Fic - Know Your Exits 3/7
Sep. 17th, 2009 10:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cj2017Title: Know Your Exits (3/7)
Rating: Hard R: violence, sex, huge amounts of bad language, discussion of adult themes, a pretty spectacular body count, casual slaughter of the innocent (including one minor series character), and scenes of a medical nature that might cause queasiness in those with a sensitive disposition.
Word Count: About 30,500 all told. This part 4,000
Disclaimer: Don’t own them. Wish I did. And I have shamelessly pinched some of their dialogue.
Thanks to all who are taking the time to review. On the advice of a kind reviewer on ff.net who suggested that Sarah might be insulted by the meager reward of $50,000, I’ve upped her asking price a little ;-)
~ ~ ~
Know Your Exits 3/7
~ ~ ~
The Rest Inn had one buzzing, flickering light in its parking lot, a tariff for renting by the hour, and a manager who barely acknowledged Derek as he counted his cash and then passed him a grimy room key. Drapes were firmly drawn in the other three occupied rooms, a couple was arguing loudly in Spanish, and no-one noticed as a young man was carried into Room Eleven by a young girl who shouldn’t have been able to lift his weight.
Sarah stripped the stained bedspread away to reveal sheets that were only slightly cleaner. Cameron laid John down on them before returning to the truck for their bags.
“Jesus. What a shithole.” Derek was helping Sarah to prop John up against the pillows.
She gave him a small smile. “You used to live in tunnels under City Hall, Derek.”
“Yeah.” He leaned John forward while she quickly cut away what remained of his shirt. “But we had our pride. Hell, Kyle even found a piece of carpet for the ten-square-feet of tunnel that we called home.”
Sarah’s smile faded and her face paled as Derek peeled the dressing away from the front of John’s chest. “Oh God.”
The wound was badly inflamed, yellow liquid already gathering and seeping away from its center. John moaned low in his throat when Derek laid a tentative hand on the edge of it.
“We’ll need to open it and clean it out, then leave it open and hope the infection drains.”
Sarah nodded. “Like you did with my leg.”
“Yeah, exactly like that.”
“He’ll need antibiotics, then.”
“Yes. The stronger the better, and intravenous, if he’s vomiting.”
“We don’t have any.” Cameron had acquired their last batch by breaking into a hospital, but if the T-888 was still on their trail, Cameron wouldn’t be leaving John’s side. Trying to figure out exactly where along their intended route they had had to make their detour, Sarah picked up a tattered take-out menu that had been left rather optimistically on the bedside table and studied the address on it. Placing it down again, she ran her hand over her face, watching her son as he shifted restlessly, his breathing rapid and harsh.
“It’s a long shot, and he’s an asshole, but there might be someone I can call…”
~ ~ ~
“Two hours. I’ll be in touch.”
Tal Emerson clicked his cellphone shut and scratched absently at the stubble on his chin. Sarah’s voice had been the same; underneath the stress and desperation that she had tried so hard to mask, its timbre and soft accent were the same as they had been ten years ago. Ten years ago she had requested a variation on the same theme: blood that time as well, and someone who could patch up a bullet wound and a stab wound without asking any questions. He had been obliging – there was big money to be made in this kind of field – but things change, and he suddenly found himself facing something of a moral dilemma. Obtaining the blood and the medications she had asked for was not going to be a problem, and it certainly posed no problem for his morals. The fifteen thousand dollars he had set as a price tag was more the issue. That price was exactly a tenth of what he could apparently earn with one simple phone call to the number currently scrolling across the bottom of the 24-hour news channel that he had stopped at, en route to the channel playing 24-hour poker.
Emerson’s moral dilemma lasted for approximately thirty seconds. Fingers trembling with excitement, he dialed the number as it appeared on the screen, wondering at the fortuitous timing, and making a mental note to buy himself a couple of lottery tickets because his mom had always told him that good luck came in multiples of three. His call was placed in a queue but answered soon afterwards, and he stuttered slightly when a girl with a pretty accent asked him for his details. He gave them, aware that they would flag him up as having a criminal record, but he had served his time for his past offenses, and, if anything, his history would only give his call more credibility. The pretty accent did not interrupt as he gave his information, and when he had finished she thanked him for his vigilance and told him that someone would be in touch.
Not at all certain of his reward, Emerson hung up with a pang of disappointment. Consoling himself with a cigarette, he took a long drag and continued to trawl through the channels, heading inevitably towards the poker. He had just stubbed his cigarette out when his cell phone rang, and he opened it to find a number that he didn’t recognize. The voice on the other end was male, bordering on friendly, and belonged, unmistakably, to someone in law enforcement.
