Terminator in Brockton Bay

[AntonioCC]

Chapter 1

Brockton Bay General Hospital

Taylor Hebert's room

January 7th, 2011

23:11
​

'Taylor looks so frail.' Danny Hebert thought, looking at his daughter being near-comatose in the bed of the hospital.

He didn't know yet how wrong he was.

Brockton Bay

A lonely alley, not far from the Boardwalk
​

Suddenly a bit of wind carried some papers around, and some sparks jumped between metallic surfaces. The sparks intensified until a ball of plasma appeared and disappeared, depositing a naked muscular man on the street, kneeling on one knee.

He stood up and slowly looked around, as if recognizing landmarks. Apparently satisfied, he started to walk purposefully. His HUD showed two main directives:

Terminate Taylor Hebert

Avoid conflict with parahumans, if possible.

His mission parameters also included a nearby place where to resupply. Soon, he stood at the door of a seemingly abandoned shop. The door was seemingly weak, but an analysis showed that it was actually quite strong, and probably a cover for a security door inside.

So he didn't give the guards the benefit of waiting, he kicked the door open, and opened the security door with the code in his memory banks. The guards had barely started to react when they were surprised by the man who quickly broke their necks and used the spare clothes and equipped himself from their arsenal.

The snake insignia would invite questions. He removed it.

Location of Taylor Hebert: Brockton Bay General Hospital.

He started to walk.

Another alley
​

Another plasma sphere opened and closed two feet over the ground on the alley, leaving another man. This one was also naked, but not that well built, wiry, and full of scars. He looked around quickly and nervously, and hid himself behind a dumpster, but nobody seemed to have observed his arrival. Even the local homeless seemed to be asleep.

"Come on…" he said to himself, as he walked around toward one of the homeless men.

After checking he was roughly his size, he stole his clothes. The man stirred as he worked; he put him back down and left him unconscious.

He then looked for an older car, his old man hadn't been much but had taught him how to open and hotwire a car without the alarm going off. HKs and T-600 converged on alarms like you wouldn't believe.

Once he had the car, he closed his eyes and tried to remember where to go now. The hospital. Taylor. He had to protect Taylor. Whatever the cost.

He searched the car, and found a sawed-off shotgun. Something with stopping power at least. He idly wondered who the car belonged to.

He knew that trying to run toward the hospital would only attract the attention of the cops, so he drove carefully toward it, but trying to reach it before the Terminator could. He could have warned the PRT. But no one knew when Skynet had gone online, the bastard had ensured that its creator had also been its first victim.

Brockton Bay Hospital

Taylor Hebert Room
​

Danny Hebert rubbed his eyes, and sat in the armchair. He would stay here, in his vigil until his daughter recovered. She was starting to show signs of being better, her eyes tracked and responded to sounds, but other than that she seemed to be still near catatonic.

Suddenly he was pulled from his thoughts by a commotion in the corridor. He got up, and went to the door. When he looked he saw a tall, well built man dressed in tactical clothes, and wearing dark sunglasses walking purposefully down the corridor. A smaller man in a ratty trenchcoat was standing in front of the other man.

Suddenly, there was a sawed off shotgun in his hand, and he shot the bigger man with it three times and then ran towards him.

But before he could say anything he saw the bigger man starting to get up, despite the wounds. As the other man grabbed him and barricaded himself in the room with his daughter, he could only think that the big man was some kind of cape.

"What the…" Danny said, staring at the man with the shotgun.

"Mister Hebert?" he asked politely, but not lowering the shotgun.

"Who are you? What do you want with my daughter?"

The man spotted a wheelchair and pulled it over.

"I want to save her from that thing. Help me put her here."

"No, Taylor stays. Security and the PRT will deal…" Danny started to say before the door started to shake violently, which elicited a moan from Taylor. It was clear that it wasn't going to resist long.

"You said?"

Wordlessly, Danny helped the man to put Taylor on the wheelchair and then, while the door kept shaking violently, the man opened a side door.

"Fortunately, it's not good at lateral thinking." he said, and they both ran through the side corridor.

"I don't understand." Danny said as they ran through the corridor and the other man or whatever it was finally broke through the door, and started to chase them.

