"You're tired."

John fought the urge to roll his eyes at Cameron. Instead he blinked burning eyes, concentrating on the blurry screen and stifled a yawn. "I'm fine." He kept his voice low in deference to the fact that his mom and uncle were both sleeping.

"You've been accessing the chip for four point three hours. It's past your bedtime."

"You sound like Mom."

Cameron's words may have been uttered with less emotion than his mom would have expressed, but her usually impassive face stared at him with a hint of concern. Concern that didn't come into being because she cared, but because she was programmed to protect him. And getting enough sleep meant being able to perform properly—

"You require adequate sleep to function nominally, which you failed to been obtain during the past week."

John held back a sigh. "I know. Tomorrow's Saturday - I'll catch up on sleep then. We need to find out if there's anything else in here that's worth anything. And I've almost got this one—" The elusive bits of file that had been eluding him all evening suddenly fell into place and a room showed up on the monitor. "That's it." John watched tiredly, not quite sure what to make of the things laid out neatly on the workbenches. "What are those?"

"I'm not sure."

"You recognize anything?" he asked as the T-888 walked through the room, giving them a pretty good view of much of the articles.

"Yes."

John smothered a yawn, hiding his fatigue from his mother. So much for sleeping in. Cameron had mentioned their find to his mom the moment she'd gotten up and immediately had gotten him out of bed, insisting he show her. They'd identified the address in a warehouse area, and now, they were standing outside while his mom picked the lock.

Shifting nervously, John couldn't help look over his shoulder. A car went by, but nobody paid them any interest. Still, the feeling that someone was watching them was inescapable and he fought the lure of looking back.

Then the door was open and they were all filing in quickly. Derek shut the door behind them while Cameron walked confidently forward, his mom was right behind her, hand on the gun in her pocket.

John glanced around, following behind as Derek identified a couple of items while Cameron did the rounds. The large room was empty, so he moved off from the group, listening as his mom questioned both of them on the items inside.

John sighed as he looked for an empty box. He grabbed one from under the table and began sweeping bits of metal into it. He'd cleared half the table when he realized there was a small glass bottle amongst the bits.

Curious, he picked it up. There was a white powder inside. Slowly he unscrewed the top and peered inside.

"Mom? What's this stuff?" He waved the bottle towards the others, and a small puff of powder flew out of the opened mouth and onto the back of his hand. He switched the bottle to his other hand, absently wiping the powder onto his pants.

A second later, his hand started to burn.

"Ow."

Another second later, his outer thigh where he'd just rubbed the powder off his hand, burned in unison.

"Ow. Ow. "Mom!"

Cameron left the group, striding quickly towards him. Her boots echoed loudly in the room, bouncing off the walls. As she came nearer, his vision distorted. She seemed to elongate, then popped back to normal as the sound of her footsteps came to him through a long, deep tunnel. Following on her footsteps was his mother's cry, his name one long, unending syllable.

Then suddenly the world flipped, and she was sideways. He opened his mouth to comment on how weird that was, when his muscles seized in agony.

"He's seizing." Frantically Sarah reached for John, only to have Cameron push her hands away.

"No. It's not a seizure."

"Like hell it's not." She scrabbled for John, but despite her petite form Cameron was an immovable object.

"Don't touch him.

... to be continued...