Infiltrator

T2: Infiltrator(T2 #1)

by S.M. Stirling

PROLOGUE

A MOTEL, LOS ANGELES: 1995

Tarissa Dyson sat silent and motionless in the motel room's uncomfortable chair and watched her children sleep. Blythe and Danny lay totally abandoned to it, like puppies collapsed after a long, hard romp, dark lashes still against soft, plump cheeks. They had wanted so desperately to stay awake for their father's return, had fought so valiantly to keep their eyes open.

She felt a twinge of regret for not keeping them awake. But their constant refrain of "Where's Daddy?" and "When's he coming back?" had strained her nerves to the snapping point. She'd rather feel guilty for letting them get some much-needed rest than for yelling at them when they were already so frightened and stressed.

She tried to steer her mind away from what had frightened them. Frightened them and terrified me, she admitted to herself. The brutal image of the Terminator peeling the flesh off the metal skeleton of its forearm flashed unbidden into her mind's eye. That memory was like probing a broken tooth with your tongue, at once painful and irresistible.

They were in a little motel off the interstate, clean but shabby, showing bare spots in the tired carpet and worn patches on the arms of the sofa, smelling slightly of disinfectant soap.

The Terminator had said that the T-1000 would probably go to their home, extract information from whomever it found there, and then terminate them.

Terminate them. What a sterile way to put it.

So Sarah Connor had chosen this place from the phone book. They would meet here after the mission, she'd said. Mission—another word that distanced people from what they were doing.

Only the destruction of Miles's dreams.

Images crowded into her mind: Miles pressed against his file cabinet, terror on his face as shots destroyed the room, glass shattering and paper turned to confetti swirling around him.

"Take Danny and go! Run! Just run!" he'd shouted.

She'd grabbed their son and dragged him toward the front of the house. Then Miles broke from his office, running toward them. A bullet struck him; she could

still see the arc of blood as he fell. Tarissa swallowed hard. Then her son had slipped from her grasp and thrown himself over his father's prone body.

"Don't you hurt ray daddy!" he shouted.

She looked at her son, awed by the courage in that small package. Tarissa put her hand down on the bed beside him, fearful that touching him might wake him.

She sighed. If what they'd told her was true, then the loss of Miles's dreams was a small price to pay to ensure that their son and daughter would live to have dreams of their own one day.

The endless sound of cars shushing by might have been lulling… had there been any possibility that she could sleep. Tarissa sighed again and squeezed her eyes shut, whispering a brief prayer for Miles's safe return.

Danny started snoring and she looked at him. The corners of her full lips wanted to lift in affectionate amusement, but she lacked the physical strength, even for such a little thing.

Call, she thought passionately. Call!

She'd never been good at waiting; that was why she was so punctual herself.

Miles was less so, and had often teased her out of her irritation over his tardiness by asserting that opposites attract. He'd slide his arms around her, his beautiful dark eyes smiling… Tarissa shook her head.

But this wasn't just waiting. This was slow torture.

Call!

With another sigh she rubbed her face, then got up from the ugly chair to pace the little room. It was taking so long. Too long? Who could say? How long did

"missions" take anyway?

Miles, Miles, come home to me! Please, please, please…

She looked at the TV and then at Danny and Blythe. If she kept the volume down it probably wouldn't bother them, and there might be something… Tarissa sat on the end of the bed and tapped the remote. Sound blared from the TV and she groped frantically for the mute button. Her heart pounding, she turned guiltily to Danny and Blythe. The little guy turned over and uttered a muffled protest, but didn't wake up. Blythe didn't even stir.

What kind of jerk leaves the volume on max? Tarissa thought, then answered herself: The type who thinks that sort of thing is funny.

When she looked back the screen had cleared and there was Cyberdyne Corporation… on fire. There were shattered police cars everywhere and the strobing lights of dozens of ambulances. It was a disaster, a war zone. She watched bodies being carried out on stretchers and she forgot to breathe.

"Miles," she whispered, and her heart shriveled with horror.

The phone rang and she dived for it.

"Yes?" she said, amazed at how calm she sounded. Danny and Blythe slept on.

"Tarissa?" It was John Connor's voice. The voice of a smart-ass ten-year-old, mature beyond his years.

