Set ten years after the events of Terminator 2: Judgment Day, John Connor and his mother, Sarah Connor, are off-grid and separated in 2005. While Sarah is at Norfolk, Virginia, for matters too personal to tell her own son, John is surviving on his o...
*Author'sNote: John's perspective will always be written in first person; any characters other than John will be written in third person*
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One of the first things my mom taught me to prepare for my role as a 'great military leader' was to never go where people know you. I thought I had been doing a good job of that: head low, avoiding heavily populated areas, never staying in one place, etc. Until now in Santa Fe.
Just a few months ago, Mom told me that she'd be going to Norfolk, Virginia to take care of some 'things'. Knowing my mom, 'care' did not mean 'with fragility.' Whatever she had to 'take care of' in Virginia, especially Norfolk, a heavily populated city, I had no idea. Since she didn't like questions, and neither did I, I didn't ask any when she left.
Of course I wanted to go with her and of course she refused. She said that there was no reason to join her now that I'm 20, the age when I can look after myself. Of course I can take care of myself.
I found myself moving from place to place, mostly within Nebraska (nothing to see except for golden fields of grain for miles). Did I mention there was barely a living soul in Nebraska, except for the occasional farmer and farm animals? It was a peaceful ghost town compared to the din of California. But even with the occasional farmer and the occasional and gentle farm animal, it still felt empty. Almost too empty. Maybe it was because farm animals couldn't talk and all the farmers I'd met talked about nothing but their crops, but the quietness of it all was just as loud as California.
Now for the million dollar question: How did I end up in tourist-attraction Santa Fe, New Mexico?
I was on my way from Nebraska to Northern Mexico to visit a friend of my mom's, Enrique Salceda. Deciding to stop for the night at Santa Fe after riding for hours, I checked into a shifty motel (like I had anything to lose except for my motorcycle). The next morning, I was off again, bringing us here to the present.
After an hour or so of riding, I pulled into a gas station that looked like it had seen better days. Its windows and concrete walls were cracked and its roof was layered with rusted metal shingles. I park at a pump, insert money into the slot, and insert the pump into my motorcycle. I looked over at the gas pump beside mine, which was pumping gas into a jet-black Suzuki GSX. I quickly look away. I didn't want the owners to think I was going to loot, even though they were nowhere to be found.
I head inside the gas station's store. Bottles of soda pop in different flavors were packed into refrigerators spanning an entire wall of the store. Aisles filled with junk food lined the inside like a maze as the smell of greasy pizza and hot dogs wafts through the air.
I walk over to one of the refrigerators and select a water bottle after scrounging around the bottles of soda. My refrigerator-diving must have attracted some attention because when I close the door, a woman leans against the refrigerator with her arms crossed.
"Can I help you?" I ask, annoyed at her sudden appearance.
The woman tilts her head to the side, letting her scarlet hair drape over her shoulders. She looks me up and down with her steel gaze and shoves her hands in her pockets. "Are you John Connor?"
Dread pools my stomach. I reach for the pistol hidden carefully within my jacket. "What do you want?"
The woman pulls out a pistol of her own, equipped with a silencer, and points it at my chest. "It was nice knowing you, John."
A shot rings out from the entrance of the store. I don't bother looking to see if the woman had been shot. I duck and crawl my way to the nearest exit, pulling my pistol from its holster. I crawl away from the strange woman, from everything. This couldn't be happening. Mom, Uncle Bob, and I destroyed Cyberdyne ten years ago. It's impossible. We destroyed every piece of technology leading up to Judgement Day. What went wrong?
The cashier of the gas station curses in Spanish and begins loading his shotgun. I stand up and point my pistol at the woman, who holds her cheek in her hand. When she removes her hand from her face, instead of blood flowing from the point of impact, dark, liquid metal drips like tears. A shot from the cashier meets the woman. More dark, liquid metal drips from her chest. A Terminator.
Suddenly, the aisle beside the Terminator lifts itself in the air and hurls itself against the Terminator. I look in the direction where it came from. Even though those candy bars and chip bags weigh nothing, no one should have been able to throw it, much less lift it by themselves.
A police officer with dark, olive skin stares back at me, huffing and puffing from her efforts. She yells at the cashier in Spanish.
"¡Afuera! No debes estar aquí!" She yells, motioning at him to leave, which he gratefully does and drops his shotgun in the process.
The police officer reloads the shotgun and grabs more rounds from the counter.
My finger curls around the trigger, but I don't aim at the officer. "W-Who are you?"
The police officer removes her sunglasses, revealing warm-brown eyes like melted chocolate. She holds a gentle hand out to me. "Come with me if you want to live."
