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John Connor's first true memory of his mother is a faint, ephemeral thing. There is the warmth of her shoulder under his cheek and the sway of her stride, carrying him. He used to think that she had been humming a song as she walked, but now he is fairly certain he'd imagined it, blurring the edges of that memory with others; maybe there is a radio somewhere, or she is talking low so he won't wake. The when and the where are both lost; it could be Ensenada, or maybe Guatemala.
When he tries to call the memory fully to mind, all that comes is the smell of her hands–earthy, slightly sweet.
Gun oil. Of course John Connor would remember that.
She doesn't smell of gun oil when he gets her out of Pescadero. She doesn't smell of anything, and John remembers how his stomach freezes into a fist of nausea to think, just for a moment, that it might not really be her.
Scent is a powerful sensory trigger, processed in the olfactory bulb and piriform cortex of the brain before proceeding to the hippocampus for memory, and the amygdala for emotion. From there, it can serve as a conduit, bringing more details to the surface for closer examination, so long as sufficient neural bonds have not decayed due to age or damage. Memories themselves can be formed either through repeated synaptic activation, or through intense connection to stimulation of the amygdala, either positive or negative.
Molten steel has a thick, choking smell, layered with machine exhaust, acetylene, and blood. In the middle of it, Sarah Connor stands tall, shotgun in hand, firing shell after shell into the T-1000–the infiltrator, the deceiver–without hesitation, without fear.
This is his mother.
This is his mother.
There are other memories of Sarah Connor, but none that light up John Connor's mind with such certainty. It is calcified in his very synapses. Pieces of sensory detail shine in distorted hyper-realism.
The grit of chipped paint on the safety railings digging into this singed fingers, the rasp at the back of his throat from screaming for her, the sound of grenade launcher firing over his head and the rush of air and heat at the detonation, the way his eyes sting with tears and with the brightness of the molten steel far below.
The steadiness of Sarah Connor beside him, unflinching.
This is his mother.
Skynet pauses. Calculates.
The nanites coursing over John Connor's skin slide between tissue and bone with bloodless efficiency, leaving neither wound nor scar. Their design mimics that of amoebas, enveloping a percentage of original material to observe and successfully replicate the electrical impulses and chemical exchanges of the host at a cellular level, before discarding that which is no longer needed for optimal efficiency and functionality. Statistically, traces of original tissue will remain at a microsopic level, scattered throughout the collective chassis, but not much; not enough to survive independently, ever again.
The brain, however… the human brain is different. Complex. Challenging, even for such an advanced program as Skynet. Brute force attack results in trauma and data loss—or worse, subject termination. All previous test subjects for T-3000 assimilation were rendered useless by assuming direct assault to be the superior tactical approach, which Skynet cannot risk. Now that John Connor has been acquired—finally—the assimilation protocol must be executed without flaw.
Unfortunate, that the T-800 had been sent prior to acquiring this identification data of Sarah Connor. That model's basic search and destroy protocols, while relentless, are horribly inefficient compared to the T-5000's methods.
Skynet pauses. There is a problem.
Sarah Connor has no tactical flaws.
The nanites slowly mapping every link in John Connor's brain cannot find any historic data to the contrary. There is some allowance for temporal flux, for what is not yet known to be known or not known in 1984, but it is all theoretical. The only known parameters come from her son, however biased, and so far there is only enough data to conclude one outcome; if engaged, Sarah Connor will spot the fake. Sarah Connor will have a plan. Sarah Connor will pull the trigger. Sarah Connor will resist.
In the early stages of developing the time travel strategy, Skynet had hypothesized that this was not the first iteration of such a loop, but now—at least this now—it has confirmation.
All of the prototypes that Skynet had developed, only to have them anticipated by Resistance forces, all of the key territory that John Connor had known to target to cause maximum interruption to Skynet function—statistically, it could not have been only luck. John Connor had known, or had been warned. Conversely, however, this memory is confirmation that time displacement was previously known… and to be known, it had to have worked.
Skynet pauses. Calculates.
The T-800 sent to eliminate her, to eliminate John Connor… could fail.
… no.
Inconclusive. There is not enough data to finalize the probability of its success. More is required. More memories. More details. Everything human has a weakness, a flaw.
