Fic- Breaking Point 5/8
Mar. 10th, 2010 07:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cj2017Title: Breaking Point (5/8)
Rating: Hard R: violence, sex, harsh language, you probably know the drill by now.
Word Count: 35,000 all told. This part 4,400.
~ ~ ~
Breaking Point 5/8
~ ~ ~
“I don’t need them. No. Keep them on.”
They were already off and in his hands.
“Here, they’ll help.”
Sarah stared at the damp, dirty pair of thick, woolen socks Derek was holding out to her and started to laugh hopelessly.
“What the fuck are we doing, Derek?”
He shrugged, still proffering his clothing.
“Escaping?”
Shaking her head at his blind optimism, she took hold of the socks and slid them over her battered feet.
“Shit.” Both feet were badly swollen, and even the loose-fitting socks felt like a vice clamping around them. But she silently conceded the point; the material would offer some protection from the rough concrete.
“Can you stand?”
“Yes,” she said immediately. Because there was no other option. Slowly, she pushed herself up the wall and stood with her back against it. The pain was formidable; she took a couple of deep, deliberate breaths. Pain can be controlled, Kyle Reese had told her, and he had been right. Seventeen years and countless scars later, Sarah Connor had perfected the art of disconnecting.
“Sarah?”
“I’m okay.” She looked at the door. Approximately fifteen minutes ago, they had started to hear voices and sounds of activity out in the corridor. Clubbing her bound hands together, she stepped into the shadows and waited.
~ ~ ~
They hadn’t worked out a plan. They had no tactics, nothing beyond hoping that only one man came and hitting him as hard as they could.
It was Jenkins who stepped casually into the room. He didn’t bother to switch on the light and his carelessness gave Sarah the opportunity she needed. Without giving him time for his vision to adjust, she swung a double-fisted punch that caught him square on the side of his head. The force made him stagger backwards. Before he could recover his footing, she hit him again, slamming his head back, and then barreled into him and took him to the floor.
They both landed heavily. Momentarily stunned, she tried to shake off the crippling dizziness, but the thump of his boot into her abdomen left her gasping and coughing. For an endless second, she couldn’t move. As if in slow-motion, she watched Jenkins clamber to his hands and knees and fumble for the radio on his belt.
He never got the chance to call for help. From low on the floor, Derek threw his hands over Jenkins’ head and pulled the chain of his handcuffs taut across the man’s throat. Jenkins gagged, dropping the radio, his clumsy fingers flailing, trying to find purchase on the metal choking him. It was a good enough distraction to enable Sarah to pull the gun free from his holster. Hypoxic, his vision failing, his body began to go limp. He barely felt the blow from his own pistol that sprayed his blood across the green-tinged wall and finally rendered him senseless.
“Oh fuck.” Dropping his hands away, Derek bent over double, straining to catch his breath.
Sarah cast a fleeting glance in his direction but couldn’t spare any more than that. Scrambling over to Jenkins, she patted him down and found a switchblade, a second handgun, and the keys for Derek’s handcuffs.
“Here. Easy. Stay still.” The cuffs fell away, and just as quickly she fastened them around Jenkins’ wrists. Taking his belt off, she bound his feet, struggling in her own restraints to pull the leather tight enough.
A touch to her shoulder made her jump and she spun around to find Derek, his hands raised, the knife glinting in one of them. Without speaking, she held her wrists out to him, waiting impatiently until he had sliced through the rope and biting back a whimper as the strands peeled away from her torn skin.
“What now?” He took the gun she held out to him and checked its clip.
She made a mystified noise. She had never actually expected to get to this point but, when she thought about it, they didn’t exactly have a lot of choices open to them.
“Carey. Warm clothes. Blow the place to fuck and run like hell.” She slapped the clip back into her own gun. “Let’s move.”
~ ~ ~
Al Carey was a true believer. Recruited as a youth out of a career stacking shelves and breaking the bones of people who pissed him off, he had been indoctrinated, trained, and then elevated into a position of power. He was now trusted to help ensure that the future turned out the way it was supposed to. He was under no illusions about the nature of that future, but, having spent the early part of his life as one of society’s bottom-feeders, there was no way he was passing up the opportunity to rise to the top. Consequently, when he heard Sarah Connor’s voice commanding him to put his hands in the air and turn around slowly, the bitter recognition of his failure was hard to bear.
“Now.”