"That thing and I both come from the future. A bad one. Skynet, an AI created by some Tinker, took over after Scion went nuts…"

"Fuck." Danny said, "How is that possible?"

"We don't know. The thing is that Taylor became the leader of the Resistance against Skynet." he explained, "I'm Alex, by the way."

Danny had a thousand questions, but survival instinct told him that it was better for later. If there was a later. They finally arrived at a lift, and called it. They could see that the man chasing them had stopped and was taking aim.

Alex pushed Taylor out of the line of fire just as the man shot, taking the shot just as the lift opened. They descended in silence.

"Let me see." Danny said, "I was a Navy corpsman, I know something about wounds."

With reluctance, Alex opened the coat showing the place of the wound. Abdomen.

"That wound…"

"I know, a couple hours at most." Alex said

"We are in a hospital, and Panacea could still be around"

"And a killer robot is still after your daughter. No, I knew that the voyage was one way from the beginning." Alex said, shaking his head.

"A killer robot…God,..this feels like a bad movie."

"Yeah, I know, believe me. I was a kid when everything went to Hell." Alex replied, "But we don't have time for this."

He pressed the stop button, just as the lift was on the first floor.

"Come on." he said, "I think I saw loading bays on the first floor when I was parking."

TO BE CONTINUED...

 

[Lord of the First Flame]

I have no proof but I know Cauldron is involved in this.

 

[ATP]

I have no proof but I know Cauldron is involved in this.

Click to shrink...

plausible explanation.

 

[AntonioCC]

I have no proof but I know Cauldron is involved in this.

Click to shrink...

plausible explanation.

Click to shrink...

It could be. It could be also Leet. It could be also an original tinker without relation to Cauldron.

 

[AntonioCC]

Chapter 2

Brockton Bay General Hospital
​

The Terminator had already deduced that its objective wasn't going to stop on the ground floor. Ignoring the security guards trying to stop him, and the chaos his presence was causing, he proceeded toward the stairs, to start a methodical search.

Then one of the security guards shot the Terminator. Insufficient to impair function.

The Terminator shot the guard without looking, killing him, and then going for the other guards.

Once he had finished he started his search. He would start for the first floor, where the lift had stopped.

Unknown to him, the PRT had been warned and Armsmaster and Miss Militia were en route.

First Floor
​

They soon located a loading bay, where they could exit the hospital.

"My truck is parked nearby." Danny said.

"And probably in that thing's files." Alex said, "I can hotwire a car. But, we can't go to your home…"

"Because it will also be in his files, and our friends too." Danny replied and started to think, "We could go to the PRT."

"Bad idea. One of the first things that Skynet did when it awakened was to compromise the PRT systems." Alex explained, "And the Resistance never knew when it did awaken."

"But that's for the future, and we can get their protection…"

"Skynet can't know the future role of Taylor." Alex said, "At all."

"Very well, I think I know the place where we can go…" Danny said

"Where?"

"The Navy had a group of warehouses in the Harbor. They closed them, and tried to sell them, but then came the strike." Danny explained, "The keys are in the possession of the Dockworkers Association, unofficially."

"How far?" Alex asked, already kneeling beside a car to open it. He suppressed a sharp breath from the pain as he worked.

"It's in the Docks. The Dockworkers Association first, to get the keys." Danny said.

"Don't you have copies?" Alex asked, as he opened the car and started to help Danny to move Taylor onto the backseats.

"No, there are few people even in the DWA that know of the keys. A simple set, kept on the HQ." Danny explained, as he covered Taylor with his coat and tied her with the seatbelt. She moved a bit, but didn't wake up yet.

"All right." Alex said.

Danny turned to Alex.

"Let me at least bandage that wound. The car has a first aid kit." he said as he looked for the kit.

"Okay, but be quick." he said.

Danny did what he could, which was disinfect and apply pressure and bandages to the wound.

They looked at each other for a moment, and Danny nodded, going to the driving seat of the car.

Brockton Bay General Hospital
​

The Terminator paused his search to observe the arrival of two bikes through the window. One was a custom vehicle driven by a thirty-something bearded Caucasian male in power armor, and the other was a high powered, but standard bike, driven by a middle Eastern woman in military fatigues with a bandanna covering her face. His HUD identified them as the parahumans Colin Wallis A.K.A. Armsmaster and Hannah Madison A.K.A. Miss Militia.