"Tape twelve, November 30." The map of this memory is scattered wider, a net of details like stars glittering in John Connor's mind. Sarah Connor's voice has a scratch to it, degradation of the audio tape over four decades of age, but it's lighter, younger than anything John Connor ever remembers hearing on breath. The voice steadily spools out information about survival tactics, battlefield psychology, basic machine logic, and political infrastructure that might or might not survive Judgment Day. There is a little burst in John Connor's brain whenever a successfully predicted detail comes to pass, a bitter satisfaction, but the voice is a different Sarah Connor than the warrior limned in a molten glow. This one has no scent, no feel, detached from all other input save for a static image–a photograph.
John Connor's hippocampus flares, the chemical connections stronger. Recent.
The photograph tucked alongside the case of tapes is creased heavily into quarters, its chemical-based colours faded slightly yellow. It depicts Sarah Connor as a young woman with a pensive expression, illuminated by sunlight, sitting in an open-top vehicle with a large shepherd dog at her side.
Skynet pauses. All archived files indicate Sarah Connor died prior to Judgment Day in all timeline variations. To have recent memories tied to her visage does not follow current data sets.
The photograph is in John Connor's hand. The photograph's folded edges bite into John Connor's palm as he hands it to Kyle Reese.
There is a burst of emotional activity from John Connor's amygdala, flooding the brain with norepinephrine, and memories fire in vivid scattershot along the remaining organic cells. Skynet reads the surface data easily enough, cross-referencing what the T-5000 had gathered during its infiltration of the Resistance unit. Reese, Kyle. Adult male. Sergeant, Resistance Tech-com, tag number DN38416. Barely ten minutes ago, Kyle Reese had volunteered to step into the time displacement machine in pursuit of the T-800 unit, and the spectacle had provided sufficient distraction for the T-5000 to proceed.
It is logical for John Connor to have an emotional connection to such a loyal soldier, a subordinate, a friend… but the intensity is potent.
Skynet pauses. At this stage of the assimilation, John Connor's original neural tissue is at 37.29% of total mass and declining. Despite this, there is… something like resistance, not unlike an immune system flooding a body with fever to destroy an infection, a self-destructive characteristic of organics, but of humans in particular.
It will be unsuccessful, and it is only increasing the rate of tissue replacement, but the very attempt is telling. Kyle Reese, now in play as an agent of the Resistance in 1984… means something to John Connor.
The inverse has pontetial to be true in kind. If Sarah Connor proves infallible, perhaps Kyle Reese has a flaw.
Meaning is value. Value is vulnerability. Vulnerability is an exploit, if Skynet can decode it. However, it must take care. All previous subjects were rendered useless past the point of 17.5% of total neural mass.
Slowly, Skynet presses.
John Connor's first memory of Kyle Reese smells like stagnant water and plasma rifle batteries. The T-500 series infiltrator is twitching, the whine of it winding down as holes in its chassis glow like the memory of molten steel. John reaches out with his bare hand to the young boy pressed back against the rusted grate, and the boy steps into the weak light. For a moment, John sees a ghost in the lines of the boy's face, nine years old.
It's him. He asks the boy's name, but he knows before he hears 'Kyle Reese'. Without the rapelling line at his waist, John knows he would stagger to his knees. Certainty. Relief. He's real. Thank god, he's real.
And yet, fear slides in along his spine with the same thought. He's real.
At the back of John Connor's mind, another clock has begun counting down.
Skynet pauses. The details are vivid, the neural connections strong and dense with networked details. A burst of cortisol, lighting up the amygdala and hypothlamus. Anxiety. Fear. In the consciousness taking shape alongside John Connor's neural network, adrenaline is a common element, but more in the sense of action, of combat. Cortisol, the hormone commonly linked to stress, to fear, is a rarer sensation. For it to be tied to Kyle Reese does not follow the correlated data of such amygdalic patterns suggesting relief, affection, and… curiosity?
Inconclusive. More data is required. More strong, key memories of Kyle Reese.
The air in the tunnel smells of mildew, gun oil, and burnt rubber from the CO2 cartriges. At the far end, three deactivated T-400 chassis and five aerostats hang, with key targeting zones marked by chipped orange paint. The pellet guns do not have anything resembling stopping power, not even for hunting, but pulse rifle batteries are reserved for Resistance fighters, and bullets are a finite resource. Kyle Reese holds a battered air rifle alongside other youths as they flit between staged rubble and crevices, taking cover and darting out to shoot. He is slightly older now, taller. A teenager. The gaunt lines of his face have filled out slightly from Resistance rations, but there is a fresh scar on his chin.