The bullet Sarah fired buried itself into the wooden crate which Carey was standing beside. The splinters of wood that flew up and dug into his cheek sent the desired message, and he turned, his hands raised, his face blazing with hatred.
“Should’ve just fucking killed you.” He spat the words out as he stared at her.
“Yeah.” She left Derek covering him and moved to pat him down. “You probably should’ve.”
Carey was well-equipped. She dropped duct tape, several knives and a small blowtorch onto the crate and tucked two more handguns into the belt on her combats.
“Hands behind your back.” His hands swung down in a lazy arc, his left fist clenched and ready to strike.
There was no warning. Derek fired instantly. The bullet punched a chunk out of Carey’s biceps and he howled with rage, the fingers on his right hand clutching the wound.
Without blinking, Sarah picked up the duct tape. “Shall we try that again?”
“Son of a fucking bitch!” For a big man, Carey didn’t seem to tolerate pain very well. “You’re dead, you’re both dead.”
“The next one goes between your eyes,” Derek warned.
With a low moan, Carey positioned his hands behind his back and allowed Sarah to wrap tape around them.
“Move.” The jab of her Beretta between his shoulder blades encouraged Carey out of the warehouse and into the corridor. “We need clothes and boots,” she said, trying to keep her voice level despite the pain that was screaming through her with every step she took. “And then you’re going to show us what’s in D6.”
~ ~ ~
The coat was too big for her, but it was thicker than the one she had arrived in, and Sarah allowed herself a second just to enjoy the sensation of being warm again. Carey had taken them to the store where Jenkins had dumped their clothes, and he sat glowering in the corner as they raided the company supplies. They selected the best of the outdoor wear, quickly pulling on waterproof pants, pocketing gloves, ski masks and scarves, and doubling up their socks.
“These might be better.”
Derek handed her a pair of boots that were a size bigger than her own. She heard Carey snigger softly.
“Someone fuck up your feet, Connor?”
Ignoring him, she drew in a deep breath, pushed her feet into the boots and laced them as tightly as she could bear. She walked over to Carey.
“I’ve been fucked up worse,” she said with a shrug. She smiled when the smirk fell from his face, and then leveled the gun at him again. “D6. Lead the way.”
~ ~ ~
D6 contained enough demolition equipment to vaporize an office block. The explosives left over from the original construction of the facility had been carefully preserved. After they had dismantled all of Sarah’s earlier efforts, someone had placed her bags alongside them.
“So this is how Kaliba works?” Sarah was eyeing the barrels, the small trolley and the C4 while trying to make rough calculations in her head. “You build in the middle of nowhere, but you’re always ready to cover your tracks if necessary?” She hauled a bag over her shoulder. “Is that what happened to Desert Heat and Air?”
Carey gave her a look of genuine bewilderment. “You tell me.”
She laughed, short and sharp. “Oh, that wasn’t me. I was busy trying to get a bullet out of my leg when your warehouse went up in smoke.”
He shrugged casually, but she could see his confusion and knew that he believed her. Which meant that she also believed him, and that left only one possible explanation.
“I guess someone else has Kaliba in their sights.” There was no time to worry about a third party, but she made a mental note of the information for later. “Turn around.” He turned and she slit the tape on his wrists. “Get two barrels loaded, then put your hands where I can see them and get on your knees.”
There was a soft tap on the door, followed by another two in quick succession, and Derek entered.
“Monitors are down. Jenkins is still unconscious.” He sounded out of breath. Smashing the security system into pieces had expended energy that he couldn’t afford to spare.
“Good.” She looked at Derek and then lifted the second bag as if that had been her intention all along. “You got him?”
“Yeah.” Derek nodded, grateful for her tact. “Yeah, I got him.”
“Let’s go.” She waited while Carey made a show of climbing obediently to his feet. “We’ll start with the factory, and on the way there you can tell me where Dyson went...”
~ ~ ~
It was like déjà vu, only this time slightly easier because the layout was familiar and Carey was surprisingly deft with the wiring. He hadn’t been able to give Sarah the address where Dyson was heading, but, when Derek had fired up the blowtorch, he had sullenly provided another company name, and that had been enough for him to keep his body parts intact.
Sarah looked up at the looming mass of the HK and nodded in satisfaction when Carey rolled one of their barrels directly beneath it. Derek taped additional C4 to the barrels of jet-fuel and smiled grimly. It might have been overkill, but he had first-hand experience of being hunted by one of these machines, and he wasn’t in the mood to take any chances.
