Chapter 24: The General Wants to See You

Author's Note: I'm back! I got a lot better during the week, so I decided to take advantage of my extra free time to write more chapters than the usual. So, enjoy the mass release of sorts. Thank you to everyone that sent me their well wishes!

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"Alright. Over there is the registration desk for the new arrivals. You guys should go there and register yourselves before the camp can make the necessary arrangements for your needs."

The leader of the squad of soldiers made one of the soldiers to accompany Kayden's group through the gate. After the soldier escort had taken the group to the registration area for new arrivals and had informed them of what they needed to do next, he left, heading towards the inner central part of the camp.

Kayden stood aside while Serena accompanied Nadiya's group as they went to register themselves with the camp. He watched as Nadiya led the former prisoners to join the long queue of survivors that had formed in front of the female soldier who was responsible for handling the registration of the survivors.

As Kayden watched the Resistance soldiers allocating supplies to the survivors who had already been registered in the camp, he carefully considered his next plans. Kayden had no intention to join Nadiya's group and register himself with the Resistance camp. He only wanted to wait and make sure that Nadiya's group had been properly settled into the camp before he continued on his way.

Still, Kayden had no idea about where to go next or what to do next. He had no memories about where he had originally lived before he had ended up in Skynet's core facility or whether he even still had a home somewhere or whether he still had any family or friends left somewhere in the world waiting for him. For all he knew, he was all alone in the world, adrift with no place to call home.

The only thing Kayden was sure of was that staying in this camp would not be safe for him. He was a human-machine hybrid, someone whom any Resistance soldier would be considered a target for immediate elimination if his true nature was ever revealed to them.

And if Kayden stayed in this camp for too long surrounded by so many Resistance soldiers, it would only be a matter of time until he was discovered by the Resistance, and that would definitely not end in a good way for him.

'Maybe it will be better if I just travel around randomly for a while. Maybe I will encounter a place that will jolt my memories or something. According to the Resistance, they have already destroyed Skynet and the machines have lost, so traveling should be way less dangerous from now on. I should also use that time to learn more about my body and all the ways Skynet has modified and enhanced it.' Kayden thought.

And that was when Kayden suddenly recalled something that he had overlooked until now.

'Oh, right! The computer files! I totally forgot about those files I downloaded from the computers inside that Skynet lab where I was being experimented on.'

Kayden pulled up the files on his HUD and then began to read them one after the other. He was sitting on a rock lying under one of the many light sources being used to keep the camp well-illuminated even though the time was about 2 am in the morning and still very dark out. The rock was probably a fragment which had broken off from one of the building ruins littering around the army camp. The broken-down ruins were the only tell-tale remnants of the pre-Judgement Day era.

Kayden frequently switched between reading the computer files and watching the things going on in the army camp. Even so, with his abnormally fast reading speed, he quickly finished reading all the files.

He did not learn much from the files. And there were not that many files. Kayden only learnt a few general things about the experiments carried out on him and about the enhancements added to his body. But most of the knowledge he had obtained from the files were things he had already learnt on his own about his body from his experiences during their escape from Skynet's core facility. Things like his metal endoskeleton, his fast wound regeneration ability, his HUD and so on.

Even so, he learnt some new things like the fact that Skynet's most advanced neural net processor nanochip had been implanted in his brain and the fact that those black thread-like metallic things that would sometimes come out of his hands were the transformed forms of his extremely advanced intelligent carbon-based mimetic polyalloy liquid metal endosheath that could also function as nanotechnological transjectors.

Yeah. There were many words like the previous ones that Kayden had no idea what they meant. Things like plasma-biological hybrid reactors. And what the hell were Zero-Point Retrograde Temporal Actuators?

And when he tried to access to follow the links attached to those words and access their more detailed versions, he would always see an error message saying that every detail had been removed from the files.

Kayden turned off his HUD when he was done reading. He resumed watching what was going on in the camp. His eyes were glazed over with boredom while he mulled over the things he just finished reading.

With the camp area having been originally serving as the command center for coordinating the attack on Skynet's core facility, there were not that many Resistance soldiers in the camp. Most of the few remaining combatants in the camp had even later been sent out to hunt down the Terminators fleeing the battlefield. So, the only members of the Resistance left in the camp were just some high-ranking commanding officers and the few soldiers responsible for guarding the camp or handling the logistics associated with arranging for the needs of all the normal survivors now coming to the camp.

Most of the people in the camp were the normal survivors who had originally been hiding the surrounding areas and who had begun to arrive at the camp after they heard John Connor's announcement on whatever radio devices they had.

From time to time, military vehicles arrived at the camp. A couple or more soldiers would disembark from each vehicle following which they would sometimes carry a destroyed T-800 out of the vehicle. Sometimes, they would even bring a dead deer or some other larger game out of the vehicle.

Kayden overheard them talking about how they found so many animals just walking around in the area. The animals seemed to lack any wariness towards the soldiers. So, the soldiers, who almost never had access to such good sources of meat, decided to shoot down the easy prey and bring them back to feed the camp.

Only ten minutes after the first groups of soldiers returned from their Terminator hunt, a camp fire had been set up and the mouth-watering smell of roasting meat began to fill the whole camp. The survivors still waiting in the queue to be registered were looking very distracted by the smell, frequently turning around and craning their necks in an attempt to look for the source of the mouth-watering smell. The survivors that had already completed their registration had begun to gather around the soldiers' camp fire, their eyes laser-focused on the roasting meat. Many of the kids among them had saliva dribbling down from their little mouths.

Even Kayden himself began to feel a little hungry.

The sound of approaching footsteps startled Kayden awake from his thoughts. He turned around and saw Serena coming back from where she went to help Nadiya's group with their registration. When they entered the camp, she had volunteered to help Nadiya's group with their registration since she was familiar with the Resistance's protocols even though she still seemed to be a little out of it. She was still looking a bit down and depressed.

Serena sat down beside Kayden. She maintained her silence for a while, also joining Kayden in watching what was happening around the campfire cum barbecue place.

"Kayden, what are your plans? What're you going to do next?" Serena asked suddenly.

"After I'm sure that Nadiya's group has settled down, I plan to go and look for my former survivor group. My loved ones should still be with them." Kayden said, giving an answer that he felt was perfectly normal for someone in his situation. "What about you? Will you be staying here?"

Serena sighed, "I don't know. I just asked around. My original teammates are not here. I'm still trying to decide whether I should wait for the Resistance soldiers who fought in the battlefield to arrive here so that I can tell them about where my teammates are. Or whether it will be better to just go back to my original base directly and look for them there."

Kayden looked towards the survivor registration area, and he realized that Nadiya's group were about to complete the registration process. Nadiya was already helping the last few kids with their registration.

Kayden stood up and patted the dust from his pants, "Alright, it looks like they are almost done. I guess it's time to leav—"

Just then he heard brisk footsteps approaching them from behind. Immediately, he turned around to see three well-armed soldiers walking towards them.

The soldiers came to a stop in front of them, and one of them stepped forward.

"Come with us! The general wants to see the both of you!" The soldier said.

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