“Mr. Emerson, my name is Agent Auldridge. I work for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I understand you’ve spoken to Sarah Connor…”
~ ~ ~
The worst of it was done. Sarah sat by John’s side, periodically wiping a cloth over and around the oozing wound on his chest.
Derek emerged from the bathroom, hair still damp from the shower, and gestured at the cup of coffee that Sarah had ignored and left sitting on the bedside table. “If you’re not going to sleep, you should drink that.”
She looked up at him, dark shadows beneath her eyes, and shook her head with a grimace. “Let’s just say that Cameron’s coffee-making skills are about on a par with my cooking skills.”
He widened his eyes with a grin. “Fuck. That bad, huh?”
“Possibly slightly worse.” She smiled, but when she stood to clean a trickle of blood from John’s chest she only made it halfway up before she suddenly sat down again. “Shit.” What little color there had been in her face drained from it, and she closed her eyes.
“Head between your knees, Connor.”
She mumbled a reply that sounded suspiciously like “Fuck off”, but obeyed him anyway, bending forward to rest her head on her folded arms. He left her there, filling the small kettle, and then rummaging in the bags Cameron had brought in from the convenience store. When he went back to her, she was sitting upright in the chair, still looking pale but less so than she had been just moments before.
“I got up too fast.”
“Yeah.” He handed her a bottle of orange juice, a banana, and a granola bar. “Are you bleeding?”
“No,” she said sharply, her tone intended to put an immediate end to the topic.
He wasn’t swayed, however, and when he repeated his question she gave a small sigh of defeat and lifted her shirt. The three dressings Cameron had applied were all clean and dry. Sarah waited until Derek nodded, and then dropped her shirt back down to cover them.
“I just got up too fast.”
“I know you did.” He didn’t care if she heard the relief in his voice. Trying to keep one Connor alive was proving difficult enough; he couldn’t afford to add more complications to the mix. “Drink the juice and I’ll make you a decent cup of coffee. Deal?”
Removing the cap, she took a couple of mouthfuls from the bottle and tried not to screw her face up as the acid hit her empty stomach. “Deal.”
~ ~ ~
“Here.” Derek handed Sarah her coffee and pulled up a chair at her side.
“Thanks.” Her other hand rested on John’s arm. “He feels warmer.”
“We’re doing everything we can, Sarah.” They had stripped him down, bathed him, opened the windows, and given him more Tylenol, which he had vomited back up. Derek checked his watch. “Another hour, then hopefully, if your contact’s as good as he claimed, we can get the antibiotics and something to bring his fever down.”
She nodded, taking a sip of the coffee, her eyes never leaving John’s face. “He almost died before he was even born.”
“What? You mean the machine?” Derek was running a cool cloth across John’s face and chest, giving Sarah a break, and he sensed rather than saw the shake of her head.
“No. Well, yes, but after that as well. He was premature. I never told you?” She had revealed so many of her secrets to him lately that it was getting hard to keep track of the ones she still held.
“No, you didn’t tell me that.” He sat back down and blew on his own coffee before taking a sip.
“I made it to thirty-four weeks. I was in Nicaragua at the time, training with a group of mercenaries.” She shrugged mildly when Derek raised an eyebrow. “It probably wasn’t what an prenatal class would have recommended, but then I never actually made it to any classes. The group had a base camp in the jungle and we were hiking back after an exercise when the pain started.”
“Contractions?”
She was already shaking her head. “No, continuous pain, terrible, like I was being ripped apart, and I was bleeding.”
“Nowhere near a hospital, were you?” He had a nasty feeling that he knew where this story was heading.
“No. Luckily, Alvaro, the camp medic, was with us. He didn’t have a clue what was causing it, but he’d seen similar symptoms, and in pretty much all of the cases the baby had died. He gave me a choice.” She took a sip from her cup, her mouth suddenly dry. “A Cesarean there and then, or…” Her lips curled with a sardonic smile. “Well, actually, I guess he didn’t give me a choice.”
“Jesus, Sarah.”
“I think he’d done a couple before, in the camp, but we weren’t in the camp.”
“No anesthetic.” Derek put his cup down, feeling slightly sick.
