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The sound of her ringtone pulled her out of sleep too early. But then, given the schedule she’d put herself through over the past few days, anything short of eighteen hours would be considered too early.
“This is not happening, this is not happening,” she said to nothing, and rolled over on her bed. Chuck’s bed. Well, what was once Chuck’s bed. The sheets and comforter had been supplied by the CIA, of course. Nothing in the room smelled like him, naturally. It had been years since he had been inside this room. Sarah ignored that now and finally unearthed her phone from the mess on the bedside table. She squinted at the clock. 6:30 in the morning.
Somebody had better be dead or on fire.
“Walker,” she said, finally pushing up her sleep mask.
There was a pause on the other end of the phone line. But Sarah’s hopes that it had simply been a wrong number, and she could go back to sleep, were dashed. “Sarah? Sorry, did I wake you? I thought for sure you’d be awake, it’s 9:30—”
“On the west coast it’s not,” Sarah said, pushing the heel of her hand against her eye to rub some of the sleep out. “What’s up, Dave? You’re not calling me to tell me Bryce blew another building and I have to go save Chuck again, are you?”
“No, nothing like that.” Dave sounded amused. “I’m glad that worked out, by the way.”
Me, too, Sarah thought, looking around her new room in her new apartment. Finally rooming with a Bartowski, and not in the way I expected.
“I was actually sort of calling about that,” Dave said.
“Why? Chuck’s not hurt, is he? Did something happen?”
“Whoa, easy there. Chuck’s fine as far as I know.”
“Oh.” Sarah bit her tongue over the instinctive “Can this wait? I’m sleeping” response. Dave was swamped with work even more so than her. If he was calling, it was important. “What’s up?”
“You haven’t been keeping up with news from the Farm, have you?”
“Why would I?”
“I, ah, think you need to—is your computer on?”
“Yeah, I’m logged out, though. Hold on a second.” Sarah reluctantly crawled out of bed and stumbled over to the desk. It took two tries to get her password right. The whole time, she debated asking Dave about the family, but in the end decided that their interactions pre-Siberia were just a little too raw for that. He might still see it as a threat. “Okay, I’m in. What is it?”
“I thought you might want to see the new training video they’re showing in the Hand to Hand Combat courses.”
“Why would I...” Sarah trailed off as an image came up on her screen. She blinked hard, but it didn’t change. “Oh, God.”
“You know, you forgot to mention something when I talked to you the other day.”
Sarah stared at the interrogation room on her screen and resisted, barely, the urge to smack herself in the forehead with her palm. Multiple times. “Like what, Dave?” Her voice sounded a little high-pitched, even for her.
“Like the fact that you’re a Terminator?”
On screen, Sarah, face thankfully blurred, exploded into action, shoving the table, flipping out of her chair. Sarah flinched with each hit that landed, even as her eyes tracked her form. She didn’t think she’d ever had such good posture and form. And her footwork was amazing.
It was a good video to show, but—she winced as the on-screen version of her crashed through the window.
“That is so awesome!” Dave crowed on the other end of the line. “Seriously, that is sweet, this is my favorite part, check it out.”
“Trust me, I know what happens, I was there.”
“And it’s so cool. Bam, bam. You took that guy right out.”
She hadn’t. The guard had tranqued his friend; she’d just used the guy and his chair as a shield.
“This is a nightmare,” she said, turning away from the computer screen. She didn’t want to see the look on her face as she took out Smith. She didn’t want to face up to that level of scary. “This is a nightmare, and I’m still sleeping. This isn’t happening.”
“Do Terminators actually sleep?”
“I don’t know what a Terminator is, Dave. Please, tell me you’re kidding. They don’t actually show this at the Farm.”
“No, they totally do. And you’re everybody’s new hero.”
“That’s it,” Sarah said, “I’m going back to sleep. This isn’t happening. Bye, Dave.”
“Bye, Terminator.”
Sarah groaned even as she buried her head under her pillow.