SCC fic: A Patch of Sunshine (PG-13)
Title: A Patch of Sunshine
Author: SabaceanBabe
Characters: Riley Dawson, John Connor
Rating: PG-13
Word count: ~4,800
Warnings: rats and broken bones...
Disclaimer: Sadly, nothing Terminator belongs to me.
Timeline: Set about a week after Born to Run
Summary: She reluctantly slipped away from the tiny patch of sunlight that shimmered down from a break in the ceiling far above; she missed it almost immediately.
Author's note: Written for scc_reloaded and I'm so sorry this is late, but I didn't want to write some measly little 1,000-word fic for lizardbeth_j. ;) The prompt I used was "John discovers Riley's still alive in this future, too, and he still thinks she needs saving." And huge thank yous go to aprilleigh24 and grammarwoman for their awesome beta fu. This story is so much stronger for your efforts.
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Beneath the constant white noise of the generators, Riley heard a faint skitter-scratch and turned toward the sound. It came from up the tunnel, back in the direction from which she had come moments before. She reluctantly slipped away from the tiny patch of sunlight that shimmered down from a break in the ceiling far above; she missed it almost immediately.
The sound came again, more distinct the further she moved away from the hum of the electric lights. She spied a dark shape scurrying along the tunnel wall, heading for the darkness where most of those who lived in the tunnels didn’t go. Pulling on her gloves, she sprinted on an intercept course, aiming for a spot just at the edge of the dark.
The rat squeaked when she grabbed it up in one leather-gloved hand. The heavy leather gloves were cumbersome, but necessary; mere cloth or even rubber was too thin and the rats could easily bite through to the fragile flesh beneath. Riley had known another rat catcher, a boy who thought the gloves were a joke until a rat bit him and a week later he was dead, his hand ugly and swollen, almost black.
She looked down when the rat squirmed in her hand, reminded that she wasn’t done yet. The fresher they were when they went into the pot, the better, but she couldn’t leave them alive to chew through the bag. Taking it firmly in both hands, she twisted its head, killing it, then dropped it into the bag that hung from the length of rope that, doubled, served as her belt. Some of the older tunnel dwellers disliked even the idea of eating rats, but Riley had never known anything else. She didn’t know what all the fuss was about, anyway; the meat wasn’t bad, and sometimes, if there were enough vegetables for a stew, it was downright good, but still, some complained. Shaking her head, she secured her pouch and headed back to where she had left her sad little scrap of sun.
***
Riley blew on her spoon in an effort to cool the steaming stew; she’d already burned her mouth once and didn’t want to repeat the experience. The babble of many conversations and the clink of metal spoons on metal bowls blended with the hum of the lights overhead to make something that almost sounded like music, in a weird sort of way. Hoping the stew was cool enough now to not cause pain, she raised her spoon to her mouth.
“Did you hear what I said, Riley?”
Pausing mid-bite, she looked over at Jen. “No?” Her friend rolled her eyes and then nodded her head toward the chow line at the other end of the tunnel.
“I said that new guy is kinda cute.” And it was Riley’s turn to roll her eyes at her friend. Jen was pretty, but what resistance fighter was going to look twice at a rat catcher? She scooped up another bite of stew, a bright orange carrot swimming in white-ish gravy.
“Aren’t you even going to look?” Jen asked, exasperated.
“Fine.” Riley took her bite, reveling in the spicy gravy and the softness of the carrot between her teeth, and then made a show of turning around to look up the tunnel at the small group of fighters who had just joined the stew line.
She knew immediately who Jen meant. Unlike most who lived in the tunnels, he stood straight and tall, just like the two older men with him. While she watched, he said something that made the men laugh, and even from this distance Riley saw his face turn bright red with embarrassment. He turned away from the men, who were still laughing, and looked around at all the people who, for the most part, ignored him. That seemed to make him feel a little better as the color in his face faded.
“Okay, yeah,” she admitted, returning her attention to her meal, “he’s cute. So?”
“You’re hopeless, you know that?” Jen stood up.
“Where are you going?”
Jen smiled, a wicked gleam in her dark eyes. “I think I need seconds.”
Riley snorted. “You’re gonna have to go to the end of the line. I doubt there’ll be anything left for you to have seconds of.”
“Doesn’t matter.” She walked backwards a few steps. “Either way, I get a closer look at the pretty one.”
Shaking her head, Riley saluted her with her spoon and bent back over her bowl, but after another couple of bites, she glanced up. Jen stood next to her prey, but he paid her no attention, even though Riley could tell that she spoke directly to him. Instead, he was focused on Riley. His eyes widened when her gaze met his, but she quickly looked away, embarrassed and more than a little confused by the sudden intensity of his stare.
***
Wake, grab some hardtack and jerky, fill her canteen to get through the day, and patrol the outlying areas for rats. Every day, it was the same routine, until the day that it wasn’t. Usually, she’d fill a satchel or two, but the rats had moved out into the more inhabited areas a few days ago. Now, she was more likely to fill three or four satchels with as many trips to the kitchens to drop off her catch.
She’d been in that tunnel a million times, but about a week ago, a spot of light on the floor where there shouldn’t have been any had caught her eye. She knew she should report it, because even the smallest thing like a chunk that had broken from the roof could become a major security breach Skynet could use, but she wanted to have that bit of sun for just a little while.
***
He was watching her again. It was unnerving. It seemed every time she turned around, at least when she wasn’t out hunting, he was there. He never approached her, never said anything to her, just stared, and she really wished he’d stop. She never thought about things like the streaks of dirt on her face or whether her hair was a mess, how she smelled, but he was always looking at her and that made her think of those things now. Because of him, she felt self-conscious, and it was starting to piss her off.
