"So you won't feel so defenseless," she said.
"Thanks," he said, accepting it. He looked up at her.
Sarah felt as though he wanted her to say something, but she had no idea what.
"I have to finish some things," she said. "Hold the fort and don't shoot my kid, okay?"
He raised the gun in salute. "You got it," he said.
He watched her go back into the office she'd come out of, then he looked around.
His hands were shaking, so he dropped the gun to the floor beside him and clasped them, hard. Jordan grimaced at the bodies on the floor and let out his breath in a little huff. They looked so human.
What if they are human? he thought. What if the Connors are delusional and I've somehow become infected? Then an image of Serena making those fantastic leaps came into his mind's eye. He'd actually seen that with his own eyes. This might be the craziest thing that would ever happen to him, but he, at least, was not insane.
Jordan shook his head and slowly dragged his wounded leg into the elevator. He pushed himself back until he was leaning against the wall. Next time something came through that door he was not going to be a sitting target. He reached up; yes, he could touch the elevator's control panel; he could shut the door at need.
He let his head lean against the wall and once again allowed himself to relax.
* * *
reroute, reroute.
Electronic components no human could have designed struggled to throw off their passionless equivalent of shock. They had been integrated with the
biological half of their personality for a very long time. Autonomous reintegration took a long time; several complete seconds.
checksum, response: negative, damage—
neurologicaclass="underline" central brain stem: no responsive. function terminated, terminated, terminated.
decision tree: restart autonomous functions from backup.
The corpse's lungs heaved, once, twice. The heart began to beat with an artificial steadiness. The computer analyzed how much function remained in muscle and organ; enough for a few minutes, if it controlled fluid loss from the ruined brain.
But it had never been designed to move the organism in this manner. Complex calculation would be required.
Fingers quivered, clenched. A heel softly tapped the ground. An eye opened, and the pupil cycled from pin-sized to a black disk that swallowed the blue of the iris.
Serena Burns was dead. But her body began to move…
"Last one," John said to Dieter, who shoved the dolly he'd found in the janitor's closet under the barrel.
"Okay," von Rossbach panted.
They'd been working well together, and fast, running back and forth to the lift every minute or so, it seemed. Dieter glanced up as he pulled the barrel out of the elevator.
"Oh, my God," he said softly.
John looked up at the indicator. There were now two elevators on four.
"Mom!" he said, and ran for the stairs.
"NO!" Dieter said, catching him by the back of his shirt. "Don't just run out there. Look first."
"Right," John said. He took a deep breath and gave the big man a rueful look.
"Don't tell Mom, okay?"
"What do you think?" Dieter said.
Cautiously, they opened the door and listened. Von Rossbach nodded and they moved carefully down the stairs.
Jordan had fallen into a state of physical and emotional lethargy. His leg hurt, but he knew he couldn't do anything about it and on some level had accepted the pain. Should I be worried about that? he wondered.
When he saw signs of movement from Serena he thought he might be hallucinating—possibly going into shock. At first all he saw were random twitches, movements so small they might have been imaginary. Then there was a full-body convulsion.
Something postmortem, he told himself wisely. Possibly brought on by all the fast food she's been eating. And boy, could that girl pack away junk food. He'd always wondered how she managed to stay so slim.
Then her head lifted and he had a full-body convulsion of his own.
"Sarah!" he shouted. This can't be happening. I'm going into shock, bethought.
"SARAH!"
Serena's head came up off the floor. Her face, streaked with blood, was utterly white, the eyes lifeless. She stayed in that position, motionless, for what seemed a long time. There was a dark hole just above her right eyebrow and blood dripped slowly from her chin.
"Sarah! She… it's alive, Sarah!" He could feel the blood draining from his face and he begged God not to let him faint. Where the hell is she? he wondered frantically. "CONNOR!"
Serena's head turned in his direction, but her eyes seemed unfocused. Jordan found he couldn't speak; his mouth went dry and his heart beat so fast it almost hurt.
Then Serena's body shifted, in an almost insect-like series of motions that first lifted her onto her hands and knees, then onto her fingertips and toes. Her head dipped and turned, in sharp, abrupt movements, as though adjusting itself to this position. A human couldn't have held her head at that angle without pain; a human couldn't have held her body like that without dropping to the floor almost immediately.
" CON-NORRRR!" Jordan screamed. Utter horror struck as he pushed himself back against the elevator wall with his good leg, until he was almost standing.
"It's alive!"
The thing that had been Serena Burns shifted its head to look in his direction, and Jordan pushed the close doors button frantically. Nothing happened; he pushed a floor button. The elevator is dead, he thought. Oh, God! So am I! He got himself onto his feet and half hopped, half slid his way around to the door and through it.
The Serena-thing scuttled toward him rapidly and he shouted in wordless terror, as he might had a spider the size of a wolf walked out of his dreams.
Instinctively he put his weight onto his wounded leg and went down to one knee.
He thought of the gun, still inside the elevator, and threw himself sideways; grabbing it, he rolled over and fired. It hit her in the shoulder and she folded back onto her knees, her head still up, still apparently watching him.
Jordan once again dragged himself to the side of the elevator, never taking his eyes off of the thing, and pushed himself to his feet. He wondered how he would get past it; it blocked most of the doorway. He and Sarah finished setting the detonator on time fuse. She had no idea exactly what was happening out there, but she did know that there was probably very little she could do about it. The laser still had ten minutes to charge. And this had to be finished. Cyberdyne was going up tonight, Terminators and all, even if she and Dyson had to go with it.
When she was finished she picked up the gun and stood. Okay, minions of Skynet, here I come, ready or not. She moved cautiously out of the office, thinking, Dieter, find my son, keep him safe. Please, my friend. Please.
She arrived just in time to see Serena knock Dyson off his feet. Taken completely by surprise, she froze for a second. Between the two of them, Dyson and the woman, this one was the least likely to be on her feet again. People with
their brains blown out didn't get up again, and she'd seen the pink-and-gray jelly spatter.
The bloodied blond head whipped round and the woman raised her gun and fired in one sharp movement. The bullet clipped the bone at the top of Sarah's right shoulder and her gun went flying.