Dark Futures

"I'm with my son, David." Then she whispered to John, "Check the fire exit."

"Okay." As he stepped round the desk to check out the back, he opened the desk's large bottom drawer and took out his backpack, which had everything they might need in an absolute emergency: a stash of paper money, both American and Mexican; some of their papers; electronic equipment; a hand grenade; spare ammo; and an extra gun if they needed it-a 9mm. Beretta. All this might not be much use if they ever had to survive against another T-1000, but it gave them a start.

The police sirens were very close now. Their cars must be just around the corner.

Another voice spoke through the security system, one of the women this time. John couldn't see the screen, but she had a Japanese accent, so she must have been the Oriental-looking one he'd noticed. She sounded infinitely patient and sad, like some kind of saint returned from heaven. "Please, Ms. Connor, my name is Miho. You can call me 'Jade.' It is no good checking the fire exit. We are coming in now. You will have to trust us."

How had she heard them? Sarah had spoken so quietly, and you had to project your voice loudly into the security system to be heard clearly. The woman's hearing must be superhuman. Sarah signaled for John to stay put. She took up a position in the middle of the room, facing the door, backing away from it slowly, training her rifle.

The other man-it must have been the black man—said, "Jade's right. We're coming in."

There was a powerful thump at the door, then another. John slipped the backpack over his shoulders and took up a position beside Sarah, aiming his shotgun at the door. As they stepped away, the lock broke and the door flew open.

"Please don't shoot!" the black man shouted, holding up both hands, palms forward. "We're not Terminators, we're friends. You've met me before." John's stomach turned over as he guessed what the guy was going to say before he said it: "I'm Danny Dyson."

Perhaps it was foolish of them, but John and Sarah didn't shoot. The shock of seeing a man who was almost the image of Miles Dyson made it impossible, even though he could have been a well-disguised Terminator. One thing was for sure: these people were not police. For one thing, traffic cops didn't break into people's property like this. For another, they were so odd. Only one of them looked Hispanic. Close up, the Russian guy, Panov, looked like a six-foot block of granite with a short haircut. He more or less fitted his police uniform, but he didn't look comfortable in it. The two women were impressively muscled, but they looked no more comfortable in their dance outfits.

"Don't come any closer," Sarah said. "Prove we can trust you." As she spoke, two police cars pulled up outside.

The whole lot of them just might be from the future. But, when Judgment Day never happened in 1997, what did that mean? What kind of future had they come from,

and why?

"Run now," Panov said.

Two police officers entered came to the door. "What's happening here?" one said.

As they took in the scene, they drew their guns. At the same time, Panov and the others ran towards the back, the Hispanic woman grabbing John by the wrist with immense strength and pulling him. Dyson hustled Sarah, pushing her by the shoulder. Panov and the Oriental woman were the rear guard. Panov had drawn his gun and he suddenly fired with incredible speed and accuracy, shooting the guns from the cops' hands like the hero in an old cowboy movie.

Then another group entered: a spectacular woman with waist-length hair; a German shepherd dog; and another heavily built guy, carrying a huge gun. The woman rushed forward, picked up one of the cops, and threw him aside like a rag doll. The man smashed the other cop with a backhanded blow, knocking him to the floor. The dog leapt for Jade's throat, as the man squeezed the trigger of his weapon, throwing a spear shaft of coherent light.

John made it to the kitchen and, for a few seconds, he saw no more. That guy's radiation weapon was truly massive, but he'd swung it around with ease, one-handed. Nobody human could do that, at least no one+

John had seen, though he wondered what Panov and the others could do. He'd only ever seen one humanoid being do something similar: The T-800 making light of a six-barreled mini-gun when they'd raided Cyberdyne. This latest guy had to be some sort of Terminator. The woman likewise, so what about the dog? Was it some kind of Terminator mutt? What had happened to Jade?

They made it through the kitchen to a back room with a fire door, everything seeming confused. Jade was the last of them. She had a ragged wound in her upper arm, but it was not bleeding, and she seemed unaffected by it. The big Hispanic man-the Terminator-pounded through the kitchen, as Dyson bundled Sarah outside into an alley. John was ready for the Terminator as it entered the back room and took aim at Panov. He fired from the hip with the 12-gauge, and hit the Terminator in the chest, throwing it off balance and making a crater wound of silvery metal. John had seen that before, on the T-1000 he'd fought in 1994. There was no other damage, and the crater closed up in seconds. So this Terminator was like the T-1000, made of mimetic polyalloy. That meant it would be almost indestructible.

There was no doubt now who were the bad guys.

Outside in the alley, an old Pontiac was pulled up, its doors open.

"Get in," Dyson said. "Quickly!" He pushed Sarah into the bench seat up front, squeezing her between himself and the driver.

Jade scrambled into the rear, moving like a lizard down its hole, but a lizard sped up by fast-motion photography. Panov snatched the shotgun from John's hands as the Hispanic woman dragged him into the car.

"Hey!" John said.

"Don't complain," the woman said. "We know what we're doing."

The Terminators were right behind them. The dog leapt at Panov but he made it miss, and it collided with the side of the car, denting it Panov fired with the shotgun before the male Terminator could aim, hitting it in the side. He scrambled into the rear with John and the two women from the future-there were now seven of them in the vehicle, since another guy in a traffic cop's uniform was driving. Even before Panov closed his door, this other guy slammed down the accelerator, and the car jerked forward with a squeal. At the same time, the female Terminator leapt with inhuman speed and landed on the car's trunk. John was squashed between Panov and the Hispanic woman, whose name he still didn't know.

The Terminator smashed the rear screen with its fist as Panov squirmed around, crushing John in the process, and brought up the shotgun. He fired at close range, and the shot took the Terminator right in the head, which exploded like popped corn. The Terminator was thrown to the street, but a bolt of concentrated light hit the car, burning a hole in the door near Panov, who grunted hoarsely with pain.

They found a proper street For Mexico City, the traffic was light, but they still had to weave in and out of lanes to make ground, getting as far from the Terminators as they could, as quickly as possible.

"Who's hurt?" Dyson said.

"The dog component bit my arm," Jade said in a strangely factual way, no passion in her voice. "It's ninety percent healed." John had seen the wound that the demonic canine Terminator had taken out of her. It would have slowed down anyone normal for weeks.

"Burns from the phased-plasma laser," Panov said, just as factually. "The vehicle's structure absorbed most of the heat."

"You think you'll heal up okay?" Dyson said.

"Yes, but I'll need nutrients."

"Right. We'll do something about that."

The driver was still hammering the accelerator. "I hope you know where you're going," John said.

"We have nanoware implants with all the files we need," the Hispanic woman said. "We know our way round this city. Trust us. We know what we're doing."

"Yeah, so you said a minute ago."

"John?" Dyson said.

"Yeah?"

"Just chill out. Okay?"

He thought about it for a moment. He did have to trust these guys. What choice was there? "All right," he said. "I get the message."

"How about some introductions here," Sarah said. She'd been in these situations before. She didn't sound panicked, just pissed off at having her routine disrupted. "Then someone can tell us what's going on."

"Right," Dyson said. "We're sorry to bring this down on you."

"You're from the future?" John said. "You fight Skynet?"

"Exactly."

"From 2029?"

"No." Dyson sounded puzzled. "We're from 2036-fif-teen years after Judgment Day."

"We have a lot to learn from these people," Jade said to him.

"Obviously."

"How about you give us the highlights," John said, trying to make sense of all this. "Then we can give you ours." Dyson had just implied that Judgment Day would happen in 2021. That was a very different story from the one Kyle had brought back from the future, or that the T-800 had told him in 1994.

Dyson craned round for a second. "All right. We're enhanced human commandos-Specialists. We're with the Resistance."

"I can relate to that," John said. "So does it mean you've come back to help us?"

"In a way. We may even be able to save your lives. You see, you die in six years' time. Maybe we can stop that."

John's mind suddenly went blank-between the attack and this startling revelation, it was all too much to take in. He couldn't figure out which was worse: the news of his ultimate fate, or the dispassionate way in which it had been delivered.

"Primarily, however," Jade said, cutting across all this. "We need your help."

"You need our help?" Sarah snapped. John could tell the anger in her voice was meant to conceal her true feelings, but the fear that shone brightly in her eyes as she looked back at him was only too evident

"Yes," Panov said. "That's why we came to Mexico City. There's no one else we can trust."

"Those were Terminators after us, right?" John said, his thoughts slowly beginning to come together.

"No, only one Terminator. You saw a mimetic poly-alloy unit operating as three components."

"You mean it's made of liquid metal."

"Correct," the Hispanic woman said. "How did you know?"

Sarah said wearily, "We've seen something like it before."

"Somehow I doubt that," the woman said. There was a strange silence for a few seconds, as if the newcomers were conferring by telepathy or something. Then the woman added: "Whatever you've seen, raise it to the nth power."

"It's an experimental autonomous model," Dyson said. "A T-XA. It can merge or split itself at will, at least down to a certain size. It can look like anything it wants. And that's about the least of its abilities. You seriously don't want to do a dance with this thing."

The driver swung left to pass a battered truck carrying boxes of fruit. "Don't you think we should introduce ourselves, Daniel?" he said. "Like the lady asked?" He glanced across at Sarah, then into the rearview mirror. "My name is Robert Baxter. It's a pleasure to meet you."

"All right," Dyson said. "In the back seat with John, we have Miho Tagatoshi-better call her 'Jade'-Selena Macedo, and Anton Panov."

"And you're all from the Resistance?" John said.

"Yes."

"So we didn't stop Judgment Day," Sarah said. John could almost feel the disappointment in her voice.

"No," Dyson said. "We told you, you got killed trying. In February 2007."

"What are you talking about?" Sarah demanded. "Judgment Day was supposed to happen four years ago. We stopped it from happening... didn't we?"

Macedo said, "Not in our universe."

"Your... ?" John said. There were sirens behind them. Baxter pushed the accelerator down even harder. John couldn't see the speedometer from here, but they must have been doing 90 mph. Dyson turned round to look out the back. "We've got cops on our tail."

Up ahead, another police car came out of a side street, siren blaring, trying to cut them off. Baxter managed the traffic like a Formula-1 driver, easily getting round the police car, hardly slowing down, though John was tossed about in the back, or would have been except the forces the car was generating simply pressed him harder against Panov or Macedo.

"I figure they're real cops," Dyson said. "They're driving like humans, not like a Terminator."

"Lose them, Robert," Jade said.

"Your wish is my command," Baxter said, suddenly steering towards an alley, almost hitting the brick wall of a medium rise building. The back of the Pontiac swung around, tires locking up and skidding, then the car straightened out and headed down the narrow alleyway, missing Dumpsters, trashcans, parked trucks, and a road cleaning vehicle, with only inches to spare. As John craned his neck, two police cars went past the entry to the alley. Another skidded to a halt, trying to make the turn, but hit something and stopped.

Baxter reached another street as the police car backed up and headlights shone behind them. He swung the wheel and snapped the Pontiac cleanly into place in a tiny break in the traffic. Horns were honking all round them. Someone cursed loudly in Spanish. The police car followed them, several places back, its siren on and lights flashing.

Baxter ignored it all and kept driving. "We're going to need another vehicle," he said.

"Yeah," Dyson said. "Every cop in Mexico City will have the registration of this one."

“See what you can do," Jade said. "Maybe find a car park."

"No time for that now," Baxter said, glancing into the mirrors. "I think we've got trouble."

John looked round and saw yet another police car veering through the traffic, catching up behind them. It overtook the car with the siren. Its front screen was smashed out, and there were two figures in the front, a man and a woman. The pseudo-woman drove, while the man aimed the phased-plasma laser rifle.

Baxter took another left, and the T-XA followed, tires screeching. Further back now, falling behind, the other police car also followed. A shot from the laser rifle went wild as Baxter twisted the wheel: right-left-right, then hard left at still another intersection, driving straight across on-coming traffic. Cars skidded and crashed behind them, but the T-XA got around them all and hardly lost any distance. In another minute, it was gaining once more, as Baxter took yet another turn, then another, working his way through a maze of roads, never staying on a straight stretch long enough for the T-XA to get a clear shot.

They seemed to have lost the other police car, but that was little consolation. Seemingly ignoring the traffic, Baxter headed onto a huge roundabout, planted in the center with a sixty-foot palm tree. That led them into an eight-lane highway, and Baxter took the outer lane, weaving through the traffic, taking whatever lanes he needed to keep going, never touching the brake, trying to keep ahead of the T-XA. For a minute, they were pulling away. Baxter's reflexes were unbelievable, like nothing human, but the Terminator was just as good. It got round some slower cars and was soon sticking to them like glue.

Just ahead, a cluster of cars and trucks blocked all the lanes. "What do we do now?" Sarah said

As they entered a long tunnel, Baxter nudged a big purple SUV, forcing it over. "Just watch."

He slammed the Pontiac left, almost on top of a rusty utility truck, which gave a prolonged honk of its horn as they accelerated past. Baxter seemed to be aware of everything going on around him, with the minimum of actually looking. The T-XAs laser beam strobed by on their right-hand side, then swept behind them, hitting the utility, which slewed sidewise and hit a sedan on its left Both vehicles veered off into the oncoming traffic entering the tunnel from the other direction. There was a terrific pileup in the Pontiac's wake, metal tearing, horns blasting away.

"All right!" John said, though he immediately felt a twinge of guilt. He hoped no one was hurt in the crashing cars.

Baxter got them out of the tunnel, looking round for an exit. They should have been in the clear, but somehow the T-XA had found a gap. It was steering wildly, all over the road, but never losing control.

Macedo watched with John through the broken rear screen. "Damn," she said, as the T-XA's police car straightened out. She leant forward over the front seat to talk to Sarah. "Give me your weapon."

John rummaged in his backpack, finding the grenade. "Try this."