Riley twisted the lid back onto her canteen and decided she’d had enough. She didn’t like confrontation, didn’t like drawing attention to herself; even so, she took what little courage she had in both hands and stalked over to him. She didn’t even know his name.
“Stop staring at me,” she hissed. He blinked rapidly a few times, opened and closed his mouth like a fish, but no sound came out, and she pushed on. “Just leave me alone.” She whirled around and all but ran through the press of people. She knew at least some of them looked at her now, too, that it wasn’t just Jen’s pretty boy who stared, and the only thing she wanted was to escape all those pairs of eyes, all that attention.
“Riley, wait!” he shouted after her.
She stopped, startled, and turned back around, glared at him as he ran after her. “How do you know my name?” she demanded. And again he fumbled for words that wouldn’t come. “Well?”
“I-”
“Oh, never mind. Just go away.” She turned her back on him and left him, walking rapidly, headed for her usual hunting grounds. After she’d gone a few steps, she heard him move and hoped he was going back the way they’d come, that he wouldn’t follow her, but she was never that lucky.
She didn’t realize how close he was until he grabbed her arm and swung her around to face him again. She tried to jerk from his grip, but he held on too tightly, gaze fixed on her wrist, as though he looked for some mark that wasn’t there. He slid his hand down and ran his thumb over the smooth, thin skin of her inner wrist; the weirdness of it gave her the strength she needed to break free.
“You freak!” Taking one step back and then another, she rubbed at her wrist; he hadn’t hurt her, but she still felt the imprint of his fingers. His face paled and then went red: embarrassed or angry, she couldn’t tell. He dropped his hands to his sides as if she’d burned him.
“Riley, I’m sorry.” Embarrassment, then. He ran a hand through his hair, making it stand up in brown spikes. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I just want to talk to you.”
She took another step back. “Why?” Wary, she kept her eyes on his. They stood at the entrance to one of the lesser tunnels. If she ran down it and took the second tunnel on the left and then the first one on her right, it would lead her to the crossroads where she’d found that patch of sunlight. It was dark, further in. She could lose him easily.
“Can’t a guy want to talk to a pretty girl?” It took her a second to process his words and to realize that he answered her question, even if he was lying through his teeth.
“Yeah, right,” she sneered, edging further into the tunnel. “Go sniff after your own kind, Mr. Resistance Fighter.”
“My name is John.” He took a step toward her and held out a hand as if he wanted to shake hers and she rolled her eyes. He dropped his hand. “John Connor. I want to help you.” He said it as though he expected some kind of reaction from her, but at least he didn’t sound like he was trying to fool her into thinking she was something special, like before.
“I don’t need your help. Just leave me alone.”
A sound she couldn’t immediately identify distracted him and she darted into the dark tunnel. The sound came again, louder, and the ground shook, almost knocking her off her feet. She caught herself and kept running, ignoring John Connor calling her name, ignoring the sound of his footsteps as he ran after her again. Dust showered down from the ceiling, getting in her mouth and eyes, and she knew that first sound had been a distant explosion. The bunker was under attack.
Riley ran and John followed, doing his best to keep up with her on the twists and turns. The explosions continued, but at least there was no sound of gunfire; the metal hadn’t broken into the bunker itself. Dust and debris continued to fall as the bombardment grew heavier. Riley jumped over a fallen support beam and continued on, heading deeper into the deserted section.
Something hit very close by. There was a crash behind her, where she’d been just a moment before and she abruptly stopped, burying her nose and mouth in the crook of her elbow against a thick cloud of dust and dirt. The ceiling had caved in.
John had been right behind her.
When the dust cleared and nothing more rattled down from above, Riley cautiously headed back toward the collapse, keeping a wary eye out for more falling debris. “John?” she called, remaining still while she waited for a response. Nothing. Even the sounds of the bombardment had stopped, at least for now. “John?” she called again, a little louder. No answer.
Was he buried under all that rubble? The pop, pop, pop of distant gunfire sounded overhead and Riley looked up, saw a gap in the ceiling large enough that she saw blue sky. She spun quickly around; she was in the same chamber she’d found a week ago, but her patch of sunshine was now big enough to illuminate most of the room. The sunlight made the shadows in the corners and under the fallen supports seem darker and the noise from above grew louder, but it wasn’t close enough for her to worry about yet. Still, either John was on the other side of the rubble that blocked the way she’d come, or he was under it, and there was nothing she could do about it, so she should move on.
But when she was well into one of the tunnels that intersected with the chamber, she heard him call out. “Riley? Are you out there? I need help.” Dammit. His voice was strained, and it sounded like he might be hurt. “Is anybody there?” He sounded scared.
Well, so was she. Instead of running for something approaching safety, though, she gritted her teeth and forced herself to return to the collapse. Being on the wrong side of a cave-in was one thing, abandoning him if he was right there within her reach was something she just couldn’t do.
The closer she got to John, the more distinct the twin sounds of gunfire and renewed bombing became. An explosion overhead sent more dust and chunks of masonry plummeting to the floor.
“Riley?” The angle of the light had changed and she saw now that he lay in what had been the opening of the main tunnel, more than half in shadow, but his head and his right arm and shoulder were free. She knew he hadn’t heard her come back when he laughed, the choked sound bitter, humorless. “I’m going to die here like a rat in a trap and no one will care. Some hero, huh? Riley’s fine. I’m the one who needs help, not her.” He pounded his head on the floor and winced. “Idiot.”
Another shell exploded, sounding like it was just outside the opening above, and suddenly the light in the room became brighter as another hunk of metal and concrete collapsed, shattering almost at Riley’s feet. She jumped, startled.