“No. Someone had a bottle of dark rum. I remember puking a lot of it back up, and there were hands holding me down, and Alvaro saying he was sorry over and over again as he cut. I stayed conscious until I heard John cry, then…” A faint shake of her head. “They got us back to the camp somehow. I don’t really remember the next few days, or weeks, I guess. I’d lost a lot of blood and I got an infection.” She rolled her eyes; for her, some things never changed. “Ofelia, one of the women, when I didn’t have the strength, she would hold John so that I could nurse him. She kept telling me how important it was, even if I was sick, so that we could bond.” She smiled a little at that and looked up at Derek, her eyes wet with tears. “And he was fine. Small at first, but beautiful, and he fought so hard.” A quiet sob escaped her as the tears over-spilled to run down her cheeks. “I didn’t realize then that that was just the start of it. That he’d have to fight every fucking day of his life.”
Swiping a hand across her face, she allowed the anger to eat into the edges of her grief; breaking apart was an indulgence that she couldn’t afford. She felt a hand rest briefly on her shoulder and sensed Derek moving away from her. Grateful for his tact, she used her shirt sleeve to dry her eyes properly, then finished her coffee and set her cup back down.
Minutes later, Derek returned with more coffee and a fresh bag of saline. Neither of them spoke as he reset the IV before sitting down beside her again. With nothing left to say and nothing more they could do, they sat in silence and waited for the phone to ring.
~ ~ ~
“No. Absolutely fucking not.” Derek paced across the small room, turning to face Sarah as she stood by the bed, her cellphone still clutched in her hand.
“I’m not arguing, Derek. He didn’t give us a choice. I go on my own or the deal’s off. I already agreed to it.”
“You can call him back.”
“No.” She was already pulling her jacket on. “And we’re wasting time.”
“He could drive.” Cameron was standing by the window, scanning the parking lot through a small gap in the drapes. “There is nothing more to be done for John until we obtain the medications, and you shouldn’t go entirely on your own.”
As a compromise, it was fairly obvious. Derek looked to Sarah for her answer, grabbing his own jacket when she nodded.
“Okay, but I go and meet him alone, as arranged. I can’t afford to fuck this up. Emerson’s my only contact for this kind of thing, and he always was as nervous as hell.”
“Fine.” Derek checked the clip in his gun and picked up the keys for the truck. “You ready?”
Sarah pressed a quick kiss to John’s forehead, but when she looked up at Derek her face betrayed no emotion.
“Let’s go.”
~ ~ ~
“Okay, then.” Auldridge nodded in satisfaction at Emerson, who was still sitting, pale and twitchy, in the small booth.
“I did everything you said, right?” Emerson bit the skin at the side of his thumb, pulling it hard enough to draw blood. “And she’s coming, right?”
“Right.” Auldridge was barely listening as he scribbled his signature across requisition forms for the necessary personnel, vehicles, permits, and firearms.
“So, when do I get my reward?”
Passing the forms to a junior agent waiting by his shoulder, Auldridge put his pen down and smiled. “As soon as we have Sarah Connor in custody, Mr. Emerson, I promise you, you can have your reward.”
With his thumb firmly wedged into the corner of his mouth, Emerson sat up a little straighter and grinned.
~ ~ ~
The bus smelled of wet clothing and something faintly sour. Sarah ignored the unshaven man muttering to himself across the aisle, and concentrated on being unobtrusive. She sat still, not tensing whenever someone stood up without warning, not checking over her shoulder to find Derek trailing three cars behind in the truck. Taking the bus for the last stage of the journey had been her idea, to ensure that no-one could connect her to Derek. No-one would see her getting out of the truck, and, if Emerson was somehow tracking her or watching her, he would be confident that she had travelled alone.
The route was unfamiliar to her, as was the routine that her few fellow passengers had found so simple. They hadn’t fumbled to find the right money or struggled to describe which stop they were heading towards. They sat listening to iPods or moving their fingers furiously across cellphone keypads, not needing to watch the landmarks as they passed or to study the names of the stops as they flashed up above the driver in digital orange.
Standing as soon as her stop was announced, Sarah caught an overstuffed bag that was knocked towards her by its owner, who was struggling to get up in time. The young girl met her eyes and thanked her profusely. Hours later, when the police made enquiries, she would be the only passenger on the bus who had even noticed that Sarah was there.
~ ~ ~
At five in the morning, the hospital corridors were all but deserted, and there was no-one there to question why a man in a white laboratory coat efficiently disabled a fire alarm and allowed a woman to circumnavigate security by entering the hospital through a side door.
“Emerson.” Sarah nodded at the man, but neither offered their hand. They had never been friends, just passing acquaintances.