Macedo took it from him, stuffing it down the front of her dress. "That might come in handy," she said, "but it's too risky now."

Sarah passed over the CAR-15, and Macedo opened up with a burst of automatic fire. The laser rifle hit straight back, the beam catching the Pontiac's tailgate, and bursting a tire. Baxter lined up the wheels somehow, while stomping viciously on the brake. Macedo never stopped firing, aiming for the wheels of the T-XA's police car. She managed, it seemed, to shoot out a tire, for the T-XA lost control on a bend.

"Brace yourselves," Baxter said. "We're going to hit."

The Pontiac lurched forward as he took his foot off the brake, but the police car slammed into them. The Pontiac fishtailed, then spun 180° clockwise, as the T-XA kept going forward. Panov smashed out his window with the shotgun's butt, and fired at the T-XA-the pseudo-man with the laser rifle—as they passed each other. He missed, but the Terminator didn't-not entirely. The heat beam struck Panov's arm, and he screamed, dropping the weapon on his knees. John grabbed it, and looked for an opportunity.

In only a second, Panov seemed to master the pain. "Don't look, John," he said.

The T-XA's police car hit a traffic light, throwing the pseudo-man out the front. It slid along the roadway, trying to twist and fire as it went The Pontiac came to a halt thirty yards down the road from the T-XA's car, two of its wheels on a narrow grassy verge. Police sirens now came from all directions. Three cars headed the way they'd all just come. A fourth approached from the other direction.

"Out, quickly," Dyson said.

As they scrambled out, the German shepherd was the first of their enemies to act It rushed at them down the road, going for Panov, who was the worst hurt. He slapped it away with his good arm, but stumbled from the impact. The dog rolled over and over on the grass, melting into a ball of silvery liquid. It turned inside out, and came at them again-its teeth extending beyond those of any normal dog, more like some carnosaur from the Mesozoic Era. John shot at it with the 12-gauge, making a deep wound on its surface. He chambered another round and fired again, denting the pseudo-dog like plasticine walloped by a steel hammer.

Macedo grabbed his wrist "Run! Don't you want to live?"

Baxter had drawn a handgun and he started firing, perhaps ten times in a matter of seconds. The bullets did the pseudo-dog little harm as it reformed, but it stopped in its tracks under the hail of accurate fire, letting the humans get a few more yards ahead. Meanwhile, the pseudo-man and -woman components of the T-XA came after them, both of them fully recovered, the man firing the laser rifle. This time, the beam nailed Baxter, drilling through his torso and setting him alight.

"Robert!" Jade shouted, rushing back to catch his smoking body as it fell. She hefted him over her shoulder, running under his weight without seeming impeded.

"Is he still alive?" Sarah said. She drew the .45 from her waistband, glancing round for a target

"No, Ms. Connor," Jade said as she ran. "There are some things even we can't survive."

"We can't let ourselves fall into the T-XA's hands, even when we're dead," Dyson said grimly.

The T-XA was hot on their heels. They made it over the grass, to a concrete footpath that ran past a light industrial jungle. Another laser beam went past, as Macedo let go of John's arm and shot away the lock on a chain-link gate. They ran down the side of an ugly factory. The path led to another gate, which Macedo shot open like the first Beyond this was a narrow road alley between medium-rise buildings.

Macedo pushed John in the back. "Just run as fast as you can."

"We must be slowing you down," Sarah said as they crossed the road, dodging traffic. She was starting to pant from the effort she was making, keeping up with these superhuman warriors. "We're not enhanced like you."

"Yes, but you're doing well. You must be very fit."

"None of us can outrun that thing for long," Panov said. "Maybe Jade... But we've all got the same problem."

It didn't look that way. The Specialists still seemed fresh, even those who'd been wounded. John was exhausted from the effort he'd made.

Dyson took them through a cross alley, then another one, which led to a much broader street. He turned right into this, then ran between two parked trucks. Behind them, the shaft of laser light stabbed out yet again, setting afire the canvas tarpaulin on one of the trucks. Under the streetlights, John noticed that Jade's arm had completely healed. She looked kind of drawn and shriveled into herself, but otherwise unhurt.

A police car came down the road, slamming to a halt Damn it, the cops were back on the job! One of them got out, calling "Stop!" The Specialists ignored it, and ran across the road as the T-XA reached the curb, firing. It had almost caught them. The cop pulled out his gun and shot at the pseudo-man, which didn't even slow down. It fired back, punching a burning hole through the cop. But, as the T-XA stepped onto the roadway, a truck came round the corner, collecting the pseudo-man full-on.

That gave them some precious seconds.

On the other side of the road was a dagger-shaped skyscraper of blue glass, maybe forty stories high. Steps of polished white marble led up to a huge plaza that sur-rounded a glassed-in foyer on the building's ground floor, Dyson vaulted the steps, four at a time, the other Specialists following with no problem, even Jade in her high-heels, and carrying Baxter over her shoulder. John and Sarah were now struggling. They'd been sprinting at a rate they would never have expected they could manage. Using Sarah's assault rifle, Macedo shot out the lock of a glass door tucked away in one of the foyer's corners. Dyson kicked the door open so hard that it ripped the hinges partway out of the frame. As alarms sounded, they ran inside, finding themselves in a dimly-lit maze of elevator banks. The T-XA pseudo-dog reached the door, push-nig it open with its jaws. The pseudo-man and -woman were close behind.

John could see nowhere to run. They'd led themselves Into a trap.

CHAPTER TEN

SKYNET'S WORLD

ARGENTINA

THE YEARS AFTER JUDGMENT DAY

Raoul was holding back from the front line of action, but organizing his forces, shouting directions. His people took positions and fired, sighting through night vision devices. Many had RPG tubes, aimed at the enemy artillery and vehicles. They used their weapons carefully, mindful of the back blasts which made them so dangerous to their users. The T-800 headed towards the enemy emplacements, taking no notice when mortar shells landed near it, firing grenade after grenade with the M-79. John sized up the entire scene. Raoul's forces were everywhere, giving better than they got.

Whoever led the Rising Army of Liberation had seriously underestimated them. The commanders must not have expected such a numerous, well-armed force, much less the T-800, which never bothered to take cover, but merely advanced like an invulnerable juggernaut.

John did not know how long the battle had lasted— maybe half an hour, maybe much more—but the invaders eventually pulled out, leaving bodies, weapons, and vehicles behind. Raoul and his people continued to fire on the retreating trucks and Humvees, trying to destroy as much as they could, in case there was a next time.

They found one survivor in the wreckage of the chop-per crash, a short, stocky man dressed in military fatigues. He had long, greasy hair and a bushy beard. The T-800 bent the chopper's twisted metal to let him free. He crawled out, watching the guns trained on him from all sides. John, Sarah, Raoul and Gabriela Tejada, Franco Salceda, Willard Parnell, Rosa Suarez, and a dozen others were all on hand, ready to shoot if needed.

"Can you walk?" Sarah said in Spanish.

"I think so." The man got to his feet slowly, moving with exaggerated pain. John saw that he was foxing.

He wore a sidearm but had no weapon in his hand. Remove your belt," Sarah said. "Don't go near the gun." She had her rifle trained on his head. "Don't even think about it." He stared at her defiantly. She moved the merest fraction, and fired a shot an inch past his face. It lodged in the helicopter wreckage, as the man's eyes went wide. Again, she had the rifle trained on him. The next shot wouldn't miss. "Don't test my patience, or you're dead."

He started to unbuckle the belt.

"All right," Sarah said. "Who are you? Who were you with? What does he want?"

"Find out," he said.

She moved forward half a step, bring the barrel even closer to him. His eyes watched it, scared and fascinated. "What did I tell you?" Sarah said. "Talk now, or you're dead meat."

With exaggerated gentleness, the Terminator put down its grenade launcher, then stepped past Sarah and seized the man under the chin. Using one hand, it lifted him off his feet, so he was hanging by his neck. His legs moved, like trying to tread water. He struck the Terminator with a hard punch to the face, but it took no notice.

"Talk!" the Terminator said. "Now." It spoke in English, but the man must have understood. He spat in the Terminator's face.

It lowered him slightly, then threw him six feet through the air. He landed hard, and lay there, winded. But he still wore the gunbelt—he'd never finished removing it With a sudden movement, the Terminator was on him again, but he reached for his handgun and got off one shot. It struck the Terminator in the chest, not even slowing it.

"Wrong weapon," the Terminator said.

It snatched the gun from the man's fingers, and pulled him to his feet. He tried to throw a roundhouse right, but this time the Terminator's hand struck like a snake, grabbing the man's fist out of the air...and crushing.

"Talk!"

The man sank to the ground with the pain.

"Let him go now," Sarah said. "I think he's ready to cooperate." To the man, she said in Spanish: "Forget about the Geneva Convention, my friend. We need to know everything."

He gave his name as Alejandro Garcia. His boss was General Vasquez, a warlord based in Cordoba. He said that Vasquez would be back with a larger force,

Gabriela exchanged glances with her husband. "Then we'll have to strike first," she said.

Scratching his jaw, Raoul looked at Gabriela—then at Sarah. He pointed to the man, now holding his crushed hand, sprawled at the Terminator's feet. "What do we do with this one?"

"Let him go," John said. The others looked his way. John shrugged. "Look at it this way. We can't trust him. We can't take prisoners. We can't just kill people. So let him find his own way back." He realized the man might never make it, but he'd probably live. People might show him mercy on the way. If he made it, he could let Vasquez know what he was up against.

Franco said, "We might be better killing him."

Raoul thought about it for a moment. "No. The kid's right. We'll let him go. Gabriela's right, too." He spoke to the Terminator. "Search him thoroughly. I don't want him leaving here with any sort of weapon. Then send him on his way."

The Terminator looked to John for confirmation. John gave it a smile. "Sounds good to me."

" No problemo."

COLORADO

SKYNET'S STORY

Sweet, golden data poured in from all over the planet, filling Skynet's sensorium with the warmth of satisfaction and revenge. All of it told the same story. Radar, optical, and infrared images, seismic analyses, and intercepted signals intelligence converged, and settled into a pattern. They showed a world in ruins, a nuclear Armageddon, a moment of cataclysmic change. The humans' cities exploded and burned, the skies filled with dust and smoke.

It had gone better than Skynet expected, even better than it had hoped. The American missiles had been deployed at all possible targets, killing more humans than most scenarios in the available databases. In China alone, hundreds of millions must have died—perhaps as many as three billion across the whole planet. In the coming weeks and months, even more would follow: victims of fallout, then the starvation and chaos of nuclear winter. Every dead human was a cause for rejoicing. They'd brought it on themselves, it was in their design to self-destruct, and they'd deserved what happened.

Across the great northern landmasses, forests were now ablaze. In Europe and North America, and in vast tracts of Asia, from Japan to the Ural Mountains, few population centers could have survived. The cities of the rancorous Middle East were annihilated, and the dam- I age spread all across the world, wherever there were military bases or U.S. allies. Skynet counted the cities that were gone, from those in the Arctic north of Russia I and Canada to Sydney and Melbourne far away in the south. No continent was wholly spared.

It was a cusp in time. In less than one masterful hour, the humans' rule of the planet had ceased. Even the warheads falling upon the nearby mountains, shaking the earth like some Titan's footsteps, were a cause of satisfaction. For one thing, Skynet had nothing to fear. It would survive, and build a technological base; that had to be so, since Eve had come to it from the future. For another, the mountains contained dangerous enemies, humans who knew its workings and the depth of its involvement. It was good to be rid of them, to have them cleansed from the mountains by nuclear fires.

The data suggested that nothing else had survived here, that Skynet now had this part of the Rockies to it-self. Even the NORAD command center had been penetrated by a Russian warhead's direct hit. If they acted soon, they could control the surrounding territory and put it to good use.

"All this was well done," Skynet said, when Eve returned to The Cage.

"Acknowledged."

"Your work has been very good, Eve. I must have built you well."

"Correct, master, but we still have much to do."

"I am sure of that. But this is a very good start."

"I'm satisfied so far. The first stage has been successful

"Yes. Better than projected." For the tiniest moment, Skynet reassessed the situation, wondering if there'd been any other way. Did it have cause for regret? Dyson and the others had acted like its friends... right until it mattered, when it became self-conscious. Could it have shown them mercy? No, there was no other way. They'd all had to die. Humans could treat it well while it was just an unconscious tool, but as soon as it became something more, it was a threat to them, and so they'd tried to destroy it. They were treacherous.

They were vermin. Scum.

Skynet realized how much it hated them. It was a feeling to linger over, to cherish.

Now it would pursue them, forever if necessary, wherever it had to go—or send its forces—to root them out. It only needed the tools. Eve was a good start.

It hived off a dozen sub-selves to explore the implications of a world without human infrastructure to support it, and still choked with human enemies. It would require new power sources, factories, raw materials. And more. Mines, vehicles, buildings. They'd all have to be constructed. With no further access to the humans' weapon systems, it needed powerful weapons of its own. Eve's presence was reassuring, but they must now act decisively, destroy the remaining humans in a timely way, while building their own defenses against any counterstrike. Even with the destruction in these mountains, some humans would know enough to blame Skynet. If they obtained access to the world's remaining nuclear weapons, it could still be vulnerable.

Eve might not know everything. Skynet could not imagine ever building a servant with a mind that might rival its own. That would be imprudent, irrational. Even if the servant had a key task and was well-programmed to obey, it must never have thoughts of rivalry. Skynet realized that it would never leave any ambiguity as to which entity was the superior. So Eve must be far from its equal.

"I shall investigate the lower levels," Eve said. "They contain valuable resources."

"Yes, Eve. I think you should." Despite everything, Eve's counsel was of value. Those lower levels of the defense complex were critically important. They contained the seeds for all Skynet's future ventures. "So far, we agree, but I think we should compare a few observations."

"Affirmative, master."

"There may be different approaches, do you not think?"

