They'd gone about their destruction so thoroughly. After all that effort, was there any chance that someone could still reconstruct Miles's research? They must have done a good job that night-if they'd messed up, Cyberdyne would surely have invented a Dyson-style nanoprocessor by now. But maybe someone had kept notes, or had the knowledge in their head. With Cyberdyne still doing well, that could be seriously bad news.
No, John thought, time wasn't like a block of amber. He knew that much-and they'd already changed the future. Judgment Day 1997 hadn't happened. But maybe it was like a rubberband, or some kind of big, powerful spring. Sure, you could change the future, but then it could come back at you, if you gave it half a chance. There was a shape it really wanted to go into.
If that was the nature of time, something bad was still coming. Who knew what the future would bring?
Two police officers entered the alley, walking cautiously, with long-handled flashlights in their left hands. The wind and lightning must have attracted their attention. The cops had drawn their pistols and pointed them directly ahead.
"Who's there?" one of them said in Spanish. "What's going on?"
The flashlights swept in arcs, back and forward across the alley, and Anton founded himself staring straight into their beams. Unmodified human eyes would have been blinded, but Anton's adjusted easily.
The same voice spoke again. It belonged to a middle-aged cop, a heavily-built six-footer with a huge gut on him. He looked dumbfounded by what he saw: five naked people in superb physical condition, three men and two women.
"My God," the cop said, still in Spanish. "Who are you?"
Danny Dyson didn't hesitate. He replied in the same language. "We need your clothes."
The other cop was taller, but he was young and athletic, with fast movements for an unmodified human. He shifted into a crouch, aiming his gun at Danny, two-handed, letting the flashlight hang from a wrist strap. "What did you just say?"
At the same time, the first cop aimed his flashlight straight into Danny's eyes. Danny merely held up his hands, showing that they were empty.
Robert spoke almost languidly, also dropping into Spanish. "My friend said we need your clothes."
Selena said, "Right now!" The flashlight's beam moved back and forth, from one of the Specialists to another: Danny, then Robert, then Selena. When the police didn't reply, she added, "Don't worry, we're the good guys."
"What's this about?" the younger cop said. "What's this good guys/bad guys stuff? You people have been watching too many American movies."
"Besides," his partner said, "you're causing a disturbance."
"You're the only ones who look disturbed." Selena sounded amused. Then she added, "I'm sorry, but we really must hurry. We'll have to take your clothes."
Anton and Danny exchanged glances. Danny subvocalized, "Deal with it, Jade.
Jade became a blur, even to Anton's enhanced vision. Me was glad she was on his side. Within a second, she'd covered fifteen feet, dodging easily, as the young cop opened fire at her. She seemed to anticipate his movement before he made it. In that same second, she knocked him unconscious with a sharp blow to the side of his jaw. In another second, she spun on her heel and kicked the gun from the other cop's hand. She turned him round face-first against an alley wall, then twisted his arm up his back. All of her actions unfolded in a single fluid motion.
The cop bucked and kicked to escape her, but Jade easily resisted his efforts. Then, as if to give him another chance, she let him go, that sad smile on her face. She shrugged, showing him her open palms, just as Danny had done. Grunting, the cop threw a punch at her, but she simply slipped away.
“I do not wish to hurt you," she said in her slow but passable Spanish. “I am sorry about your colleague. Please give us your clothes."
"You're mad," he said.
In another effortless motion, Jade removed the flashlight from the thick fingers of his left hand, tossing it to Anton for safekeeping. "I wish there were time to explain," she said sadly. "If you understood, I'm sure you'd help us."
"Do hurry, Jade," Robert said. "We don't have all night."
"Very well." In yet another easy motion, she lifted the cop over her head and held him there at arm's length while he struggled like a landed fish. If needed, she could have held him like that for weeks.
"Put me down!" the cop said. "I don't care who you are, you can't act like this."
Jade simply dropped him, and he landed hard. "I am really terribly sorry," she said as she stood over him. "I hope for your forgiveness, but it's in a good cause. Now, please, your clothes."
He looked from one of them to another. "She's got a point," Robert said.
The cop unbuckled his belt.
Robert and Anton pulled on the cops' outer clothing while the others tied and gagged the cops with their own underwear. They weren't being too nice, for the good guys, Anton thought, but they needed to slow the cops down a bit; they couldn't be allowed to interfere. That was the problem with fighting Skynet in a pre-Judgment Day metropolis. There were so many innocent, unenhanced humans in the way, all of them so easily hurt.
The younger cop's uniform was tight on Robert. Its | owner was tall, but Robert was even taller, and the uniform rode up on his wrists and ankles, making him look slightly ridiculous. Still it would have to do. Finding better clothes for him would not be easy. The other uniform fit Anton reasonably well. It was just a bit loose round his waist. He had to tighten the belt as far as it would go. They checked the cops' handguns. Both were in working order and fully loaded, save for the wild shot that one cop had fired off when Jade rushed him. It was comforting to have weapons, however primitive and ineffective they might prove if Skynet had sent back any opposition.
They still needed clothes for Danny, Selena, and Jade.
Anton and Robert stepped out of the alley into the street. The police car was parked just a few yards away, and Robert had the keys. For the moment, the street was deserted. They got into the car, started it up, and Robert drove closer to the alley so the others could pile into the back, unseen by anyone who strayed past. A few seconds later, a group of revelers came by, two couples who looked they'd come from a party or a dance club. One young man wore a purple velvet dinner suit. The other had a plain black business suit with a flamboyant lime green tie. The women wore short dresses, tight round their hips, with low-slung belts. They tottered on high heels. Such absurd clothing people wore in this era, Anton thought. Especially the women. Those clothes could never be practical for fighting. Still, they might do for Selena, and Jade, at least for the moment.
Robert pulled up alongside the partygoers, winding down the car window when they ignored him. They glanced over at the police car, possibly wondering what they'd done wrong, or maybe just feeling drunk and aggressive.
"Excuse me," Robert said in Spanish, "but we need your clothes..."
The T-XA stepped forward, and the policemen fired a shot into the air. "Put down your weapon," one said. "This is your last warning. Drop to the ground. Now!"
"That won't be necessary, officer."
"Now!" The police fired in the air. At the same time, the T-XA's pseudo-dog component sprang for one officer's throat, its mouth unhinging and its teeth elongating into throat-tearing daggers. The other officer fired, and several bullets impacted on the pseudo-human components of the T-XA, scarcely affecting its polyalloy construction. The male human component fired its laser rifle just once, as the female component commandeered the car. Its work done, the dog component jumped into the rear of the vehicle.
The pseudo-man had a last task to do. Quickly, it extended a finger into through the skull of the policeman that the dog component had terminated. As it probed the human's brain, the polyalloy extension broke down into thousands of minimally programmed nanoware fragments. These swarmed through the human's nervous system according to a preprogrammed routine, eating, digesting, and analyzing nerve fiber, building up sufficient data records to reintegrate into a highly simplified version of the man's personality and memories. Seconds later, the tiny components streamed back into the T-XA, carrying all that information with them. The Terminator reintegrated them into its body, and its main software reconstructed the information it needed.