Still he did not release his grip, although with what little RAM was left in his cognitive circuits he finally reduced his chances of success to zero percent.
His body, broader at the shoulders and in the chest than the T-X's, was being crushed by the lowering blast door.
He could feel all of his systems going off-line, one by one. And there was nothing he could do to stop his own destruction.
He brought up John Connor's image, now and in the future, superimposed over the images of Katherine Brew-ster now and then. They were not machines. They were humans, creatures his original programmers had meant for him to eliminate.
But a montage of pictures of interactions with Connor and with Katherine Brewster rippled across his dying memory circuits.
One final course of action was left open to him. The only logical choice.
He released his grip on the T-X, and for a second their optical sensors locked together.
The T-X withdrew the saw and started to crawl the rest of the way under the blast door.
Terminator pulled aside the armor plating in his chest to expose his last hydrogen fuel cell. Without hesitation he yanked the cell out of his chest, trailing wires and mechanical parts, sparks and fluids flying in all directions.
With his free hand he grabbed the T-X by a piece of tubing protruding from her hip and dragged her back.
She turned and fixed him with a baleful gaze.
"You are terminated," he told her.
Terminator crushed the fuel cell to rupture it, and thrust it into the T-X's mouth, driving it deep into her throat
"Eat me," Terminator said, and the fuel cell erupted with a tremendous explosion.
c.33
The Refuge
Kate had to help Connor hobble down an unfinished concrete corridor to a short set of stairs. They had just started down when a wall of flame shot out from under the steel blast door.
They managed to get to the bottom of the stairs and race down the lower corridor when the shock wave hit them with a blast of incredibly hot air, sending them reeling and stumbling forward as if propelled by unseen hands.
The blast door settled on its track with a tremendous metallic bang that instantly cut off the flames and shock wave.
Connor and Kate pulled up short and turned to look back. Connor half hoped to see Terminator appear at the head of the stairs. But he knew in his heart of hearts that would not happen.
He and Kate exchanged a glance and then headed the rest of the way down the tunnel that was lit at intervals by caged lights.
Dust lay everywhere. No one had come this way for
a very long time. A quarter century, Connor supposed.
The corridor ended at an elevator cage. Functional. Industrial. Meant to move people and machines to and from a subterranean control center.
Or was that right?
Connor looked back again for a moment. All the vehicles in the tunnel were very old. Coated with dust. Everything was disintegrating with time. This place was dead. Unused.
According to his watch, they had eight minutes before Judgment Day began.
They boarded the elevator and started down.
Connor opened the knapsack and inserted a detonator into a brick of soft plastic explosive. He was out of breath and operating on his last reserves. The wound in his leg throbbed, and the pain in his half-crushed ankle was excruciating. He couldn't remember when he'd had a decent meal and a good night's sleep. In a bed. Between clean sheets.
He looked at Kate, who watched him with a dubious expression on her smudged face.
"I'll set this for five minutes," he told her. "That should give us enough time to make it back up here."
She nodded. Left unsaid was what would become of them afterward. It was possible that the blast door would never open and they would be trapped down here.
Connor crimped the fuse to start the acid timer and looked at his watch. The countdown started now.
Moments later, the elevator reached the bottom,
which Connor estimated had to be at least one hundred meters beneath the tunnel.
It was dark down here. The only sounds were the noise of the elevator machinery and a distant hum somewhere.
Connor pulled the door open, and he and Kate stepped out, not knowing what to expect.
Lights began to flicker on as old, automatic circuitry activated with their arrival. Classical music, low and soothing, began to play. And they could feel the gentle rush of clean air from ventilators.
Connor stopped short as he began to see where they had come out. They were in a very large, lavishly appointed space, perhaps the lobby of a luxury hotel of twenty or thirty years ago. But brand new. Never been used.
Comfortable looking, overstuffed chairs, long plush couches, and massive coffee tables and end tables were grouped here and there. A fully stocked bar ran along one wall, shelves of books on others.
The ceiling was very high. Parts of the room had been partitioned by frosted glass dividers and doors. Sections of raw rock were exposed as if the designer had used the natural look of a cave hollowed out of a mountain rather than completely disguise it
But there were no supercomputers here. No command and control center. No sign of Skynet.
"What is this?" Connor muttered, half under his breath.
He limped across the lobby to a large door, which he threw open. Inside was an enormous pantry filled with row upon row of metal shelving stacked with bottled water, freeze-dried foods, canned goods, cooking oils and spices, paper towels and napkins.
At one end of the storage area, racks of grow lights were mounted over rows of hydroponic trays meant to cultivate vegetables and herbs and other plants.
Kate opened another door, which led into a dormitory. Rows of bunk beds and lockers, enough to accommodate at least fifty people, were ready for use.
They were running out of time. The detonator fuse continued its countdown.
Connor hurried past Kate to a third door that revealed a different kind of facility entirely.
This was Crystal Peak's Control and Command Center, and yet it was all wrong. What looked like a waiting area furnished with chairs and couches faced a glass-enclosed computer center raised a couple of steps above the main floor.
The great seal of the United States of America was mounted high on one wall, and across from it, what appeared to be a small television studio had been set up in a corner. Lights hung from a massive, circular concrete slab suspended from the ceiling brightly illuminated a podium that was flanked by the U.S. flag and a blue flag that Connor didn't recognize. Television cameras were trained on the podium behind which was a blue curtain for a backdrop.
Connor and Kate took a couple of steps closer. At the
center of the backdrop, directly behind the podium, was the seal of the President of the United States.
The president was meant to be here. To broadcast his message to a nation that was at war.
Global thermonuclear war.
It was becoming clear to Connor, finally. He sprinted across to the computer center, which consisted of several rows of monitor stations above which were clocks showing the local times at various capitals around the world. But the equipment was old. Twenty years or more out of date.
"These are just ordinary computers," Connor said with growing understanding.
He looked around, frantically searching for something, anything to prove him wrong.
"This isn't Skynet," he said. "There's nothing here. It's just a fallout shelter for VIPs. Only they never got the warning."
He swept a computer monitor off the desk and it smashed onto the floor, its old fashioned CRT tube imploding.
"Goddammit, there's nothing here!" He looked at Kate and nodded beyond her to the lobby and the elevator that had brought them down from the tunnel. "Why did he send us down here to?"