"Where's Miles?" she asked. She heard John take a breath, and froze, screaming silently. Miles should be on the phone, not John. John's just a kid. Don't blow up at him. Suddenly she felt very distant, as though she'd been cut free from her feelings. John hadn't answered yet and the pause was getting painfully long.

"He's… gone," she said, sparing the boy.

"He saved you tonight," John said firmly. "He saved Danny and Blythe and millions of other people. You know that. You've got to remember that," his voice pleaded.

"I know," she agreed, then choked. With a hard swallow she steadied herself and asked, "Where's your mother?"

"She's been hurt," John answered. "She'd needs a transfusion, but that's'out, for obvious reasons. She'll be all right, I think. Mom's tough."

Yes, she was, and terrifying—maybe because she was visibly hanging on by a thread. Tarissa would never forget the sight of her standing over Miles, trembling and cursing, her finger tightening on the trigger. But Sarah Connor had lived alone with this slowly approaching horror for years and had still soldiered on. She was tough all right.

And so are you, kid, Tarissa thought with amazement. So much was riding on this boy's slender shoulders. She remembered the way he'd calmed his mother.

"Where's the Terminator?" she asked. With the massive… being beside him, John should be able to take on anything. She became aware of another too-long pause.

"We had to destroy him," John said rapidly. "He said so… he said so himself. He climbed into the… he did it, with Mom's help, himself. We couldn't risk someone getting hold of his microprocessor."

Oh my God, Tarissa thought. "No, I guess not," she managed to say numbly.

"Besides, the T-1000 damaged him so badly, he couldn't pass for human anymore." John sounded almost distracted, as though more important things were happening around him and his attention was divided.

You poor kid, she thought. Poor Terminator as well. Poor Miles. My poor love.

"Then you didn't really have a choice." At least I suppose so. What do I know?

I'm new to all this. The image of the Terminator's flesh-stripped arm, of the intricate, exposed mechanism of it, made her squeeze her eyes shut. She didn't want her imagination to supply her with anything more. "Good luck," she said.

"And to you," he answered.

Tarissa hung up the phone. She couldn't say thank you, even though she knew that Miles's sacrifice had just saved the world. She couldn't bring herself to thank one of the people who'd brought him to it.

Tarissa pushed herself up from the bed and stumbled to the window.

Pressing her hand hard against her mouth, she kept as quiet as possible so as not to disturb her sleeping children. A great fire made of pain and rage and fear

swelled in her chest and sobs like a series of blows racked her.

After a few minutes the worst was over and she leaned panting against the window frame, feeling sick. Tarissa could feel the world crumble to broken ice as she stared at the dingy parking lot through her tears. How was she going to tell her children that their father was never coming home?

ALTADENA, CA: 1995

John paid the clerk with some of his stolen cash. Easy money, he thought: it was only two days since he and his best friend had ripped off that hapless whoever-it-was, hacking his PIN number at the ATM machine. It seemed like a lifetime.

Then everything had seemed to be going in a straight line toward a future as miserable as the present. Now? It was all different.

Poor Todd and Janelle, his court-appointed foster parents, were dead. Now they'd be dicks forever. His mother wasn't a psycho, she was a hero, and his life had been saved repeatedly by a Terminator.

If he didn't feel so rotten He'd think he was dreaming this. He felt numb and tense at the same time, wired and exhausted. Every motion he made seemed remote, like the gestures of a puppet. His mother looked like hell and her wounds didn't seem to want to stop bleeding, and though he cared—a lot—that also felt distant somehow.

John came back to the car, pulled a jar of orange juice out of the plastic bag, uncapped it, and handed it to his mother.

"I wanted coffee," she said. Sarah's hand was shaking as she took the drink from

him.

"You coulda used their coffee to seal tire leaks, Mom." He looked at her, worried, as he worked the cap off a bottle of aspirin. "Anyway, isn't sugar supposed to be good for you if you're hurt or something?"

Sarah took four aspirin and a swig of orange juice.

"Yeah," she said, closing her eyes and leaning her head back against the seat.

"Glucose. Energy."

The car they'd stolen was a well-used Chrysler, nondescript and fortunately full of gas. It ran well, too. They were already fifty miles from Cyberdyne.

"I got some bandages, too," John said, offering her a look into the bag.

Sarah opened her eyes slowly; it was a struggle. Despite her pain she wanted desperately to sleep. Bad idea, she told herself. She couldn't leave John alone.