Probability of Taylor Hebert continued presence in the building: 3.7%

Probability of altercation with parahumans: 94.5%

He stopped searching and waited until both parahumans had entered the building. Then he jumped out of the window, and stole Miss Militia's bike. His direction, the Hebert home.

PRT HQ
​

It was not one of Emily Piggot's better nights. Night calls tended to range from bad to catastrophic, with some stops into the genuinely apocalyptic.

"Run that by me again." she said.

"The perpetrator sustained three close range shotgun blasts to the chest and upper abdomen." Armsmaster's voice was precise, clipped, and carried the particular tension of a man who did not like reporting things he couldn't explain. "He then proceeded to neutralize six armed security personnel, exited through a fourth floor window, and departed on Miss Militia's motorcycle."

Piggot was quiet for a moment.

"He stole Miss Militia's bike."

"Yes Director."

"Not the point, I'm aware." she said, "casualties?"

"Four security personnel dead. Two in critical condition. The perpetrator sustained damage that should have been incapacitating by any conventional metric and showed no functional impairment whatsoever."

"Brute?"

"Unknown. His movement patterns don't match any parahuman in our database. That's actually why I've looped in Dragon."

Dragon's voice joined the call, characteristically measured, though Piggot had worked with her long enough to catch something underneath it. A careful quality. The particular tone Dragon used when she was working at the edge of her own certainty.

"Director Piggot. I've been reviewing the hospital security footage."

"And?"

A pause. From Dragon, that pause was its own kind of answer.

"The entity's damage tolerance, locomotive efficiency, and threat response patterns are unlike anything in the parahuman database. His movements are too economical. Too consistent. A human combatant under adrenaline shows variance. This one showed none, across the entire engagement."

"So what are you telling me?"

"I'm telling you what it isn't." Dragon said, "I'm still working on what it is."

Piggot absorbed that. Dragon telling her what something wasn't at one in the morning while four people were dead was not, strictly speaking, a good sign.

"What about the other one? The smaller man with the shotgun."

"That's where it gets interesting." Armsmaster said, which from him meant that's where it gets worse. "Witness accounts and footage suggest he wasn't attacking the larger individual. He was attempting to slow him down. The target appears to have been a patient — a teenage girl, Taylor Hebert, fifteen, admitted four days ago following a trauma incident at Winslow High School. She was removed from her room in a wheelchair by the smaller man and her father, Daniel Hebert, during the chaos."

"So we have an unidentified entity that eats shotgun blasts for breakfast, an unidentified man who apparently knew it was coming, and a missing fifteen year old girl in a hospital gown." Piggot said, "In January."

"That is an accurate summary, yes."

"Find them." she said, "All three. The entity first, the girl and her father second. And Colin…"

"Director?"

"Get Hannah a new bike."

TO BE CONTINUED

 

[ATP]

Yes,they should not trust PRT with anytching.Maybe gangs or scion would deal with it for them....

 

[AntonioCC]

As a note, I have changed the date to January 7.

 

[AntonioCC]

Chapter 3



Hebert Residency
​

The Terminator stopped before the house and saw that nobody was home. Nonetheless, he went inside, went up the stairs (and broke the rotten step), forced the door open and started to look around.

By the time it had finished, he had a complete map of the routines of the Heberts. He then went back to the bike and departed, just in time to be missed by the first PRT agents that arrived to check.

It didn't matter anyway, he had his next objective: the Dockworkers' Association.

En route to the DWA HQ
​

The drive happened in silence, broken only when Danny asked.

"How is she? Taylor, I mean. In the future."

"Driven." Alex answered instantly, "She keeps everybody at arms length, even her closest lieutenants."

Silence followed for a moment.

"Does she talk about… Brockton Bay? About what happened?" Danny finally asked.

"Barely. Until tonight, I didn't know about the circumstances behind…" he caught himself, which didn't pass unnoticed by Danny.

"Behind what? The locker?"

"The locker was only part of that." Alex said, as they arrived at the DWA HQ. 'Behind her trigger event.' he completed in his mind

"Part of what?"

"That's something that Taylor should tell you herself." Alex said, "Right now we don't have the time."

"Alright." Danny said, getting out of the car and going to the DWA HQ.

