As soon as Kayden reached the ground level, he was faced with a dilemma; he seemed to be in some kind of massive cave-live structure — he realized this from seeing the parts of the wall that were not covered with concrete or metal, and he was not sure about which of the direction he should take to escape. He would not want to pick an escape route and then run into Skynet’s forces while travelling through it. But still, Kayden had noticed that the many sounds explosions and fighting were coming mostly from one particular direction.

‘The entrance to this place should be in that direction. I should go in that direction if I want to escape from this place, but the fighting should also be fiercest in that direction, and most of the Terminators should also be there.’ Kayden thought.

Still, Kayden chose to travel in that direction as he did not whether this place had other entrances or escape routes.

Just as he was about to take a tunnel that seemed to lead towards the entrance area, a particular massive and violent explosion rocked the place. Amid the violent shaking of the place and the falling of several boulders which had broken loose from the cave’s roof, Kayden heard the many alarmed cries coming from one of the buildings, constructed inside the cave structure. around him.

Kayden had noticed the buildings when he had gotten to this level, but he did not want to waste more time bothering with them. Besides, the buildings all had their large and thick doors closed and locked shut.

But now that had he heard the human voices coming out from one of the buildings, Kayden decided to check the room out. He did not want to leave without finding out what was going on with the humans in the building. Besides, he may find some new clues or some other useful information.

Pulling on the thick door, Kayden found that the door had not been locked shut like he had assumed. Also, the door did not weigh as much as he had judged from the door’s thickness. Kayden then pulled the door fully open and stepped into the building.

As soon as Kayden stepped in, he did not need any door sign to know the purpose of this build. Kayden could see large steel cages with humans imprisoned inside. There were about twenty large cages inside the building, each holding about ten people inside.

The imprisoned people seemed to have been frightened badly by the noise and explosions from outside. They had all huddled together in the cages, either at the center of the cage or at the corners. The rocking and shaking of the room caused by the explosions, the rapidly expanding cracks in the walls, and the broken off chunks of concrete that kept falling from the ceiling did not help matters.

Some of the captive people had seen him enter the room, so they immediately called out to him, shouting, “Help! Free us!”

As soon as the few people called out to Kayden for help, all the others finally noticed his presence, and they joined in asking for his help.

“Help!”

“Save us!”

“Release us!”

“Free us!”

The room was filled with a cacophony of people shouting their various pleas for help. Someone even shouted out in a surprised and confused tone, “Hey, why are you naked? Are you some kind of exhibitionist? Anyway, who cares? Help me too!”

Surprised by those words, Kayden took a quick look at his body and realized that he was naked. Now, he remembered that he had not put on any clothes since he had awakened in the experimentation room. The awareness of his state of undress caused him to be a little embarrassed, so he shouted back towards the direction from which he had heard the earlier voice, “I’m not any kind of exhibitionist. This is not my fault.”

Kayden thought about which action would be better for these people: leave them in this room so that they could hide in here and ride out the battle currently ongoing outside, or release them and allow them to try their luck at escaping from this facility. But just then, another explosion violently rocked the building, and a large boulder was dislodged off the roof of the cave structure. The boulder struck into a wall of the building and created a large hole in it. The broken off pieces of the wall struck some of the cages, scaring the people in those cages immensely.

There was a brief moment of shocked silence in the building before the people started screaming for his help.

“HELP US!”

The people were all in a hysterical state now. They were shaking and beating at the bars of their cages, and screaming in fright. They were all scared and convinced that the next attack might hit and kill them.

Feeling pity for the state of the captives and remembering that their current plight was very similar to his own previous condition from which he was also trying to escape, Kayden quickly decided to free and let them try their own luck at escaping from this place.

Still, before he did that, Kayden went to the closest cage. The people inside the cage quieted and looked at him expectantly, hoping that he had come to break them out of their cage, but Kayden stood in front of the cage and quickly looked through all the people in the cage. He saw a man who looked to be about his height of 6’2. He pointed at the man. “Hey you! Yes, you at the back, the one wearing the black coat and pants. Come over here.”

