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...
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Reyna yawns, craning her neck to look at the stars from the glass ceiling. The top of her head brushes against John's hip. Neither of them say a word.
She looks up at the stars, each twinkling on their own, yet some joined together to form constellations. Some she knew, and others she created herself, like the Sleeping Sereia. It was so dark and cloudy in the future that she couldn't see the night sky anymore. It was nice to see the twinkling bodies of heat with clarity.
"Would you like me to take over your watch?" John offers.
"No, thank you." Reyna bites the inside of her cheek to keep herself from yawning again. She looks at the watch she had stolen from the police officer. "I have thirty minutes left."
"Reyna, that's the second time you've yawned tonight."
"Just let me finish the shift, John-"
"As your General, I order you to rest!" he snaps, trying and failing to hide the not-quite joking smile on his face.
The supersoldier stares incredulously at John with her jaw hanging open. It was as if he told her that Judgment Day was tomorrow. She couldn't deny his order, though. He is her general no matter how old he is.
A reluctant Reyna switches spots with John, letting him borrow her rifle since she had left the shotgun in the car. She lies down on the fountain ledge, which had been warmed by John's prolonged resting. Meanwhile, the young general stretches his legs and limps around the fountain. And for the first time today, she rests.
A nine-year-old Reyna squeals as she and her older brother, Rowan, jump over waves in Cape Lookout. He leaves for Marine training the next day. It would be the last time she would see him in person.
An older, but still young Reyna sits on the porch of her new home in California, watching her Doberman puppy, Pretzel, and Brigadeiro, her mother's Chow-Chow, chase each other in endless circles in the background lawn. She had just moved from her quiet home in North Carolina to a noisy neighborhood in Oxnard. Mid-unpacking, her mother and father argue behind the sliding glass door, but Reyna pretends not to hear it.
"You expect too little of her, Jae!" Indigo yells. "How will she ever improve?"
"Geukyeom! You're pushing her too hard! Isn't enough enough already?" Jae-Deok shoots back. "You pushed Rowan beyond his limits and look what happened to him!"
1, 2, 3! Reyna delivers a spinning kick to the block of wood in front of her as hundreds of families, judges, and academy and college representatives watch. The block of wood splits into two uneven parts. The crowd cheers. Judges and representatives scribble excitedly onto their clipboards. Indigo and Jae-Deok Dahyun nod proudly in Reyna's direction.
The oxygen of the room has been substituted for hairspray and cologne. The speakers pour out the eighties' greatest hits. Teenagers dressed in various colors of prom outfits sway their body with the music. In the midst of it all, Reyna and her boyfriend, Victor Magdalen, spin in slow circles in Barrington-Rosseau Academy's eighties-themed senior prom.
That very same night, Reyna looks over the edge of Victor Magdalen's backyard. Just one more step, and she'd be sleeping in the ravines forever.
"Leave me alone, Victor." She gasps, fighting against his iron grip. She had gone outside to escape the inebriated teenagers that lurked in Victor's after party. She should've just gone home.
Victor continues to grab Reyna in an indelicate manner. "Just one more kiss before you go, Reyna."
Reyna's stomach lurches at the smell of Victor's alcohol breath. "I said, let go of me!"
She delivers the same, award-winning spinning kick that granted her admission into Barrington-Rosseau. But instead of breaking through wood, her foot meets Victor's chest. It was finally his turn to sleep in the ravines.
She covers her ears to block out Victor's scream, but it wasn't enough. Reyna looks to the stars, ever so clear and bright in the sky, for an answer. She didn't expect to see a nuclear strike.
Reyna's eyes flash open, then squeezes shut when she stares directly into the sun's rays. After adjusting to the abundance of light, she squints, wipes the sweat off her brow, and sits up to find John sitting across from her.
"Wh-what time is it?" She asks.
"Would you believe me if I told you it's 10:00?"
The supersoldier jumps from her spot on the fountain. "We must leave now. We can change vehicles when we cross the border and maybe find some food-"
"Reyna." John takes her hand for the second time during the mission and forces her to turn around. "Is something wrong?"
If only you knew. "Can you walk to the car?"
The young general limps around the fountain, demonstrating his inability to walk.
"Here." Reyna straps her rifle to her back, places John's arm around her shoulders, and ignores the burn in her cheeks. "Just walk with me."
The supersoldier helps her general into the police car before sliding into the driver's seat and pulling out of the mall.
"The border is ten miles away, so we can switch vehicles and find food at the same time." She explains. "Unless you have a better idea?"
"You make it sound like I have no idea at all." John teases, reaching for the radio dial.
Reyna lightly slaps his hand away without taking her eyes off the road. John recoils in mock pain.
"O-ow." He grimaces.
"Oh please, do you want the JEM-9 to track us down by our radio frequency?"
"Can it even do that?"
"We can't take any risks."
John sighs and props his right foot against the dashboard. "How's the future?"
Reyna sucks in a breath. He's asking about the future, not your future. "Well, it wouldn't be a surprise if I told you."
"What's there to be surprised about? There'll be a nuclear strike, 1% of the population survives, and we fight a war against the machines. Unless, of course, we change the future by changing the past." John stares out of the window. Whether he did it for dramatic effect, or if he was checking for any signs of the JEM-9, Reyna didn't know. "How did you become a supersoldier?"
"Well, there were only ten solutions, and your mother noted in the files that the solution worked best on adolescent bodies. So, the ten youngest soldiers in the division -correction, your division- were administered the solution."
"Could that be what my mother's working on in Virginia?"
Reyna shrugs. "Does your mother have any connections in the eastern coast?"
John looks at his foot. "What did it cost? Being a supersoldier, I mean?"
Victor and the war had already stolen her innocence. "The shell of who I used to be."