~ ~ ~
In the dark of Sub-C, Jenkins opened his eyes with a groan and wondered why he couldn’t move. It took him a full minute to remember what had happened and where he was. His back was to the door; he turned himself to face it. The keypad was blinking red, indicating that he was locked in. That wasn’t a problem when he knew the override code. His problem was the handcuffs binding his wrists.
Pushing himself into a sitting position, he gritted his teeth and heard the crunch of bone as his thumb dislocated. When he twisted his wrists, the metal ground into his skin, making the bracelet slick with blood, and it fell away with a final, awful effort. He allowed himself the time to correct the deformity to his hand before unfastening his ankles and walking over to the door. He had done too much too quickly, and the keypad swam in front of him, the numbers a mess of blurred gray. It took him two attempts at the code before the light flashed green and he heard the click of the lock disengaging. Stepping out into the corridor, he took a steadying breath. He needed a weapon and back-up. But mostly, he needed to know where Connor and Reese were hiding.
~ ~ ~
“Carey? Come in. State your location. Over.”
Her eyes wide, Sarah pulled the radio from her duffel bag.
“How the fuck?” Derek looked over his shoulder, his gun still trained on Carey, who was smiling as if he had just been told the funniest joke ever.
“Gonna answer him, Sarah? Let him know where I am?”
“No.” She had managed to compose herself, and was studying Carey thoughtfully. “No. You’re going to answer him. You’re going to tell him you’re over in…” She looked to Derek for guidance.
“Sector A. It’s on the other side.”
She nodded. “Sector A. That you tracked us there and you think you have us cornered.”
“Sector A. Tracked you. Got you cornered.” Carey still looked far too cheerful.
“Deviate and you lose something vital.” Sarah beckoned him over and pressed her gun against his forehead. “Okay. Talk.”
“Jenkins?”
“Yeah.” Jenkins sounded slightly groggy, but nowhere near as groggy as Sarah would have liked. “They’re out. The monitors are smashed. I’m gonna see if Dyson left a PDA in the labs and activate that. What’s your location?”
“Sector A. I tracked them out here.” Carey looked to Sarah for her approval and she nodded curtly. “I think I have them cornered.”
“Give me ten. I’m on my way.”
“Roger that.” Carey’s thumb lingered on the button just slightly longer than necessary, and then he dropped it away and handed the radio back to Sarah. “Happy?” Carey was. He was grinning from ear to ear.
She looked at the radio, replaying the conversation in her head. “The PDA. What would he need to activate that for?”
Carey shrugged, but it only took a second for his ego to win through over his common sense. “It means none of what I just told him will do a bit of fucking good and he’ll find you anyway.”
“How?” The gun was back at his forehead. She was pushing so hard that his skin was bruising.
He winked at her as he watched her face lose the little color it had; he knew that she had worked it out.
“A tracking device,” she said, the words thick with loathing. “You put implants in us.”
Having completed the last section of wiring, Derek was listening to the exchange, the detonator in his hand.
“Where are they?” Her voice was calm and dangerous. Her finger twitched on the trigger.
Carey licked his lips, his bravado wavering. “Right thigh.” He watched Derek pick up a knife and snorted with disdain. “They’re in deep, and they’re small. You’re not gonna find them easily.” He turned towards Sarah, and his grin was back. “And you’re not gonna be running very fast once he’s done cutting you to ribbons.”
Sarah dropped her hand slightly and looked to Derek. It was the opening Carey had been waiting for. Without making a sound, he brought his arm up, slamming it across her throat and sending her crashing to the floor. He reached down, his fingers scrabbling on the smooth material of her coat as he tried and failed to get a firm grip. She slapped his hand away and he only had her half-way to her feet when Derek fired.
Derek was as good as his word; Carey took the bullet right between the eyes. Sarah let out a strangled cry as Carey’s momentum took her to the floor again, his body crashing down on top of her. She couldn’t breathe and her struggles were almost frantic as she tried to get out from beneath him.
The crushing weight rolled away from her abruptly. Gasping for air, she lay flat on her back.
“Thanks.” She took Derek’s hand, but pushed herself to her feet. He nodded, his eyes slightly wild. Picking up the knife, she held it out to him.
“No.”
“No? Derek, you heard what he said. How the fuck are we going to get far enough away if Jenkins can find us without even breaking a sweat?”