“Riley?” John’s voice was laced with a combination of pain and hope. He turned his head so that he could look at her. She stared at him, wide-eyed, and listened to the sounds above. “Riley, I can’t move my legs.”
“Shh.” She held up a hand as she listened intently. Pounding footsteps, mechanical servos. “Oh, God.” Torn between running as fast as she could down any of the three dark tunnels that remained more or less clear and running to pull John free, she was paralyzed. There was metal right up above, more than one.
“What is it?” he asked, his voice unnaturally loud to her ears, but it snapped her out of her indecision.
She ran to him, dropped down, and began to dig at the rubble. “Terminators, right outside,” she whispered, nodding toward the ceiling as she dug. More gunfire sounded above and a dark shape scurried past her feet into the tunnel to the left, but she ignored it and continued digging. Right now, what with trying to free John and evade terminators, rats were the least of her concerns.
Though his efforts were limited, John did what he could to help Riley dig; it went much faster after she freed his other arm. Fear and adrenaline gave her strength, and as soon as she could manage it with John’s help, she finally pulled him free, but as she did so, he screamed. He bit off the sound, but Riley froze in pure terror. There was no way the terminators could have missed that sound.
She looked at John. His face was pale, drenched in sweat and streaked with dirt; she knew she didn’t look much better. His breathing was rapid and shallow and she realized that he hadn’t bitten off that horrible sound so much as fainted. With monumental effort, she dragged his dead weight away from the debris and into the light.
John lay there, unmoving except for the rapid rise and fall of his chest. The gunfire up above had moved further away, but that didn’t mean they were safe. She patted his cheek.
“John, wake up. We have to go.” Her heart pounded in her chest and tears pricked at the backs of her eyes, but she refused to cry. She shook him. “John, come on!”
He groaned and slowly opened his eyes. “Let me guess. Come with you if I want to live?” But when he tried to move, he clutched her hand so tightly she gasped. “My leg…” he said, barely audible. “I think it’s broken.”
Riley turned her head toward his legs and the tears that had threatened before tracked unchecked down her cheeks. “I can’t carry you.”
John bit his lip, grimacing, then said, “If you can splint it, I might be able to walk, with your help.”
“Right. Right. Okay.” She dashed the tears angrily away so that she could see what she was doing, pushed up from where he lay on the floor to search for something stiff and straight to use as a splint. Her belt would serve well enough to tie the splint to his leg.
It wasn’t until she returned to his side with a length of pipe and part of a two-by-four that she noticed his right leg seemed to be bent below the knee. “John…” His calm gaze met hers and she knew that he was well aware of how bad the break was.
“You’re going to have to straighten it first.”
“But it’s going to hurt you,” she protested.
He laughed. “It already hurts.” He reached out and took her hand, pulled her toward him. “You can do this, Riley. I know you can. You’re stronger than you know.”
She frowned. “You don’t know me.”
“Yeah, I do.” She shook her head in mute denial, but said nothing. And still she hesitated, helpless to do what was necessary, which would also cause him yet more pain. John took the lengths of wood and metal from her and set them down, took her hands in his.
Their eyes met; John’s were green in the sunlight that poured down from above. “What do I do?” she whispered.
“You’re going to have to pull on my foot to straighten my leg.” His fingers tightened around hers.
Riley shuddered. “Are you serious?” She shook her head, silently telling him she didn’t need an answer to that, and scooted down to his feet. Squeaking, chittering rats streaked past them from one of the other side tunnels and down the same path the first one had disappeared into. Swallowing hard, she put her hands to either side of his ankle; she’d hoped to interlock her fingers for a more secure hold, but they barely touched. She started to unlace his boot.
“Leave it.”
“I can get a better grip if I-”
“Leave it,” he repeated. “We can cut it off later, if we have to.”
Nodding tensely, she shifted her hands around so that one was tight on his ankle and the other on his foot and began to pull. “Steady,” John directed her, “just don’t stop.” But she did stop, looked wide-eyed at John.
“Did you hear that?”
“What?”
There hadn’t been any explosions for a while, but now she heard again the whine of mechanical servos that served as joints for metal arms and legs, growing louder, and the screech of metal being torn apart. The light in the chamber grew, shining down from above, and again, fear gave Riley the impetus she needed. She got as tight a grip as she could on John’s ankle and foot and pulled for all she was worth: not hard or fast, but strong and steady. John whimpered, pounded the ground with a fist, but he didn’t cry out again. Suddenly, like a puzzle piece snapping into place, the bones of his leg seemed to fit together as they should. It didn’t lessen John’s pain, but she was out of time to worry about that right now.
Metal was coming.
Riley grabbed up the materials for the splint. John had fainted again. Working as quickly as she could, she placed the support pieces to either side of John’s lower leg and bound them tightly with her belt. He had told her she could do it; she couldn’t remember the last time anyone had placed any confidence in her, not like that. She couldn’t let him down.
Sometime during the process of maneuvering her shoulder under his arm and trying to stand, he came to. Between the two of them, they managed to get him to his feet while the sound of fighting resumed above. The hole in the ceiling was much larger now, and Riley saw the glare of light reflecting from the metal exoskeleton of a terminator.
“Which way?” John asked.
Nodding her head toward the tunnel down which the rats had gone, Riley started to move. “Rats know how to survive. We’ll follow them.”
He laughed weakly. “And hope the way out is bigger than they are.”
“But not too big,” she murmured, glancing over his shoulder, up at the ceiling. She gasped as, with a solid thunk, a terminator dropped from the breach to the floor of the chamber, which was a good fifteen feet below; it faced away from them. Urgently, Riley whispered to John, “Run.”