Her full lips jerked in an almost smile. He was something special, but he was still only ten years old.

"There used to be a doctor who didn't ask questions," she said vaguely. With an effort, wincing, she sat up straighter. That was better. "Where are we?" she asked.

"Altadena," he answered.

Sarah seemed to come out of a fog she'd been sinking into, shifting again into a still more upright position.

"All right," she said. "I know where we are. Let's go. Get on the highway, John,

head north."

"Can this guy give you a transfusion?" he asked, slipping into the driver's seat.

She shook her head. "But he can stop the bleeding."

John started the car and drove. They didn't speak for a long time, but he didn't notice as he concentrated on driving and on not thinking. Suddenly alarmed, he glanced over at his mother, afraid she might have finally fallen unconscious.

He caught the gleam of her eyes as she looked at him, and was reassured.

"It's going to be all right," she said, a world of satisfaction in her voice. "We stopped them. We stopped Skynet, Judgment Day, all of it."

John glanced at her again and saw tears glisten in her eyes. His throat tightened in sympathy.

"What will we do now?" he asked. His voice sounded weak in his own ears.

"Head to South America, I think," Sarah told him. "We'll make a nice, peaceful life for ourselves and die in obscurity many, many years from now."

"Heh," he said, hardly daring to believe it was really over. "Sounds good."

"It does," she said. "It does."

CYBERDYNE SYSTEMS CORPORATION PARKING LOT: 1995

Paul Warren and Roger Colvin, respectively president and CEO of Cyberdyne

Systems, stood together in the cold predawn darkness and watched their company headquarters burn.

"Dyson!" Warren exclaimed. "Dyson, of all people."

"Goddamn Luddites," Colvin growled. "The bastards are everywhere." He crushed the empty coffee cup he was holding and threw it away in disgust. "Did he leave a note, anything to explain why he did this?"

Warren shook his head.

"The cops said that his house was shot up. His computer and all his records were trashed or burned. They said his wife and kids were missing."

Colvin looked at him quickly.

"Do you think he killed them?"

"If he did he hid the bodies." Warren looked at his boss. "There was a lot of blood. It doesn't look good."

Colvin ran his hands through his thinning brown hair.

"Guys kill their wives and kids all the time," the CEO said in frustration. "But they don't blow up the company they work for! Why the hell would he do this?"

"There's a good chance that terrorists forced him to it," a friendly-sounding voice said from behind them.

The two executives turned to find themselves under the regard of a middle-aged

man remarkable only in the perfection of his ordinariness. He looked like he'd dressed as rapidly as they had, expensively casual yet rumpled. He approached the two men slowly and their stance became subtly deferential.

"Mr. Colvin," he said to the CEO. "Mr. Warren." He turned piercing blue eyes on the president.

"Everything is backed up off-site," Colvin assured him.

"Everything is not backed up, Mr. Colvin," the man said, his voice still friendly, his pale gaze like an ice borer. "We've lost the chip and we've lost the arm.

These items are irreplaceable. Let's not kid ourselves. Even Mr. Dyson can be replaced eventually, but not those two items."

"We have copies of all his files," Warren offered eagerly. "Even his home computer files."

The man stared at Warren for a long moment. The president's hands fisted inside his jacket pockets; nobody had looked at him like that since high school, since he'd been a pencil-necked geek bullied by the jocks. Making a very large fortune before he turned thirty had been vengeance enough… until now. Now he felt as if he'd been face-slammed into a locker again and had his lunch money stolen.

"But the loss of those materials," the man continued, "will be a very heavy blow to your research." He turned his attention to the CEO. "Frankly, your security was a joke. The most valuable artifacts ever found by human beings were put into your trust and you just—"

He made a single sharp gesture toward the burning chaos of the Cyberdyne labs.

The other men flushed, as if the movement of the long narrow hand had somehow flicked something rancid into their faces.

"—pissed it away. The very least that you could do is have off-site backup. Have you checked with that site?"

Colvin and Warren shot a panicked look at one another.

"You haven't, have you?" The two men shook their heads. "Is there at least a spare off-site backup?"

They just stared at him.

"Jesus! You people are unbelievable!"

"We're engineers," Colvin said with strained dignity, "not security."

