Kayden walked out of the Side Exit C.

As soon as Kayden walked out of the secret exit, he realized that he had finally gotten out of the mountain-hollow facility and was now outside. He was currently in a wooded area with a single dirt road leading out of the area and with the Cheyenne mountain as a shadowy backdrop.

Kayden looked around him, observing his surroundings as he waited for the rest of the group come out through the exit’s door one after another. Unlike the well-lit interior of the mountain facility, it was dark outside. The only source of illumination was faint moonlight from the waning moon.

‘It should be nighttime or very early morning.’ Kayden thought as his eyes quickly adjusted to the darkness.

[CALCULATING THE TIME…]

[TIME: 3.46 AM]

‘HUD says the time is 3.46 am. Early morning it is then. Soon it will be dawn.’ Kayden thought.

The area in front of him was sheltered by a concave depression in the mountain wall with a large rocky overhang above the depression thereby making the area to be less visible from above the mountain. Besides, there were many tall trees surrounding the area. All these factors made the area a good place to hide a secret entrance/exit away from unwanted eyes.

Looking at the four trucks — 3 huge supply trucks and a much smaller fourth truck which looked like some kind of armored personnel transport truck — packed in the semi-enclosed area, Kayden guessed that this place should serve as some kind of hidden garage or parking lot which Skynet used as a storage area for reserve or sensitive supplies and their transport vehicles.

Just then a huge explosion shook the mountain. Kayden could feel the ground trembling. He immediately turned to his left and looked towards where the main entrance of the mountain facility complex should be located. Immediately, he saw a bright burst of light which was slowly fading away, most likely caused by the explosion he had just heard.

Now that Kayden had focused his attention on that area, he was able to notice more of what was happening there. He could see many rapid flashes of light which looked similar to the plasma beams produced whenever he fired his plasma rifle. Among those light beams, from time to time, he could see some even bigger plasma beams, most like produced by even larger plasma weapons. Whenever those large plasma beams appeared, they were quickly followed by large bursts of light and the loud sounds of explosions. Kayden could even hear — most like carried along to where he was by the wind — the faint sounds of people shouting or screaming and crying in pain, with some of those sounds ending abruptly.

From time to time, bursts of lights that looked like small fireballs would appear in the dark sky, and these are quickly followed by objects on fire falling to the ground. The appearance of these ‘fireballs’ were also accompanied by explosion sounds.

Kayden immediately realized that he was looking at a fierce and brutal battle currently in progress. It was most likely the same battle he had guessed was happening while they were still inside the facility.

When Kayden focused his sight on that area, his HUD zoomed in closer, giving him a closer view of what was happening in the far away battlefield. He saw many shadowy shapes moving about in the fierce battlefield. Due to the battlefield being too far away from him, Kayden could not clearly make out the shapes to know what they really were. Still, he discovered that the shadowy shapes were of different sizes, ranging from huge to very small. Some of the shadowy shapes were moving very fast and some others were moving slowly or were basically stationary and barely moved.

The brief flashes of light from the frequent explosions which would appear on the battlefield helped Kayden gain some insight about what the was happening on the battlefield. He was able to see some things which hinted at the true appearance of some of the shadowy shapes. The huge shadowy shapes were revealed to be large combat robots of various kinds who seemed to be fighting the smaller-sized shadows who were actually humans.

[ACTIVATING NIGHT VISION…]

[NIGHT VISION ACTIVATED]

Following the appearance some words on his HUD, Kayden’s vision field suddenly brightened and became sharper and clearer. Night turned into dusk, almost as if a new source of light was shining over wherever was included within his vision field. And like how a car cover is removed to uncover the make and model of the car, the veil of darkness that covered the battlefield disappeared in front of Kayden’s night-vision-enhanced eyes, and this allowed him to see the battlefield clearly and know what was happening there.

What he saw was terrifying.

The battlefield occupied a large area in front of the main entrance of the mountain facility, extending for almost one square kilometers. The smoke-filled battlefield was filled with human skulls, bones and incomplete skeletons, metal scraps and junk which looked like they were the result of machines that had exploded. On looking closer, Kayden could even see a few T-800, which seemed to be missing a lot of their body parts, lying around on the burnt-black ground unmoving. Some were missing their lower bodies with sparking wires extending from beneath their torso; these ones were slowly crawling about on the ground while pulling their torsos forwards.

