Hey guy! I'm back, I guess. How have you all been? I hope the new year is treating you guys well. Here is a new chapter. Enjoy!

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After a short ten-minute trip, the RA-115 armored car came to a stop close to the center of a dark, deserted suburban town located some distance away from the city ruins where the Resistance camp was situated. The armored vehicle’s doors opened and Kayden and Serena stepped out.

Kayden glanced around his surroundings with curiosity, his eyesight unbothered by the darkness of night. Serena had explained that she had a hideout located close by where she had hidden some supplies which she used to use during her field missions in the area before Skynet’s forces had captured her. 

Soon after they had got into the armored car and had just driven a few meters away from the Resistance camp, Serena had told Kayden about the hideout she had hidden in a town located close by, and she had also said that she wanted to get some of her things from the hideout, so she had asked for his help. She wanted him to drive her there and back with his car before he continued on with the rest of his journey. 

“You will be taking the truck with you on your next journey, so you just have to drive me there and then bring me back. It won’t take too long I promise. Pretty please.” Serena had said with a pleading smile.

Serena had promised him that the whole trip would not take too long, so he had no qualms about offering this final piece of help before their final parting. Anyways, Kayden was not really in too much of a hurry, so he had quickly agreed. Besides, she had also offered to allow him to take some of the things stored in her hideout that might be useful to him during his future travels.

From what Kayden could see and from the types of buildings—the usual bungalow-style family houses commonly found in suburban American towns—in the area, he judged that this small town should have been a suburb in the past. But just like the other places Kayden had seen, including the ruined city where the previous Resistance camp was situated, this place was now deserted.

It was a ghost town.

Still the town was in a relatively better condition than Kayden had expected based on the conditions of the other places that he had seen and based on the general knowledge about the world that he had in his memories. Unlike the buildings in the ruined city where the previous Resistance camp was situated which looked like the products of a city ravaged by a disastrous war, the houses in this town were relatively intact.

Although the whole town was completely overgrown with weeds and other wild plants which flowering luxuriantly due to it still being springtime and none of the houses still having anything which could be called a lawn, the buildings here seemed to have suffered way less damage than Kayden had expected.

Still, as far as Kayden could see and from the heavy silence that the whole town was cloaked in, the town seemed to have been emptied of its last human inhabitants a very long time ago.

Kayden followed behind Serena as she walked into one of the houses in the center of the town.

The house was the one building in this part of the town which was in the worst state of repair, with the roof having caved in partially and with vines growing all over the walls. Some vines had even grown through the windows and seemed to have spread inside some rooms in the house.

‘This is a good place for a hideout.’ Kayden thought as he followed Serena inside the house, walking through the front doorway which was missing its door.

After his brief observation of the houses in this area, he had figured out why Serena had chosen to locate her hideout inside this particular building out of all the other houses in this area of this deserted suburban town.

Kayden had realized that with the state the house was currently in—which was so much worse than that of the rest of the houses surrounding it—most visitors to the towns—whether scavenging human survivors or even the machines—would be more likely to choose to ignore the house and instead choose to check out some of the other houses which were in much better conditions and would more suitable buildings for whatever they wanted to do.

Serena strode through the interior of the house, heading straight for where the entrance of the cellar was located. Kayden followed close behind her, but he had subconsciously slowed down his walking pace as he passed through some of the rooms in the house. 

His eyes had been attracted to the many things inside the house: the dust-covered furniture which looked like they had not been used in years, the tv with the broken screen, and especially, the family pictures—in dusty picture frames—still hanging on the walls or placed on top the shelf by the side of the room. These things, like the many other things that he had seen since his awakening, filled him with child-like curiosity. 

Although Kayden had immediately recognized most of these things when he saw them, he still did not have any memories of him having personally seen them before. So, it could be said that since his awakening, he was technically seeing most of things he had seen for the first time ever.

Still, Kayden made sure to keep pace with Serena and also made sure not to make his excessive curiosity towards the things he was seeing too obvious.

They soon stood before the large empty bookshelf that Serena pushed to the side to reveal a door. Kayden judged that she had placed it in front of the cellar door in order to make it much more hidden from sight and make the cellar that she used as her hideout to be much less likely to be discovered by other people.

They walked down the stairs into the cellar, their feet immediately stirring up a small dust cloud from the dusty floor. 

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I am now posting extra ‘Terminator: New Fate’ prequel chapters, character backstories and side stories, and chapters from my new original novel ‘The Last Primordial Exarch’ on my Patreon.