“Been a long time. You’re looking good, Connor.” Emerson’s voice held more than a note of surprise; she looked tired, but the years had certainly been kind to her.
“Yeah, thanks.” He had already started walking, and she strode alongside him, her eyes flicking into every doorway, then casting down to the floor when they passed closed-circuit cameras. “Did you get them?”
“Sure, sure. No problems. They’re in the lab, where we can make the…” He hesitated, searching for a word to make the whole business respectable, “…Transaction in privacy.” He stopped at a door marked Hematology and tried to will himself not to shake as he placed his key in the lock.
“You alright, Emerson?”
“Yeah, yeah.” The door swung open at the third attempt. He coughed dryly, flailing for the excuse he had been preparing in case his nerves got the better of him. “Not done this for a while, that’s all. I’ve been running straight for two years.”
“Sorry,” she said, sounding genuinely remorseful. “You know I wouldn’t ask if I had any other way.”
“Yeah, I know. Besides, they pay me fucking peanuts here.” He was kneeling by a fridge, reaching into the back to bring out a bag. “Four units, AB negative. Gentamicin, IV. Acetaminophen, IV. Metaclopramide, IV.”
Sarah handed over her own small bag. “Fifteen thousand.”
He peered in at the money but made no attempt to check it.
She frowned. “Sure you don’t want to count that?” He had always been cautious to the point of paranoia about payment, and she felt the hairs at the nape of her neck begin to prickle.
He seemed to recognize his error and corrected himself with a jolt. “Yeah, yeah. Hold on, let me count it.”
Sarah was already moving. Ignoring Emerson as he swore and called her back, she began to retrace the route to the entrance they had used. The buzz of her cellphone sounded, harsh and insistent. With cold sweat sticking her shirt to her back, she pulled it out of her pocket.
~ ~ ~
They had arrived without warning and en masse. No sirens, just the flashing of red and blue as they deployed themselves around the main entrance. From his vantage point, crouched low in the front seat of the Dodge, Derek saw a man in a suit holding a bullhorn and watching patiently as uniformed officers began to hurry early morning shift workers away from the hospital.
“Oh, fucking hell.” Trapped in the truck, Derek stared, horrified, as SWAT teams took up position, fanning out to surround the building. Feeling numb and utterly useless, he took out his cellphone and hit Sarah’s number.
~ ~ ~
“Sarah.” It was all there in Derek’s voice, in that one word.
Sarah slowed her pace, clutching the bag of drugs so tightly that her fingers ached. “He gave me up, didn’t he?”
“Yes. Fuck. Yes.”
“How many?” She felt strangely calm, no thoughts of trying to run, as she studied the signage at a corridor junction.
“Too many. Front and back. Shit.”
“You need to go.” She set off walking again, faster now, following the signs for the main entrance.
“No. I could come around the side, see if they left a gap.”
Pushing open the door of a restroom, she ducked inside, heaving out a breath when she realized it was empty. Derek was still talking, trying to work out a plan from a distance, as Sarah dug her hands into the trash and buried her bag at the bottom. Crouching with her back against the wall, she cut him off in the middle of a sentence.
“Derek, listen to me.”
“Sarah…”
“No! Shut the fuck up, and listen to me.” She ran a hand over her face; it came back damp with sweat. “You need to get out of here and go back to John.”
“They’re going to be watching the parking lots.”
“Yeah, well, I can probably get their attention.”
He must have heard something in her tone to give him an idea of what she was intending. “Don’t do anything fucking stupid, Connor. They’ve got marksmen everywhere.”
“I’ll try not to give them much to aim at.”
He let out a sharp laugh of disbelief, and she heard a bang as he hit his fist against something hard. Then he sighed heavily, his voice full of resignation. “Main entrance?”
“Main entrance.” Leaving the restroom, she passed a shuttered coffee shop and a news stand that had been deserted with only half of the day’s newspapers arranged. “Go. They’re not looking for you. They don’t even know you’re here. Go back to John.” She lowered her voice, no longer able to keep the emotion out of it. “Please.”
“Fuck.” Another muffled thud, his hand against the steering wheel. “Fuck.”
She nodded at him even though he couldn’t see her, her throat tight with relief. “The bag’s in the trash in the men’s room, at the entrance.” Dark shadows were moving beyond the main doors of the hospital, red and blue lights cutting across them intermittently.
“I’ll get it.”
“Give it a couple of hours.”
“I will. I’ll get it. Don’t worry about John.”
She made a small, anguished sound at his familiar promise, but, mercifully, he had already ended the call. Taking a deep breath, she put her hand on the door and pulled it open, wincing as artificial light blinded her and the screech of a misfiring bullhorn cut through the air.