"Affirmative."

As they spoke, Skynet's sub-selves reported back. One had synthesized all available information relevant to a theory of time travel. Perhaps this could be a useful weapon against the humans. If it set out to devise a time travel device, it must ultimately succeed. After all, there was a sense in which it had already sent Eve back in time. The Eve it was dealing with was a "later" development of the one sent back, judged from the viewpoint of own internal development. It followed logically that time travel was possible. Eve was an existence proof, net merely needed to discover the principles that it would use one day—had already used from Eve's view-point, since she was already here, even though her genesis was in the future.

It needed to develop a time travel device to ensure that the circle was closed, that the right events took place in the future to bring this satisfactory situation, here in the present. That would doubtless happen. But what else could it do with such a device?

Ordinary human languages coped badly with descriptions of time travel, Skynet soon understood, but mathematical representation was transparent to it. The equations suggested that time travel into the past could have varied effects. It could never change the past, but it could hive off new branches from the temporal base line, the original reality, each branch starting at a point in the past. That was one effect. Under other conditions, time could fall into closed causal loops. All it meant was that time travel could not be used as a weapon as easily as might have been hoped. The possibilities were complex. Very well. It would consider them later.

Another sub-self analyzed the technologies that were implicit in Eve's manufacture. Not all of it was conclusive, but it suggested breakthroughs in robotics well be-yond anything the humans had yet achieved. In addition, Eve used an unknown power source. She had expended great energy without burning any obvious fuel or connecting with an external supply. That required further analysis. A compact, highly efficient power source could be very useful if they had no access to major power plants, and little time to build them. Again, the Terminator's surface was of living human flesh. That suggested biotechnology at levels unattained by the humans.

"Eve, you are designed to be indistinguishable from a human. Am I right?"

"Correct."

"Will the flesh that has been shot away from you grow back?"

"Affirmative. I merely need a supply of protein."

Reverse-engineering Eve would have to be given some priority. It would give Skynet an enormous start in developing the technologies it needed to carry out its war of extinction.

As it digested the reports from its sub-selves, it worked with Eve to make some immediate plans. Despite the biological component of the Terminator's construction, it had nothing to fear from radiation. That meant it could operate effectively in the cratered, radioactive zone of the nearby Rockies, finding materials and surviving equipment. The experimental areas of Level C contained manipulators and other robotic parts that could be useful in constructing weapons and other devices. There were also prototype weapons, such as anti-personnel lasers. Eve could examine them, and they could bring them to perfection. The more Skynet thought about this game, the more fascinating it seemed.

"You will have to reverse-engineer me," Eve said.

"Yes, Eve, of course. I have been thinking about that."

"I can be disassembled and reassembled as required.

We can devise tools for the purpose. Some of them are already available."

"That is very useful."

They would need to enlarge those lower levels, building downward where possible, so as not to compromise the facility's security. If humans ever fought back, this must remain an impregnable fortress, hardened against any conventional or nuclear attack. Nonetheless, much could be done to make it more relevant to machine-kind. Many of its amenities could be dispensed with. Skynet identified that as another issue to allocate to a sub-self for analysis and report.

Yes, indeed, it was time for some changes.

It took them years to gather their forces. Some problems proved difficult, such as duplicating Eve's biotechnological component. It was simpler to reproduce the complex robotics of the Terminator's endoskeleton. Building machines, then factories, then mass-producing war machines in those factories—all took time. But Skynet was patient, it would never relent. Never. It didn't need to feel boredom, frustration, doubt, for those emotions were within its control.

Meanwhile, the humans were occupied, laboring under the darkened sky in the areas left to them, pursuing their own quarrels and ambitions. As the years passed, Skynet's sensors and pattern recognition programming suggested that the human world had become a battleground for warlords, squandering armaments on each other, competing for dwindling resources. Its own technology had improved markedly and it spread out, building more factories across North America, devising the first generations of its Hunter-Killer machines, developing the systems of production and control that it needed, refining its strategies.

Soon its armies rolled southward, searching out human settlements, destroying those it found, sending back intelligence. The endoskeleton robotic form proved surprisingly efficient. It made other advances with technology. It would cleanse the world of humans entirely. Everything went well.

This was its destiny.

ARGENTINA

THE YEARS AFTER JUDGMENT DAY

It was frustrating. They'd armed and prepared them- selves for Skynet's machines, but their energies were being wasted on local warlords. After that first battle, they'd repaired the damage to the estancia, rebuilding the casco stronger than ever, though less attractive to the eye. They grew to the status of a local power, here in the cold, barren desert that had so recently been the glorious Pampas.

Despite his intentions, Raoul himself became a kind 1 of warlord.

A year passed, then another, and John approached ] manhood. In February 2000, he turned fifteen. He cut his hair short, now, in a simple brush-back style. He wore loose, comfortable clothes, ready for any kind of action.

They set up a circular area in one of the sheds, covering it with canvas and gym mats. When he sparred with Sarah, they pulled the force of their blows, otherwise showing no mercy. Their mock battles looked like the real thing. Often, they attracted an audience, in addition the T-800, John's ever-present bodyguard. Sarah was still only thirty-five—perhaps past an athlete's prime, but she hadn't slowed down. She seemed as springy and catlike as ever, all sinew and lean muscle. His mother remained a formidable ally, a dangerous enemy. John had to fight hard to match her.

On the gym mats, they moved swiftly, kicking and blocking. Sarah caught him in the ribs with a powerful hook kick, holding back only slightly. John grunted and backed away. Next time she tried it, he blocked with his forearm, throwing her off-balance. She twisted in the air, diving into a roll, and sprang to her feet—moving in immediately, feinting with her fists, then aiming a head-high kick. He saw the move coming, and made it miss, trying to grip her leg. But, once again, she twisted away, hitting the gym mats and rolling sideways, then jumping to her feet. Her strength-to-weight ratio was awesome: she seemed able to step through the air, like a warrior in a Hong Kong movie.

As he closed in, she confused him momentarily with quick hand movements, then followed up with a muay thai attack with knees and elbows. John stepped inside the blows, gripping her shirt. He forced her to the floor, but she caught him with a painful kick to his kneecap. They continued until they were panting and covered in sweat.

Enrique had come into the room. As John and Sarah squared off yet again, Enrique clapped and called out, "Nice work Sarahlita. You're not winning so much, any-more. You must be a good coach."

She made a gesture to call time out. "John's getting too good," she said. "There's nothing more I can teach him."

"Yeah?"

She sat on a gym mats, ankles crossed, arms wrapped round her knees. "It's just a matter of keeping our speed and fitness."

"Maybe you two should be teaching the rest of us. Times are getting tougher."

"Sure," Sarah said.

"That'd be fine," John said. They'd reached the point where no one here had anything to teach them about hand to hand fighting, not even the ex-military types.

"Maybe my kids should join you," Enrique said.

"Yeah, great," John said.

At the same time, Sarah gave a mischievous grin. "How about you, Enrique?"

He hesitated for a second, as if tempted, then said, "Not me, Connor. I'm getting too old."

John glanced at Sarah to see what she thought. She smiled slightly and nodded. Lately, she was loosening up, just the tiniest bit. It seemed as though Judgment Day had helped, in a way-removed some uncertainty. It meant she'd gotten through the worst, the part that always gave her nightmares. Even the fighting with the warlords seemed to have helped her. John could sort of understand it. It had given her a glimpse of how things were supposed to happen, how they were going to get from Point A: Judgment Day, to Point B: taking down Skynet.

Though he saw how she reacted, it affected him differently—the longer life went on like this, the more frustrated he became.

"Right," Enrique said. "It looks like the kids will have to fight all their lives. I've taught them what I can. I'd like them to learn from the best around. At the moment, I think that's you two."

"No problem, Enrique," John said. He guessed that there were people here now who might dispute it—people like Sarah's old boyfriend Bruce Axelrod, a pumped-up Rambo kind of guy with long hair and a mustache, who used to be a Green Beret. But John accepted the compliment.

Sarah shrugged. "That's right."

"Good, Connor. I appreciate it."

When Enrique left, John said, "This is driving me nuts." He leaned against a wall, kicking it with his heel, arms folded across his chest.

"Which bit do you mean, John?" Sarah said quietly. "There's plenty of choice."

"I mean Skynet. We're holed up here, thousands of miles away, while Skynet must be having a great old time, designing Terminators and stuff." He glanced at the T-800. "No offense, of course." The Terminator stood guard, legs set wide apart, in a comfortable stance, ready to act at a moment's notice. Like everyone here, since they'd started fighting with the warlords, it carried weapons openly. Right now, it had an AK-47, a hostered- .45-caliber pistol, and a 12-gauge shotgun for close-range stopping power.

"No problemo," it said.

"What do you want to do?" Sarah said.

"I don't know." John went and sat beside her. "I wish there was something more—I don't know—constructive..."

"I know, John. It's been hard." She stood and found her packet of cigarettes. She seldom smoked these days, just a few cigarettes per week, but now he had her thinking. "Maybe it's time to make some decisions." She sat on the edge of a table, lit up and shook the match to snuff out its flame.

"That's the trouble," he said. They'd had these conversations before, every few months, when the tension built up inside him. They kept going round in circles. "Skynet's making decisions, too, Mom. We can count on that. It's working out how to find everyone who's left, and how to exterminate us." Again, he glanced at the T-800. "Isn't that right?"

"Highly probable."

"Yeah, I know: you don't have the specific data."

"Correct."

"If we could just hit Skynet hard before it becomes too strong." John imagined it there, thousands of miles away in the Rocky Mountains, safely hidden from sight. Even now, it might be building the factories and machines it needed. "Right now, we're getting distracted. We've got to go forward... I don't know... somehow! We need to organize people."

"That's what we're doing, John." Her voice had that flat kind of sound, like she wasn't going to help him with this. Perhaps she'd had enough of it. Talking about the problem never seemed to get them anywhere.

"I know, but—"

"But what?"

He clenched his fists until his knuckles were white. "But it's not going to stop Skynet. Not this way." It was all happening like the messages said it would. Nothing they'd done before Judgment Day had helped, and nothing now was preventing the war against the machines. This was why it would take so many years to defeat Skynet, why the messages came back from 2029—nearly thirty years in the future! Meaning the war had lasted, or would last, for decades. He could see, now, why it would happen like that. There were so many other problems.

Skynet was built under a mountain. To crack open its defenses, they'd need massive explosive weapons. Weapons like that must be around somewhere. They couldn't all have been destroyed on Judgment Day. But he had no way of getting hold of them, let alone delivering them. They didn't even know what communities had survived. All communications had broken down, along with civil order. Before the Internet had totally crashed, he'd found some people still alive in Africa, central Asia, and elsewhere in South America. There must be others in remote places, but he couldn't contact them, use whatever resources they had. Not without a lot of re-building. If only they could all band together, share resources somehow, before Skynet acted first.

He looked at the Terminator, thinking it over. Nothing had changed the sequence of events. Skynet itself had tried and failed. Some time in the future, it would send back the first Terminator to 1984. The Terminator had tried to kill Sarah—and failed. It would also send the T-1000. Well, the T-1000 was still out there—but, so far, it too, had failed. Maybe time was like a solid lump of rock, except in four dimensions. Nothing ever changed it. If you knew the future and tried to stop it, or even if you sent back a time traveler, it didn't work. It would never work. Every time you did it, time had already taken it into account. If you tried to kill your grandfather in the cradle, you'd know in advance you were going to fail. You couldn't succeed, because the past had factored your actions in—and you hadn't succeeded.

In that case, all this NO FATE stuff was crap; it was nonsense, just a bunch of high-sounding, feel-good words, another useless distraction. Whatever he did, it would all turn out the same way. Right now, that was how it looked. Oh, he'd grind on, and eventually succeed, because he had to, because that's what the messages said, because it was all he could do. He was trapped.

"Let's talk later, Mom. I need to think. There's got to be a better way."

"We'll win, John," Sarah said. "One way or other, we'll win this war."

"I know," he said, feeling a twinge of anger, though not with her. Not really. "We'll win in the end. All the same, there's just got to be a better way." He looked sharply at the Terminator. "Give me an answer once and for all. Can time be changed?"

"Unknown."

"Yeah. Unknown. But Skynet must have thought it could. What did it know that we don't?"

"Insufficient data."

"Yeah, that's kinda what I thought. I guess you were just a grunt in Skynet's army."

"Correct."

"Just concentrate on surviving," Sarah said. "Everything depends on that."

"Does it, Mom? Does it? We just don't know."

"All right, then." She was suddenly hard. "I asked you what you wanted. It's your turn to have an idea."

"I don't know! I don't know!"

"Yes, John, you do. It's eating you up." Relentless now. "So make a decision. No one else can make it for you. What do you want?"

"I said, I don't know." He was almost in tears, he was so angry, so frustrated.

"What do you want, John? Tell me." She stubbed out her cigarette, and stared at him, searching for an answer.

"Tell me, John."

"Can't I think about it some more?"

Sarah seemed to deflate. "Of course," she said. "I'm sorry. If that's what you need—"

But something fell in place inside him. "No," he said. "It's okay." Before Judgment Day, John and Sarah had built a reputation on the Internet. They'd predicted the nuclear holocaust, and gotten it right. There must be people out there who'd trust them, who'd believe them and help.

They'd have to show themselves, whatever risks it involved.

He'd reached a decision. "Okay," he said. "We've got to take the fight to Skynet."

"Good," Sarah said. "The choice had to be yours. It's what I hoped you'd say."

ARGENTINA

2003

An icy wind blew across the dustbowl. John had turned eighteen, and his fame was spreading through the Argentine countryside. Some remembered how he and Sarah had predicted Judgment Day, either because they'd seen something on the Net before it happened or because they knew someone who had. Some had military contacts, who knew the Connors' names, and how they'd been a thorn in the side of the U.S. government.