“We’re not,” he answered without hesitation. “He’s going to find us. When he does, we’ll have to deal with him.” He was throwing everything he could find into one of the duffel bags. “But John has a PDA. If Jenkins can track us, maybe John can too. If something goes wrong and we get stuck out there…”
“We are not leading John out here!” She brandished the knife at him again and he caught her wrist, holding onto it tightly.
“Sarah, he’ll come anyway.”
“No.” Her voice broke on the word, uncertainty creeping in. “I told Cameron.” She tried to wrench her hand free, but her efforts tapered off as she saw Derek shake his head.
“He’ll come anyway,” he said gently. “At least this way he might have something to head towards.” He pried the knife from her fingers. “We need to go. Vehicle bay is about five minutes from here.”
She nodded, wiping her cheeks dry with her fist. She had no intention of leaving the implants in situ for John to trace, but that argument would have to wait. The thought of her son being drawn back there compelled her to push aside her injuries and her fatigue. Moving with a renewed sense of urgency, she zipped the bag closed and then took the detonator from Derek, placing it carefully into a side pocket.
They had to step over Carey to reach the door. A thick pool of blood had already collected beneath his head and his eyes stared unseeing. The swelling to Sarah’s feet was affecting her balance and she took the hand Derek offered to help her negotiate the obstacle. It was the only consideration either of them gave the body as they left the room.
~ ~ ~
“Son of a bitch.” Sarah dropped her hands onto her knees, breathing heavily as she stared at the ruin of the two trucks in the bay. Jenkins hadn’t been discreet, but had just smashed the engines to hell, put a knife through the tires and moved on. The fact that he hadn’t waited there to ambush them probably meant he had erred on the side of caution and gone to find the PDA.
“These are the only ones.” Derek raised his head slowly; he was wavering on his feet. “You go.”
“Yeah, nice try.” She grabbed his arm and slung it over her shoulders before tucking her own arm around his waist. “If I have to go out into the snow, you’re coming with me.”
He laughed and then started to cough, and she had to work hard to keep him upright. He nodded at her before he had fully recovered, and they started to move towards the nearest exit.
“We need to try to get to the treeline.” They needed to be a safe distance before she could detonate the explosives. She opened the door, the freezing wind immediately stealing her breath. She could feel Derek leaning heavily against her. He was already shivering and she realized, with a slow, sinking sense of dread, that they would be lucky to get as far as the fence.
~ ~ ~
They had walked straight out into a blizzard. As they plunged knee-deep into the snow, the facility was lost from sight within seconds. With no way to communicate effectively, Derek had pointed to indicate a direction, and they had clasped hands in an effort to keep together. The snow flew into Sarah’s eyes and stung the small exposed patches of her face where her ski mask didn’t quite fit snugly enough. Beside her, Derek stumbled frequently but was managing to walk unaided.
She was counting, trying to gauge how far they had traveled and how far they still needed to go before she could safely detonate the charges. They had not gone far enough, nowhere near far enough. She tried to console herself with the fact that their exit had been on the same side as their original entrance, which meant they were heading for the same stretch of fence. She was under no illusions that they would be fortunate enough to find the hole they had cut, but at least they had a chance of ending up near the logging track.
Her legs burned with the effort of wading through the thick powder and a sharp little pain in her chest had started to make her cough. Derek trailed an arm’s length behind her; she stopped briefly to allow him to catch up. As soon as he did, he squeezed her hand and she moved on again. Neither of them wanted to stop. They were both well aware that, if they stopped, the temptation to lie down in the snow and close their eyes would be overwhelming.
~ ~ ~
The shrill beep and the insistent flash of light woke John up. Lying in bed, he peered at the ceiling, his brow furrowed with confusion as the pine logs were intermittently bathed with a wash of red. He threw the covers back and looked towards the desk, adrenaline shaking off the remnants of sleep as he saw that the glow was coming from the screen of the PDA.
“What the hell?”
The screen bore the outline of a building and two small dots. After thirty seconds, the image updated and the dots had moved away from the building slightly. He stared unblinking, not quite trusting his own eyes, but thirty seconds later the same thing happened and he ran from the room shouting for Cameron.
~ ~ ~
“The last time this device received any information, we were lured into a trap.” Cameron was watching the screen, her expression wary.
“I know that, but it could be them.”
“It could be anyone.”
He took hold of the device. “I think this is the main building, and this,” he traced a thin line some distance away from the dots, “I think this is the perimeter fence.” He took a breath but his hand shook anyway. “I think they’re running.”
