As they passed a women's shoe department, Jade grabbed a pair of low-heeled sandals, hopping about as she put them on. She tossed a pair to Macedo, who caught them in one hand, the other balancing Baxter across her shoulders. Jade pointed the others to an exit door, but Sarah was already headed in that direction. Outside, they all huddled on a metal landing, thirty feet above street level. The police chopper was cruising round the building, searching with its spotlight, but it hadn't found them yet. As Selena propped up Baxter's uniformed body against the wall, then changed her shoes and tossed away the high heels, it struck John that this was all kind of macabre.
"I'd better do this bit," Selena said, looking over the rail to the street. "I'm the least conspicuous around here."
"I don't think so," Jade said, looking her up and down. "Have a look at yourself."
Selena checked out her arms, and legs and the front of her dress, as if noticing the rips, and all the blood, for the first time.
Jade vaulted the rail, saying, "I'll be back." She landed like a cat on the concrete below, then ducked round a corner and vanished from sight.
"Now what?" Sarah said, leaning over the rail, looking round vigilantly, with the CAR-15 at the ready.
Danny hefted Baxter's body and headed down the stairs towards ground level. Anton seemed much better— he was walking okay. They emerged in a deserted alley. Again, there were sirens in the distance, getting closer.
"Jade will be fine," Danny said. "As you've seen, she can act quickly."
Thirty seconds later, a big 1980s Toyota sedan pulled up. Jade popped the trunk lid and they folded Baxter's body into the trunk. Then they piled in, Danny sitting up front with Jade. She drove out of the alleyway quietly, passing a knot of police cars and merging smoothly with the city traffic. The chopper came by, going low, but it didn't recognize them in the new car. They turned north, then picked up the Anillo Periférico, heading west, then north again, following the signs to Quértaro.
"Where are we going?" Sarah said.
"To the U.S.," Danny said. "But we'll have to stop and bury Robert. How's everyone else?"
Anton groaned, then said, "I'll get over it. I wasn't sure for a while." John had seen the man's wounds, some of them. He should have been dead at least a couple of times by now.
"Good," Danny said. "The rest of you?"
Jade and Selena were obviously okay. John and Sarah were exhausted from running and fighting, but otherwise unscathed. The T-XA had concentrated its attention on the others, not seeming to care much about the Connors. That was unlike the Skynet they knew, but there had to be a reason.
"So what's this all about?" Sarah said. "What have you dragged us into?"
"Right," Danny said. "You know about Skynet, of course."
"Of course we do."
"We're here to make a better future, one without Skynet."
"What do you mean, 'one without Skynet'? We thought we took out Skynet seven years ago."
"You might have, in a sense," Anton said. "But only in a sense."
"What does that mean?"
"We came to you for help," Danny said, "because you're the only people we can trust. In the future, you'll campaign against the Skynet project and try to blow up Cyberdyne. We know you're committed, and we know what you did in '94. Remember, my mother was part of it. So we know you'll believe us. Hopefully, you'll trust us as much as we trust you. I realize we have to earn it."
"All right," John said, figuring this out. "So this time it's you trying to change the future-not Skynet?"
Danny sighed. "That's more or less right. It's more complicated than that. In the world where I came from, my mother died in 2007, at the same time as you. Later on, I found out she was right. It's just that she didn't succeed."
“Tarissa tries to help us out?" John said. That's right." Danny sounded haunted. "I was nineteen at the time. I didn't believe her. If I had, I might have died as well."
"So you're going to save her, doing this?"
"No," Anton said firmly. "That's the tragedy of it, John. Whatever we do, no one ever gets saved."
They changed cars again half an hour later, picking out a 1960s Chevrolet sedan with big rear fins. It was still pretty conspicuous, once someone reported it missing, bit it was easy to steal. By the time it was reported, they would be far away, in yet another vehicle.
Sarah sat up front this time, squeezed between Danny, when he got in, and Jade, in the driver's seat. Jade smashed the ignition mechanism with a blow of her fist and started the car.
"Wow!" John said from the back, seated just behind her. "You sure you're human, Jade? I've never seen anyone human do that."
"There's always a first time, John."
He didn't know what to make of that. She had a way of talking that was gentle and sad, as if she'd seen and understood stuff the rest of them could only imagine. As the car pulled out of its parking spot, John craned forward to talk to her. "I mean, I've seen a Terminator do it, but not a human being."
"That's what I thought you meant."
"Yeah. Uh, don't take it the wrong way. I'm not trying to compare you to a Terminator." Back in 1994, when the T-800 was protecting him, it had stolen cars that way. If Jade could do it, too, no wonder she kept stealing cars so quickly-and that she could do so much else.
"I'm not offended," Jade said. "And I think you'll find that stealing cars is the least of my talents." Though it was obviously a little joke, she didn't laugh. "We're all biologically human, but we've been upgraded."
"Jade gets sensitive about this," Macedo said. "She's the most enhanced member of the team."
Jade shrugged as they passed a big Mercedes tourist bus. "I'm the youngest, so I'm the most enhanced. Judgment Day came just after I was born, so the technology doesn't get any better than this." She wasn't boasting. It sounded more like she saw it as tragic.
"You mean there was no chance to develop it further?" he said.
"Exactly."
"But Danny was born back in, I don't know, 1990 or something."
"1988," Danny said.
"Right, so you can't have been enhanced then. We didn't have that kind of technology back in the '80s—we still don't."
"There are different kinds of enhancement," Anton said. "The rest of us have had somatic cell engineering at different points in our lives, but Jade is different. She's re-engineered through and through, from before she was born. Every cell of her is more efficient than you or me, or any of us."
"Just don't pick on her," Danny said. "She'll make you regret it."
"I could do without all the attention," Jade said.
Danny glanced over at her. "Sorry, Jade. I know you're not a curiosity piece. You're one of us. You're the best."
"Thank you, Daniel."
"Hey, Jade, I'm sorry, too," John said. "I didn't mean to offend you."
He was figuring out something else. Jade looked at least twenty, maybe a bit older. But she said she was born not long before Judgment Day. Let's see, he thought. If Judgment Day was 2021 and these people came from 2036, she must be only fifteen or sixteen. That didn't add up.
"No offense taken, John," she said. "You need to know about us. Daniel is right—I was what they called one of the 'ultrabrights' in the years leading up to Judgment Day. I was re-engineered very deeply. For example, I'm almost immortal-I won't age any further."
"How old are you, Jade?"
For the first time, she laughed. "In years actually lived, sixteen. But I was designed to grow up fast, then stop. Socially, intellectually, and biologically, I'm much older. Then again, if you want to measure my age from when I was born until now, I'm about minus eighteen."