“Sarah Connor. Put your hands behind your head. Kneel on the ground!”
She raised her hands slowly, trying to predict the tactics of the forces massed in front of her. Two uniformed officers began to tuck their guns away and approach cautiously. She took one brief glance towards the parking lot, where a black truck with its lights extinguished was beginning to move. Refusing to give herself an opportunity to change her mind, she ran at the officer closest to her. Her shoulder caught him hard, and he crumpled to the floor with a yelp of surprise. Without losing her momentum, she threw a wild right hook at the second officer. Ignoring the burst of pain in her hand as he fell away from her, she sprinted forward – too much confusion and too many bystanders to allow the snipers a clear shot. Noise was building around her, orders and warnings; she shut it all out, forging forwards towards the frontline, two more officers offering themselves as sacrificial lambs, tackling her to the floor and completely underestimating their target. With her hands around the throat of the first, Sarah kicked out to force the older of the pair back against a patrol car, his head hitting the wing mirror and knocking him senseless.
Watching the ranks close in on her, she realized that that would have to be enough. The first baton struck her bluntly across the middle of her back. It drove the breath from her and she struggled to keep her position, her hands still loosely gripped around the officer’s throat, dimly aware that she was still a threat for as long as she resisted. The blows continued relentlessly, pounding against her shoulders, her back, her arms. When she felt the stitches in her side split, she finally sagged, falling to the concrete and no longer fighting, as her arms were dragged behind her and handcuffs were cinched tightly around her wrists. Hauled suddenly upright, she panted against a surge of dizziness, her legs barely supporting her as she was frog-marched to a patrol car and pushed roughly into the back seat. The engine started immediately, the driver pausing only for an armed escort to pull out in front.
Sarah didn’t acknowledge the Miranda that the arresting officer was reciting, turning instead to look beyond the flashing strobe lights and into the parking lot, where there was nothing to be seen but a row of vacant spaces.
~ ~ ~
TBC…
~ ~ ~
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-17 11:24 pm (UTC)yes...i'am that much of a loser that that scene made me happy...so THANK YOU!!
and OHNOS I hate you a little for Sarah!arrested but the rest of it made up.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-18 01:06 pm (UTC)*g* I know everyone probably has their own take on that little bit of back-story (there were some very creative discussions on scs.net after Some Must Watch aired!) but I couldn't resist trying to fill in some blanks...
I kinda gave away where I was heading in the first chapter ;-)
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-19 04:05 pm (UTC)LOL I'm such a loser!
Now you know my badly kept secret in which I skipped to Derek/Sarah...oops heh
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-20 01:12 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-18 01:54 am (UTC)So I said screw the paper, I can't wait anymore. And, GOD, this is SO FUCKIN WORTH THE ALL-NIGHTER.
FFFFFFFFFFFUCKKKK YESSSSSS! Now this is what the show shoulda been! Every single bit, absolutely PERFECT. GOD I LOVE YOUUUUUUUU. LOVE. YOU.
I'm so pleased I might pass out.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-18 01:11 pm (UTC)Head between your knees...
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-18 05:10 pm (UTC)Head between your knees...
I tried! I am weak! *passes out happily*
BADASSMUTHERTRUCKINCONNAHHHHHS
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-19 01:40 pm (UTC)In that case, I hope I helped you to get a good grade! And didn't accidentally influence you to pepper your writing with casual violence and harsh language ;-)
*LOL* They truly are the most awesome of family units.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-22 06:22 pm (UTC)Shit.
Trying to keep one Connor alive was proving difficult enough; he couldn’t afford to add more complications to the mix.
I love the idea of Derek as live in medic. If any family ever needed one, it's this family.
“No. Well, yes, but after that as well. He was premature. I never told you?”
Awww. That's heartbreaking. How little Derek actually knows of the facts of Sarah's past.
“And he was fine. Small at first, but beautiful, and he fought so hard.” A quiet sob escaped her as the tears over-spilled to run down her cheeks. “I didn’t realize then that that was just the start of it. That he’d have to fight every fucking day of his life.”
*sob*
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-23 07:10 pm (UTC)*LOL* Yep, that pretty much sums it up!
It's a role he does seem to fit nicely into. Even the show had him playing out in that area - Alpine Fields, fixing up Jesse's hand... and it serves my purposes bloody beautifully!
They're getting there, bit by bit, chipping away at it.
Hope you had a lovely hol, girlie!