Amidst all the metal junk could be seen many burnt down vehicle chassis frames. Some still had a few smoldering flames weakly flickering on them, but many vehicles of all kinds were still fully ablaze and were burning gloriously.

A large battle formation of Hunter/Killers, which included more than a thousand T-800 Terminators and a few hundred tank-type HKs of various kinds, defended the main entrance of Skynet’s Core facility against the onslaught the invading human army.

‘Ah! Those should be the Resistance soldiers Serena talked about.’ Kayden thought.

Just like the machine army, the invading human soldiers fought with plasma weapons of various kinds; some were even mounted on vehicles. Though, unlike the Terminators, the human soldiers all wore night vision goggles which made Kayden wonder why they chose to attack Skynet’s facility at night and in darkness.

Having been observing the battlefield till now for more than a few seconds, Kayden had to admit that those human soldiers were very brave indeed. The soldiers seemed to very motivated to win the battle. They never cowered, faltered or retreated from the battle despite the frequent casualties among the soldiers from being shot by plasma guns or being blown to pieces by a plasma cannon shot from the larger HK tanks. The screams and pain-ladened moans of their wounded comrades did seem to bother the soldiers enough for them to try to drag their wounded colleagues behind cover but the soldiers would immediately rejoin the battle after doing that.

 The soldiers engaged the machine army in a fierce battle while hiding behind any available cover.

‘Ah… they’re really brave soldiers. I should be able to learn something useful from them.’ Kayden thought as he remembered his own embarrassing showing during his fight with the Terminators.

Just then, Kayden saw a bright flash of light fly up from the high up on the mountain wall and then go on to strike something in the sky which result in a fiery explosion appearing in the sky above the battlefield.

Due to the explosion, Kayden’s attention was now attracted to what was happening in the sky. He soon realized that there was another fierce battle currently ongoing in the sky, this time between various aircrafts on the human side and HK-Aerials on Skynet’s side. The aircrafts were flying around, shooting at and chasing one another across the night sky. From time to time one of the aircrafts would land a successful shot on an aircraft from the opposite side and cause it to either explode into a blazing fireball or crash to the ground and join the wreckage already littering on the battlefield below.

There was another flash of light from the mountainside and a Resistance aircraft that flew too close to the mountain burst into flames and crashed to the ground. Kayden looked at where the light originated from and he saw that arranged high up on the mountain were a group of large plasma cannons which would occasionally seek to destroy important targets both on the ground and in the sky — especially the ones who come too close to the mountain.

“This… this… this is bad.”

A whisper coming from beside Kayden startled him awake from his full-attention observation of the battlefield. He turned around to see Serena standing beside him. During the time when he was watching the battle going on, the whole group had already walked out of the facility and someone — probably Serena had even closed the door of the secret exit and turned the hand wheel on the door to lock it from the outside.

She wore a shocked expression as she stared wide-eyed and open-mouthed in the direction of the battlefield.

“What?” Kayden asked. He had expected her to be happy to see her fellow Resistance soldiers.

“What?” Serena asked him back, looking a little confused.

‘Ah…. The massive scale of the battle must have really shocked her.’ Kayden mused in his thoughts.

“I asked you what you meant by ‘This is bad.’”

Serena took in a deep breath, and then she seemed to quickly return to her usual calm self. The only thing missing was her usual smile.

“Oh that. I said that because I believe the Resistance can’t win this battle.”

“Why though? Don’t you guys usually do things like this? You said it yourself. You guys fight Skynet’s forces and attack their bases.”

“Yes, we do all that. But that’s only for small, isolated Skynet facilities with minimal defenses. Not something like. This Skynet facility is too well defended. We can’t win this battle. Why did Connor sanction this mission? Something must have happened in the Resistance. I just don’t know what it is. Damn it! Being imprisoned sucks!”

“It’s okay. You can’t do anything about that right now. Besides, it looks we can meet up with the Resistance right now either. There’s no way I’m wading into that battlefield.” Kayden wanted to stay as far away from that brutal battlefield as possible.