Alex used the time to check the bandages. Not good. They were already soaked with blood, and the pain was bad. He checked the first aid kit and took a couple of Ibuprofen pills, hoping that it would help, while he checked the street.

Nothing, only far away engines. For a moment his mind slipped back to the War, part of an unit, trying to fight HKs with assault rifles and grenade launchers. Surviving parahumans were few and far between, being premier objectives of Skynet troops. Only when plasma weapons started to be available in numbers did they start to have an opportunity.

"Who… who are you?" the trembling, but hauntingly familiar voice interrupted his memories. Taylor had awakened.

"I'm… Alex, a friend of your father." Alex said, knowing that he didn't cut a very trustworthy figure.

"I don't know you." Taylor said, and Alex couldn't help hearing a small echo of the future leader in that voice.

"You can ask your father." Alex said, after a pause, seeing Danny coming back.

Danny opened the door and sat down, warehouse keys in his hands.

"Dad, what happened?" Taylor said.

"Later, Taylor, when we're in a safe place." Danny said, turning on the car.

"Dad, I…" she started to say, whatever she was going to say, interrupted by the car moving.

The lights had just disappeared when the Terminator arrived. His eyes immediately focused on the IR band, seeing a series of steps going to and from the union hall, toward a set of still warm tire tracks.

He followed them to the main street, where they merged with traffic, but he already had a way to track them. He followed the street and started to methodically check the side streets for tire tracks.

On their way to the old Navy warehouses
​

"You are bleeding." Taylor said to Alex.

"Yes, I know." Alex replied, "Your father bandaged me."

"But…" she started to say, but she was interrupted by the arrival at a fence that had seen better days.

"We're here." Danny said, and he got out in a moment to open the fence.

"Where is here, dad?"

"A few abandoned warehouses. We should be safer, at least." Danny said as he came back.

"Safer from what?" Taylor asked, as her father drove the car closer to the warehouses.

"Alex?" Danny said.

"A Terminator series 800. While not a great threat to most capes in 1 to 1 combat, it's a great infiltrator and assassin. It's also relentless." Alex said with a grimace, shifting in his seat.

"A what?" Taylor said.

"A Terminator. A killer robot sent from the future to kill you." Alex said, matter-of-factly.

"But, but, why? I'm just a girl." Taylor said

"You are more than just a girl, Taylor." Alex said, "Skynet, the AI that launched a war against humanity, feared you enough to do this insane plan."

"You are from the future, too, then?" Taylor said, clearly skeptical, with her arms crossed.

"Yes, sent to protect you. Your future self said that you would be difficult to convince. So she told me these words. Emma. Tenth birthday. Chocolate pudding."

Taylor blushed, clearly remembering the occasion.

"Oh? Something to do with a dress that mysteriously disappeared that day, Taylor?" Danny said, amused.

"Eeep…" Taylor said, embarrassed.

A side street.
​

He had found the tracks. It seemed to go into the direction of the Harbor.

He followed the tracks, closing the distance, until he arrived at a section of the harbor that looked abandoned.

Changing to thermal imaging, he could see three figures entering one of the warehouses. He would get closer and terminate them before they could react.

That's when a nearby, hidden dog started to bark.

Warehouse

"What's that?" Alex said, lying on the backseat of the car.

"Just a dog." Danny said.

"We used dogs to detect T-800s, they can smell the machine." Alex said, trying to force himself upright.

Taylor looked anguished, as if she was doubting herself, until she finally took a decision.
"Dad, I…I have powers now." Taylor said, "I can control bugs."

"What?" Danny said, "But how?"

"When this is done, look for trigger events in relation to parahumans." Alex said."Taylor, are you summoning a swarm?"

"Yes…But I don't know what good are going to be bugs against…that."

"Scouting, blinding, and the bigger insects can carry things." Alex said, looking meaningfully at Danny and the boxes in the warehouse.

"How do you…?" Danny asked

"Please, I'm not an idiot. I can recognize military storage boxes even in the dark." Alex said, with a grimace pretending to be a smile.

"We stored part of a stash of weapons here that we 'liberated' from Marquis' men after his capture." Danny said.

Taylor sat very still, directing her swarm, while Danny opened a couple boxes.