She tilted her head to one side, measuring the scale and the progress of each update. “They’re not running,” she said. “At best, they are walking quite slowly.”
“You really think Kaliba would chip two of its own and send them out for a stroll in the middle of a night like this, on the off-chance that we might head out there?”
From the window over his shoulder, she could see the snow coming down hard. “It sounds unlikely,” she conceded. “I don’t think anyone would survive for very long on a night like this.” She heard his sharp intake of breath and realized, too late, that that had been precisely the wrong thing to say.
He set the PDA down on the table with utmost care, as if the slightest jolt would be enough to break the signal it was receiving. “Then we go and find them.” His hand came up to cut off any attempt she might have made to contradict him. “Blankets, first aid kit, whatever weapons we have. There’s a couple of Thermoses under the sink and there were chemical heating pads in the bathroom.”
“If they’re moving that slowly…”
“Then they’re probably injured. I know that.” He was already heading towards the bedroom door, but he hesitated and turned back to face her. “So we bring them back here and we fix them.”
She said nothing, and he left the room, cupboards banging as he started to collect supplies together. On the screen, the two dots moved again, their progress barely registering. John would go on his own if she didn’t go with him. She remembered her promise to Sarah and wondered whether, if she actually did manage to find them and fix them, Sarah would then attempt to dismantle her regardless.
~ ~ ~
The first time she heard it, Sarah dismissed it as part of the storm; a small popping sound, faint and quick to fade. Another ten paces, and this time she recognized it for what it was. Stopping sharply, she pulled Derek’s hand down. He followed her lead and crouched low. Twenty feet behind them, the snow to the left of their footprints was suddenly flung upwards as a bullet fell short of its target.
“Shit.” She pushed Derek on ahead of her, urging him forwards and pulling her own gun free. Unable to identify Jenkins’ location, she fired three optimistic shots off and then followed Derek. When she turned again, she saw a brief flash of light, bobbing as it moved. It was still a good distance away, but gaining ground far more quickly than she expected, and she realized then that Jenkins wasn’t on foot. More gunfire splattered into the powder. She ran as quickly as she could, catching up with Derek easily and fumbling in the side pocket of her bag.
His eyes widened when he saw the detonator in her hand and he shook his head once as another spray of bullets left pockmarks in the snow. In front of them loomed the silver mesh of the fence. Behind them, whatever Jenkins was driving wasn’t close enough for them to hear its engine or pick its shape out of the blizzard. From a collection of really shitty options, she took the only one in which they got to decide their own fate. When her thumb flicked up the protective cover on the detonator, Derek gave her a look that suggested he might have issues with her later, if they actually survived, but he managed a thin smile right before he dived as deeply into the snow as he could.
Sarah took a breath and hit the switch.
Even as she threw herself over Derek, she could hear the dull roar of the initial explosion. The noise grew exponentially. The ground beneath them began to rumble and shake as the chain reaction they had wired throughout the facility gathered momentum. She pushed down hard and felt him trying to do the same. Snow quickly covered them, giving them the illusion of protection, but as a huge fireball lit up the sky and the heat-wave expanded outwards she knew that would never be enough.
~ ~ ~
TBC…
~ ~ ~
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2010-03-10 09:14 pm (UTC)Another cliffhanger.
;)
(no subject)
Date: 2010-03-10 09:20 pm (UTC)I DON'T THINK YOU LIKE HUMAN BEINGS
(no subject)
Date: 2010-03-11 08:14 pm (UTC)But cos you guys have been so very awesome with the feedback (and because you just made me laugh tea out of my nose,) I'll stick part 6 up on Saturday for you.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-03-11 08:57 pm (UTC)And woot. WOOT WOOT WOOOOT!
...Sorry about the tea though. sadlol :D
(no subject)
Date: 2010-03-11 08:12 pm (UTC)Love the part about Cameron thoughts about either Sarah gonna dismantle her for letting Jonh`s go and help them, ore not. You Cameron definitely has sens of humor.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-03-11 08:18 pm (UTC)LOL. I had to let Sarah blow something up, I just had to.
Cam is a lot of fun to write. She's far more fun when she's not being all sneaky and sly... or seductive *shudders*.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-03-11 08:23 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-03-13 10:57 pm (UTC)Flippin' sweet to read the bad guys getting a serving of mass destruction with a side of mayhem.
This is what I've been waiting for!
Yee HAH!