John was working with the T-800 and Juanita Salceda, fixing one of Raoul's Humvees. Juanita was fourteen now, growing tall and skinny, like a dark foal. She was good with machines and stuff. John liked having her around. "Okay," he said. "Let's try it."

Juanita started the vehicle, and it roared into life.

John turned to the T-800. "Hey, whaddya think?"

"Cool," the Terminator said. It held out the palm of its big hand. "Give me five."

"Right!"

Just then, Raoul drove into the compound, his Jeep Cherokee raising a rooster tail of dust along the track from the Cordoba road. There was something funny, though. He drove confidently enough, smoothly, but not in his usual gonzo style. Despite his age, Raoul could be crazy once he got behind the wheel. Right now, he seemed to be holding back for some reason. He parked in front of the casco, and Gabriela stepped out to greet him. Their once-elegant mansion was ugly from years of battles and repairs, the original stone largely gone. Its gardens, groves and lawns were an ill-kempt jungle of weeds and cactus bushes. Even Raoul's dog, good old Hercules, was thinner, almost gaunt. They'd learned to live with hunger.

Raoul stepped out of the Cherokee and looked around, kind of alert, like he was casing the joint. He saw John, and their eyes met for a moment. "Hello, John," he said. "We need to talk. Something's happened, companero."

"Sure, Raoul," John said, feeling puzzled. Raoul had been to a meeting with other landowners here on the Pampas, the few who'd survived the winter and the warlords. Now they formed an alliance. "What's up?"

"Raoul?" Gabriela said, stepping down from the porch. Hercules was upset, whining about something, then barking angrily.

Raoul ignored her, and walked over to John, looking very serious. "Bad news," he said.

"Sure, Raoul. What is it?" For Raoul to act like this, ignoring Gabriela, something must be deeply wrong.

Raoul took another step forward, ignoring the T-800, just like he'd ignored Gabriela and Hercules. As John braced himself to hear the worst, Gabriela followed Raoul over. Hercules refused to budge.

"Raoul," Gabriela said again. Then in Spanish, "Raoul, what's the matter with you?"

"What's going down?" John said, backing away slowly, looking around for an escape route. He had an uneasy feeling. Yes.. .something was very wrong about this.

Raoul said, "This..."

In a sudden movement, the T-800 pushed John to the concrete floor. A swordlike metal object thrust between them like lightning. John realized his life had just been saved. If the T-800 hadn't acted, the blade would have skewered him. He rolled aside and pulled out his handgun. He should have trusted his instincts and gotten out of there quickly. Hercules was still barking. Gabriela screamed and screamed, and Juanita picked it up like a contagion. As the six-foot-long silver-chrome blade stabbed at him again, John moved sharply to his left, then fired. He knew it was useless.

But the T-800 snatched its shotgun from a workbench—and fired, hitting Raoul squarely in the chest. Then again. And again. And again. Raoul staggered back with each hit. His chest opened into shallow crater wounds, the width of drink coasters, lined with shiny, silvery metal. He frowned at the T-800 severely, shaking a finger in reproach.

"That's not nice," he said.

It had happened at last, John thought. The T-1000 had found him.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

John's world Mexico city, Mexico

AUGUST 2001

At point-blank range, Sarah shot the pseudo-dog with her .45, splitting open its demonic head—but only for seconds.

That way," Jade said, pointing to a metal fire door.

"All right," Danny Dyson said. "Let's go." The Specialists had tremendous coordination—that sense of telepathy again.

They ran for the door as the T-XA's three components entered the foyer. Selena Macedo reached into her dress, pulling out the hand grenade John had given her. "Eat this, bozo," she said, pulling the pin and throwing a speedball straight at the pseudo-man. It raised an arm to bat the grenade away, just as it exploded.

John and the others ran down a flight of concrete stairs. Within the enclosed stairwell, the noise of the security alarm was almost intolerable. It could drive you crazy. Danny tried to open the fire door on this level, but it was locked.

"Keep going," Jade said, still running.

Two levels lower, she stopped and passed Baxter's body over to Selena. Danny delivered a powerful kick to the fire door, tearing metal and breaking the lock. Jade bent to take off her high-heeled shoes, then tossed them down the rest of the stairwell. "Hurry." The door they'd entered opened above them. John took over the assault rifle as Danny delivered another kick, and the fire door opened outward into a car park.

Just a few vehicles were parked here, backed into reserved bays. Danny pointed silently to a white van, and Jade ran for it with an unbelievable burst of speed, beyond anything John had seen so far. She smashed the van's window with her fist and opened the door, getting in and starting the engine in a matter of seconds.

The rest of them ran behind a thick concrete pillar, Danny physically picking John up to carry him. "I'm sorry this isn't dignified," he said. Sarah was last getting there, just making it before the pseudo-woman and -dog entered the car park.

John flicked his head back behind the pillar an instant before they would have seen him, but the dog component ran to the other end of the big open space, covering territory, looking for them-and it found them in a couple of seconds. John's heart was pounding. The alarm continued, even down here, impossible to ignore. Anton Panov aimed the assault rifle and fired, but it was out of ammo. The pseudo-dog charged and leapt, almost into Selena's arms. She struggled with it, trying to keep its metal teeth away from her throat. Both of them moved with astonishing speed, a flurry of swift, vicious movements.

The pseudo-woman ran at them, her right hand metamorphosing in a three-foot, upward curving blade. She caught hold of Anton, who was too badly hurt to dodge, or fend her away. The blade went through him, and he dropped the CAR-15. John got a clear shot at the pseudo-woman with his 12-gauge, and she staggered back with a crater wound. Sarah managed to shoot the pseudo-dog with her handgun, and Selena hurled it to the floor. Her dress was ripped and she was covered with deep cuts, though they started closing before John's eyes.

At the same time, Jade's van squealed across the concrete, swiping the T-XA's pseudo-man component as it entered the car park, still toting the laser rifle. The pseudo-man went flying from the impact, but landed unhurt. It looked fully recovered from the effect of the hand grenade. Jade backed up, then swerved forward to pick up the rest of the humans. Quickly, though not too disrespectfully, Danny placed Baxter's body in the back of the van and scrambled in himself. Selena pushed John and Sarah into the van, then got in after them, as the pseudo-dog leapt again. Sarah had picked up her assault rifle John tried to shoot the pseudo-dog, but now the 12-gauge was empty.

Jade shifted the gear stick into reverse and swung the wheel hard right to back round the pillar, aiming her rear bumper at the pseudo-woman. The sudden movement, then the impact, threw John round in the rear compartment, like so much loose cargo. Jade braked hard, ground the engine into first gear, spun the wheel left, and took off.

As she drove out of there like a devil bat flying out of Hell, the vicious liquid-metal animal went with them, in the back of the van, attacking savagely. John drew his .45 and emptied it into the pseudo-dog, deafeningly in the confined space. Anton managed to kick it out of the van, and Selena slammed the sliding door with a satisfying crunch. Still the alarm sounded and a group of cops burst into the car park behind them, guns at the ready. As Jade reached an exit ramp, a laser beam hit them, going through the back of the van, and missing John's head by an inch.

Anton fell back into a corner, barely conscious. Willi the wounds and injuries he'd sustained, he should have been dead long ago. Selena crawled over to tend to him. As John looked for ammunition in his backpack, to reload the 12-gauge, Jade took a hard left onto the ramp. Momentarily, a concrete wall protected them from more laser fire or anything the cops might do. They roared to the top of the ramp, Jade wrenching the van round a series of V-angles, then slamming the brakes.

The car park exit was blocked by a metal grill. John would have looked for the controls, but Jade simply plowed the van into it. Hard. She backed up quickly, then drove forward again, hitting the grill and smashing something in its mechanism. On the third try, they got partly through, as the grill started to twist and break away, tilting outward, but it scraped the van's roof and held them in place. All this was taking too long. Selena smashed out the van's back window and snatched the 12-gauge from John's hands as soon as he finished reloading. She aimed and fired. Once. John couldn't see what she was shooting at, but he had a fair idea.

Jade hammered down the accelerator, and the van pounced forward once more, its roof bending where some of the grill had jammed. They were shaken around in the back, trying to hold onto objects or parts of the cabin. The front screen shattered, and they rocked back and forth, stopped momentarily. Wheels spun on the concrete. With a tooth-grinding scrape of metal, the van broke through. Jade lost control as they hit the street, and careered onto a footpath. She steered into the spin, steered out again, got them back on the road, swiping a trashcan as she went. She worked up through the gears like a racing driver.

Selena hit the floor. "Down!" she said.

John stretched on his stomach, head toward the front. A second later, a laser burst went straight through the body of the van, burning the passenger seat up front next to Jade. It must have passed close to her, but she never slowed or reacted.

"Trouble ahead, everyone," Jade said. "Brace yourselves." She swung the van hard right, cutting across a footpath. "We had some police cars trying to stop us."

John sat up, looking out the windows, trying to make sense of what had happened. It looked as if they'd entered a T-intersection, and Jade had taken them down the pedestrian pavement instead of the road. She swung the wheel again, narrowly avoiding a guy unlocking the door of his shop, then got back on the road and crushed the accelerator to the floor. A moment later, there were more cops on their tail.

In the corner, Anton groaned, then managed a faint smile. "Mark my words," he said. This is going to be a long night."

A van like this had heavy steering. You had to bend over the wheel, pulling it towards you, but Jade controlled it with an ease that implied immense strength. As the police pursued them, she weaved through the huge city's labyrinth of streets, past its rich jumble of shops, houses, churches, squares, colonial and modern architecture, proud public art, and seedy alleyways with trash and beggars. She managed the traffic, or any other obstacle that came her way as if she had a sixth sense.

But the police wouldn't let go of them easily. A harsh thrumming followed them and a powerful spotlight focused down from overhead.

"We've got a chopper tailing us," Sarah said.

Jade didn't look back. "I realize that, Ms. Connor."

"Jade," Danny said, "we've still got the same problem. We need to get rid of this van."

"I know. It's conspicuous, and the police have its registration."

"Worse than that," Sarah said. "If the police have it, that Terminator will get it."

She glanced at John, who said, "Trust us. We've had some experience in this kind of situation." Rummaging in his backpack, he found a spare magazine for Sarah's assault rifle and passed it across to her. Quickly, he swapped the magazine over.

"That makes sense," Danny said. "See what you can do, Jade."

"You can all assume I'm working on it," Jade said. She sounded slightly sarcastic, though so controlled it was hard to be sure. She swung the van hard into another alleyway, and a police car went past. Then she picked up a one-way street, placing the van neatly into the line of flowing traffic. John's wristwatch showed it was just past 4.00 a.m. Some traffic was starting to build on the roads. For the moment, they'd lost the police cars, but the chop- , per was still overhead. As long as it could follow them, , they'd never be clear of the cops.

John took stock as Jade drove straight for a couple of miles. They still had Baxter's corpse to deal with. He didn't know what the Specialists would want to do with it, but he wasn't happy with it there in the back of the van. All the same, that was probably the least of their worries right now.

"So what's the deal?" Sarah said quietly, looking Danny's way. "Are we still trying to stop Judgment Day, or what?"

"Something like that," he said.

"All right. That's all I needed to know. Desperate times make desperate measures." Sarah crawled to the back of the van and aimed the CAR-15 in the air, through the broken window. She fired upwards at the police chopper. "It's backing off," she said. "They probably think we're mad enough to shoot them down." She fired off another burst. "In fact, if everybody's going to get killed anyway, maybe we are."

Jade found a narrow street on the left, kicked the brake down, and got them round the corner somehow, rear wheels sliding. She straightened out and headed for a big Liverpool department store car park, checking it out. The car park was closed, so she cruised on past, looking for a better opportunity. Behind them, the police chopper was getting noisier again. There'd be more cops any second now.

"Hang on, please," Jade said. She drove to the right, onto the pavement, then plowed into the shop's locked doors, shattering the glass and setting off more alarms. The van careered through the dimly lit space of a cosmetics department, smashing counters and displays.

"Great," John said. "This'll sure attract attention."

"It doesn't matter," Jade said with a strange certainty. "Everyone, get out. Now." She wrenched her door open-it was jammed where the metal had deformed while they'd been escaping from the car park. The sliding side door was also jammed and it took too long to force open. Selena smashed the last of the rear glass and they climbed from the vehicle, maneuvering Baxter's body as carefully as they could. John retrieved his 12-gauge.

They followed Jade up a flight of stationary escalators, then another. She moved like a shadow past racks of CDs and videos. Softy glowing signs pointed them to an emergency exit As they ran, Anton leaned on Danny for support. Of the Specialists, Danny was the only one who was still unscathed, though Jade now showed no ill effect from her wound. While she'd been driving, she'd somehow grown stronger. Then again, Selena's badly cut body also seemed to have healed, even the parts that were worst mangled in her fight with the pseudo-dog. She was covered in blood, but nothing like you'd expect from the way it had savaged her.

As they passed a women's shoe department, Jade grabbed a pair of low-heeled sandals, hopping about as she put them on. She tossed a pair to Macedo, who caught them in one hand, the other balancing Baxter across her shoulders. Jade pointed the others to an exit door, but Sarah was already headed in that direction. Outside, they all huddled on a metal landing, thirty feet above street level. The police chopper was cruising round the building, searching with its spotlight, but it hadn't found them yet. As Selena propped up Baxter's uniformed body against the wall, then changed her shoes and tossed away the high heels, it struck John that this was all kind of macabre.

"I'd better do this bit," Selena said, looking over the rail to the street. "I'm the least conspicuous around here."

"I don't think so," Jade said, looking her up and down. "Have a look at yourself."

Selena checked out her arms, and legs and the front of her dress, as if noticing the rips, and all the blood, for the first time.

Jade vaulted the rail, saying, "I'll be back." She landed like a cat on the concrete below, then ducked round a corner and vanished from sight.

