Connor looked doubtfully at the smoke, but he handed Terminator his Gerber from his belt pouch. "I thought I was the one they're after."
Terminator opened the utility tool and studied the longest blade for a moment. "You could not be located, so a T-X was sent back through time to eliminate others who could become enemies of Skynet. Your lieutenants."
Connor glanced at Kate in the back. She was huddled now in the far corner by the door, her knees up to her chin, a sullen look on her round, pretty face.
"So, she's going to be in the resistance" he started. But that didn't make any sense. Judgment Day had never come. "But ifNo, no." He looked at Terminator, trying to gauge the cyborg's meaning by the look on his face. Which was futile.
Terminator waited patiently for Connor to work it out.
"You shouldn't even exist. We took out Cyberdyne over ten years ago."
"Cyberdyne backed up its research data," Terminator explained. "They saved it off-site. When the company went bankrupt in 1993, Cyber Research Systems acquired the assets and developed the technology in secret."
"But we stopped Judgment Day," Connor insisted. He'd lived with that knowledge for the past twelve years.
"You only postponed it. Judgment Day is inevitable."
Connor sat back, defeated. There was no defense against this kind of circular logic. As he'd been from the beginning, he was nothing more than a pawn between the machines and humans in some future war. And time travel made anything possible.
Or, perhaps, impossible.
"Take the wheel," Terminator ordered.
Connor snapped out of his thoughts and he grabbed the steering wheel as Terminator, his foot still on the gas pedal, opened his jacket and lifted his T-shirt, totally indifferent to the fact that they were traveling sixty miles per hour down the highway.
The Toyota swerved to the right, nearly down into a ditch before Connor got it back up on the pavement and under control.
The flesh on the left side of Terminator's chest was charred black, an area about the size of a package of cigarettes completely burned away, exposing his metal chassis.
With the Gerber blade, Terminator cut a long curving incision around the burned skin and muscle. There was no blood, and Terminator felt no pain. The skin was dur-aplast, a form of pliant plastic.
Connor had seen this kind of weirdness before, but he was still amazed. "What are you doing?"
"I am powered by two hydrogen fuel cells," Termi-
nator said. He cut the flap of tissue free and casually tossed it out the door. "The primary cell has been damaged by the plasma cannon."
"Plasma cannon?" Connor said. The last time Skynet had sent a cyborg back to kill him, it hadn't been equipped with anything like that "So this thing is worse than a T-1000?"
Terminator folded the knife blade and opened the prying tool that he used to release his chest plate. Next, he swung open a small panel that was just beneath the most severely burned area of flesh to expose complicated circuitry and a maze of mechanical works.
"That model was discontinued in 2029. The f-X is designed for extreme combat, driven by a plasma reactor and equipped with onboard weapons. It's a far more effective killing machine."
He opened the Gerber's pliers and got to work inside his chest.
"Okay, so she's like a tank with liquid metal skin," Connor said, and even he was having trouble believing what he was saying. "She can't be melted down?"
Terminator shook his head. It was an oddly human gesture, out of place with his chest open exposing the electromechanical innards. "The battle chassis is heavily armored, hardened to withstand external attack."
Connor shrugged. "You'll find a way to destroy her," he said, because it was his only hope for survival.
"Unlikely," Terminator replied, without looking up from his work. "I am an obsolete design. The T-X is faster,
more powerful, more intelligent. Its arsenal includes nanotechnological transjectors."
"Meaning?" Connor asked.
Terminator glanced at Connor. "It can control other machines."
Connor nodded after a moment. He'd seen her handiwork with the police cars and ambulances. "Great," he muttered.
Terminator had gotten down to the pair of fuel cells in his chest. One of them smoked and sizzled. It was leaking something that was starting to react, like an acid, with bis other circuitry, and a residual blue plasma energy still shifted and rippled like an aurora around the unit.
"My presence in this time has been anticipated. The T-X is designed to terminate other cybernetic organisms."
"So, she's an anti-terminator terminator," Connor said, working it out. He shook his head again. This was getting worse, much worse by the minute. "You've got to be shitting me," he mumbled.
"No," Terminator replied. "I am not shitting you."
He moved a pair of contacts, rerouting the last of his power circuits, then looked up for a moment as the circuitry displayed in his head-up unit confirmed that he had successfully isolated the damaged power cell.
Terminator handed the tool back to Connor, gingerly unplugged the power cell, and carefully removed it from his chest. It was about the size of a small book, and it looked battered, but not particularly dangerous.
With a snap of his wrist, Terminator threw the power
cell out into a sloping field of scrub brush and boulders. It arched one hundred feet into the morning sky, hanging at apogee for a long moment before it came down, a thousand feet off the highway.
When it hit the ground it exploded with a tremendous flash-bang. The shock wave hammered off the nearby foothills and slammed into the pet van, nearly shoving it off the road. Terminator had to help hang the Toyota back under control.
"When ruptured, the fuel cells become unstable," he said.
He pulled down his T-shirt and zippered his jacket to hide the surgery as Connor glanced back at the sizable mushroom cloud rising out of the field.
An hour later they were over the foothills and headed down toward the desert, the Toyota's gas gauge on empty, wisps of steam coming from under the hood.
A large gas station-truck stop-convenience store was nestled up against a low hump in the desert.
"We must stop here for fuel and coolant fluid," Terminator said. "Do you require supplies?"
"Something to eat, maybe some water, would be okay," Connor said. "Where are you taking us?"
Terminator ignored the question. He slowed down and pulled into the gas station just as the Toyota's engine began to buck and stall, finally out of gas. He coasted to a stop at one of the pumps, got out, and went into the
store, leaving Connor to fill it up, check the oil, and get some water into the radiator.
No one was inside the station except for the cashier behind the counter. He was a teenager, wearing a striped cowboy shirt and a baseball cap. He could see the battered condition of the pet van, and the still obvious injuries to Terminator's face, though much of the skin had reformed, hiding the metal cranial case. It made him nervous.
Terminator took a moment to scan the contents of the store, spread down four aisles with rows of coolers along the back wall. He picked up a basket and walked
up and down the aisles, methodically selecting various food items including beef jerky for protein, potato chips for carbohydrates, cookies, ice cream bars, and Twinkies for sugar, and bottled water for hydration.
The cashier was fiddling with a small television set behind the counter, but every channel he switched to displayed the same message: please stand by.
He had taped a hand-lettered sign in front of the cash register. no credit cardscomputers down.