"M-14s with ammunition, an M79 grenade launcher and several grenades." Danny said.

"The Terminator is approaching the fence." Taylor said.

TO BE CONTINUED…

 

[ATP]

M14 would not help,but M79...maybe....

 

[AntonioCC]

M14 would not help,but M79...maybe....

Click to shrink...

Well, look at the next chapter.

 

[AntonioCC]

Chapter 4



Old Navy Warehouses
​

Several things happened at the same time.

A swarm of insects attacked the Terminator, going for the eyes, the ears, the mouth, every possible orifice. Knowing that it was a machine helped Taylor to push past her qualms.

Danny loaded the M79 with the help of Alex.

"Try to hit it in the center of mass." Alex said, "It'll probably survive, but you'll knock it down and buy us time."

"And then?"

"I'll go for the head." He said, holding the shotgun.

"You can barely walk."

"I know, but it has to be me." Alex replied.

And they had no more time, as, despite the swarm attacking him, the Terminator had reached the fence and was ripping it.

Danny shot, the explosion knocking down the machine, revealing the endoskeleton.

As quickly as he could, Danny gunned the car and trapped the Terminator under it, allowing Alex to get close enough to aim into the exposed Cranial Processing Unit.

"See you in hell, metal bastard." Alex said, as he shot twice.

The Terminator's red eyes fixed for a moment in Alex. But they didn't dim out, the machine starting to lift the car.

And then the swarm came again.

This time wasn't like before, the endoskeleton was exposed and the joints were jammed in seconds, the circuitry was accessible and shortcircuitable, and finally, some of her bugs managed to access the well armored CPU, allowing her to disable it.

Taylor felt it all through her swarm, how it went more and more rigid, how the circuitry lost power. It was nothing like killing. She wasn't sure what it was.

Finally the lights on the eyes that had been fixed on Alex all the time dimmed out.

"It's done." he said, letting the shotgun fall, followed by his knees failing him.

Both Danny and Taylor ran towards him, Danny kneeling and cradling him.

"Listen…I don't have much time…Scion will go nuts roughly in three years." Alex explained, "It'll be a big event… he'll be seemingly provoked by Dragon…" he grimaced, "We learned later that Dragon had died… and had been replaced by Skynet in the interim."

"There is something…you, the future you…" he coughed blood, before continuing with a thready voice, "There is no fate… but what we make for ourselves… the future is not written…"

"There is no fate, but what we make for ourselves." Taylor repeated, "Words to live by. "

"It has…been…an honor…" Alex said, breathing his last.

Danny closed his eyes and Taylor cried.

Somewhere close to the Docks
​

The Rig didn't need to warn him of the explosion, he'd seen the flash already. He accelerated his custom bike and approached the row of old warehouses.

"Those warehouses are in some kind of ownership limbo since the dockworkers strike." Dragon informed him.

"Thank you, Dragon." he said.

"What are friends for?" Dragon said, "Do you want backup?I can reroute one of my suits to Brockton in less than five minutes."

"It'll be appreciated, though I don't think it'll be necessary." Armsmaster replied, as he neared the site of the explosion.

He found there two corpses, and two living people, that were rapidly identified as Danny Hebert and his daughter Taylor. It was when he approached that he stopped.

One of the corpses wasn't human, rather, it was some kind of tinkertech construct covered in flesh. He surmised that the explosion had peeled away the flesh enough for the machine to be visible.

"Are you seeing this, Dragon?"

"Yes, and I can barely believe it."

Armsmaster looked from the… thing to the actual corpse. The man looked, from scars and the build, like an actual soldier, and given the positioning of the car and the weapons, he had clearly known how to fight it. He wondered if he had worked for the tinker who had created the thing.

But enough with the dead.

"Mister Hebert, miss Hebert." he said, "What has happened here?"

They looked at each other for a moment, before the older man started to speak.

"It all started in the hospital, when I was keeping a vigil for my daughter…" he started to explain, telling the truth as far as it went.

"So, this man came to warn you that this other man came for your daughter, and didn't tell you why?" Armsmaster said, skeptically, "And now, he is dead. And the other man turned out to be some kind of tinkertech machine."

"We didn't exactly have time, with his wound, and having to prepare for that thing's arrival!" Taylor protested.