***
Once they escaped the lighted area, the way became more difficult. Riley had excellent vision in the dark, but even so, much of the way had to be determined by the feel of the walls, the floor beneath her feet, the change in the air pressure against her face, the smell of the air itself when they passed another opening. Twice they had to stop for her to remove obstacles from their path while John clung to a wall and tried not to fall over, but there were no more cave-ins to deal with. Though it was purest luck, there was no sign of pursuit.
It was hard to judge the passage of time in the darkness, but they were both getting sloppier and more desperate in their movements when they heard shouting up ahead. “I think we’re almost out,” she said. John groaned in response. She wanted to move faster, but neither of them was capable of it.
The shouts grew louder and light leaked into their tunnel from another tunnel up ahead. They were close enough now to make out words: “Chavez, take three men to…” “Maggie’s been hit!” “More ammo needed at…”
They emerged into controlled chaos. Men and women moving with purpose, resistance fighters, support personnel, medics and the wounded they tended… She and John appeared to be the only ones not involved in the fighting. An older woman with dark hair and eyes came toward them. “Who are you and what the hell are you doing here?”
“He’s hurt,” Riley said. “There’s been a breach back that way.” She gestured over her shoulder toward the way they’d come.
The woman’s voice and eyes were intense when she asked, “Metal inside the bunker?” Riley nodded. And that breach was her fault.
“Jackson! Epworth! Get over here.” Her eyes remained on Riley even as she moved to take some of John’s weight onto her own shoulder. “Can you lead someone to the breach?” she asked Riley.
Before Riley could give her an answer - Oh, God, no! Please, don’t make me go back there! - a man ran over to them. “Blair, what’s going on?”
“Girl here says there’s been a breach in the tunnels. She’s going to take Jackson and Epworth in.”
John cleared his throat, coughed. “Derek.” The man looked over at him and John continued before he could be interrupted. “She doesn’t have to lead them in. The breach is in the area I came through. The…” He shot a look at Blair and then back to Derek. “The bubble must’ve caused structural damage.”
Blair looked as confused as Riley felt; she had no idea what all that meant, but a surge of relief flooded through her when Derek nodded and turned to the two men who had just arrived. Jackson and Epworth, Riley assumed. “Take a squad to bravo three.” He looked at Riley. “How many?” She shrugged, shook her head, wishing she could tell him something useful.
He turned to John, who said, “I don’t know. We saw a T-600 come through the hole, but it sounded like more followed.”
“Prepare for an unknown number of hostiles,” Derek told Epworth and Jackson. “I want that breach sealed.”
***
John lay on a pallet on the floor, his right foot naked below heavy bandages around his lower leg. The medic had told her after they’d cut his boot off that she’d done a good job; he could move his toes and there didn’t seem to be any nerve damage, so at least she’d done one thing that hadn’t ended in disaster.
Riley sat on the floor, back against the wall, arms wrapped around her knees, face buried in her arms. Relative quiet surrounded them. What little conversation she heard was in hushed voices so as to not disturb the sleeping or the wounded. They had fought off Skynet, the last of the enemy terminated hours before, but at great cost. And that cost fell squarely on Riley’s shoulders. She wasn’t sure she could bear the weight.
Tears and snot made a mess of her face and her arm as she quietly cried into her the crook of her elbow. God, how could she look anyone in the eye with that knowledge eating at her from the inside?
“You’re still here…” John’s voice broke into her awareness, derailing her guilt, if only for a moment. She raised her head to look at him, wiping her face on her sleeve in the same motion. “I thought you wanted me to leave you alone.” He smiled at her, a crooked thing that she didn’t want to look away from.
“I changed my mind.” Her voice was rough from crying.
She didn’t expect him to frown or to prop himself up on his elbows to look at her more intently. “What happened wasn’t your fault,” he told her, as if he read her mind.
“Oh, really?” Her laugh was harsh. “Which part? The part where you were caught in a cave-in and almost died? The part where your leg got smashed? Or how about the part where I didn’t report a hole in the roof that let Skynet find us, that got people killed?” The tears started up again, and she pushed up and away, to leave, but he stopped her.
“None of it was your fault, Riley. I chose to follow you. Your hole in the roof wasn’t the only one. Yeah, they exploited it, but they broke through other places, too. You should have reported it; you didn’t. That’s not good, but it doesn’t make the attack your fault.” He lay back down as if the words had taken all the strength he had left. “If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s mine.” The words were low, spoken toward the ceiling, and Riley thought that she wasn’t supposed to hear them.
“How could it be your fault?”
He rolled his head to look at her again. “It’s complicated.”
“Well, then, uncomplicated it.”
He hesitated, but eventually responded. “There were about a half dozen holes that… appeared in that area about a week ago. I was supposed to patch all of them up.” He chose his words too carefully, and she knew he was hiding something. “And I did close them. Except for that one.”
“Why not that one?”
“Because of you.” He shifted on the pallet so he could see her face. “A couple of days ago, when I checked that one out to see what needed to be done to repair it, I saw you sitting there in the sun. Your friend Jen told me you went there every afternoon, and I just… I couldn’t take that away from you.” Riley didn’t understand the haunted look in John’s eyes when he said that last part.
After his admission, John rolled onto his back and said nothing more. The silence held for a time until Riley scooted over closer to John. His eyes were closed. “Are you awake?”
“Yeah.”
She wanted to thank him for saving her from having to go back into the tunnels, when the woman, Blair, had asked her to, but she was too embarrassed over her own cowardice. Instead she told him, “I’m sorry I was such a bitch to you earlier.” Which was also true.
He snorted and the crooked smile came back and she realized that she liked that smile as he replied, “That’s okay. I didn’t mean to freak you out.”
“Can we… maybe… Can we start over?” She held her breath as she waited.
“Yeah.” He rolled onto his side and held up a hand. “Hi, I’m John.”