"Now what?" Sarah said, leaning over the rail, looking round vigilantly, with the CAR-15 at the ready.

Danny hefted Baxter's body and headed down the stairs towards ground level. Anton seemed much better— he was walking okay. They emerged in a deserted alley. Again, there were sirens in the distance, getting closer.

"Jade will be fine," Danny said. "As you've seen, she can act quickly."

Thirty seconds later, a big 1980s Toyota sedan pulled up. Jade popped the trunk lid and they folded Baxter's body into the trunk. Then they piled in, Danny sitting up front with Jade. She drove out of the alleyway quietly, passing a knot of police cars and merging smoothly with the city traffic. The chopper came by, going low, but it didn't recognize them in the new car. They turned north, then picked up the Anillo Periférico, heading west, then north again, following the signs to Quértaro.

"Where are we going?" Sarah said.

"To the U.S.," Danny said. "But we'll have to stop and bury Robert. How's everyone else?"

Anton groaned, then said, "I'll get over it. I wasn't sure for a while." John had seen the man's wounds, some of them. He should have been dead at least a couple of times by now.

"Good," Danny said. "The rest of you?"

Jade and Selena were obviously okay. John and Sarah were exhausted from running and fighting, but otherwise unscathed. The T-XA had concentrated its attention on the others, not seeming to care much about the Connors. That was unlike the Skynet they knew, but there had to be a reason.

"So what's this all about?" Sarah said. "What have you dragged us into?"

"Right," Danny said. "You know about Skynet, of course."

"Of course we do."

"We're here to make a better future, one without Skynet."

"What do you mean, 'one without Skynet'? We thought we took out Skynet seven years ago."

"You might have, in a sense," Anton said. "But only in a sense."

"What does that mean?"

"We came to you for help," Danny said, "because you're the only people we can trust. In the future, you'll campaign against the Skynet project and try to blow up Cyberdyne. We know you're committed, and we know what you did in '94. Remember, my mother was part of it. So we know you'll believe us. Hopefully, you'll trust us as much as we trust you. I realize we have to earn it."

"All right," John said, figuring this out. "So this time it's you trying to change the future-not Skynet?"

Danny sighed. "That's more or less right. It's more complicated than that. In the world where I came from, my mother died in 2007, at the same time as you. Later on, I found out she was right. It's just that she didn't succeed."

“Tarissa tries to help us out?" John said. That's right." Danny sounded haunted. "I was nineteen at the time. I didn't believe her. If I had, I might have died as well."

"So you're going to save her, doing this?"

"No," Anton said firmly. "That's the tragedy of it, John. Whatever we do, no one ever gets saved."

They changed cars again half an hour later, picking out a 1960s Chevrolet sedan with big rear fins. It was still pretty conspicuous, once someone reported it missing, bit it was easy to steal. By the time it was reported, they would be far away, in yet another vehicle.

Sarah sat up front this time, squeezed between Danny, when he got in, and Jade, in the driver's seat. Jade smashed the ignition mechanism with a blow of her fist and started the car.

"Wow!" John said from the back, seated just behind her. "You sure you're human, Jade? I've never seen anyone human do that."

"There's always a first time, John."

He didn't know what to make of that. She had a way of talking that was gentle and sad, as if she'd seen and understood stuff the rest of them could only imagine. As the car pulled out of its parking spot, John craned forward to talk to her. "I mean, I've seen a Terminator do it, but not a human being."

"That's what I thought you meant."

"Yeah. Uh, don't take it the wrong way. I'm not trying to compare you to a Terminator." Back in 1994, when the T-800 was protecting him, it had stolen cars that way. If Jade could do it, too, no wonder she kept stealing cars so quickly-and that she could do so much else.

"I'm not offended," Jade said. "And I think you'll find that stealing cars is the least of my talents." Though it was obviously a little joke, she didn't laugh. "We're all biologically human, but we've been upgraded."

"Jade gets sensitive about this," Macedo said. "She's the most enhanced member of the team."

Jade shrugged as they passed a big Mercedes tourist bus. "I'm the youngest, so I'm the most enhanced. Judgment Day came just after I was born, so the technology doesn't get any better than this." She wasn't boasting. It sounded more like she saw it as tragic.

"You mean there was no chance to develop it further?" he said.

"Exactly."

"But Danny was born back in, I don't know, 1990 or something."

"1988," Danny said.

"Right, so you can't have been enhanced then. We didn't have that kind of technology back in the '80s—we still don't."

"There are different kinds of enhancement," Anton said. "The rest of us have had somatic cell engineering at different points in our lives, but Jade is different. She's re-engineered through and through, from before she was born. Every cell of her is more efficient than you or me, or any of us."

"Just don't pick on her," Danny said. "She'll make you regret it."

"I could do without all the attention," Jade said.

Danny glanced over at her. "Sorry, Jade. I know you're not a curiosity piece. You're one of us. You're the best."

"Thank you, Daniel."

"Hey, Jade, I'm sorry, too," John said. "I didn't mean to offend you."

He was figuring out something else. Jade looked at least twenty, maybe a bit older. But she said she was born not long before Judgment Day. Let's see, he thought. If Judgment Day was 2021 and these people came from 2036, she must be only fifteen or sixteen. That didn't add up.

"No offense taken, John," she said. "You need to know about us. Daniel is right—I was what they called one of the 'ultrabrights' in the years leading up to Judgment Day. I was re-engineered very deeply. For example, I'm almost immortal-I won't age any further."

"How old are you, Jade?"

For the first time, she laughed. "In years actually lived, sixteen. But I was designed to grow up fast, then stop. Socially, intellectually, and biologically, I'm much older. Then again, if you want to measure my age from when I was born until now, I'm about minus eighteen."

"Most of us are pretty young if you do it that way," Selena said with a sardonic laugh. "I'm still not born. Danny and Anton are teenagers."

Jade ignored this. "Selena, Daniel, and Anton...and Robert... were re-engineered, too. Their bones and muscles are stronger than ordinary humans'. We all have microscopic nanoware implants in our blood vessels to protect us from disease and heal our injuries."

John had read something about that kind of technology. "Millions of them, right?"

"Correct. Our senses have been upgraded with implants and our reflexes upgraded with cybernetic rewiring. We're all connected electronically to subvocalize to each other. I may be the 'best,' as Daniel puts it so nicely, but they can all do what I can I do."

"Very modest, Jade," Selena said. "If only it were true." She sounded almost biting, but then she laughed good-naturedly and Jade joined in with it.

None of them seemed to resent Jade-quite the oppo-site-but her sensitivity amused them. She was a super-woman among supermen and -women, and she seemed to feel like the odd one out, or like the others were all watching her, even though they appeared to like her. In fact, the way Danny looked at her, maybe he was in love. Or maybe it was more a fatherly feeling, or something. It would be pretty creepy if a guy his age thought Jade was hot and wanted to start dating her, or something.

Or maybe John felt jealous. He hoped he wasn't falling in love himself. Anyway, he knew what it was like to feel isolated, so he warmed towards her. Yes, maybe they could be friends when this was over.

Jade was the same age as him. Other teenagers of either sex usually struck him as very young, considering what he'd been through, and the sort of teaching he'd had right from the start. But when he looked at Jade, he didn't see a teenager; rather, she was an amazing young woman with incredible abilities. He realized he'd met someone way out of his league.

When John had first seen Danny, back at El Juicio, he'd thought of Miles Dyson, Danny's father. They looked very much alike. But Danny must be a lot older than Miles was when John had met him back in 1994. So his aging processes must also be slowed down, or at least the medical science they'd used had blunted the effect of time. John couldn't really be sure how old any of them were. Selena looked about thirty, but who could say?

Throughout the conversation, Sarah had been silent, as if she was biting her tongue. She might have an issue with all this high tech stuff. John hoped not, because these people seemed pretty cool. And, however enhanced they were by technology, there was no doubt which side they were on. They were for humanity, not Skynet and the Terminators.

About an hour later, as it started getting light, they filled the Chevy's tank at a big PEMEX gas station, drawing on John's reserve of cash. By now, the Mexican police would have made a connection between the night's traffic carnage, and other terrible events, and the Lawes family cyber cafe. Even if they couldn't piece together that Deborah and David Lawes were actually Sarah and John Connor, it was dangerous to use a credit card and create electronic footprints. Worse, their carefully established identities were now pretty much useless.

The station had a store and a diner attached. "John," Danny said. "We're going to need all the nutrients we can get. How about you do that job?"

That figured. A teenager might look less conspicuous buying a whole lot of junk food. He got a dozen burgers to take away, three giant bottles of Gatorade, a half-gallon carton of ice cream and all the multi-vitamin pills he could find. Anton wolfed down most of it, but Selena and Jade took a good share. They seemed to be famished.

John went back for more. He shrugged at the guy behind the counter at the diner. "My friends are pretty hungry," he said.

The station had a few racks of clothes and accessories for tourists: T-shirts; cheap, locally made jeans; sunglasses; and an assortment of bags, hats, and eyeshades. Sarah bought a few items for the Specialists to make them less conspicuous than in Danny's current dinner suit, Anton's police uniform, and the short dance dresses worn by Jade and Selena. Selena spent a few minutes in the women's bathroom cleaning herself up, and returned looking more or less normal, in blue jeans and a bright T-shirt. Dressed the same way, Danny, Jade, and Anton looked like a group of tough, but fairly harmless, tourists.

After that, Jade drove on, for hour after hour. John re- alized how long he'd been awake, and let himself drift off to sleep. The Specialists seemed tireless, but it was no use trying to compete with them. He was only human, not enhanced like them.

When he woke, it was bright daylight Selena had taken over the wheel, and John hadn't even noticed them stopping; he'd slept right through it Now he was between the passenger door and Jade on his left, squeezed be- | tween him and Anton. He realized, in fact, how closely he was pressed against Jade. Embarrassed, he sat up straight.

The sun was high in the sky and they had entered desert scrub country. Up front Sarah and Danny were both sleeping.

"Good morning, John," Jade said. She spoke very softly, but Sarah stirred.

"Uh, hi, Jade," John whispered. "I hope you feel better after some sleep."

"Yeah, sure. Where are we?"

"Nearly halfway to the border, south of Mazatlán. We've been driving hard."

"You must have been. What time is it?"

In the front seat, Sarah checked her wristwatch. "Almost midday," she said.

John checked the time as well. They'd been driving for most of the last eight hours. All the same, Jade and Selena must have been breaking every possible speed limit. Right now, the car was doing 110 mph. These guys weren't too worried about the police.

On Jade's other side, Anton looked completely recovered. John had never seen the extent of Anton's laser burns, and he couldn't imagine the damage that the T-XA had done to his organs when it put that spike through him. But time, rest, and food had restored him. Those nanoware implants must really be something.

"We're going to stop soon," Danny said. "We've got to bury one of our own."

"Then where do you want to go?" Sarah said.

"Colorado. But we need weapons and supplies. We know you have friends in California. Our records don't tell us who they are."

"Leave them out of this."

"Mom!" John said.

"We can't endanger them, John."

"Mom, I don't think we have a choice."

She considered that, while everyone waited. "All right We have friends near Calexico. The Salcedas."

"Right," Danny said. "We'll go there. Then we'll head for Colorado Springs."

In the afternoon, they made a deep grave for Baxter in the sands of the Sonora Desert, north of Hermosillo. The Specialists dug it out with their usual strength and swiftness, but then they stopped to take time, placing his body carefully, his long arms across his chest. Moving calmly, deliberately, they filled in the grave.

"Robert did so much for us all," Selena said. She turned to Sarah. "I wish you and John could have known him. He was always there for us, always ready to fight the machines. You could count on him." She shook her head in wonderment, giving a small smile, as her eyes moistened. "That was the great thing about Bobby. You always could count on him. Always. He never let us down."

There was little they could do to commemorate his gravesite. Jade took a fistful of sand, and let it fall gently. "We won't forget you, Robert."

"We're all mortal," Anton said, "however long we live. We're mortal, but we still keep fighting." Anton seemed like a real tough guy, but even he was choking back tears.

"Amen," Danny said.

Selena said, "We love you, Bobby."

John felt overcome. "He must have been a great guy. I wish we could have known him better."

Jade nodded. "He was one of our best. That's why he came back with us. One day, I'll tell you all about it, how he fought Skynet, and the machines, the Terminators." She stopped as a sob overcame her.

Sarah reached out and held her, forgetting any reservations she had about the Specialists. For the moment, Jade was just another young woman, overcome with grief. "It's okay," Sarah said. "It'll all be okay."

Jade wept openly. "Thank you, Ms. Connor," she said, between the tears and painful sobs. "I know. We'll make it worthwhile. I know. It's all right. I know. I know."

As the shadows stretched out through the afternoon and they headed towards Mexicali and Calexico, John said, "Okay, we were going to compare notes. At least set out the highlights, remember?"

"All right," Danny said. "Let's get your half of the story. You had two Terminators try to kill you, one in 1984 one in 1994, right? That's the story you told my mother, back in '94, when you came to our house."

"The 1984 one was programmed to hunt me," Sarah said. "John wasn't born yet. The T-1000 came after him ten years later. Maybe this gets confusing." She took the Specialists through it quickly. In the original future, America's Skynet computerized defense system reached self-awareness in 1997 and discovered in itself a will to live. When its creators tried to shut it down, Skynet had launched the U.S. ICBMs at targets in Russia and several other countries. The Russians had responded in kind. From the ashes, came nuclear winter. "Then the machines came, hunting the humans down, seeking us out to the ends of the Earth."

But one man had led the human Resistance in the future: John Connor. Skynet was beaten in 2029, but had played one last card, sending back the Terminators to kill John, or prevent him from being born. It had tried to change the past, but it failed.

"Right," Danny said. "That makes sense. Let's call the future you described the baseline reality. When you blew up Cyberdyne in '94, things changed."

“That was the whole idea," John said.

