John nodded, his eyes closed. He wasn't hungry, but his mother would have insisted that he eat to keep up his strength. Besides, he thought he would feel better if he ate.
"I'll have them send up something, then," the doctor said. "Something light, some soup and some Jell-O."
"Thank you," John said.
The doctor gave him a quick, dry smile, then looked at Jordan. "You?" he asked.
"Yeah, please," Dyson said. "I haven't wanted to leave. I could use something to eat."
The doctor nodded, glanced at John one last time, then he left.
John turned his head and looked at Dyson. "Thank you," he said.
Jordan rubbed his stubbled face. "For?" he asked.
"For not turning me over to them." John's face was serious. "They will kill me if you do that," he said. He raised his brows. "And it may be a cliche, but I'm too young to die."
Dyson snorted. "Me, too," he agreed.
"Where am I?" John asked.
"You're in the base hospital at Ft. Laurel," Jordan watched John take a breath that was almost like a sob and then go still. "I haven't reported to my boss, if that's what you're wondering."
John let out his breath slowly and closed his eyes. "I was," he admitted. He looked over at Dyson. "Why not?"
Jordan grimaced. "Tarissa told me the full story a few weeks ago," he said. "I thought she was the victim of some sort of traumatic-stress/Stockholm-syndrome combination kinda thing. I mean she bought into your mother's delusion so…
completely." He looked over at the boy. "I've known that woman since I was a kid, and I always thought of her as one of the most sensible, sanest people I knew. And then she dumps that on me."
"Only it's true," John said.
"Yeah, right," Dyson sneered.
There was a knock on the door and an attendant thrust it open with his foot.
"Dr. Huff ordered this for you," he said, holding out a tray.
Jordan got up and took it from him.
"Thanks," he said.
The tray held a bowl of soup, a dish of green Jell-O, a cup of orange juice, a sandwich, and a carton of milk.
"The sandwich is mine, I guess," Jordan said. "Do you want the OJ or the milk?"
"OJ," Connor said. "I need the sugar."
Jordan's brows went up. "If you say so."
John took a sip of juice and held it in his dry mouth.
"I know how you feel, you know," he said. "When I was ten, I thought my mother was a complete psycho. Then one day two Terminators showed up, one to kill me, one to save me." He shook his head, then closed his eyes and reminded himself not to do that. "It was the craziest forty-eight hours of my life.
So far." John looked Dyson in the eye. "I don't want this to be true; it just happens to be true. If they find me, they will kill me. And I guarantee you they are looking for me. So what I need to know is, did you leave any kind of a trail at all?"
"What do you mean, like credit-card charges?" Jordan asked. "What, you think I was stopping in bars?"
"I was thinking of phone calls," John said.
Jordan bit his lip. "I called to make these arrangements from a pay phone, using a calling card. But that was from the last place I contacted Cyberdyne, so that wouldn't tell them anything. Oh, I called when we were about twenty minutes from here to tell my friend when we'd arrive."
"Were the card and the phone issued by Cyberdyne?" Connor asked.
"Ye-ah." Jordan bit into his sandwich and wondered where the kid was going with this.
"Get rid of them," John said. He could hear the tension in his own voice.
"Anything that they've given you probably has the capacity to listen in or trace you."
"Well, they haven't so far," Jordan said casually. "And we've been here all night and all day. Which, if they were looking for us, they would have done."
"Maybe they're waiting for dark," John said, glancing at the window.
"They had plenty of dark last night," Jordan pointed out, his mouth full of apparently irreducible bread. He took a sip of milk. "So that doesn't work."
"If they suspected I'd convinced you," John said musingly, "they would assume you'd be too vigilant to attack last night. But tonight, your belief would be
fading, you'd be wondering if you'd done the right thing, so you'd be a lot safer to attack." Connor looked at him measuringly. "Maybe it won't even be an attack. Maybe your Ms. Burns will just sashay in here and ask you what's going on." He raised his brows. "What would you say then?"
"I don't know," Jordan said honestly.
"Maybe something like, I got crazy, I don't know what came over me, the kid talked me into it?"
Jordan rolled up his napkin and tossed it into the wastebasket.
"When Serena Burns next sees me, the first words out of her mouth are going to be 'you're fired.' " He looked over at John. "After that she might ask me what the hell I thought I was doing, but since I'm fired it won't really matter what I say, now will it?"
"Would you let them take me away?" John asked. He had no idea how young he looked to Jordan at that moment, lying pale and weak in the bed, dark circles under his eyes, his hair tousled on the pillow.
Jordan thought of what Tarissa had told him. He thought of Danny and the look on his nephew's face before he slammed the door on him. They believed in this kid, and his mother. From what they'd told him, they had good reason to believe him. More important, Miles had believed in them. Could he do less?
"No," he said at last. "I wouldn't."
John almost wept with relief; his eyes filled and his throat tightened. He took a
deep breath and forced himself to relax. Nobody pays attention to a crying kid.
Certainty. If you act certain, people pick it up. After a minute he spoke.
"Then you have got to get me out of here, man."
Jordan looked at the door as though he expected someone to come bursting through it at those words. He leaned close. "Where do you want me to take you,"
he said quietly.
John thought for a moment. "How long have I been here?" he asked.
"All last night and all day today." Jordan frowned; he'd already told him that.
Maybe the head wound was making him forgetful.
John blew out his breath.
"Then this is the day we were going to attack Cyberdyne," he said. He looked over at Jordan. "You have to take me there."
"To Cyberdyne" Jordan asked. "Are you crazy? What about all those Terminators over there who want you dead?"
"My mother's going to be there," John said.
"Oh!" Jordan straightened up and rolled his eyes. "Why didn't you say so? I guess I'd better go find you some clothes. You can hide out in my office. No, wait; that won't work, because as soon as I show up, I'm going to get fired and I won't have an office."
John smiled. "Seriously," he said. "It's the last place the Terminators will be
looking for me. They know I'm wounded; they'll expect me to be lying low.
They might even be counting on my mother nursing me back to health in some remote location. But she'll be there. I swear she will."
Jordan tightened his lips. But he could see that the kid was serious.
"Like I said, I'd better go get you some clothes," he muttered.
* * *
Ralph's Kung Pao chicken was as good as it smelled. Dieter felt like a heel rewarding such a good dinner with what was going to be the mother of all headaches, but there was no help for it. While Ferri's back was turned he put the drops in his friend's beer.
Ralph turned back and put a brimming plate in front of Dieter, then set down his own.