Smiling, she took his hand. “I’m Riley.”
Author: SabaceanBabe
Characters: Riley Dawson, John Connor
Rating: PG-13
Word count: ~4,800
Warnings: rats and broken bones...
Disclaimer: Sadly, nothing Terminator belongs to me.
Timeline: Set about a week after Born to Run
Summary: She reluctantly slipped away from the tiny patch of sunlight that shimmered down from a break in the ceiling far above; she missed it almost immediately.
Author's note: Written for scc_reloaded and I'm so sorry this is late, but I didn't want to write some measly little 1,000-word fic for lizardbeth_j. ;) The prompt I used was "John discovers Riley's still alive in this future, too, and he still thinks she needs saving." And huge thank yous go to aprilleigh24 and grammarwoman for their awesome beta fu. This story is so much stronger for your efforts.
-----------------
Beneath the constant white noise of the generators, Riley heard a faint skitter-scratch and turned toward the sound. It came from up the tunnel, back in the direction from which she had come moments before. She reluctantly slipped away from the tiny patch of sunlight that shimmered down from a break in the ceiling far above; she missed it almost immediately.
The sound came again, more distinct the further she moved away from the hum of the electric lights. She spied a dark shape scurrying along the tunnel wall, heading for the darkness where most of those who lived in the tunnels didn’t go. Pulling on her gloves, she sprinted on an intercept course, aiming for a spot just at the edge of the dark.
The rat squeaked when she grabbed it up in one leather-gloved hand. The heavy leather gloves were cumbersome, but necessary; mere cloth or even rubber was too thin and the rats could easily bite through to the fragile flesh beneath. Riley had known another rat catcher, a boy who thought the gloves were a joke until a rat bit him and a week later he was dead, his hand ugly and swollen, almost black.
She looked down when the rat squirmed in her hand, reminded that she wasn’t done yet. The fresher they were when they went into the pot, the better, but she couldn’t leave them alive to chew through the bag. Taking it firmly in both hands, she twisted its head, killing it, then dropped it into the bag that hung from the length of rope that, doubled, served as her belt. Some of the older tunnel dwellers disliked even the idea of eating rats, but Riley had never known anything else. She didn’t know what all the fuss was about, anyway; the meat wasn’t bad, and sometimes, if there were enough vegetables for a stew, it was downright good, but still, some complained. Shaking her head, she secured her pouch and headed back to where she had left her sad little scrap of sun.
***
Riley blew on her spoon in an effort to cool the steaming stew; she’d already burned her mouth once and didn’t want to repeat the experience. The babble of many conversations and the clink of metal spoons on metal bowls blended with the hum of the lights overhead to make something that almost sounded like music, in a weird sort of way. Hoping the stew was cool enough now to not cause pain, she raised her spoon to her mouth.
“Did you hear what I said, Riley?”
Pausing mid-bite, she looked over at Jen. “No?” Her friend rolled her eyes and then nodded her head toward the chow line at the other end of the tunnel.
“I said that new guy is kinda cute.” And it was Riley’s turn to roll her eyes at her friend. Jen was pretty, but what resistance fighter was going to look twice at a rat catcher? She scooped up another bite of stew, a bright orange carrot swimming in white-ish gravy.
“Aren’t you even going to look?” Jen asked, exasperated.
“Fine.” Riley took her bite, reveling in the spicy gravy and the softness of the carrot between her teeth, and then made a show of turning around to look up the tunnel at the small group of fighters who had just joined the stew line.
She knew immediately who Jen meant. Unlike most who lived in the tunnels, he stood straight and tall, just like the two older men with him. While she watched, he said something that made the men laugh, and even from this distance Riley saw his face turn bright red with embarrassment. He turned away from the men, who were still laughing, and looked around at all the people who, for the most part, ignored him. That seemed to make him feel a little better as the color in his face faded.
“Okay, yeah,” she admitted, returning her attention to her meal, “he’s cute. So?”
“You’re hopeless, you know that?” Jen stood up.
“Where are you going?”
Jen smiled, a wicked gleam in her dark eyes. “I think I need seconds.”
Riley snorted. “You’re gonna have to go to the end of the line. I doubt there’ll be anything left for you to have seconds of.”
“Doesn’t matter.” She walked backwards a few steps. “Either way, I get a closer look at the pretty one.”
Shaking her head, Riley saluted her with her spoon and bent back over her bowl, but after another couple of bites, she glanced up. Jen stood next to her prey, but he paid her no attention, even though Riley could tell that she spoke directly to him. Instead, he was focused on Riley. His eyes widened when her gaze met his, but she quickly looked away, embarrassed and more than a little confused by the sudden intensity of his stare.
***
Wake, grab some hardtack and jerky, fill her canteen to get through the day, and patrol the outlying areas for rats. Every day, it was the same routine, until the day that it wasn’t. Usually, she’d fill a satchel or two, but the rats had moved out into the more inhabited areas a few days ago. Now, she was more likely to fill three or four satchels with as many trips to the kitchens to drop off her catch.
She’d been in that tunnel a million times, but about a week ago, a spot of light on the floor where there shouldn’t have been any had caught her eye. She knew she should report it, because even the smallest thing like a chunk that had broken from the roof could become a major security breach Skynet could use, but she wanted to have that bit of sun for just a little while.
***
He was watching her again. It was unnerving. It seemed every time she turned around, at least when she wasn’t out hunting, he was there. He never approached her, never said anything to her, just stared, and she really wished he’d stop. She never thought about things like the streaks of dirt on her face or whether her hair was a mess, how she smelled, but he was always looking at her and that made her think of those things now. Because of him, she felt self-conscious, and it was starting to piss her off.