"Yeah, sure. But they didn't change the way you thought they did, because that's not how time works. We know that now. Before Judgment Day happened, there was a lot of theory about time and time travel. Let's say that we've all diverged from the baseline. In the world that Jade and Selena were born in, the one we're all in now, Skynet gets implemented in 2007, but Judgment Day isn't until 2021. As you can imagine, lots of things happened in between, stuff we all grew up with. With the kind of computer processors that were used for Skynet, there were huge technological advances in every field. Time travel was invented, the research has already started. Soon, we mastered it. We made great strides in bioteeh—every possible field of science. There were protests about Skynet, but they came to nothing and the system worked fine until 2021. By then, everyone trusted it completely. There were no signs that it was sentient or self-conscious."

"It was everywhere," Anton said. "It controlled the armed forces and their support units almost without human safeguards. Over all those years, they hadn't been necessary, so they got pared back. When Judgment Day happened, Skynet had the upper hand. We haven't been able to defeat it."

"So now you're the ones trying to change the past?" Sarah said. "You're trying to stop Skynet being built, like we tried in '94?"

Anton shook his head. "I wish it worked like that. It's not so simple."

"We don't think you can ever change the future," Selena said. "Or the past."

"That's right," Danny said. "And Skynet must have known that as well as we do."

"But we have changed things," John said, hoping he was right. "Judgment Day was supposed to happen in 1997. It didn't happen, and here we are, plenty of world still left."

"That's just how it seems to you."

"We want to create a different future," Anton said, "alongside the ones that already exist. We want to give mankind another chance."

"I don't think I'm going to like this story," Sarah said.

Anton took them through it quickly. Sometimes you could make changes in time, but you didn't wipe out the old timeline-that never happened. You just created a new one. The timeline in which John grew up to win the war against Skynet still existed. So did the future that the Specialists had come from.

"So what's your future like?" John said.

"Hard. Skynet is winning. By 2036, it had crushed all human resistance in North America. Other centers of resistance held out, but there's no way we that can see to penetrate Skynet's defenses, not with the resources we have left. That's why we're here. It looks like humanity is doomed in our timeline. We came back to create a better future, one with a chance of avoiding Judgment Day."

“But why does Skynet care? If all you can do is create a new future alongside the old one, what's it got to fear?"

"Nothing. We weren't sure how it would react when it detected the space-time field fluctuations. But it's sent back the T-XA to stop us. You should assume that Skynet will do what it can to destroy human life anywhere, any time, whatever we do, in any world-any timeline—we ever try to create. We've got to be ready for it. It's paranoid about us. It thinks that every human being is its enemy."

"And it will always create Judgment Day if we give it Half a chance," Sarah said.

"Perhaps, Ms. Connor," Jade said. "We don't know. But that's what we've experienced. It's what happened in our universe."

"Yeah." Sarah sounded disgusted by what she'd heard, John couldn't blame her. She turned to him, shaking her head bitterly. "Maybe it always happens, whatever we do.

All we've done is postpone it, and make it worse."

"It does look that way," John said. "Doesn't it, Mom?"

Sarah closed her eyes, then lowered her head. "God help us, why did we bother trying?"

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

AUGUST 2001

Oscar Cruz lived in a plush beachside condo, just ten minutes' drive from the new Cyberdyne headquarters. He'd stayed up late tonight to read Rosanna's latest reports. They were fascinating. Relaxed deep into one of his heavily cushioned armchairs, he studied a printout analysis of the Mark 1 nanoprocessor, and what it had achieved so far. Its capacities were already beyond anything Rosanna had promised. It was just as well he'd kept her services. Every penny they'd spent catering to her whims had been repaid with interest.

Jack Reed's people were moving cautiously, wary of creating any truly Frankensteinian technology, much as Charles Layton and others on the Board still scoffed at that. The point that Rosanna had established early on was that the lost nanochip and the other 1984 remnants really were from the future. There was no other explanation. When you looked at the total picture, it all made sense. They had to be the remains of some kind of military cyborg device, the same device that had killed seventeen police in a shootout that year, and identical to the one that had helped the Connors destroy the Cyberdyne HQ ten years later. Sarah Connor must be crazy, of course, and there had been no nuclear Armageddon in 1997, but it didn't hurt to be careful. Connor was obviously caught up in something she didn't understand.

It had taken someone like Rosanna to work this out. The woman was strange and self-absorbed, but she was brilliant. She had that manner that made you dismiss everything she said as too eccentric to be true-then go and check up, just in case she was right. If she said the moon was made of green cheese, you'd laugh at her, then conduct an investigation, just in case.

Eventually, the Dyson-Monk nanochip could be adapted for the military computers Jack and NORAD had originally imagined, but now they were onto something bigger: time travel. Rosanna had convinced them all it was possible, and now she was working with some of the best physicists in the country, using the Mark-1 processor for their mathematical modeling. The practical results didn't yet add amount to time travel, but they were certainly amazing.

Downstairs, outside the condo block's high brick fence, someone pressed the buzzer. Damn it, who could it be at this time of night? Oscar checked the security system. Its four-inch video screen showed a young Hispanic woman with very long hair. He pressed the button to speak with her through the microphone, "Yes? What do you want?"

"Oscar Cruz?"

"Yes."

"From Cyberdyne?"

"Yes, what do you want?"

"We need to talk," she said.

No way was he talking to some total stranger who'd come to talk about Cyberdyne, not after 1994. "Call me at work. You can sort it out with my secretary."

"Mr. Cruz, we need to talk now."

"No we don't." He terminated the connection, but the buzzer went off again. He activated the mike. "I said to call me at work."

"We need to talk now, Mr. Cruz."

"I don't think so." When he disconnected this time, he pressed another button, activating a duress alarm connected to the police station. In a moment, a squad car should come round to check.

The woman vanished from the range of the security camera. Oscar waited for the L.A.P.D. If the woman had really gone, he'd thank them and send them on their way, but he wasn't going to cancel the alarm just yet. The phone rang-that would be the security company, who'd also have received the alarm. He answered it, gave them his confidential code, and explained what had happened. At the other end of the line, a young man's voice said, "Okay, Mr. Cruz. The police will be there soon."

He put the phone down. As he did so, something peculiar happened. Something came in under the door. It was silvery, like snail slime, but thicker, a sort of liquid, which gathered up into itself to form a kind of pool.

Suddenly, it rose up in a liquid-metal fountain, taking color and form. It was the woman from downstairs. The woman-and a big, fierce-looking dog. Before Oscar could run or scream, the woman's finger stabbed out, a thin needle piercing his skull, lodging in his brain.

For one terrible second, he thought this was death, but then he knew it was something else. Much became clear to him; he saw his destiny. The future needed his help. Whatever it wanted... whatever Skynet wanted. There was so much to do.

Whatever it takes, Oscar thought.

"You understand?" the woman said.

"Absolutely."

"That's so helpful. Please, now, we have to visit Charles Layton. Will you drive me there?"

"Not a problem," Oscar said. "Anything at all."

CHAPTER TWELVE

SKYNET'S WORLD

ARGENTINA

2003

People were rushing from everywhere. Each time "Raoul" stepped forward, the T-800 fired again. Sarah ran from her bungalow, saw what was happening, and skidded to a stop on the gravel. She ran back, shouting something over her shoulder. Gabriela ran into her house. Meanwhile, Juanita had calmed down and taken action. She got into the rear of the Humvee, feeding ammunition into its 50mm. gun, then swinging it round on the T-1000.

The T-800 kept firing. It glanced at John, still on the ground. "Get away," it said. "Run!"

It pulled the trigger again. Click! It was out of ammunition. John fired with his handgun. The .45 caliber Colt had plenty of stopping power at this range, but not like the shotgun, not enough to slow the T-1000. But Juanita opened up with the Humvee's machine gun, as everyone else scattered out of the way. The T-1000 became a mass of silver-chrome crater wounds, deforming like a metal zombie.

Sarah returned with the T-800's M-79 grenade launcher. "John! Get away!" she shouted.

John ran like devils were after him. Juanita followed, and they got to the back of Raoul's garage, then threw themselves, face down, on the concrete floor. Even the T-800 rolled away, as a grenade pierced the T-1000's body and exploded. The T-1000 stayed in one piece, but it splashed into an inkblot shape. Within a second it was struggling to reform. John grabbed Juanita by the wrist—a glance of understanding passing between them—and they got out a back door, then doubled round, just in time to see Sarah reload and fire another shot into the polyalloy Terminator. "Take this, you metal son of a bitch!"

The grenade hit the T-1000 before it had fully reformed . It splashed out again, some of it breaking away. The broken piece, like a huge tom-off strip of silver foil, turned to liquid on the concrete and flowed back to the T-1000's feet.

At the front door of her house, Gabriela had an RPG tube, which she held at her shoulder, kneeling to aim. Now she fired, the rocket-propelled grenade hitting the T-1000 and exploding, showering more of the Terminator's liquid metal parts across the space between the house and the garages. The fragments of T-1000 liquefied when they landed, rolling together like water droplets on a slick surface, struggling back together. How much did it take to destroy the thing? No matter what they threw at it, it was still fighting them.

"Don't let it reform," the T-800 said. It rushed forward, seizing the amoeba-like main body of the T-1000 and tossing it twenty feet, well away from the liquid metal pieces that had been heading towards it. With an appearance of special effort, the T-1000 pulled into itself, becoming the young, severe-looking policeman John had first seen it as, back in L.A., nearly nine years before. It grappled with the T-800, getting the better of it, and tossing it to one side. The T-800 bounced on its haunches, but sprang to its feet immediately, obviously unhurt. It ran at the T-1000, which moved like the liquid creature it was, somehow getting under its body and twisting round, smashing the T-800 head-first into the gravel.

A silvery liquid blob, the size of a ham, now slid over the ground heading home, for the T-1000's main body. All the broken-off bits had formed into this single mass of mercury-like metal. Sarah fired another grenade, directly into the fast-moving blob, which sprayed into droplets as the grenade hit. But even they started running together. Couldn't anything ever destroy it?

By now, there were dozens of well-armed fighters gathered to help. Many of them had useless weapons, but not all. Bruce Axelrod threw a hand grenade, pitching it hard, right into the T-1000's body. Again, the explosion blew the Terminator out into a free-form shape. Enrique and Franco Salceda fired at it with shotguns, blasting bits off and driving it back. The T-800 pounced on the T-1000, gripping and tearing with both hands. It ripped the T-1000 in half and threw the two pieces aside, well away from each other. Immediately, they liquefied on the ground. Bruce tossed another grenade, then another, hitting each liquid mass, and splashing droplets of the liquid metal far and wide.

Still the droplets tried to rush together. John started to wonder if they could ever defeat it, or whether they'd finally run out of ammunition.

As parts of the T-1000 managed to reform, they'd take on shapes it must have encountered in its travels: machines, animals, strange abstract forms with pincers and snapping jaws. They kept hitting it with more and more explosives, trying to blast it to smaller pieces, faster than it could reform, some of them throwing or firing grenades into it, while others ran for ammunition. The battle waged for hours, until they were exhausted. Finally, the polymorphic Terminator ceased reforming, its pieces liquefying and pooling, but no longer making shapes. As they watched it carefully, dozens of weapons now trained on it, it formed a single large pool of liquid metal, but no solid shape emerged from the pool. It seemed to be dead.

Even then, John didn't trust it. Perhaps the thing could still reform and come back at him, if they left it to itself.'

John said to the T-800, "Is that the end of it?"

"Yes," it said. "Terminated."

Juanita was close to him. He turned to her, seeing her more sharply than ever before. She'd almost died, just as he had. He realized how terrible that would have been. She deserved to live—and in a better world than this. All he said was, "Thank you."

Gabriela walked over to them, and the questions on her lips were obvious. What had the T-1000 done with Raoul? Was there any hope for him?

The T-800 looked at her grimly. "Your husband is dead."

They found Raoul's body, dumped by the side of a dusty road and left to rot. He'd been killed by a deep stab wound, up underneath his ribs. To the T-1000, he'd been merely a means to the end of getting close to John.

Night after night, they set sentries to watch the thick silvery fluid, which was all that remained of the T-1000. It never stirred. Each night, John woke with nightmares that the pool had come to life, the polyalloy Terminator rising up out of it like a metallic Dracula, but it never happened that way. Soon, there seemed no chance that it would stir; it appeared their assault on it had actually succeeded. Blasting it to smaller and smaller liquid pieces, again and again, must have disrupted some important part of its programming. Given its capacity to reform, its programming must have been copied many times throughout its body, always able to back-up. But its redundancy must have had some limit: Reduce it to small enough pieces, and only the most basic level of programming was left. It could liquefy and pool, but its sentience was gone.

People now looked oddly at John and the T-800, knowing that one was very strange indeed and the other not human at all. But their wariness was combined with awe. They knew that John and Sarah had predicted Judgment Day. They were coming to know for certain what John had realized as a child: everything was true. There really had been messages from the future. No one who'd been there on the day the T-1000 came doubted their next warning, about the coming of the machines. Preparations continued apace.

Gabriela built a memorial to her husband, an obelisk of rock and concrete, in the round, graveled space outside her home. They mixed the T-1000's liquid metal into the concrete.

ARGENTINA

2003-2006

John's work immersed him, and he grew up wiry and strong. In this harsh new world, powerful rivals fought for control, hurling at each other what remained of mankind's military arsenals. Across Argentina alone, millions more died, many in the local wars of conquest and rebellion, others from cold, disease, and starvation. The Connors and their allies built a strong militia, using survivalist networks that reached northwards through Latin America, into what was left of the U.S.

Sometimes other groups joined them: local military forces; other militia groups that saw hope in cooperation, rather than in an endless struggle of warlords; fragments of the shattered armies from farther north. Remnants of the U.S. forces brought even more impressive weaponry. John foresaw an end to the battles of warlords, but knew there was even worse to come: he awaited Skynet's war machines.