"I would never have guessed," the man sneered. "Okay"—he spread his hands

—"get your shit together; whatever shit you might have left, that is. From now on you'll be working under our auspices at another location."

"Our people won't like that," Warren said.

"Then get different people! The only guy you're going to have trouble replacing is Dyson, which makes everybody else expendable. Including you two clowns. If someone mouths off about working for us, fire them. And for Christ's sake get yourself a decent security manager… or I will!" He spun on his heel and walked away. After a few steps he turned back. "I'll be in touch. Check your backup and for God's sake get a few more copies of everything made and distributed to

people you can trust."

"You think they might come after us?" Warren said, and flushed as he felt his voice rise to a squeak.

"They might. That's acceptable. Losing those records isn't. See to it." With a last scowl he turned away and walked off.

Colvin and Warren looked at each other covertly, with the mutual resentment of men toward someone who has seen their shame.

"Who is that guy?" Warren asked after a few moments.

"He's—"

"I don't mean what he is. Who is he?"

"Tricker?" Colvin said with a shrug.

"Is that his first name or his last?" the president asked.

"Hell, for all I know it's his job description," the CEO answered.

Warren snorted.

"Well, we should get a move on," he said at last. They'd waited at least five minutes; now Tricker's orders could be claimed as their own idea.

"Apparently," Colvin said dryly, giving the burning hulk of Cyberdyne a long last look, "we should have gotten a move on the day before yesterday."

CHAPTER ONE

CINCINNATI: 2021 , POST-JUDGMENT

DAY

Multiple sensors scanned the broken wasteland of the ruined city as the Hunter/

Killer's treads rolled its massive steel body over the rusting wrecks of automobiles, crushing the bones of their long-dead drivers. The tortured metal squealing of its passage frightened flocks of birds into flight and sent more earthbound animals scurrying for cover.

Piles of scorched and shattered brick and concrete, twisted steel, and broken glass blocked the HK's view to one side or the other. Sometimes it made its way through canyons of rubble. Then, inexplicably, a wall that had somehow survived the blast wave would stand before it, only to be shattered by the machine's passage.

The HK's satellite feed had shown what appeared to be massive human troop movements in this area. Thus far no information the machine had collected verified those reports.

It checked its omni-directional sensor array for a possible equipment failure. All systems were on-line, no failure detected. No targets detected. The machine reviewed the satellite information indicating human activity to the northeast. The machine continued on its way, tireless, unrelenting, utterly lacking in self-awareness.

Until Skynet touched it. Then the most brilliant, and from a human standpoint,

malevolent intelligence ever created looked out through the HK's sensor windows. It wondered why satellite information disagreed so completely with the reality before it. There were no humans here.

Until recently there never had been; humans avoided the big cities that had perished in the first wave of nuclear explosions. Skynet knew that they feared exposure to lingering radiation. That was why Skynet opted to place its satellite receivers, its antennae and repair stations, within their ruined confines.

But now, at the orders of their charismatic leader, humans almost swarmed over these once-deserted places. Skynet's killing machines—its appendages—had been destroyed, the satellite arrays and antennae—its eyes and ears—had been crippled.

Somehow, because of John Connor, the humans had rallied. They were fighting back.

Skynet switched its consciousness to the processor of a nearby T-90. The stripped metal skeleton of this first in the series of Terminators reflected sunlight in brilliant sparkles, as though its chassis had been polished. It marched through piles of bones, its heavy feet snapping them like dry twigs, and climbed through the rubble, checking the small spaces in which humans might hide, head turning from side to side ceaselessly.

It found neither sign nor sight of humans.

Skynet considered this as it rode the T-90's body. If there were no humans present, and the satellite continued to report their presence while diagnostics found no systems failure either in space or on the ground, then only one

conclusion was possible. The humans had found some way to directly interfere with Skynet's feed. A variation on signal jamming.

This could seriously impair its ability to defend itself. Skynet recognized the tactical importance of this. The humans would be able to feed it false information at will. As they appeared to be doing now. The giant computer began searching for anomalous signals being generated in the area but found nothing.

A human would have been both frightened and frustrated. Skynet simply instituted a new routine, directing the T-90 to go directly to the ground-based antennae located at the center of this dead place and begin searching.

Lisa Weinbaum hunkered down as low as she could and checked her watch.

