Season 2 Episode 22 - Born to Run

In jail, Sarah Connor is interrogated by FBI Agent Auldridge. The jig is up -- he knows she's not Sarah Baum and that obviously, she didn't die in the bank vault in 1999. He wants to know where her son is. "John is dead," she tells him.

John and Cameron watch a news report of Sarah arrest (and their complicacy) from a secluded motel room. John tells her he needs a computer to do research. Cameron thinks it is so that he can look for the jail's blueprints to break his mother out, but it isn't. He wants to know about shielded nuclear power sources -- like her's -- and if they pose a risk. "I want to know if being around them all the time can give you cancer," John tells her.

They aren't the only ones watching the news of Sarah Connor's arrest -- so is the Water Delivery Terminator Kaliba sent after them previously...

...and so is John Henry as he plays Dungeons and Dragons with Murch. Weaver enters to speak to Murch. She wants to know how long it will take to pack up the Turk room -- the entire room, John Henry included! But Murch warns her that it's not a good idea -- even the slightest adjustment to John Henry could throw him off completely. "I think it's potentially a really bad idea," he explains. "What we know to be John Henry only exists as this specific collection of hardware and software. Body and soul."

Weaver, the T-1001, understands -- "We change a wire, we change John Henry." Yes.

Agent Auldridge ushers in Ellison to see Sarah Connor. He claims he didn't know that they were tracking him. He's had to convince them that they're not in this together. "Maybe I should tell them we were," Sarah threatens him. He encourages her to explain everything to the FBI -- everything she's been doing, everything she knows. "Last time I drew a picture I ended up in a psyche ward." But he thinks it could be different now. Sarah warns Ellison that the girl isn't safe, yelling to the surveillance camera...

...which is watched by Agent Auldridge.

...and Catherine Weaver and John Henry.

Ellison visits Agent Auldridge in his office. The FBI Agent tells Ellison that Sarah's requested a priest -- Father Armando Bonilla -- but the name isn't familiar to Ellison. Auldridge is trying to figure out the connection. He knows that other than a lawyer, a priest is the only other person she can ask to speak to that the FBI can't listen in on.

But we should recognize Father Armando Bonilla as he visits Sarah Connor. He's the priest who's church Sarah and John hid from Cameron when she went bad at the beginning of the season. He remembers her. She tells him that John and Sarah are in hiding and that she needs his help. In fact, she'll explain everything that happened that day if he'll help her. "Will you do something for me?"

Ellison finds Weaver and John Henry watching the feed of Sarah and the priest -- the closed feed. Ellison is upset that they're watching the feed. "John Henry monitors all law enforcement channels. It seems prudent," Weaver tells him. But it's also illegal. "So is lying to the FBI," she reminds him.

Weaver tells Ellison that she wants to meet John Connor. He thinks it's a bad idea. But she wants to know why he was at her house to save her daughter when the attacker showed up. She wants to know why his mother believes he's the messiah. And she wants to know how he and his cyborg companion (yes, she knows Cameron is a cyborg!) are connected to the John Henry body. She confronts Ellison with the news of Cameron. "Yes, she's a cyborg. Don't pretend you didn't know." He admits that he doesn't know how to find John Connor. But she does.

The Terminator stalks into a gun shop to buy silencers. Terror awaits...

John and Cameron continue to wait in the motel. He asks her how much weight Sarah has lost (she told him that she may be sick previously). "Eleven percent of her mass in the last six weeks," Cameron tells him.

"Stuff does go wrong with you, doesn't it?" he asks her. "You kill birds, you twitch, you try to murder me. You're not perfect. You're a machine." It's a hard truth for John Connor. But the phone rings and interrupts him. It's Father Bonilla.

Father Bonilla enters the confessional where he gives instructions to someone who seems to be Cameron on the other side of the screen. "Underneath the bench there is an envelope. I hope it is enough. It's all I could find. I have a message for you as well." But when the girl that looks like Cameron exits the church, we see that she is trailed by Ellison.