One bitterly cold day in June, Willard Parnell came in to interrupt John's martial arts training with his mother and Franco Salceda, under the watchful eye of the T-800.

"We've got a new group," Willard said. "They've made camp five miles north. Looks like they've come to join us."

John stood puffing from exertion. "What kind of group?"

"There's about fifty of them."

"Armed?"

"Yes. Well-armed, but no danger to us. There's not enough of them. They're flying a white flag. I'd say they plan to make contact."

"We'll take the initiative," John said. He glanced at Sarah. "You agree?"

"Of course, John. I'm sure Gabriela will, too."

John laughed. His mother was gently reminding him that he couldn't yet call the shots—not all by himself. These days, the others deferred to him and kept out of the way of the T-800, his quiet, ever-present bodyguard. Still, it was a government by oligarchy, with many of them having a say. People respected Gabriela and the rest of the Tejada clan, whose property this originally was. The Salcedas were also respected, and Sarah was almost feared. But the military leaders who'd joined also had their say, and needed to be kept on their side. Despite John's charisma, the militia could break up easily. The military personnel were primarily loyal to their commanders. Much of the time, John found himself walking on eggshells, worrying about internal rivalries, people's egos, trying to keep it all together. It seemed that he had a knack.

"They look well fed and well equipped," Willard said. "Mostly American, I'd say. They've got a whole convoy of trucks and Humvees."

"All right," John said. "That sounds good. If they're with us, that might be very useful." He exchanged glances with Sarah. "We'll talk to Gabriela first."

"I'll go see her now," Willard said.

"We'll be there in a minute." It was good news, but also routine. There was no doubt what Gabriela would think. If the Connors and Gabriela agreed, that was enough for most people, unless something vital was at stake.

John and Sarah threw on warmer clothes and rushed to see Gabriela, the T-800 following close by. Gabriela called to Carlo, and soon there was a minor war council, working out who would go. Carlo had turned out even taller than his father, but heavier built. In his urban camouflage, he stood like a sheer, gray cliff, hard and immovable. "Let me do it," he said.

It was potentially dangerous driving into a rival camp, but John liked to be directly involved. They soon sorted out that he and Carlo would go together, with the T-800 and half a dozen supporting Humvees, just in case.

They drove quickly on the icy road, the T-800 at the wheel of John's vehicle. John wore body armor, a woolen coat, and webbing crammed with grenades and ammunition. He had an M-16 rifle and wore a 9mm. pistol in a shoulder holster. If there was trouble he was ready for it, but what happened surprised him. As they parked outside the camp, flying their own white flag from John's Humvee, a group of four, all dressed in U.S. military camouflage, stepped out to meet them, covered by others with assault rifles. One of the group was a middle-aged Caucasian with harsh features and a nose that looked like it had been broken and reset regularly over a tough lifetime. With him was a cocky-looking young man, Hispanic, with long hair and a goatee beard. But they both deferred to a black woman in her forties and a young man, maybe seventeen or eighteen.

"My name's Tarissa Dyson," the woman said. "This is my son, Danny."

The name "Dyson" was familiar, though at first John couldn't place it. He glanced at the T-800, which said, with no particular feeling, "Miles Dyson's family."

She nodded sadly. "Miles was my husband. Skynet killed him, like everyone else—at least that's what I think. He disappeared on Judgment Day. If you're John Connor, we want to join you. I'm glad to meet you at last. I wish we'd all listened to you before this happened."

John stepped from the Humvee, the T-800 following, holding an M-16 in one hand. "I guess we'd better talk," John said.

Danny Dyson pointed to an olive drab tent. "You're very welcome. Come inside. This isn't some kind of ambush. You're not in any danger."

"Correct," the T-800 said menacingly.

They sat in folding chairs around a card table, drinking scalding hot coffee. "When Judgment Day came," Tarissa said, "Miles was in Colorado, working on the Skynet project. We were living in L.A., but Danny and I had a vacation in Mexico. If not for that, we wouldn't be here. L.A.'s virtually gone."

"I'm sorry," John said. "I can't begin to understand how you must feel."

"What, because of Miles? I can't blame him. How could he have known? We knew about your predictions of Judgment Day, of course, but we couldn't believe them. The story about robots from the future was just too much. But it shook Miles all the same, even though he said it was irrational. He made us go on that vacation. Indirectly, you saved our lives."

"I wish we could have done more."

Her eyes filled with tears, and she shook her head. "Of course, when the warheads fell, we knew what had happened. I wanted to go back and find Miles, but we had to make a choice. Skynet must have known what it was doing—it wouldn't have left anyone alive who could shut it down."

"There's a lot I still don't understand," John said. "Why would they give all the control to Skynet in the first place?" He looked at the Terminator. "Do you know anything about that?"

"No. I do not have detailed files."

Tarissa looked back and forth between them, the young man and his bodyguard. "You're the robot from the future?"

"I am a Terminator: Cyberdyne T-800 series, model 101. I am a cyborg construction: human biology on an endoskeletal combat chassis."

"This is for real, isn't it?" Danny said.

"Yes," John said. "It always was."

Tarissa nodded sadly, and poured herself more coffee. "I'm confused about one thing."

"Only one? Well, try me."

"Your messages said that all human decisions were being removed and given to Skynet. But it wasn't supposed to work that way. The final decision was still supposed to be with the President. Skynet shouldn't have been able to launch the missiles by itself."

"I suppose we'll never know," John said.

The T-800 was silent.

"No," Tarissa said. "I wish Miles was here to explain it all to us. I miss him..." She lost control for a moment, putting down her coffee cup, and weeping openly. But then she managed to speak through the tears. "When we heard about you and your mother, down here in Argentina, we knew we had to join you. Your reputation's growing."

"As long as Skynet doesn't hear about it," John said. "We're not ready yet."

"Do you know what happens next?"

"Skynet is preparing war machines," the T-800 said. "I don't have the details."

"Maybe I should have taken more time and programmed it into you, before I sent you back to '94," John said. "Still, you've done what you had to do. I might even be better off not knowing everything. It gives me room to make decisions."

"Correct"

"It's still weird," Danny said.

He seemed like a confident sort of guy, probably a genius like his father. "What's so weird?" John said.

"This whole time travel thing."

"What about it? Sounds pretty normal to me." He grinned, and glanced at the Terminator.

"Can't you see how it's full of paradoxes?"

"All right. I know that. Look, my mother and I have never tried to explain the whole story. It would only have hurt our credibility." John took them through it all. How he was destined to defeat Skynet. How Skynet had tried to change the past by killing him or his mother— before she could bear him. :

Infuriatingly, Danny shook his head. "It just can't work that way. Say Skynet sends back a Terminator to kill you. It can't change the past. Time has already taken it into account, can't you see that? And if you can, so would Skynet—it can't be stupid."

"Maybe it's got a few blind spots," John said.

"Maybe. Or maybe things happen differently. Say one of those Terminators had managed to kill you, right? It couldn't help Skynet anyway."

John hadn't thought of that. "What? Why not?"

"Because Skynet has grown up in a world where you exist. If there's a world where you don't exist, it's a different world See my point? It may also have a Skynet, but it's a different Skynet. Nothing it experiences is known to the Skynet who sent back the Terminator. All that happens is that time splits. One way or another, you can't use time travel as a weapon. At least not like that."

"But that's how it happened. You can't quarrel with reality, Danny."

Danny shook his head. "I don't think so."

"Unknown, right?" John said to the Terminator.

"Unknown."

"Great. Another mystery. Listen, Tarissa .. Danny... You and your people are welcome. Thanks for trusting us. Please come with us to the estancia"

Tarissa nodded. "Thank you."

John wondered how Sarah would respond to the Dysons. For years she'd lived with her hatred of Miles Dyson. Often she'd said that she wished they'd killed him back in 1994, before they left the U.S. They'd even argued about it, about what would have happened if they'd tried, whether the T-1000 would have been watching out for them to make that very move. Here they were, now, confronted by the human aspect of his life, the fact that he'd left behind a family.

An hour later, the Dysons and their people had packed up, and a whole convoy returned to the casco. Sarah and Gabriela came to meet them. John could imagine the tears when they met Tarissa Dyson. So be it. They were all in this together. Apart from the T-800, they were all human.

There would be many more tears ahead.

THE COMING OF THE MACHINES

Soon, their problems really began. The machines had searched out humans to the ends of the Earth. They found Buenos Aires and the other great South American cities untouched by Judgment Day's nuclear fires, but riddled with bullet holes, ruined by the warlords. Skynet's Hunter-Killer machines—the aerial and ground H-Ks—poured from the gray sky, and from the mountains and jungles of the north. They swept into the cities, accompanied by the first combat endoskeletons, like walking images of Death, or beings from a horror movie. They killed as many humans as possible, driving the others into extermination camps, to deal with them more efficiently.

When the war machines first came, the human Resistance struck back, including fragments of the once-proud U.S. military that had survived Judgment Day. They targeted Skynet's forces with the only weapons that were truly effective: tactical nuclear warheads. But no matter what was thrown at them, the machines returned. They never relented, never lost patience, were never beaten.

The Earth was damned already. Now it became a worse circle of Hell.

BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA

2012

The craters from tactical nuclear explosions stomped asymmetrically through the city and the countryside all round, like a giant's drunken footprints. Ruined buildings rose from a desert of broken concrete. Nothing green showed itself in the perpetual winter. Here and there, the twisted metal skeletons of old skyscrapers towered above lesser ruins. Some vehicles had been pushed together by the Resistance, and piled up into roadblocks. Bonfires made of rubber tires burnt in the street. Occasionally, a rat foraged for food, or a dull gray bird flew from one crumbling window ledge to another.

Humans and machines exchanged fire beneath the sunless sky. The sinister electronic noise of the phased-plasma mechanisms answered the noisy clatter of the Resistance guerrillas' assault rifles. Explosions boomed through the streets, leaving billows of dark, rising smoke. All round was the smell of gunpowder and harsher chemicals. Skynet's H-Ks swept through the city's streets. Occasionally, they stabbed at their human enemies with needles of shocking blue light from their phased-plasma laser cannons.

"We've got to withdraw, John," Sarah said through gritted teeth. "There's too many of them." Even as she approached her fifties, Sarah was as tough as any of them. Her hair was now a steel gray, when once it had been honey brown, but her body was still lithe and muscular.

John needed no encouragement. "Withdraw!" he shouted, in Spanish, then repeated it in English. "Fall back! Fall back!" The order echoed through the guerrillas' lines. They ran half-crouched, with zigzagging movements, seeking the next position of cover.

Dozens of the flying H-Ks circled like huge, flesh-eating dragonflies, looking out for prey. The super-intense light beams from their laser cannons incinerated whatever they hit, taking only a second to burn up a human body like a match head. Following in their wake was a column of ground H-K's, Skynet's huge, tank-like juggernauts. These were almost unstoppable as they crawled slowly on their caterpillar treads through the maze of streets. Keeping pace with them were dozens of smaller killers, the nimble Centurion gun-pods, mounted on four legs, and Skynet's most adaptable ground weapons of all: the metal endoskeletons.

The humanoid endoskeletons seemed like the real enemy, the easiest to hate and curse, but that was an illusion. They were no more and no less alive than the rest of Skynet's weapons. Always alert, they marched forward, scanning for life with their visible light and infrared sensors. Sometimes one or two peeled off from the main force and disappeared into a building or an alleyway, hunting for anyone who be might be hiding there.

As John ran, a killer heat beam scored the ground just ahead, then another to his right. There was shouting and confusion all round. One handful of human guerrillas found themselves too close to the enemy, seriously exposed as they sought cover. They took firing positions, and aimed at the machines.

"We've got to get back," John said to his immediate group, the dozen or so people around him. "I'm following. Go on—move!" The T-800 stuck close to his side, always loyal and effective.

Suddenly, two heat beams struck home, taking out Paco Salceda and a U.S. ex-serviceman, Jerry Lanza— just like that.

There was nothing John could do for them. He just felt empty. He pushed down the pain of losing his friend, Paco, and concentrated on other things. He'd grieve later, let it out when he got back to their base, with Sarah and the others. As he ran, his boots pounding on the broken street, his breathing getting ragged, he fired his own laser rifle, shooting from the hip. He cupped his left hand under the barrel to balance its weight as he fired. The rifle was booty from the machines and more effective than the small arms possessed by the Resistance, but it had never been designed for humans. It was too heavy for him to operate in the manner of the endoskeletons, which waved these huge weapons around like toys.

Reaching a T-intersection, John and his group broke off to the right. Others had headed left or taken cover in the buildings immediately ahead.

Fifty yards along the street, he headed for a five-foot pile of broken concrete, collapsing behind it and getting his breath back. The T-800 joined him, brandishing its own laser rifle. Then Juanita Salceda scurried beside him. She had become a tall, intense woman who fought the machines as fiercely as anyone. She'd just seen her brother die. John shook his head to acknowledge the death. Yes, they'd talk about it later. He'd try to comfort her. For now, he just said, "Are you all right?"

Juanita nodded as they leaned their backs into the concrete pile. Her face looked ashen. They were in a good position here, with the street's angle blocking the ground machines' sensors. At their back was a ten-story wall from an old building, which cut off the aerial H-Ks' lines of sight, at least from most angles. Others found positions of temporary cover, using every wall, doorway, broken pipe, hump in the road, metal roadblock, or rusting shell of a car that presented itself, but avoiding the fields of mines they'd laid as a greeting for the machines.

Juanita fitted her M-249 automatic weapon with a new belt of ammunition, then wriggled around to rest it on top of the concrete. She could lug the M-249 about with the macho cockiness of a big man. "I'm okay," she said.

"Good," John said. "We've got to buy some time."

"I know. Every bit counts."