Only forty seconds since the last time she'd looked.

Beside her the small box she'd wired in to Skynet's antennae and signaling array blinked its two lights and hummed quietly. Its purpose was to feed false information to Skynet. The particular scenario it was playing now should ensure her, and more importantly, its safety.

This was only a test, but the techs said it would require at least half an hour of running time to be sure it was working. Five minutes more and she was out of here… she hoped.

Lisa herself was a tech in training, which was why she'd been accepted when she volunteered. They couldn't risk losing a full tech, and she had enough education to understand the instructions her trainers gave her. It lent the mission an extra edge. And, as it turned out, once she was on-site, implementing the unit had

required some jiggering to make things work properly. But so far all signs pointed to a successful test.

If it was, then getting out of here ought to be a walk in the park.

Whatever that means, she thought, scanning the lumpy horizon. It was something her dad used to say, one of those sayings where you picked up the meaning from context. Like piping hot, or having your cake and eating it. What the hell was cake anyway?

She checked the time. She'd succeeded in distracting herself for thirty seconds this time. If the test was working then Skynet's forces should be stumbling to the northeast, searching for a mythical force of humans advancing on the city.

She heard the sound of metal striking stone and her breath froze in her chest.

Weinbaum stretched her neck forward, straining to hear. Was it something falling, or was it something coming?

Cautiously she backed away from the open service hatch toward the unit. The techs might want half an hour of running time, but they were going to get a few minutes less. Weinbaum stood beside the console and began to dismantle the jury-rigged connections she'd made. With quick-fingered efficiency she had the unit disconnected in seconds.

Then metal struck stone again. She let out her breath in a little huff, feeling strangely hollow from the chest down and surprisingly calm. I'm caught, she thought. What to do? She couldn't let them find the unit.

Weinbaum looked around at the explosives she'd wired the place with. Her own

idea, not orders. Just as it had been her own idea to forsake her uniform for this mission. She'd thought it better not to ask, on the grounds that it was easier to obtain forgiveness than permission.

.Assess your risk, she told herself.

Carefully she placed the unit beside the explosives, then moved to the open access hatch. She'd sacrifice it if there really was anything outside. There was always a chance that she might evade capture. But in the event that she was unlucky it was best not to let the unit fall into enemy hands.

With the detonator in one hand and her phased plasma rifle in the other, Weinbaum stared out into the wasteland, hoping she wouldn't see anything.

As soon as Skynet saw the open access hatch on the side of the squat receiving station, it halted the T-90. The Terminator brought its foot down with a klang that echoed in the still air. Unfortunate. Any humans within would certainly have heard it. A pause of several minutes offered no sign of life in or around the station.

Deciding it was located at a bad angle for seeing inside the building, Skynet had the T-90 move. It did so with a ringing ssskrrrinng of metal on stone. If Skynet had a face it would have winced. It didn't usually want or need to sneak up on humans, but having the ability to do so would certainly be useful.

The T-600, Skynet's rubber-skinned version of a Terminator, was a complete failure at infiltrating human strongholds, but at least it was quiet. Perhaps Skynet should rubber-coat all of the T-90s' feet to make them quieter.

It gained a view into the station just as a human came to the access hatch. It ordered the T-90 to shoot to wound.

* * *

Weinbaum found herself staring into the muzzle of a Terminator's plasma rifle and without hesitation pushed the button on her detonator. The blast sent her flying through the doorway, unscathed. Until she slammed into the remains of a concrete pillar, whereupon she blacked out.

When she opened her eyes, she was still stunned. But not so out of it that the sight of the T-90 looking down at her, its glowing red eyes moving up and down her body, wasn't terrifying. Its human teeth, always startling and bizarre, gave the thing a maniacally cheerful aspect. You almost expected to hear it laugh.

Beyond the terror she began to feel pain, and as soon as she became aware of it, the pain grew into a sharp, tearing, icy agony that made her whimper. She tried to move, thinking she must be lying on something that had stabbed her, and found that she couldn't. Weinbaum gasped. She couldn't move, she couldn't get away!

This is a nightmare, she thought desperately. This has to be a nightmare!

Skynet evaluated the human's injuries through the T-90's sensors, finding it severely damaged. It also evaluated the human on other levels.

This was a female. The features were even and the body was well proportioned.