“You’re right. There’s nothing I can do about this battle. Besides, our leader John Connor should have a good plan for this battle.” Serena said, and then she paused for a second before adding, “There should be some Resistance checkpoints and gathering sites some distance outside the battle zone where we can find some Resistance soldiers instead of trying to meetup with the ones here in this battlefield.”

“I like that plan better.” Kayden nodded. He then turned and pointed at the armored personnel truck parked beside the single dirt road leading out of the area. “There is even a good vehicle here that can carry all of out of here. It even looks like a fast vehicle.”

Kayden had noticed that particular personnel truck immediately he saw it for the first time as he walked out through the secret exit. This was his HUD had alerted him of the vehicles features, specifications and capabilities. In summary, it was fast, with amazing maneuverability and shock absorption. Besides, it was armored and had good defenses. It was one of Skynet alternative methods of transporting Infiltrator-type HKs — aka Terminators — besides using Transporter aircrafts.

As Kayden and Serena walked to the truck, Serena asked, “Who’s driving? Me or you? Uh… Wait? Do you know how to drive?”

With both of them now standing in front of the door on the driver’s side of the truck, Serena looked Kayden, obviously waiting for an answer to her question.

‘Do I know how to drive a truck or not?’ Kayden wondered.

But he did not know the answer to the question either. He had no memories of himself driving or any memories of him doing any other things for that matter, so Serena asking him the question and expecting an answer was basically useless.

Still Kayden tried to look for a reasonable answer to give Serena. He decided to just say that he did not know how to drive. There should not be that many normal survivors who had access to functioning cars, right?

“I don—”

Just as he was about to say that he did not know how to drive, some words appeared on his HUD.

[DRIVING SKILL FILE REQUESTED…]

[RETRIEVING DRIVING SKILL FILE FROM MEMORY ARCHIVE…]

[COMMENCING INSTALLATION OF DRIVING SKILL INTO THE BRAIN…]

[INSTALLING…]

[DRIVING SKILL INSTALLED]

‘Fuck yeah!’ Kayden exclaimed with his thoughts as the new knowledge about how to drive different types of land vehicles appeared in his mind. It did not matter whether he had learnt how to drive trucks in the past because right now, he could drive cars, trucks and so on.

With a broad grin on his face, Kayden turned to Serena and said, “I sure as hell know how to drive.”

Serena nodded. She turned to the rest of the group who had approached when they saw the two of them walking to the truck. “Everybody get in the truck. We are leaving.”

Kayden got into the driver’s side of the truck with Serena riding shotgun.

When Kayden grabbed the steering wheel, the dashboard of the truck lit with all sorts of indicator screens. There was an indicator showing the words ‘Ignition on/off’.

‘Oh, Skynet still uses the old terms.’ Kayden thought, chuckling to himself.

Kayden looked out through the window to check the progress of the former prisoners in entering the truck. He saw the last person get into personnel truck, but as he glanced past the locked door of the secret exit, a nagging thought made him pause for a second. A strange feeling washed over him. It was the feeling that he had missed something important.

‘What is it that I missed?’ Kayden wondered.

But as he had that thought, Kayden immediately realized what he had missed. Earlier on while he was inside the mountain-hollow facility, he had run away from the alerted Terminators. Right now, he had spent some time observing the battlefield outside among other things and that time should be enough for—

“Fuck!” Kayden cursed out loud as he saw the hand wheel on the door of Side Exit C. start to turn in the door-unlocking motion.

“What?!” Serena exclaimed, startled by Kayden’s sudden cursing.

“Look!” Kayden shouted as he pointed at the at the secret exit.

Kayden and Serena both watched as the turning hand wheel slowed down before coming to a sudden stop. They were surprised at that because the door had not been fully unlocked, and they wondered what they Terminators inside were up to. But they soon figured that out. It soon became obvious to them that the Terminators must have become too impatient and had considered that method of unlocking and opening the door to be too slow for their liking.

And why was that obvious to them?

Because suddenly more than 20 plasma shots simultaneous pierced through the metal door. It was quickly followed by another wave of plasma shots sweeping across the door and beginning to slice it into pieces.

And so, Serena did the only reasonable to be done in such situations.

She screamed, “FUCK!”

 

*****

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