Riley twisted the lid back onto her canteen and decided she’d had enough. She didn’t like confrontation, didn’t like drawing attention to herself; even so, she took what little courage she had in both hands and stalked over to him. She didn’t even know his name.
“Stop staring at me,” she hissed. He blinked rapidly a few times, opened and closed his mouth like a fish, but no sound came out, and she pushed on. “Just leave me alone.” She whirled around and all but ran through the press of people. She knew at least some of them looked at her now, too, that it wasn’t just Jen’s pretty boy who stared, and the only thing she wanted was to escape all those pairs of eyes, all that attention.
“Riley, wait!” he shouted after her.
She stopped, startled, and turned back around, glared at him as he ran after her. “How do you know my name?” she demanded. And again he fumbled for words that wouldn’t come. “Well?”
“I-”
“Oh, never mind. Just go away.” She turned her back on him and left him, walking rapidly, headed for her usual hunting grounds. After she’d gone a few steps, she heard him move and hoped he was going back the way they’d come, that he wouldn’t follow her, but she was never that lucky.
She didn’t realize how close he was until he grabbed her arm and swung her around to face him again. She tried to jerk from his grip, but he held on too tightly, gaze fixed on her wrist, as though he looked for some mark that wasn’t there. He slid his hand down and ran his thumb over the smooth, thin skin of her inner wrist; the weirdness of it gave her the strength she needed to break free.
“You freak!” Taking one step back and then another, she rubbed at her wrist; he hadn’t hurt her, but she still felt the imprint of his fingers. His face paled and then went red: embarrassed or angry, she couldn’t tell. He dropped his hands to his sides as if she’d burned him.
“Riley, I’m sorry.” Embarrassment, then. He ran a hand through his hair, making it stand up in brown spikes. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I just want to talk to you.”
She took another step back. “Why?” Wary, she kept her eyes on his. They stood at the entrance to one of the lesser tunnels. If she ran down it and took the second tunnel on the left and then the first one on her right, it would lead her to the crossroads where she’d found that patch of sunlight. It was dark, further in. She could lose him easily.
“Can’t a guy want to talk to a pretty girl?” It took her a second to process his words and to realize that he answered her question, even if he was lying through his teeth.
“Yeah, right,” she sneered, edging further into the tunnel. “Go sniff after your own kind, Mr. Resistance Fighter.”
“My name is John.” He took a step toward her and held out a hand as if he wanted to shake hers and she rolled her eyes. He dropped his hand. “John Connor. I want to help you.” He said it as though he expected some kind of reaction from her, but at least he didn’t sound like he was trying to fool her into thinking she was something special, like before.
“I don’t need your help. Just leave me alone.”
A sound she couldn’t immediately identify distracted him and she darted into the dark tunnel. The sound came again, louder, and the ground shook, almost knocking her off her feet. She caught herself and kept running, ignoring John Connor calling her name, ignoring the sound of his footsteps as he ran after her again. Dust showered down from the ceiling, getting in her mouth and eyes, and she knew that first sound had been a distant explosion. The bunker was under attack.
Riley ran and John followed, doing his best to keep up with her on the twists and turns. The explosions continued, but at least there was no sound of gunfire; the metal hadn’t broken into the bunker itself. Dust and debris continued to fall as the bombardment grew heavier. Riley jumped over a fallen support beam and continued on, heading deeper into the deserted section.
Something hit very close by. There was a crash behind her, where she’d been just a moment before and she abruptly stopped, burying her nose and mouth in the crook of her elbow against a thick cloud of dust and dirt. The ceiling had caved in.
John had been right behind her.
When the dust cleared and nothing more rattled down from above, Riley cautiously headed back toward the collapse, keeping a wary eye out for more falling debris. “John?” she called, remaining still while she waited for a response. Nothing. Even the sounds of the bombardment had stopped, at least for now. “John?” she called again, a little louder. No answer.
Was he buried under all that rubble? The pop, pop, pop of distant gunfire sounded overhead and Riley looked up, saw a gap in the ceiling large enough that she saw blue sky. She spun quickly around; she was in the same chamber she’d found a week ago, but her patch of sunshine was now big enough to illuminate most of the room. The sunlight made the shadows in the corners and under the fallen supports seem darker and the noise from above grew louder, but it wasn’t close enough for her to worry about yet. Still, either John was on the other side of the rubble that blocked the way she’d come, or he was under it, and there was nothing she could do about it, so she should move on.
But when she was well into one of the tunnels that intersected with the chamber, she heard him call out. “Riley? Are you out there? I need help.” Dammit. His voice was strained, and it sounded like he might be hurt. “Is anybody there?” He sounded scared.
Well, so was she. Instead of running for something approaching safety, though, she gritted her teeth and forced herself to return to the collapse. Being on the wrong side of a cave-in was one thing, abandoning him if he was right there within her reach was something she just couldn’t do.
The closer she got to John, the more distinct the twin sounds of gunfire and renewed bombing became. An explosion overhead sent more dust and chunks of masonry plummeting to the floor.
“Riley?” The angle of the light had changed and she saw now that he lay in what had been the opening of the main tunnel, more than half in shadow, but his head and his right arm and shoulder were free. She knew he hadn’t heard her come back when he laughed, the choked sound bitter, humorless. “I’m going to die here like a rat in a trap and no one will care. Some hero, huh? Riley’s fine. I’m the one who needs help, not her.” He pounded his head on the floor and winced. “Idiot.”
Another shell exploded, sounding like it was just outside the opening above, and suddenly the light in the room became brighter as another hunk of metal and concrete collapsed, shattering almost at Riley’s feet. She jumped, startled.
“Riley?” John’s voice was laced with a combination of pain and hope. He turned his head so that he could look at her. She stared at him, wide-eyed, and listened to the sounds above. “Riley, I can’t move my legs.”
