She takes control.

Officer Kimberly Thomas struggles to get a hold of herself. Quivering is a natural reaction to duress and severe shock or fright, and the rookie patrolwoman is no exception to that rule, though she fights that visceral fear relentlessly. -C'mon, Kim,- she thinks to herself, -get a grip!- But until then it will have to be the mysterious man introducing himself as Darius to take charge of her shell-shocked form. As soon as he has her in the patrol car, he floors the gas pedal and screeches away from the scene. Once out of the city, Darius begins to talk to Kim, who's finally starting to look wary of her surroundings.

"Are you okay?" he asks, sheepishly. He already knows the answer, or at least the -real- answer.

"I-I..." she stammers, "I think I'm going out of my mind. This can't be real!"

Darius places a free hand on the woman's shoulders. "It IS real," he insists, "and the sooner you can accept that, the better for all of us. You're too important not to."

Kim does a double-take at the mystery man's words. "What?"

"Officer Kimberly Anne Thomas? From Michigan? Varsity girls' volleyball in high school?" Darius rattles off a few more identifying details for effect. With each one, Kim's jaw drops a little further.

"How do you know so much about me?" she asks.

"Because I know you in the future, Kim," Darius replies, "You will be my commanding officer in the year 2198, in the resistance against the Penetrator hegemony."

Kim is naturally incredulous, but curious. Darius tells her more.

"What you saw was a Penetrator, a cyborg sent back through time to prevent the human resistance from forming. They will convert and subjugate all human life to the machines if they succeed.

"There are others like us, and we have to find them before the Penetrators do. Intel says that there were exactly TWO cyborgs sent back through time-- one superficially male, the other you've met-- but there's no telling when the temporal transport may have taken place. There could be dozens of humans already converted into subordinate Penetrator units, themselves capable of creating more."

Darius looks sternly at his passenger, who appears silent and unfocused. "Do you understand, Kim?"

She feigns contemplation as she keeps her head low and her eyes down, though furtively scanning Darius' right pant leg, which has a conspicuous tear in it.

"Kim? Kim?" Darius calls, "did you hear me?"

Kim ignores him and focuses carefully on the tear. When he suddenly moves his leg onto the brake pedal, she finally sees clearly what she had thought she had seen: metal. Shining, unmistakable silver metal, dressed with red and green wires and tiny gears.

-He's one of them!-

Kim abruptly yanks a spare pistol from her ankle holster and trains it on her driver's head. Darius stiffens up with surprise but remains calm.

"Woh, woh, Sweetheart," he says with a nervous smile, "let's talk about this, huh?"