"So he knew that it was a machine, and told you about it." Armsmaster concluded.

"Well, yes, given his state, he was in no condition to fight it alone, he knew about this stash of weapons." Danny said.

"Oh? Do you know the origin of the weapons?"

"He didn't tell us anything." Danny replied.

Armsmaster was going to continue asking when Dragon called his attention.

"Colin, some of the scars on the man, I have seen them before, on people hit by tinkertech plasma weapons." Dragon said.

"That is interesting, Dragon." Armsmaster replied, "What tinker specializes in plasma weapons?"

"Seems to be a speciality of Cyberdyne, from the LA Protectorate. Together with high level computing." Dragon said, "Cyberdyne has expressed concern that some of the weapons that he creates for the PRT may have ended in the hands of TOYBOX."

Armsmaster turned back to Danny and Taylor.

"Did he mention Cyberdyne or TOYBOX?" he asked.

"No, what are those?" Danny asked.

"Cyberdyne is a tinker in LA, If I recall correctly, I remember him being mentioned when researching Alexandria back when Emma and me…" Taylor trailed off.

"I can call for an ambulance to return both of you to the hospital." Armsmaster said after a pause, "We can conclude this conversation at a later date."

"Thank you." Danny said.

Later, in the ambulance.
​

They were left alone by the paramedics, riding together in the back.

"And now what?" Taylor asked, lying on the stretcher.

"Good question. I know that I haven't been the best father following Annette's death…" Danny said, trailing off.

"And I should have shared the bullying with you, before things reached this point." Taylor replied, "But…"

"I put distance between us, with my grief, and my work." Danny said, shaking his head, taking Taylor's hand, "We need to deal with what is coming together, as a family."

"Yes, we need to do that." Taylor replied.

Old Navy Warehouses
​

"The central processing unit is unlike anything in my database." Dragon said, "It's not tinkertech, but it's advanced enough that it almost could be."

"So, not Cyberdyne designs?"

"There is some small resemblance, but not really." Dragon said.

"So, we don't know anything about its origin or why it targeted Taylor Hebert."

"Correct."

"I hate mysteries." Armsmaster said.

TO BE CONCLUDED…

 

[ATP]

Thanks for chapter.Now,it is obvious that Dragon would be killed by those idiots who wanted kill her.forget name.Saint? Crusader? sometching like that.
If Taylor said that terminator was send by some group which want to kill Dragon,maybe it would help?

 

[AntonioCC]

Epilogue



PRT ENE HQ

The next day
​

Emily Piggot looked at the thing in the depot, the robot that had chased a teenage girl from the hospital to the Docks.

"And it doesn't have marks of any known tinker?" she asked.

"No, ma'am. But Dragon also noted something unusual in the CPU housing." Armsmaster said, "Organic traces. Insect matter, in the most heavily armored section of the machine."

Piggot was quiet for a moment.

"The Hebert girl." she said.

"We can't confirm that."

"No." Piggot agreed, "But we will keep an eye on her."

"Document everything." Piggot ordered, "I have received orders from the Chief Director to ship it to LA, but I'll be damned if I let my people be defenceless in case another of those things show up."

Three days later

Hebert residency.
​

Taylor was finally home. And she could already see the differences. The house looked better than it had looked since… since mom died. Dad had really tried to make up for all the lost time.

She stepped on the fixed step and went up the stairs of their home, and could smell the dinner that her father had prepared for her. Lasagna, using her mother's old recipe, probably.

Los Angeles

Cyberdyne's lab.
​

"It's incredible." Cyberdyne, also known as Daniel Dyson, said "The sheer power of these chips, if I could reproduce them, could accelerate the timeframe of the Project."

"By how much?." The voice in the phone, the same voice that had contacted him when he had bought the vial.

"Years. We could have a rough model in one year, and a refined model in three." he said

"Good, we'll arrange the funding."

"Thank you." he replied as the line went dead.

TO BE CONTINUED IN "NO FATE"

 

[ATP]

so,notching would change?

 

[noblej7]

Kinda seems

so,notching would change?

Click to shrink...

It's a reference to Terminator 1 and 2 where cyberdyne is given the recovered remains of the Terminator to study the unknown robotic technology when they are the experts which is then used to help make skynet and terminators. Pseudo bootstrap paradox.