At night, Cameron watches from inside the motel. There's a knock at the door. They open it to find the Chola! Carlos's silent Chola from season one is the girl from the confessional. Inside the package she brings them are new IDs, flawless passports, etc. And then it happens: she speaks! "There's nothing else there. There's nothing hidden there. No secret message there for her escape. I am to tell you this from your mother. Leave this place. As soon as it is safe, leave this place. Do not think of her, do not come for her..." the Chola tells them. She tells Cameron that she is to make sure John leaves and forgets about Sarah.

"We lose everybody we love," the Chola tells him before leaving. Yes, and she knows all too well.

Outside the window, Cameorn spots something interesting -- Ellison. She tosses him into the motel room. Again, he pleads his case that he had nothing to do with Sarah's arrest. Ellison tells John that Catherine Weaver wants to meet him, but he's not interested. He knows better. His mother can meet her when she gets out of jail. Ellison said Weaver has a message -- for Cameron:

"Will you join us?"

The question to the liquid metal on Jesse's submarine mission. But Cameron seems freaked out by this, claiming she doesn't know what this means. She demands that Ellison leave immediately. Even John can see that she is startled by this question...

Waiting patiently in her cell, Sarah is visited by Agent Auldrige. He tells her that he believes her -- about everything. Machines, time travel, John as the messiah. He tells her that he's received many calls from people that knew Sarah, John, and Cameron Baum. "I believe you have participated in the miraculous and the terrible and through it all have maintained a good soul." He claims to want to help her. But she insists that her son is dead. Before he leaves he asks her something interesting:

"Do you know who Danny Dyson is?" Yes, of course, she does -- Miles Dyson's now grown son. "He's been missing for three months." Uh-oh, a possible connection to Kaliba?

In the ZeiraCorp parking garage, the Terminator shoots up a Security Guard, killing him. Catherine Weaver appears. He's there to terminate her! Only, he obviously can't as she isn't the real Weaver, she's liquid metal! She spears him with her metal arm, electrocuting him and destroying him for good.

John Henry acknowledges the Terminator's destroyed chip. It's been treated with something that enabled it to self destruct when it hit oxygen -- just like the Terminator back in Sherman's office. Skynet's gotten better. They don't want anyone reprogramming machines. Weaver wants to know if he can get any data from it, but he doesn't think so. She wants to know what it knows and who sent it. "It's safe to assume my brother sent it." Ellison shows up. Weaver is angry at him that John Connor still doesn't want to meet her.

Cameron wakes John just like Sarah did back in the Pilot. She wants to teach him how her chip and body work. It's time. She admits that her hardware and software was created to terminate humans -- it's their soul function. Even her, down deep, still wants to kill him. And so she needs to see if she has damage to her core. "If I'm damaged, we should know."

Cameron undresses and encourages John to climb on top of her in the bed. It's an intimate moment, uncomfortable for the teenage boy attracted to the robot's beautiful physique. She makes him cut her open and stick his hand inside her (under the breast plate) to feel her metal core. "It's cold. That's good, right?" John asks her. She claims so. But is that true? Is she lying? Cameron tells John it's time to go.

Father Bonilla gets a call from Cameron.

Agent Auldridge brings Father Bonilla in to see Sarah again. She's surprised by his visit. "They have a message for you. She's coming," he tells Sarah before all hell breaks loose...

Cameron stalks through the jail with a shot gun destroying everything and everyone in her path, and taking lots of gunfire to her endoskeleton. John Henry watches from the Turk room, intrigued. He uses the schematics of the jail to unlock all of the cells, allowing all of the prisoners to go free!

John Henry shows Weaver footage of Cameron and Sarah in the jailbreak.

Sarah runs, eventually meeting up with a very damaged Cameron -- the most damaged we've ever seen her. Cameron breaks off Sarah's handcuffs and they make a break for it. Outside, John waits for them with a car. They take off.

Sarah is mad at John -- she told him not to come for her. "Yeah, bad John Connor, ground me." This is the new John, effected by the past year -- the John that's slowly grown into the future leader of mankind. A leader who has lost two father figures, a leader who values human life, now more than ever his mother's.

John asks Cameron if she's okay, but she tells him she's not one hundred percent. "How far from one hundred percent are you?" Sarah asks her. "Because I need to meet Catherine Weaver and she needs to destroy whatever is in that basement." And they're off to ZeiraCorp, a long-coming meeting upon them all...