“Shh.” She held up a hand as she listened intently. Pounding footsteps, mechanical servos. “Oh, God.” Torn between running as fast as she could down any of the three dark tunnels that remained more or less clear and running to pull John free, she was paralyzed. There was metal right up above, more than one.
“What is it?” he asked, his voice unnaturally loud to her ears, but it snapped her out of her indecision.
She ran to him, dropped down, and began to dig at the rubble. “Terminators, right outside,” she whispered, nodding toward the ceiling as she dug. More gunfire sounded above and a dark shape scurried past her feet into the tunnel to the left, but she ignored it and continued digging. Right now, what with trying to free John and evade terminators, rats were the least of her concerns.
Though his efforts were limited, John did what he could to help Riley dig; it went much faster after she freed his other arm. Fear and adrenaline gave her strength, and as soon as she could manage it with John’s help, she finally pulled him free, but as she did so, he screamed. He bit off the sound, but Riley froze in pure terror. There was no way the terminators could have missed that sound.
She looked at John. His face was pale, drenched in sweat and streaked with dirt; she knew she didn’t look much better. His breathing was rapid and shallow and she realized that he hadn’t bitten off that horrible sound so much as fainted. With monumental effort, she dragged his dead weight away from the debris and into the light.
John lay there, unmoving except for the rapid rise and fall of his chest. The gunfire up above had moved further away, but that didn’t mean they were safe. She patted his cheek.
“John, wake up. We have to go.” Her heart pounded in her chest and tears pricked at the backs of her eyes, but she refused to cry. She shook him. “John, come on!”
He groaned and slowly opened his eyes. “Let me guess. Come with you if I want to live?” But when he tried to move, he clutched her hand so tightly she gasped. “My leg…” he said, barely audible. “I think it’s broken.”
Riley turned her head toward his legs and the tears that had threatened before tracked unchecked down her cheeks. “I can’t carry you.”
John bit his lip, grimacing, then said, “If you can splint it, I might be able to walk, with your help.”
“Right. Right. Okay.” She dashed the tears angrily away so that she could see what she was doing, pushed up from where he lay on the floor to search for something stiff and straight to use as a splint. Her belt would serve well enough to tie the splint to his leg.
It wasn’t until she returned to his side with a length of pipe and part of a two-by-four that she noticed his right leg seemed to be bent below the knee. “John…” His calm gaze met hers and she knew that he was well aware of how bad the break was.
“You’re going to have to straighten it first.”
“But it’s going to hurt you,” she protested.
He laughed. “It already hurts.” He reached out and took her hand, pulled her toward him. “You can do this, Riley. I know you can. You’re stronger than you know.”
She frowned. “You don’t know me.”
“Yeah, I do.” She shook her head in mute denial, but said nothing. And still she hesitated, helpless to do what was necessary, which would also cause him yet more pain. John took the lengths of wood and metal from her and set them down, took her hands in his.
Their eyes met; John’s were green in the sunlight that poured down from above. “What do I do?” she whispered.
“You’re going to have to pull on my foot to straighten my leg.” His fingers tightened around hers.
Riley shuddered. “Are you serious?” She shook her head, silently telling him she didn’t need an answer to that, and scooted down to his feet. Squeaking, chittering rats streaked past them from one of the other side tunnels and down the same path the first one had disappeared into. Swallowing hard, she put her hands to either side of his ankle; she’d hoped to interlock her fingers for a more secure hold, but they barely touched. She started to unlace his boot.
“Leave it.”
“I can get a better grip if I-”
“Leave it,” he repeated. “We can cut it off later, if we have to.”
Nodding tensely, she shifted her hands around so that one was tight on his ankle and the other on his foot and began to pull. “Steady,” John directed her, “just don’t stop.” But she did stop, looked wide-eyed at John.
“Did you hear that?”
“What?”
There hadn’t been any explosions for a while, but now she heard again the whine of mechanical servos that served as joints for metal arms and legs, growing louder, and the screech of metal being torn apart. The light in the chamber grew, shining down from above, and again, fear gave Riley the impetus she needed. She got as tight a grip as she could on John’s ankle and foot and pulled for all she was worth: not hard or fast, but strong and steady. John whimpered, pounded the ground with a fist, but he didn’t cry out again. Suddenly, like a puzzle piece snapping into place, the bones of his leg seemed to fit together as they should. It didn’t lessen John’s pain, but she was out of time to worry about that right now.
Metal was coming.
Riley grabbed up the materials for the splint. John had fainted again. Working as quickly as she could, she placed the support pieces to either side of John’s lower leg and bound them tightly with her belt. He had told her she could do it; she couldn’t remember the last time anyone had placed any confidence in her, not like that. She couldn’t let him down.
Sometime during the process of maneuvering her shoulder under his arm and trying to stand, he came to. Between the two of them, they managed to get him to his feet while the sound of fighting resumed above. The hole in the ceiling was much larger now, and Riley saw the glare of light reflecting from the metal exoskeleton of a terminator.
“Which way?” John asked.
Nodding her head toward the tunnel down which the rats had gone, Riley started to move. “Rats know how to survive. We’ll follow them.”
He laughed weakly. “And hope the way out is bigger than they are.”
“But not too big,” she murmured, glancing over his shoulder, up at the ceiling. She gasped as, with a solid thunk, a terminator dropped from the breach to the floor of the chamber, which was a good fifteen feet below; it faced away from them. Urgently, Riley whispered to John, “Run.”