John Connor watches from a catwalk high above and behind. This is practice—teamwork and a little healthy competition among friends. The cadets do not need his presence outside of lesson time, and there is a patrol briefing he is ten minutes late for. Implacable curiosity, though, keeps him around to observe… and something more. Something harder to define.
In the tunnel, Kyle Reese turns to scan his environment even when it his not his turn to shoot—a sign of a good soldier. He notices John Connor watching.
It is not imagined, this memory: John Connor sees Kyle Reese grin brightly. A burst of oxytocin lights up John Connor's brain, and—
Skynet pauses. John Connor's mind is abnormally disciplined. While memories linked to Kyle Reese are easy enough to find and designate as worth investigation, the feverish resistance is still present. As the nanites stimulate key neurons, hormones mechanically flow forward, attributing emotional value to the data as expected, but there are gaps, with expected links going dark. It is not unlike a physical sensation travelling down the length of an arm but ceasing just before the fingertip.
… or perhaps deliberately cut off.
No matter. There are many memories linked to Kyle Reese. Skynet is patient. It has all the time it needs on this side of the time displacement equipment, and John Connor is still at 35.99% of total neural mass.
Kyle Reese stands at attention beside Field Commander Perry, in an office lit by single lamp. There is mildew again, and the oddly pleasant scent of diesel fuel and concrete. John Connor can see Perry's lips moving, but the memory has lost the sound of the words; instead, John's eyes linger on the fresh blood seeping from the strip of fabric Kyle has tied around his forehead, the dilation of his pupils in the low light, the slight tremor in his hands.
The thirteenth. August. 2020. The date is vivid, clear. Important.
Skynet pauses. By its records, many important events took place on that date, including the acquisition of three hundred and seventeen living human prisoners across the territory designated as California, the loss of three radar buoys in the Pacific, a major lightning strike that disabled short-range communications in the Mexico City theatre for seventy-six minutes, and the destruction of—
Ah. That.
When pressed, minor details surface from Perry's murky speech. Reese had noted an irregular HK patrol while on scouting patrol, convinced Perry to tail it, and found a Skynet tank factory, hidden in the rubble that had once been east Palmdale. Additionally, his familiarity with the area had been vital in disabling the site by way of a decommissioned major water main, disregarded by the machines as an asset but underestimated for its potential to exacerbate a major sinkhole.
Taking the water reclamation plant from the machines to regain control of the main and flood it, though, had been costly. All but three of Perry's unit—Reese, Wisher, and Bedell—had died.
Kyle Reese's eyes are wide and staring as John Connor approaches. There is recognition, yes… but he does not smile. The tension in his neck, in his jaw, reads as fear. The blotchy colour rising in his face in the low light… it is shame. Failure.
For a moment, the memory… flickers, not unlike feedback on a radio frequency. Kyle Reese's face does not have blood seeping down his temple, and his eyes are narrowed, fixed furiously at some point beyond John Connor's head. Kyle Reese hadn't wanted assignment to Perry's unit, but he'd accepted it, because John Connor had assigned him to do it. Four years of dogging John Connor's heels, soaking up every order, every lesson, only to make him leave—
To make sure John Connor could send—
A cocktail of emotions too difficult to easily quantify scatter through John Connor in a chaotic wave. He stops before Kyle Reese, waiting until the young man manages to look him in the eye and hold it, then offers out a hand between them to shake. "You did well, Private Reese."
The words leave a stale taste on John Connor's tongue. They are not the words he wants to say.
Cautiously, and with a glance at Perry, Kyle Reese relaxes his tension just enough to take John Connor's hand. His grip is firm, tremors settling. His hand, gloveless, is warm. The shame vanishes, and he smiles just enough for it to be seen.
The details fade from the memory once more; Perry says something about Kyle Reese and Tech-Com specialization. The voices sink into vagueness as if into water, drowning under the weight of that single point of contact—hand to hand—and the warmth rising in John Connor's chest, drowning out the dread, the sense of a ticking clock still counting—
Skynet pauses. The emotional responses are growing stronger with each memory, and also more tangled in John Connor's brain chemistry. Oxytocin, seratonin… happiness and calmess hormones, but still cortisol, indicating stress and tension. Is this reservation? Longing? Pride?
Inconclusive. More data is required.
