Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines

C.15

Sirens converged, it seemed, from all over the city of Los Angeles on the mangled, burning wreckage of the National Rentals' Champion crane, the LAFD hook and ladder unit, and the LAPD squad car.

People were already gathering closer to the scene of the accident, drawn to the flames like moths.

Someone had to have been killed. No one could have survived. There was wreckage strewn along a five-block area. There had to be bodies, though a few of the spectators had witnessed what they thought was a man leaping from the crane just before it crashed. But nobody was going to believe that.

A high-pitched whine came from deep inside the tangled mass of metal. People stepped back. There was no telling what dangerous chemicals were in there.

At the base of the fire truck's chassis a gap appeared that widened as if someone or something was opening a tent flap.

T-X, her left hand formed into a diamond-toothed metal saw, stepped out of the wreckage. She glanced with indifference at the small crowd, then walked away, her hand morphing back into human form, her skin and clothing in perfect condition. Not so much as a strand of hair out of place.

No one tried to stop her, or even talk to her.

Around the corner in the next block, she hot-wired a blue Saturn and headed back into the city. Her head-up display was overlaid with a street map on which was pinpointed the home address of Katherine Brewster.