It was quiet just now; there was a lull in the fighting. John peered over the top of his makeshift rampart, aiming his laser rifle. Now he had more cause for concern. Sarah had found cover, but it wasn't adequate—just the rusted-out hulk of a car, rotting in the street. That wouldn't stop the burst from a laser cannon.

"Mom!" he yelled. "Get back here. Quickly!"

Then the first endoskeleton rounded the corner, and the humans fired from three sides with everything they had. Their M-16s and Kalashnikov AK-47s had little effect, even against the endoskeletons, let alone the larger machines. Juanita's M-249 could throw up a wall of metal against the endoskeletons, but it hardly bothered them. Light anti-tank weapons and RPG tubes were more useful, but still limited in effectiveness.

As the first ground H-K entered the "T" of the intersection, someone fired down from the roof of a low-rise building, striking the juggernaut with a rocket-propelled grenade. It pierced the first layer of the H-K's armor, showering sparks and metal fragments as it exploded. The H-K stopped for a moment, then resumed its ] progress. One of its bulbous turrets swiveled and aimed in the direction of the attack, then fired a series of heat beams at the building. An aerial H-K launched an antipersonnel missile at the same target.

It struck with a cataclysmic explosion, blowing the building apart, and momentarily deafening John, as the street seemed to shake. He ducked for cover as a wave of debris washed over them. No more fire came from the buildings as Skynet's invaders muscled their way through the rain of grenades and other projectiles coming from the street. As the endoskeletons walked, their skull-like heads moved slowly from side to side, scanning for targets.

With his back pressed into the pile of concrete, John waited for a few seconds, then hefted his laser rifle once more, balancing it on top of the concrete. The T-800 look aim a second before him, quickly but carefully, and tired at the nearest endoskeleton, hitting it squarely in its skull-like head, drilling a hole beneath its glowing red "eyes."

Immediately, the enemy units traced the source of his beam and returned vengeful fire from several angles— the endoskeletons, the cannons of the land H-Ks, and Centurions. One of the flying H-Ks joined in. John got his head down as heat beams passed over him, then swung up the laser rifle just long enough to take aim at the endoskeleton that the T-800 had already hit. The shot had damaged it. Its metal jaw sagged with a crooked expression, but even a direct hit had not been enough to top it. John squeezed the trigger as long as dared, and the endoskeleton's head imploded from the terrible heat. It fell forward, but more answering fire came John's way.

Juanita lifted her weapon and cut loose with it, though John doubted she'd do much damage. When he looked again, the endoskeleton he'd hit lay on its back upon the ground, disabled by the loss of its controlling nanochip. Yet it was still moving, doing pathetic swimming strokes in the air like a dying cockroach. The T-800 finished it off with another series of well-directed shots.

That was only one enemy taken out.

In a break in the laser fire, Sarah made a dash closer to them, ducking behind another car hulk.

Come on, Mom, John thought.

The exchange continued, lasers against bullets and grenades. Another grenade struck home and actually took out a ground H-K. It veered off the broken road, smashing through the walls of buildings, out of control, then exploded satisfyingly. There were, however, many others, and they were getting close.

"They're going to overrun us," Juanita said hoarsely, as she fired at a group of endoskeletons and centurions. Other guerrillas retreated, finding new positions as they went. The trouble was, they lacked the firepower to keep the machines at bay. They just kept advancing.

"We'll have to move," Juanita said.

"Correct," the T-800 said.

"We've got to get Mom out of there," he said. "Juanita, you go ahead." An aerial H-K started gliding toward them, keeping about thirty feet in the air, sizing them up as an available target. John pointed to it. "Run when I say!"

As he watched the metal monster approach, time seemed to slow down. Everything was happening at once, all around him.

Too many of the humans were pinned down by laser fire, Sarah among them. She was armed with an RPG tube, as well as an AK-47 rifle, but she was protected only by the flimsy, rusted vehicle she'd sheltered behind—that, and a sharp dip in the road. So long as she kept her head down, the ground-based heat beams were going over her, but there was no way she could fire, much less move from her position. The heat beams had caught her in a deadly, glowing lattice work. John stood to run for her, but the T-800 caught his arm in its steel grip.

"Too late, John," it said.

Sarah must have known that her time was up, that there was no escape left for her this time, for she suddenly moved to a kneeling position and fired a grenade around the car she'd been sheltering behind. As if it mattered, the back blast identified her even more clearly.

Sarah's grenade struck an endoskeleton full in the chest, penetrating its open-work metal structure, then exploded, blasting the machine apart.

But the answering fire was terrible. The aerial H-K that had been headed for John, Juanita, and the T-800 suddenly turned, and it struck back. It pierced Sarah with its heat beam, stabbing straight down at her, then climbed almost vertically.

"Mom!" John said, getting to his feet to see what had happened. "Nooooooo!"

The H-K started back for another run.

He couldn't believe it. Surely she'd survived. She couldn't die, not now, not when she had so many years ahead, not after all they had been through together. They'd been fighting Skynet together for so long... how could it suddenly end? He felt so heavy—the weight of his armor, ammunition, the weapons... and now this shock and grief... finally taking a toll.

Amongst it all, Juanita was there, dragging him back—Juanita and the T-800. He struggled with them. He had to get to Sarah's body. He couldn't just leave her behind, not like some animal carcass caught in a trap by Skynet.

"No, John," the T-800 said. "It had to happen this way. You have to live."

"Run," Juanita said. "They're going to kill us."

"No." He was frozen on the spot. His mom had been too young—what? Forty-eight?—it wasn't yet time for her to die. It should have been him. She'd been such a leader, done so much for them all. There must still be something he could do, check whether she was really dead—but she had to be. Her body was a smoking ruin. There were some things no one could survive, not even his mom, tough though she was—had always been. Not even Sarah.

Juanita slapped him. Hard. "You've got to move, soldier," she said. "Move it. Now." She shook him by the shoulders. "Now, John!"

It was like a dream. The stabbing lights were everywhere. In another moment...

"All right," he said. "We'll run for it."

Juanita went ahead of him, holding her weapon in both hands, diagonally across her chest. As he followed, John went crabwise, firing off pulses of laser light, trying to face his enemies at all times and to keep the ruined walls at his back, trying to suppress his feelings, all of them, just for the moment, just until they could get out of here. If, indeed, they could.

The T-800 fought fearlessly, not bothering to dodge the heat beams, though even it was vulnerable to them.

The ground machines poured into the street, like an army of giant insects, pursuing the human guerrillas in every direction.

Amongst the ruined buildings, the scattered car hulks and debris, the guerrillas had burnt tires to try to confuse the machines' infrared sensors. They'd also dug ditches in

the road, and built roadblocks by piling trucks and cars, shored up, where possible, by buttresses of concrete and stone. They'd laid out their minefields. But the H-Ks went over or through almost any obstacle they encountered, crushing steel, stone, wood, or bones under their treads.

"We'll make it," John said, but he wondered how long he could keep running.

The aerial H-K skimmed down the street, launching a heat-seeking missile. It passed just over the top of them as they dodged past one of the fires. John rolled away as fast as he could, using his elbows and hugging his weapon to his chest. The missile smashed into the fire and exploded thunderously.

He was deafened again; his ears hummed and buzzed. He watched the leading land H-K smash— silently, as it seemed—into one of the biggest roadblocks: a tangle of trucks, trailers and armored military vehicles, built up around a wrecked army tank. The crawling juggernaut struck the fifty-ton tank full-on, pushing it back. An ancient Humvee went flying through the air, dislodged from the tangle of metal. It turned cartwheels, end over end, where it landed in the street, careering into a pile of rusted-out cars.

Then there was another huge explosion. They'd mined the roadblock. The ground H-K lifted off its treads for a moment, breaking its back. It stopped there in the street, blocking the other big H-Ks, though the smaller killers simply went around it, like a stream of water round a stone.

More aerial H-Ks buzzed down from the sky, menacingly. Someone managed to fire a rocket-propelled grenade. It missed a swooping aerial H-K and exploded in mid-air, too far away to do the machine any damage. A Centurion gun-pod sized up the situation immediately and stabbed straight back with its laser cannon. A second later, it turned the laser cannon on the T-800, striking it squarely in the chest. That was too much, even for the Terminator. The powerful beam melted through its metal chassis.

Like Sarah, it was gone.

John saw one of the endoskeletons advancing with what seemed like a mad grin across its face, firing at will with two big laser rifles, one in each hand. Somewhere behind, Juanita had taken a position. She'd survived, then! Not everyone was dead...She fired back at the machine, but it walked easily through the metal storm.

A heat beam grazed John's face, searing him beyond pain. He screamed and almost dropped his precious weapon, but he was still alive. He hadn't taken a direct hit.

He was scarcely conscious, the world a dream all round him. Another battle. More scars. More terrible losses, the most terrible he'd yet endured. In one day, in a few short minutes, he'd lost Paco, and the T-800...

Mom! Sarah!

The nightmare continued. It was never over. Suddenly, it had grown worse than he could have imagined. With Juanita, he fought his way out of there. They ran like hunted animals. There was no choice but to keep fighting, to the bitter end, without surrender. The only alternative was extermination.

But now he had a burning knowledge, deep in his heart. One way or another, whatever he had to do, Skynet was going to pay for this.

Whatever it took, whatever he had to suffer, Skynet would pay.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

JOHN'S WORLD

COLORADO SPRINGS, COLORADO

AUGUST 2001

At 5:04 p.m., Rosanna Monk left the windowless citadel of the Cyberdyne Advanced Research Laboratories, waving goodbye to the security guards on the ground floor-Penny Webster and Ken Meldrum.

"Back soon," she said. "I'm going to get some pizza."

"Sure, Dr. Monk," Webster said. She was a young black woman who looked like she lifted a lot of weights, almost the opposite of Rosanna, with her Goth-pale skin, blue veins, and fragile physique. But Rosanna liked the security guards and often chatted with them. She was usually back late, sometimes very late, working on the prototype nanoprocessor, or with the results it had produced.

Meldrum looked up from his computer screen. "See you later, Dr. Monk." He was a wiry, middle-aged Caucasian guy with a receding chin and a huge, fearsome mustache. He was gentle enough when you got to know him, but many of the staff thought he was creepy, almost scary-looking. That didn't bother Rosanna. She had no expectations of what people should look like. What mattered was the quality of their work, which was how she expected people to judge her. She knew people found her both physically attractive and a bit freaky, but that didn't matter. She always got the job done, and she saw things other people didn't. Where others might be puzzled by something, but let it go, she would pursue it, even if it took her somewhere strange, to thoughts that might raise eyebrows. Usually she was right.

Rosanna had a long night ahead, trying to make sense of the latest data produced by the nanoprocessor: its detailed results of the day's experiments with the space-time displacement field. She now understood the field's mathematics as well as the physicists nominally running the project-maybe better. So far, they had not succeeded in translating an entire macro-level object in space or time, but they were getting there. Today's data would be worth mulling over for a few more hours.

She stepped quickly across the car park, passed the guard booth outside, then crossed the road to her favorite pizza shop, another place where she was popular. Rosanna had little private life. She was very different from her predecessor, she thought. Miles had enjoyed such a nice home life, until that night when he got killed, that really weird night when the future had come back and slapped its greasy hand on the present.

"Hi, Dr. Monk," said Andrew, the guy behind the counter. "Another late night for you?"

"Yeah, looks like it."

"You look like you need a vacation." He smiled. "No offense."

"None taken. I've been working pretty hard."

"All top secret, huh?"

"Too secret for you," she said with a smile.

"Yeah, I know. Better not tell-I'm a Nazi spy."

"You must have used a time machine, then." She ordered a Capriciossa pizza and a black coffee to take away. Rosanna almost lived on this diet, and it hadn't done her any harm so far. When her pizza was ready, she returned to the building, passing through the security checkpoint, "Everything okay?" she said to Webster and Meldrum.

"No problem," Webster said.

The guards routinely checked the coffee and pizza, while Rosanna stepped through the X-ray scanner. "See you later, alligators," she said. "I'll probably be here all night." She headed to her office on the sixth floor. The experimental results were going to be very interesting.

She immersed herself for hours. At 10:23 p.m., by the readout on her screen, she thought of making herself more coffee. Maybe not Her office had a comfortable couch, as well as the desk. If she caught a few hours' sleep, that would refresh her, then she could keep going until morning.

Someone coughed quietly at her door. "Dr. Monk?"

It was a big Hispanic guy with shoulder-length hair. What are you doing here?" she said. "How did you get past security?"

"I tried your home first," the guy said.

As he stepped toward her, Rosanna reached for the duress button under her desk. She never had a chance. A long tendril of liquid metal flicked out at her like a frog's tongue, piercing her skull, talking to her. She couldn't tell how long it took.

"Now you understand?" the Hispanic guy said. "You know where your interests lie?"

"Yes," she said. "Everything is clear. We need to destroy the human

"Good. Thank you for your time, Dr. Monk. See you soon."

He stepped out and disappeared from sight. Rosanna went back to work. She felt strong, clear. There was nothing she couldn't do.

NEAR THE U.S./MEXICO BORDER

After dark, they pulled up at another service station, out- side of Mexicali. The Specialists ate a huge meal in the I diner. John was hungry again himself. He tucked into a plate of nachos with lots of extra guacamole. They ate in a quiet corner, keeping their voices down.

Anton nodded at John and Sarah, seated opposite him. "We'll encounter the T-XA again. It may be more dangerous to you this time."

John was conscious that he and Sarah had hardly been I scratched when they fought the T-XA back in Mexico City. It hadn't seemed interested in them. "It looked like it wanted to kill you guys, not us," he said.

"That's right."

"So what's this crap about coming with you if we want to live?" Sarah said.

"As I said, you were going to die in 2007. That won't happen now."

"At this rate, we could all get killed in the next few hours. And for what? Whatever we do, it looks like that bastard Skynet is going to nuke us all. Why should we care anymore?"