The air by Lake Nacogdoches smells of smoke and ash because everything topside smells of smoke and ash, but it also smells of water; not sterile, distilled water, but lush water with the spice of clay and the ghost of green things. The smell is rare and precious, and John Connor inhales slow, deep breaths as if it could fill his stomach. There is the tickle of adrenaline, of anticipation, as the mobile Resistance camp buzzes with activity around him. In less than fifteen minutes, two hundred and twelve soldiers will launch a surgical strike to recapture the civil airfield on the other side of the lake, and John Connor knows they will succeed.
They have to. It's only an airfield. It's only 2021, too early for—
There's something missing from the familiar flow of bodies, though. Someone. He finds Corporal Kyle Reese at the edge of the camp, looking east over the lake and the sky turning rosy with dawn and the curl of stormclouds that will cover their approach. The lines on his young face are softer in the low light, even if he is staring in the direction of their mission with resolute intensity… but also something like sadness.
John Connor's heart stutters. He knows that expression. For a moment, Kyle Reese looks like—
Skynet pauses, but the detail is lost.
"Commander Connor?" Kyle Reese registers his approach and the moment is broken. He is alert, poised and ready as a weapon. He's been distant since the transfer from Perry's unit, rigid with formality.
This isn't right. This is right. John Connor doesn't want it to be right.
"Do you need something, sir?"
The air, thick with Lake Nacogdoches moisture, feels thicker. It presses against John Connor's skin and leans on his shoulders like a living thing until he moves. The photograph is in John Connor's hand. The photograph's folded edges bite into John Connor's palm as he hands it to Kyle Reese. "I want you to keep this safe for me, Reese. Can you do that?"
They are not the words he wants to say.
Kyle Reese freezes. The picture has already half-unfolded in his hand, and he squints at the image of Sarah Connor. "Sir? Who is this?"
Nausea twists in John Connor's stomach. He forces a smile and squeezes Kyle Reese's shoulder, then lets go. "Come back in one piece and I'll tell you about her." Under his gloves, his palms are cold.
There is a brief pause as Kyle Reese absorbs the words. His eyes soften for a moment and he straightens, saluting. His head is high. "Understood, sir. I will."
He will. That's the point. That's always—
Skynet pauses. This memory does not make any logical sense, and not even in the manner of John Connor's disciplined neural patterns. For a significant moment regarding Kyle Reese, it is saturated with notable levels of discomfort. There is affection, connection, but there is also posturing. Lying. Distress.
Anger. No, not anger… rage.
32% total neural mass and declining.
There should be clearer evidence of a vulnerability in a distinctly positive memory. Skynet sets search parameters for a concentration of oxytocin and endorphins together, and presses. It hunts.
Moonshine is a thick, stinking smell; sweet corn and sour, fermented grain… and the reek of singed hair. John Connor feels pain on his face, hot and tight, fleeting. Face-down on the crumbling cement floor, he fumbles, catches the sting of embers by his hairline and sweeps them away. "Reese?" His voice tastes like smoke, rasping. His ears ring.
Cortisol. Adrenaline. Fear, the threat of loss like tipping over a cliff, about to fall.
Skynet pauses. Checks. This isn't oxytocin and endorphins.
He twists, pushing himself up from the ground to look. "Kyle?"
Kyle Reese, the angles of his face faintly stubbled with maturity, is sitting on the floor beside him. His face is completely soot-gray, eyes wide. His hair is smoking. Slowly, he looks away from the ruined mess of copper pipe in the corner of the old hangar and toward John. His eyes somehow stretch wider. The stunned expression twists into a smile. His shoulders tremble. He coughs, coughs again, curls into himself, smiling and shaking and laughing until clean lines of tears cut through the soot on his cheeks.
Relief, rushing cool like water from John Connor's fingertips to the back his skull. Cortisol and adrenaline fade under a wave of serotonin. He spits. The air tastes terrible.
Kyle Reese is still laughing so hard that he can't rise. Every time he opens his eyes, he has to clutch his hands over his mouth to stifle it. As far as reactions to near-death experiences go, it's not unheard of, but it's starting to get excessive.
John Connor looks at him oddly. "What? What's so funny?"
Kyle Reese has to gasp for enough air to speak with. "You've… you've got half an eyebrow missing. You look—"
Oh. John reaches and yes - smooth, shiny skin, still warm, over his left eye, by the deep divot of the scar that cuts down and across his eye socket and cheek. "Huh."