John and Sarah wait in the ZeiraCorp lobby. John asks Sarah if she's sick -- Cameron thinks she is sick. But she doesn't respond. They are interrupted by Ellison, who arrives to bring them up to Weaver's office. John turns to his mother and tells her "I love you," before heading in.

Ellison asks where Cameron is. Sarah claims she's in the car. It's a heated moment between one-time enemies, one-time allies. No one is truly good or bad in the fight for humanity's survival.

Damaged Cameron stalks through the basement, entering John Henry's room. "Hello," they tell each other. "Will you join us?" John Henry asks Cameron. She pulls out her knife and shuts the door...

Weaver confronts Sarah and John in her office. She thanks them for saving Savannah and tells them they have a common enemy. "Kaliba?" Sarah asks. But Weaver isn't speaking to her -- she's speaking to John! And she's speaking about Skynet. Weaver knows Savannah has told them about John Henry, which is why Cameron is stalking around her basement...

But Ellison notices something off in the distance outside the window. Something flying towards them! Kaliba's drone! As the prototype H/K crashes through the ZeiraCorp windows and at them, Weaver morphs into a shield to protect them all! "Run!" she yells! They do! ZeiraCorp rocked to it's core, on fire, nearly destroyed Weaver's eel morphs back into her and she heads out after the rest of the group!

They all run down to the basement. "We need to get out, they're trying to kill my son," Sarah tells Weaver.

"No, they're trying to kill my son," Weaver shoots back. "Your John may save the world but he can't do it without mine."

They reach the Turk room and find... Cameron! Her chip missing, the words I'm Sorry John repeated on the walls. She gave John Henry her chip and now he's taken off with it! But where did he go? "Not where. When." They know what that means...

Sarah and John catch sight of Andy Goode's Turk! And Sarah notices three red LED lights -- the three dots! She dreamt of the three dots because she had seen them before -- on Andy Goode's Turk!

Sarah confronts the T-1001: "You lying Terminator bitch. You're building Skynet!"

But Weaver's not what Sarah thinks. "No, I was building something to fight it."

Weaver sets the room in motion as a time bubble forms. No. They can't. Shocked by Weaver's true identity, Ellison refuses. So does Sarah. They can't go, they haven't stopped it. But John has to. John Henry has Cameron's chip, he has Cameron. At the last minute, Sarah steps out of the bubble. "I'll stop it," she tells him as she see says goodbye to her son one final time.

The bubble surrounds Weaver, John, and Cameron's body, sending them to...

The Future.

Bur only John and Weaver appear. Without her chip, Cameron's body doesn't travel through. Naked, John finds a coat, before hearing dogs. Weaver and John hide from the dogs until a Soldier with a plasma rifle finds them.

John looks to Weaver but she's disappeared. The Resistance Soldier mistakes John for metal until his superior officer shows up to correct him. It's Derek Reese! And either they've arrived in the future before Derek came back in time or they've altered it so drastically that he never actually does goes back.

John is excited to see him, but Derek has no idea who he is. "It's me. John. John Connor," he tells Derek.

"I know a lot of people, kid, but I don't know you," Derek tells him. "Anyone heard the name John Connor?" No, because John Connor the messiah, John Connor the future leader of mankind either no longer exists in this timeline or has yet to exist!

Derek tells John he's about to be famous, though, because his war hero brother is back and John's wearing his coat. And then it happens. Kyle Reese, John's father that he's never met. And with Kyle, a few other soldiers including:

Allison Young. The real human fighter Cameron the machine was modeled after. John can't help but smile, before realizing the complicated nature of his new life... his new beginning...

A time bubble strikes again in the destroyed Turk room in the future. "I love you too." Sarah's voice, her essence has traveled through time with her son. Whatever he does, wherever he goes, she is with him. She is him and he is her.

This is their story. This is his story. This is her story. This is: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

 

Guest Cast:

Joshua Malina as Agent Auldridge; Carlos Sanz as Father Armando Bonilla; Shane Edelman as Matt Murch; Cooper Huckabee as Salesman; Linden Goh as Fuller.