The head of a terminator is found on the side of the road. Sarah (Lena Headey) is looking for her old friend Enrique Salceda (Tony Amendola), who can make the fake IDs they need. Cameron (Summer Glau) tells Sarah that there are resistance fighters from the future living in the area. They find several dead on the floor of a safe house. One turns out to be a Terminator and throws Cameron across the room. He runs, she chases but is hit by a car and loses him. Cameron tells Sarah that jumping eight years into the future bypassed her death by cancer. The Terminator she encountered was not out to get John, because Skynet doesn’t know where they are.
They go to see Enrique, but he is retired and refers them to his nephew Carlos (Jesse Garcia). John leaves the house though Sarah forbids it. He searches himself on the Internet and finds out about FBI Agent Ellison (Richard T. Jones) and Sarah’s old lover Charlie (Dean Winters). Cromartie the Terminator awakes. Carlos wants 20,000 dollars for the IDs. A cop harasses Cameron, and Sarah stops her from killing him. Back in the safe house, they find a locked safe. When Cameron touches it, she is electrocuted and collapses. John opens the safe. They shove the still-comatose Cameron out the window and she falls on a car, crushing it. She reboots and they run off, watched by a man with a Resistance tattoo.
Ellison discovers they are still alive. Cromartie’s body finds his head. Carlos delivers the new IDs, but Sarah overhears Enrique being called a rat. Charlie lies to his current wife about Sarah and John. Sarah pulls a gun on Enrique and demands to know if he is selling her out. Cameron shoots him and Sarah is furious. Actually, Enrique is a rat because Agent Ellison has a voicemail message from Enrique about Sarah. John and Cameron sign up for school and Sarah goes to the doctor for a cancer test.
Enrique Salceda is the man visited for guns and supplies in Terminator 2. Gnothi Seauton in Greek means “Know thyself.” The purpose of bypassing Sarah’s cancer would seem to be so Terminator 3, in which she is dead, could be eliminated from the movie timeline. Fans hated that movie and so did James Cameron. Arnold Schwarzenegger apologized to Cameron for it, though he enjoyed making it and got a shitload of money for it, which Cameron encouraged him to do. Arnie considered Terminator Genisys to be the third Terminator movie.