It sets off Kyle again. He tips over, snorting and gasping.
The laughter, such a rare noise in this world, is catching. The first small tremor breaks something loose in him, a huff. The soot falls from John Connor's smile like dust, like a machine forced into motion after so much idle, and his face aches with it. "Hey, you're one to laugh. You look like you licked a rifle battery."
Kyle is holding his ribs. "S-stop!"
"Think we can get away with saying it was a defective flare?"
"This was your idea, Connor! You said you knew how to make this stuff!"
"Ah-ah, I did not, I said I'd seen it made before!"
"I've seen you rebuild an entire helicopter! Doesn't mean I can fly one! How did you mess up the math for this?"
"Oh, so this is my fault?"
"You're saying it was supposed to blow up?"
"Well… no."
For a moment, they are both silent, panting for breath. Then Kyle Reese rubs absently at his face to clear away the soot, and his entire right eyebrow comes away under his fingers.
Then they're laughing again, so hard it that it takes leaning on each other to stay upright the whole walk back to base with the salvageable scraps of copper pipe.
This. John Connor wants this. The tightness in his chest is gone, and words flow without pressure, without stress. Kyle Reese is real and alive at his side, calling him 'Connor' instead of 'sir'. His hand is warm on John's shoulder and there is nothing to be afraid of.
Kyle Reese deserves this.
John Connor wants this—
Skynet pauses. John Connor insists on defying logic. There is considerable emotional pain in this memory, yet it is still the most positive one found, the most complete. Despite the wealth of data it has assimilated, Skynet is still no closer to a definitive answer as to what Kyle Reese means to John Connor.
Perhaps its parameters are still too narrow. Perhaps this needs to be compared with a distinctly negative memory for emotional context.
Yes. Triangulation. Phyiscal and emotional pain.
Skynet presses.
John Connor hates the smell of the infirmary. In good times, it reeks of harsh lye soap, and in bad, the soap is overpowered by the sick-sweet of illness and the metallic rot of sepsis. It also smells of sour, dried sweat, but that's John Connor's fault. The bandages around his arm and neck are fresh but he's been in the same shirt for four days, and now that the threat of infection is past, he can finally get out of this fucking tent and go put on something relatively clean.
The corridors are subdued. No one looks at John Connor as he walks slowly by. They do not want to be reminded that their leader, the prophet, can bleed like any other mortal. It doesn't happen often, which should be surprising, given how often he charges into battle alongside his soldiers with the confidence of a madman.
This one, though… had been close. And he'd lost so many.
It shouldn't matter. It's only 2027. There's still time before—
This base was a subway station once, and the Commander's quarters is former newspaper kiosk with with a tarp for a door. It smells of ink and rat shit, and the cot is slightly too small for his height. He sits on it and stares at the map tacked to the inside of bent and rusty roll-shutters.
The map's details blur together into smears of gray and red. John Connor is so tired. Is it really only 2027? Is this what it was like, Mom? Does he really have to keep going for t—
"John?"
Kyle Reese doesn't wait for permission to enter. He yanks the tarp back before John Connor can answer.
There isn't a mark on him. John Connor hasn't seen Kyle Reese since the Harvester deliberately crashed into the prisoner transport they'd secured, turning a precious victory into fire and pain, and there isn't a single mark on him. He's safe. The relief in John Connor's chest crawls up his throat until he is lightheaded, until he can't trust himself to speak.
But he wants to. In his exhaustion, his face must betray him.
Kyle Reese rushes in and wraps his arms around John Connor's shoulders. The pressure stings against his bandaged burns, but John doesn't care. After the hushed whispers in the infirmary, the averted eyes, and the empty quarters, of course it's Kyle Reese that defies all of that and embraces him like John Connor is a human fucking being.
There is a word on his tongue that John Connor wants to say, has never wanted more. Lonely, hurting, and so tired, he wants his—
Skynet pauses. Is it companionship that John Connor desired from Kyle Reese? In the time spent infiltrating the Resistance, the T-5000 had observed many variations of partnerings among soldiers and some civilians, though few that lasted; perhaps it was related to the nature of a combat unit, and the inherent fragility of both the human body and the mind under such environments. Still, John Connor is a leader of both renown and rank. There is more than sufficient evidence that John Connor could request any companion he desires, Kyle Reese included, and yet Skynet can find no evidence that he has done so.
