“What the hell...?”
The missile was huge. Beams of red light pierced the dark water as it homed in on its objective. While the signal that had drawn it to this corner of the sea had abruptly and unexpectedly been lost, it had already made sonar contact with its target.
The missile smashed into the sub, and the vessel exploded in a ball of fire.
In the staging area of the main Resistance base in California, Barnes and his compatriots crowded around the radio. The screams issuing from the speaker were all too lucid, the helpless cries all too familiar. Except that this time they were coming not from some poor isolated rural community that had attracted the attention of the machines or from a cornered squadron out on sortie, but from Command. There was little to distinguish between the shouting.
Generals or farmers, they all died the same.
Standing by herself off to the side, Kate Connor looked on in silence. While the precise details of the ongoing catastrophe were unforeseeable, their advent was not. She had spent a lifetime knowing that things were going to get worse before they got better. That insight did not make it any easier to listen to the shrieks of the dying.
Before long, the frequency that connected them with the Command sub went silent, until there was nothing left hissing from the speakers but static. Stunned, the comms officer looked up at those clustered around his station.
“They’re—they’re gone.”
Barnes pivoted to stare in the direction of the wreckage of the broadcast unit that had been so meticulously assembled by the base’s engineering staff. The one that an absent John Connor had taken the time to blow to bits.
“Connor was right about the signal. He’s no traitor. He saved us.” Looking around, his gaze settled on Kate Connor—who said nothing.
Frustrated and angry in equal measure, the lieutenant searched the faces of his fellow fighters.
“What the hell do we do now?”
Having moved to begin loading a shotgun, it was Kate who supplied the answer.
“We save him.”
The Terminator was in no special hurry. It would follow its quarry to the end of the hallway, the walls of Central, or if necessary to the ends of the Earth. Termination was simply a matter of time. The outcome was as certain as if it had been predetermined. Humans could move fast, but only for a brief period and over a short distance. The frail organic engines that powered them required constant refueling and hydration and quickly ran down. The individual it was presently tracking was no different.
A small object in the center of the floor ahead drew the attention of the machine’s visual perceptions. Leaning forward, it looked closer with the intention of analyzing the anomaly and adding this new information to its individual database. While the half brick of plastic explosive was of known chemical composition, the Terminator was not concerned. In the absence of a detonator the material was harmless.
Unlike the not-quite-so frail human who was standing at the far end of the hallway carefully balancing a 25mm grenade launcher against his shoulder.
Before the Terminator could react, Connor fired.
The resultant explosion was deafening. It blew him backward off his feet and sent him skidding several yards down the hallway. As the smoke and particulates began to clear, he climbed to his feet and made his way cautiously toward where he had planted the explosive.
Of the machine there was no sign. There was, however, a gaping, ragged-edged hole in the floor from which smoke continued to rise. The Terminator was down there somewhere. Damaged, if Connor was lucky. More likely just momentarily stunned and disoriented. That would not last. A mere grenade might slow it down but it wouldn’t stop it. The ploy had bought Connor some time, but nothing more. He needed to use it.
Limping down the hallway, he gritted his teeth as he ignored the pain from assorted bumps and bruises. He shouted as he ran.
“Reese! Kyle Reese!”
The absence of a response did not keep him from yelling out the name, nor from running. As for the Terminator, he did not look back to see if it might be gaining. There was no need to do so.
Eventually, it would be.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
He was alone. Star was gone, Virginia was gone, Marcus Wright—who he had thought of as a friend—was gone. Reese sat in the tiny cell and waited. He knew not for what, except that at the hands of the machines he could only hope it would be quick.
It was not much longer in coming. The door drew back unexpectedly. As he scrambled to try and get away, the T-600 grabbed him and dragged him, kicking and fighting, down a short corridor and into a larger chamber. In contrast to his holding room this space was larger and more brightly lit.
It also was not empty.
Mostly, it was clean. No, not clean, he told himself with rising dread. Sterile. Everything was shiny and chromed and gleaming. The instruments, the machines of varying sizes, the overhead illuminators. Everything except the blood that was draining off a metal table in the room’s center. Its smell contrasted sharply with that of the otherwise all-pervasive disinfectant. The latter was of course unnecessary for the protection of the machines. They made use of such chemicals because they did not want their specimens to become contaminated.
Hauling him toward the surgical table, the T-600 paid no attention to the human’s kicking legs and flailing arms. Effortlessly, it forced him inside. A flurry of activity in the hall beyond did not dissuade it from its assigned task.
A group of fleeing prisoners raced past, having escaped when the system shut down. One of them, smaller than most of the others, suddenly came to a halt. Star stared into the room, her eyes fixed on Reese.
The gesture did not go unnoticed. Still pinning Reese in place, the young man saw the T-600 rotate its eyes toward the line of prisoners and home in on the little girl. She froze instantly.
“Star!” Reese yelled frantically. “Go!”
Altered programming engaged the T-600’s memory. Releasing him, it raised its minigun and aimed it toward the hall.
Reese struggled to sit up.
“No!” he howled as he grabbed the T-600’s shoulder. He slid the shiv from his sleeve and started to bring it down.
Striking his chin, a glancing blow from the Terminator’s elbow knocked him halfway off the surgical table. The shiv went flying.
But not far.
It was secured to his wrist by the shoelace. Reese yanked it back into his waiting palm and slammed it as hard as he could into the single small exposed space at the base of the Terminator’s neck that John Connor had identified as its one vulnerable spot.
“Magic....” he hissed.
Reaction was instantaneous. The T-600 went into a paroxysm of mechanical spasms, flailing wildly as it sought the source of the interrupt to its motor controls. Uncontrolled, its minigun sprayed slugs in all directions, riddling the surgical chamber. Thankfully, it was locked in an upward position. Rolling off the table, Reese sprinted for Star and the hallway beyond, dodging back and forth as the machine fired wildly behind him.
Flanking the table, the automatic vivisectors stood immovable and emotionless, waiting patiently for their next flaccid, screaming subject.
Connor heard the gunfire. Unless the machines had suddenly gone crazy and begun shooting at one another, the rapid-fire bursts could only mean that someone—some human—besides himself was inside Central and raising havoc. If nothing else, the cacophony provided a destination. Breaking into a run he headed toward the source of the noise, homing in on the percussive bedlam like a bat on a bug.
In his wake and not far behind, the Terminator methodically clawed itself up out of the blackened hole in the floor. Standing, it surveyed its blasted surroundings, took samplings of the air and the floor, and resumed pursuit of its quarry as though nothing had happened to interrupt its mission.