disposal, it was something of a shame that she would have to sacrifice one that had proven so very amenable in the bedroom, but if there was something that Kristina was familiar with, it was the notion of sacrifice.
~ ~ ~
Sarah perched on the bottom step and pulled the laces of her boots tight. She looped them twice around the leather, fastening them into place with a double knot, her fingers working methodically even as her nerves sang. The porch door rattled and she moved to one side, not surprised at all when Derek sat in the space she had made.
“Never did get that bench, did we?” He propped something dark and plastic-wrapped against his leg and handed her a mug of coffee.
She smiled, letting the steam bathe her face, more for the comfort of the smell than for the additional heat on a morning that already promised to lead into another scorching day.
“No, I guess we didn’t.”
“You all set?”
“Yes.” She sipped the coffee, savoring the bitter burn of it as it hit her empty stomach.
“You spoken to John?”
“I will.”
“I’ll wait at the truck.” He stood up and gestured at the object that now rested against the steps. “Just do me a favor, Sarah. Wear that.”
She set her mug down with a puzzled look as he walked over to the Jeep. As soon as she lifted the package, she realized exactly what it contained. The Kevlar vest was a good design, relatively light-weight and tapered to fit someone of her size comfortably. She didn’t open it, looking up instead to see Derek watching her as he attempted to gauge her reaction. Given the outcome of their recent missions, the vest wasn’t such a bad idea, and she nodded once at him. Seemingly satisfied with that, he threw a bag into the trunk and climbed into the driver’s seat. She left the gift where she had found it, picking up her mug instead and then heading back into the house. She was well aware that in her son’s current mood a bulletproof vest was probably the last thing he needed to see.
~ ~ ~
“Cameron packed you a lunch.”
Sarah stood in the kitchen doorway, genuinely lost for words. She had been trying to predict exactly what her son’s opening salvo would be, but she had to admit that that certainly hadn’t made the list.
He laughed bitterly at the expression on her face. “I know, right? You’re running off to play vigilante and the machine is making you fucking sandwiches.”
Sarah flinched. That was a little closer to what she had been anticipating. “John…”
He held his hands out and shook his head. “I get it, mom, I do. We all saw what happened to the girl, to her family. But what I don’t get is you taking this risk.”
She placed her mug into the sink and then turned back to him. “It’s not about playing vigilante, John.” When she looked at her son’s face she could tell that he wasn’t convinced, but then, if she was being entirely honest with herself, neither was she. It was plausible enough that Makin might have information, but hidden away beneath all of her sensible reasoning was a part of her that just wanted him to pay for what he had done. Removing the security tape had protected them from identification, but it had also protected Makin.
With an effort, Sarah pushed all of that aside and stuck to reiterating the case she had made the night before. “He may know something, and we’re running out of leads. We can’t just keep waiting for the next name to come up. We do that, we’ll be too late again.”
“Then we should all go.” He made his suggestion sound just as rational as hers.
“No.” That had been the crux of his argument on the previous night, but it wasn’t something she would be swayed on.
“He might be metal…” John’s voice trailed off, a hint of despair in his tone. Nothing about Makin’s behavior had given that impression.
“He lit a cigarette, John,” she said softly. “He left the girl alive. He’s not metal.” She crossed the distance between them and tipped his chin with her fingers. “It’s probably a false address.”
He nodded, but fear and anger lingered in his eyes. “Just come back.”
She felt his momentary resistance when she wrapped her arms around him, but his shoulders quickly sagged and he gripped her tightly.
“The disc’s ready,” he mumbled into her shirt.
She kissed the top of his head. “Thank you.”
Pulling away from her and shaking his head in futility, he asked the question anyway. “Nothing I can say to change your mind?”
“No.”
He nodded again, this time with resignation. “Don’t forget your lunch.”
~ ~ ~
“Mr Ellison?”
James Ellison glanced up from the frigate to which he was about to fix the mizzenmast. He had been so involved in the painstaking attention to detail necessary for the model’s construction that he had almost forgotten the bizarre circumstances in which he was building it.
“What is it, John Henry?”
The artificial life in front of Ellison that bore the face of a mass murderer and spoke with the curiosity of a child had set down his own section of the rigging and had seemingly been watching his mentor for some time.
“What is more important, the body or the soul?”
Ellison cleared his throat, giving himself time to compose an answer. John Henry had been wrestling with some fundamental existential issues for the past week now while Ellison did his utmost to satisfy the machine’s increasingly enigmatic questions.
“Without the soul, the body may as well not exist,” he said slowly. “The soul is an abstract concept, but many view it as the intellect and wit, the moral center of a being, and that can still be strong without a functioning body.” He blinked, taken aback as an image of Stephen Hawking suddenly appeared on the screens behind John Henry. The machine’s logic was slightly flawed but it was undoubtedly tracking along the right lines. “I guess that would be an example. Yes, in a sense.”
John Henry smiled proudly.
“The body without a soul serves no real purpose,” Ellison continued, beginning to break down the issue with more confidence. “It cannot function, it cannot contribute. There would be no ability to experience emotions or make decisions. No opportunity to dream or imagine or,” he gestured at the ship in front of him, “create. After death, the body will decay but the soul endures.”
John Henry picked up his sails again, the movement of his fingers lithe and fast. Ellison waited, a little confused.
“Did that answer your question, John Henry?”
The machine finished tying an intricate knot and then nodded contemplatively. “Yes, Mr Ellison, thank you. That answered my question.”
~ ~ ~
Sarah watched the light come on in the upstairs window. The shadow of a man moved behind the frosted glass and then pulled the blind to block himself from view. Five minutes ticked by and the light went off again.
From the vantage point of a foreclosed house across the street, Sarah and Derek had been watching the address given on Makin’s license for over two hours when his truck rounded the corner and then slammed to a halt in the driveway. Completely oblivious to the presence of his observers, he had carried two bulging paper bags into the house and kicked the front door shut.
A wail of sirens and a blur of red and blue strobes forced Sarah to duck out of sight. She waited calmly until they had passed, making sure that she left enough time for any back-up units that might be taking the same route. Short as their stake-out had been, this had become a familiar routine. The neighborhood was a mess of dilapidated or boarded-up houses. The few occupied houses were lively with the sound of raised voices as people fought to make themselves heard over a background of excessively loud televisions and the squeal of rubber from the joy-riders tearing up and down the streets.
Still leaning with her back to the wall, she shone her small Maglite onto the image of Makin that John had pulled from the security tape. The truck in the driveway was different from the one on the footage, but that was only to be expected. The man she had seen struggling to carry his shopping bags was the same one she had watched firing a bullet into the back of a child.
To her left, she heard Derek slide the clip from his Glock and then slap it back into place.
“Ready?” he said, stooping to pick up his bag.
She pushed herself to her feet, shouldering her own bag and tugging her Glock from her belt. His eyes glinted in the dull orange of the street lamp, waiting for her to give the order.
She nodded once. “Go.”
~ ~ ~
TBC…
~ ~ ~