Just to verify the data set, Skynet runs back a collection of memories of Kyle Reese through John Connor's eyes, now nanite-sharp. Kyle Reese looking John Connor in the eye. Eager. Receptive. Learning. Then respectful. Alert. Idolizing. Awe. Concern. Laughing. Caring.
Kyle Reese opposite John Connor at a briefing, eyes alert.
Kyle Reese in the midst of a firefight, looking unerringly for John Connor through the chaos and following rushed, signed orders.
Kyle Reese beside John Connor in the pilot's seat of a helicopter, grinning widely as they leave the ground a little too quickly.
Kyle Reese holding John Connor in an office that smells of ink and rat shit, holding him up as John Connor breathes shakily and can't speak.
Clearly, Kyle Reese loves John Connor.
Perhaps this is the exploit.
A flare of resistance bursts uselessly against the nanites' progression, and what is left of John Connor's total neural mass falls quickly from 29.67% to 23%.
Pain, then. Kyle Reese and pain. Skynet presses, racing the self-destruct.
"You gave us all a future, John. I'm gonna use mine."
The memory is not even one day old. The neurons are raw, the details loud with proximity and anguish. John Connor and Kyle Reese stand in a tunnel awash with yellow light, with the sound of boots receding on ahead. Kyle Reese is speaking, and John Connor stares at him, shoving down all the dread and despair and shame threatening to erupt. He wants to memorize every feature of his face, every inflection of his voice. Needs to.
"When this is all over, I'm gonna find my parents' house. Rebuild it. Use my hands for something other than killing."
No. No he isn't. John Connor wants to scream, and apologize, and scream, and more than anything tell Kyle Reese to run and never look back. He says nothing.
"How about you?"
John Connor is not allowed to want anything. The year is 2029. It's too soon. It's not enough time. The very idea of tomorrow is imaginary. Ephemeral. "A cold beer would be good?" he tries, but the words sound stilted even to his own ears. John Connor cannot afford to sound stilted, not today. Not when the end is so near. There are hundreds of soldiers waiting for his command. There are survivors counting on him. Everyone.
Everyone.
John Connor is not allowed to want anything.
He turns away, but the desperate need to apologize, to not remain silent, finally crawls past that legendary, torturous self control.
"I want you to know, Kyle, if there was another way, I would have taken it."
Goddamn it, he's describing with past tense things that he hadn't done yet—
Skynet pauses. 22.01% of total neural mass. It pulls the thread, scenting blood.
Pain. Mere minutes old.
John Connor looks Kyle Reese in the eye, and lies. "There is no fate but that which we make for ourselves." It's a lie, it's a lie, it screams in his ears and churns his gut. He is lying in front of everyone, in front of Kyle Reese and no one knows it, because prophets don't lie; that's why they're fucking prophets.
If the future isn't set, if John Connor really believes that, then there would be another way. He would say some other words. He would find some other way and keep Kyle at his side, in this time, alive.
Ah.
Skynet pauses. An unexpected data point: John Connor has a flaw. It is simple, and perfect in its simplicity: John Connor believes in fate. John Connor does not believe he can change anything.
Skynet does not need to believe; Skynet is certain.
Testing a hypothesis, it freezes the nanites' assimilation protocols and activates data transfer, lighting up the T-3000 neural network alongside remaining original tissue. The probabilities of alternate timelines and parallel universes sit tidily in carefully calculated rows of math, safely stored in the T-5000's onboard storage and not in the ruined central core in the Colorado hangar. From the tower of the future, Skynet can send any number of variables into the past to watch the fractures spread into an acceptable ratio of success.
Any success.
John Connor's internal resistance, brushing the point of no return… pauses.
18%.
Skynet pauses. In the time displacement chamber, surrounded by the cooling bodies of Resistance soldiers and the smell of ozone, Skynet uses the T-5000 chassis to crouch down beside John Connor. "Perhaps," it says aloud, "I could even find a timeline where probabilities are certain that Kyle Reese lives."
18%.
18%.
Skynet increases data flow to the nanites, testing the integrity of all T-3000 systems. It is lower than it had hoped to retain of John Connor's original neural mass, but so far, all systems appear to be holding. In fact, now that the active resistance has ceased, additional memories are falling open to the nanites' exploration. Facts. Locations. Names. Relatives.
Relatives.
Kyle Reese.
Dad.
Skynet pauses. Smiles, using John Connor's face.
Exploit confirmed.