***
Once they escaped the lighted area, the way became more difficult. Riley had excellent vision in the dark, but even so, much of the way had to be determined by the feel of the walls, the floor beneath her feet, the change in the air pressure against her face, the smell of the air itself when they passed another opening. Twice they had to stop for her to remove obstacles from their path while John clung to a wall and tried not to fall over, but there were no more cave-ins to deal with. Though it was purest luck, there was no sign of pursuit.
It was hard to judge the passage of time in the darkness, but they were both getting sloppier and more desperate in their movements when they heard shouting up ahead. “I think we’re almost out,” she said. John groaned in response. She wanted to move faster, but neither of them was capable of it.
The shouts grew louder and light leaked into their tunnel from another tunnel up ahead. They were close enough now to make out words: “Chavez, take three men to…” “Maggie’s been hit!” “More ammo needed at…”
They emerged into controlled chaos. Men and women moving with purpose, resistance fighters, support personnel, medics and the wounded they tended… She and John appeared to be the only ones not involved in the fighting. An older woman with dark hair and eyes came toward them. “Who are you and what the hell are you doing here?”
“He’s hurt,” Riley said. “There’s been a breach back that way.” She gestured over her shoulder toward the way they’d come.
The woman’s voice and eyes were intense when she asked, “Metal inside the bunker?” Riley nodded. And that breach was her fault.
“Jackson! Epworth! Get over here.” Her eyes remained on Riley even as she moved to take some of John’s weight onto her own shoulder. “Can you lead someone to the breach?” she asked Riley.
Before Riley could give her an answer - Oh, God, no! Please, don’t make me go back there! - a man ran over to them. “Blair, what’s going on?”
“Girl here says there’s been a breach in the tunnels. She’s going to take Jackson and Epworth in.”
John cleared his throat, coughed. “Derek.” The man looked over at him and John continued before he could be interrupted. “She doesn’t have to lead them in. The breach is in the area I came through. The…” He shot a look at Blair and then back to Derek. “The bubble must’ve caused structural damage.”
Blair looked as confused as Riley felt; she had no idea what all that meant, but a surge of relief flooded through her when Derek nodded and turned to the two men who had just arrived. Jackson and Epworth, Riley assumed. “Take a squad to bravo three.” He looked at Riley. “How many?” She shrugged, shook her head, wishing she could tell him something useful.
He turned to John, who said, “I don’t know. We saw a T-600 come through the hole, but it sounded like more followed.”
“Prepare for an unknown number of hostiles,” Derek told Epworth and Jackson. “I want that breach sealed.”
***
John lay on a pallet on the floor, his right foot naked below heavy bandages around his lower leg. The medic had told her after they’d cut his boot off that she’d done a good job; he could move his toes and there didn’t seem to be any nerve damage, so at least she’d done one thing that hadn’t ended in disaster.
Riley sat on the floor, back against the wall, arms wrapped around her knees, face buried in her arms. Relative quiet surrounded them. What little conversation she heard was in hushed voices so as to not disturb the sleeping or the wounded. They had fought off Skynet, the last of the enemy terminated hours before, but at great cost. And that cost fell squarely on Riley’s shoulders. She wasn’t sure she could bear the weight.
Tears and snot made a mess of her face and her arm as she quietly cried into her the crook of her elbow. God, how could she look anyone in the eye with that knowledge eating at her from the inside?
“You’re still here…” John’s voice broke into her awareness, derailing her guilt, if only for a moment. She raised her head to look at him, wiping her face on her sleeve in the same motion. “I thought you wanted me to leave you alone.” He smiled at her, a crooked thing that she didn’t want to look away from.
“I changed my mind.” Her voice was rough from crying.
She didn’t expect him to frown or to prop himself up on his elbows to look at her more intently. “What happened wasn’t your fault,” he told her, as if he read her mind.
“Oh, really?” Her laugh was harsh. “Which part? The part where you were caught in a cave-in and almost died? The part where your leg got smashed? Or how about the part where I didn’t report a hole in the roof that let Skynet find us, that got people killed?” The tears started up again, and she pushed up and away, to leave, but he stopped her.
“None of it was your fault, Riley. I chose to follow you. Your hole in the roof wasn’t the only one. Yeah, they exploited it, but they broke through other places, too. You should have reported it; you didn’t. That’s not good, but it doesn’t make the attack your fault.” He lay back down as if the words had taken all the strength he had left. “If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s mine.” The words were low, spoken toward the ceiling, and Riley thought that she wasn’t supposed to hear them.
“How could it be your fault?”
He rolled his head to look at her again. “It’s complicated.”
“Well, then, uncomplicated it.”
He hesitated, but eventually responded. “There were about a half dozen holes that… appeared in that area about a week ago. I was supposed to patch all of them up.” He chose his words too carefully, and she knew he was hiding something. “And I did close them. Except for that one.”
“Why not that one?”
“Because of you.” He shifted on the pallet so he could see her face. “A couple of days ago, when I checked that one out to see what needed to be done to repair it, I saw you sitting there in the sun. Your friend Jen told me you went there every afternoon, and I just… I couldn’t take that away from you.” Riley didn’t understand the haunted look in John’s eyes when he said that last part.
After his admission, John rolled onto his back and said nothing more. The silence held for a time until Riley scooted over closer to John. His eyes were closed. “Are you awake?”
“Yeah.”
She wanted to thank him for saving her from having to go back into the tunnels, when the woman, Blair, had asked her to, but she was too embarrassed over her own cowardice. Instead she told him, “I’m sorry I was such a bitch to you earlier.” Which was also true.
He snorted and the crooked smile came back and she realized that she liked that smile as he replied, “That’s okay. I didn’t mean to freak you out.”
“Can we… maybe… Can we start over?” She held her breath as she waited.
“Yeah.” He rolled onto his side and held up a hand. “Hi, I’m John.”
Smiling, she took his hand. “I’m Riley.”