The man whom Kayden had called quickly came to the front of the cage and stood before Kayden. The man had also put on an ingratiating smile, obviously hoping to make Kayden like him and convince Kayden to release him.

Looking at the man who was trying to ingratiate himself with him caused a weird expression to appear on Kayden’s face. Kayden then said to the man, “Take off your clothes. I want them.”

Shock could be seen on the man’s face. “What?! No! I can’t give—"

The man tried to refuse but Kayden quickly interrupted him. Waving a finger at the man’s face and tutting, he said, “Stop whatever you were about to say there. You will give me your clothes in exchange for my help in breaking you out of this cage. I believe that’s a fair exchange, no?”

The man paused to consider what Kayden had just said, and he seemed to decide to accept Kayden’s offer because he soon took of his clothes and tossed them out to Kayden.

Kayden quickly wore the clothes.

“Nice clothes. I no longer have to look like some weirdo.”

Kayden then turned to the people and raised the volume of his voice to allow his next words to be heard by all the people in the building.

“Everybody, listen up. I will soon break all of you out of your cages. As you can hear from the explosions and sounds coming in from outside, there seems to be a large-scale battle currently ongoing outside. So, after I free you, it will be up to you and your fate to try to escape from this Skynet facility without dying.”

Kayden then raised the plasma rifle which had taken from the T-800 Terminator, and aimed it at the lock of the cage with the man from whom he had obtained his new clothes, and said, “Everybody move to the back and away from the lock.”

The people all scurried away from the front of the cage and moved to the back of the cage.

Kayden fired a single shot from the plasma gun and blasted the cage open. The captives all rushed out from the cage. They all ran to the entrance of the building and then out of the building, obviously anxious to escape. Many of the captives only said a quick ‘Thank you’ to Kayden before dashing out of the building.

Kayden was not bothered by their attitude. He understood how anxious they were to escape from where they had been imprisoned. He also felt the same as them. Kayden then proceeded to blast all the other cages open, freeing all the captives. Many of the captives also ran out as soon as they had been freed, but a few hung around in the building, obviously too scared to venture outside into the fierce battlefield.

There were eleven people who had not escaped with all the others remaining in the room by the time Kayden was done freeing the captives. The remaining people were 6 kids aged between nine and thirteen, one boy who looked to be about sixteen years old, two young men and one woman who all seemed to be in their early twenties, and the last was a woman who seemed to be in her sixties.

Kayden said to them, “You should also leave.”

The old woman approached him and explained, “Hello sir, thank you for freeing us. My name is Nadiya. We have children with us and I don’t think that would be able to survive an escape while running through a battlefield like the one raging outside. All of us were captured from the same survivor group. We have known and taken care one another for a long time, so we had vowed to stay together and protect one another.”

Kayden said, “I’m not a ‘sir’. Call me Kayden. Also, if you keep staying here, all of you will be easily recaptured.”

Nadiya sighed. “We know, but we can’t risk the children.”

Looking at Kayden with a pleading expression, Nadiya continued, “Please, can we all come with you? I think that we will have a better chance if we follow you to escape.”

Kayden originally had no intention of joining up with other people, and had wanted to escape on his own, especially since he did not know what reactions his special condition would elicit from other humans. But as he saw the plea in the eyes of the eleven people, especially the kids, he quickly made up his mind to take them with him and help them escape. He could always part ways with them after he had ensured that they were safe.

“All right. You can come with me.”

Relieved smiles appeared on their faces. They all thanked him, even the little ones at the urging of the Nadiya and the other adults. They all said cutely, “Thank you, big brother!”

“All right. All right. Let’s go.”

Kayden took the lead and the rest of the newly formed group quickly followed behind him to leave the captives’ room. Kayden intended to take his originally planned escape route. Although the escape route would take him and the group through the battlefield, Kayden was confident that his newly discovered abilities would at least help him navigate through the battlefield and find a relatively safe path through the battlefield.

Just as the group were about to leave, Kayden heard a faint sound coming from the back of the room.