Terminator fan fiction

"Sarah! Get down."

Light streamed in through the open door, shadows cast where racks of servers caught its beams. Sarah ducked down, heart pounding in her chest as she waited for it to come for her. The unstoppable creature so devoted to its mission even ripping half the human skin from its body hadn't stopped it.

Reese shuffled up beside her, lifting himself off his haunches enough to peer through a gap in the servers. Each was a small black slab, silently processing more data than she could imagine with nothing to show for it but the faint flickering of a single blue light.

"It's here," he said. His voice was almost lost amongst the army of whirring cooling fans.

She held his arm, wet with blood, and looked at him. The gaunt figure smiled back.

"You know how to use it?" he asked.

It was heavier than she expected. In the movies they always seemed so light and the heroines who wielded them so capable. They were warrior queens skilled in the arts of war. She was a waitress who'd never held a pistol in her life.

"Point and shoot?"

"Close enough."

Then he was gone and she was alone. She trusted him. She had to.

The machine was moving. A subtle squeak from its damaged leg was enough to betray where it was heading. Straight up the corridor between the server racks. No imagination.

"Sarah? Where are you?"

The voice was Reese's, but not Reese. Another trick for the machine to play.

She moved back, each step carefully placed so as not to make a sound. Slow movements put her a little off-balance, and she used her left hand to steady herself against the servers. The right held the pistol, finger resting lightly on the trigger.

"Sarah? I need your help. I'm dying."

Through the gap in the servers she saw movement. Blue lights flickered out as the machine moved in front of them. It was closer than she expected.

It stepped into the aisle and she froze. It was a giant in black leather and shining metal. Skin and muscle grafted onto an alloy exoskeleton exposed by wounds from the improvised flame-thrower. Like this, in its half-machine state, it was terrifying.

Sarah screamed.

The stick in its hands exploded. Flash and smoke rushed out from the hollow end and almost at the same time she felt the pellets puncture her stomach. She fell back, still screaming as the second blast hit her in the chest.

It came closer, the stick clicking as it pumped another shell into the chamber. There was nothing she could do but lie on her back, staring at the ceiling as life drained away. Not just her life, but all the lives her unborn son would protect and gel into a resistance in the future.

Was the machine the last thing she would see? It peered over her, one red eye glowing in the dark as it inspected its victim.

"I don't want to die," she gasped.

Heat touched her forehead. She closed her eyes. The machine finished it.

As the echo faded, Reese emerged from his hiding place. He snapped the AR-15 into his shoulder, keeping low as he moved with a soldier's skill towards the shot. The machine was motionless over Sarah's body, shotgun resting against whatever was left of the woman's skull.

"Careful," said a voice from behind. "It might be active."

He snuck out of the shadows, weapon always trained on the machine's neck. More specifically, the base of the skull.

"Powered down," he called out.

A second figure slipped out of the shadows. She was older, grey hair pulled back in a ponytail, wearing combat fatigues. Proper ones, not the improved outfit Reese had stolen days before.

"Jesus," she cursed.

"I kinda liked her," he said, though without remorse.

She knelt down by the corpse, her back to Reese.

"Did you do it with her?"

He nodded.

"Yeah."

She turned, pulled the pistol's slide and fired twice. The first hit his shoulder, the second passed through his eye. All done with the weapon still in Sarah's lifeless hand.

There was no pulse when she checked his neck. Another corpse to find in the explosion yet to come.

"I"m sorry, Reese," she told him. "This is how we keep John Connor safe from the future."

All that was left was the tableau of a woman called Sarah Connor and a man called Kyle Reese. Decoys in a war waged far ahead in time.

And a man-machine with an eye that glowed red.

Note from Alex

I don't write fan fiction that often but this story was knocking around my head and I had to get it down.