“… All units take note! The machines are escaping! I repeat, Skynet’s HKs are fleeing the battlefield. This is to all units located around the periphery of the battlefield. Immediately set up dog-detector checkpoints and search and destroy any fleeing Terminators. Eliminate as many as you can. Wipe them all out!”

The voice on the Resistance soldiers’ Comms which had identified itself as John Connor’s voice continued speaking and giving out some more information about what was happening on the battlefield, even adding some new orders for the Resistance soldiers in the area.

As soon as John Connor had mentioned the HKs that were fleeing the battlefield in defeat, Kayden finally understood what he had been witnessing which had caused him to be a little confused about what he was seeing.

When that strange slowing down of time had stopped, Kayden had seen many HK-Aerials fly over them. Those HK-Aerials seemed to be running away from the battlefield. Although he could not make out clearly what was happening on the battlefield all the way from where he was, Kayden thought that he saw — through the truck’s video feed while using the camera’s zoom feature — tiny images that looked like HK-Aerial fleeing away from the battlefield in all directions.

When Kayden had seen the first of fleeing HK-Aerials flying towards their direction, he had cursed aloud, scared that his luck — which he was now beginning to believe was obviously rotten — had brought yet another HK-Aerial pursuer down on them. But when the HK-Aerial had reached their location, it did not slow down even the slightest. Instead, it had continued on its way as if it had totally not noticed the fully visible humans standing along its path.

But Kayden could not really blame the HK-Aerial for not bothering about them because he soon noticed that a Resistance fighter aircraft was hot on its tail in pursuit.

Kayden had witnessed several other similar events happen within the few minutes since the massive explosion that occurred on the mountain. So, he had been wondering about what was happening on the battlefield until the voice on the radio clarified the situation.

“Congratulations! You guys seem to have won the battle.” Kayden said to the soldiers.

The three soldiers had been cheering since they heard the first announcement on the radio. Kayden had noticed that the soldiers had not said anything about the weirdness with time slowing down that had just happened. The soldiers had either not noticed it or the announcement on their Comms had distracted from thinking about the weird feeling of slowing down. So, Kayden decided to not call the soldiers’ attention to it.

“Yeah! You too! This is a great victory for everybody! All humans!” The first soldier said.

“Yeah, I guess.” Kayden murmured.

Kayden’s face had twitched when the soldier had said that the victory was for all humans. He was not so sure that these soldiers would accept him as part of the human group if they knew what he actually was.

On the other hand, Kayden himself was not sure whether he could still call himself human, so the point was moot.

‘Ah…. Fuck it! I don’t have to think about all that right now.’ Kayden thought.

“So, you guys don’t need our help, right?” Kayden asked, returning to the matter that he had wanted to find out before they were interrupted.

“Nah. Don’t worry about us. Anyways, I think you guys really should leave this place right now. Those fleeing HKs can still be really dangerous for normal survivors like you guys. We will stay right here and see whether we will be lucky and run into any of those escaping machines. We aren’t satisfied with the action we’ve seen, right boys?”

“Hell yeah!” The other two soldiers shouted back.

“Oh! That’s right! Um… if you guys continue on this road, you will definitely run into the Resistance staging camp for this battle. They should have now come out of hiding since the battle has been concluded. I think you should head over there. They should be of some help to survivors and former Skynet prisoners like you guys.”

Kayden nodded. This was a good idea. He could drop off the former prisoners in his truck there, handing them over to the Resistance. The Resistance should definitely be more qualified than him to take care of the former prisoners.

Kayden then turned to Serena, wanting to know whether she had anything she wished to say to the soldiers, but she still looked like she was shell shocked or something.

So, Kayden sighed and shook his head before turning back to the soldiers.

“Okay. We will be on our way. See you guys later. Stay safe guys.” Kayden said.

“Yeah, we will try!” The soldiers said, laughing like they had used a Resistance inside joke.

Kayden nodded, and stepped on the accelerator — he had kept the truck in idle mode in order keep it ready in case a quick getaway was needed — and continued on his way.

After watching the soldiers fall behind them, Kayden turned to the silent Serena.

“Serena, are you okay?” Kayden asked.

Kayden had to ask his question for a second time before Serena responded.

“Huh? What?” Serena said. She looked rattled. Kayden’s question must have startled awake from her thoughts.

 “Are you okay? You’ve been so quiet. And earlier on, why did you scream ‘No!’? You looked so scared then.”

Serena paused for a brief second to take in a deep breath before she answered, “Sorry about that. Did you feel those tremors? I think a massive explosion must have happened on the battlefield. I was just scared for the Resistance soldiers who might have been killed by that explosion. And then there was that weird feeling that washed over me. Did you feel that too?”

“Yeah. I felt it too.” Kayden answered. But he added in his mind, ‘That’s a lie. Actually, you had screamed before all that happened. Story’s not checking out.”

Although Kayden knew that Serena was not telling him the truth, he decided to not argue about it with her right now. Now was not the right time for that. The most important thing right now was to get the former prisoners to safety as soon as possible — hopefully by handing them over to the Resistance. He would then figure out what to do next.

“Don’t worry too much. There’s nothing you can do about your colleagues.” Kayden said placatingly.

Serena nodded, and then she returned to her silent thoughts.

From then on, the journey passed in silence for both Kayden and Serena.

The driving was mostly uneventful for Kayden except for the times when he saw small teams of Resistance soldiers with dogs searching through the woods by the side of the road, and when Kayden had to drive the truck through a hastily-setup Resistance checkpoint on the road being manned by several Resistance soldiers — also accompanied by a couple of dogs.

For a second there, Kayden was really worried that the dogs would notice something off about him, but in the end, they successfully passed through the checkpoint with no problem. Kayden also noticed that Serena had briefly perked up when they passed through the checkpoint.

After a mostly uneventful ten minutes of driving along the road, they arrived at the location that the soldiers had told Kayden about.

Kayden saw a sprawling army camp ahead of him. The place was bustling with many soldiers carrying weapons — from what he could see, both plasma- and gunpowder-based weapons from. The soldiers were patrolling the camp, and several other people that looked like normal survivors going about their business. The number of normal survivors inside the camp seemed to be growing constantly as more and more survivors wearing ragged and dirty clothes and carrying their meager possessions from time to time wandered into the camp.

John Connor’s voice could be heard on the loudspeakers giving out the latest one of his post-battle victory speeches. And as Kayden slowly approached the Resistance army camp, from time to time he caught snippets of the speech over the loud din of the rowdy crowd of survivors.

“For many years, we humans have suffered under the yolk of Skynet and its machine army. For many years, Skynet has killed and enslaved many humans. Many of whom were fathers, mothers, siblings, children, friends or comrades who we had cherished greatly, and whom Skynet’s machine army had brutally murdered…”

“…And with the help of the smart, brave, talented members of the Resistance, I am pleased to announce to all human survivors that the Resistance invaded Skynet’s Core facility and have successfully destroyed Skynet’s mainframe. Skynet’s defense grid is down…”

“…I am calling on all of you human survivors, wherever you may be hiding, to come out. The Resistance has begun designating locations for building survivor camps and resettlements. Find the nearest Resistance survivor camp and join in the Resistance efforts to regain what humanity has lost and rebuild human civilization. The time has come for humanity to rise up again like a phoenix reborn from its ashes. It’s time for humans to come out of hiding, out of the shadows…”

‘Ah… I guess that’s why these survivors are gathering here.’ Kayden thought.

The whole place had the looks of the first stage of human’s restoring their ownership of their world and humanity’s resettlement of the land as the true masters of their planet.

*****

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