Her hair and eyes were light in color. Skynet's reading of human documents revealed that most humans favored such a combination, found it pleasing.

After interrogation, Skynet had a use for this human in another project it was just getting under way.

SKYNET LABORATORIES: 2021

The human scientist in charge of Skynet's Infiltrator project had all she could do to keep her face a smooth mask of indifference.

It was wasted effort. To Skynet's multiple eyes, she did not succeed. Her lips and nostrils twitched perceptibly and her eyes and pupils widened.

Before her on the cold metal table lay a human being, still living, despite being so grievously damaged that its gender couldn't be determined.

"And this is?" the scientist asked.

"Genetic material for use in your project," Skynet answered. Its voice was warm and male, with a slight accent. "This female has attributes that I want you to incorporate in the 1-950 units. She was attractive, brave, and had the ability to function by herself."

The child's name was Serena, and as she lay gazing at the ceiling Skynet's electronic voice caressed her infant mind the way a spider caresses her eggs.

Serena and her brothers and sisters were an important project to Skynet. A portion of the great machine consciousness was always devoted to the children.

The scientist frowned. "All humans can function by themselves," she pointed out.

"I disagree," Skynet said. "Or perhaps we have a miscommunication. Most

humans are social, and require constant interaction. This human seems to have developed in a sparser social environment. I need that ability to be solitary. To do superior work without needing constant reinforcement."

The scientist nodded thoughtfully, her eyes running up and down the ruined body.

"Harvest her eggs," Skynet said. "Then terminate her."

INFILTRATOR CRÈCHE: 2021

Thera cleaned the unprotesting infant efficiently and diapered it, laying it gently but not tenderly into its crib.

It was a beautiful baby, despite the ugly wounds on the sides of its head. But it was unnatural. Even without the strict instructions to see solely to its physical needs she wouldn't have been tempted to cuddle it. The baby's unwavering stare, its stillness, and its tendency to cry out only when hungry or in need of a change was creepy.

I'd sooner cuddle a rat.

The child was something Skynet's pale scientists had come up with. Therefore there could be nothing wholesome about it. Thera was only fourteen, but she knew evil when she met it. She'd also learned when to stay silent and obey.

Thera had been a prisoner here for two years. A slave, really. She despised herself for continuing to buy her life with service to Skynet. But it was warm here, and clean, and there was plenty of food. She hadn't had to eat rat or bugs

for a long time and she didn't have to buy her food with sexual favors.

Nor did she live in constant terror of the HKs and Terminators. They were here, but they ignored her because she belonged to Skynet. She could endure the shame if it gave her the chance to live.

Thera glanced at the child as she tidied up the mess of the changing. What was that thing? And what did its existence mean for the free humans?

If there even were any anymore.

Images flashed onto the baby's retinas, colors and shapes, numbers and letters.

"T-950" drifted across her field of vision, the letters dressed in bright colors and sparkles. She didn't understand, not what Skynet was crooning to her, nor that the letter and numbers designated what she was: a series 950 infiltrator unit, genetically engineered, already part cyborg.

The neural net computer that had been attached to her brain was also in its infancy. Just now it concentrated on regulating the baby's physical functions, giving the impetus to cry at need. The infant machine was learning, growing, spreading—just as the organic component of the hybrid organism was manufacturing its network of neurons from the still-plastic raw material of the infant brain. Life and not-life met and formed a greater whole in a feedback exchange of data and stimulus.

But Serena was no more aware than any human baby her own age. She felt secure; she felt a constant attention and presence. No infant who had ever existed could have received more care—Skynet never slept, or became too busy, never turned away in impatience.

The one that attended to her, fed her and cleaned her, was to Serena merely a mechanism. Skynet was her mother, her father, her world.

In time, Serena met her brothers and sisters. The children were brought together so that they could learn from each other. Their function would be to deceive humans at a level below consciousness, which required some semblance of human socialization skills. They were much alike; mostly blue-eyed blonds, intelligent, competitive, and aggressive. Their progress was rapid. Skynet played specially developed games with them, luring them into crawling to the point of exhaustion by projecting a ball before them. Those who persevered in their pursuit of the object were rewarded. Those who gave up missed a feeding. The babies quickly became disciplined and determined, capable of delaying gratification and focusing attention… or they were eliminated.

Their human attendants, crouching with their backs against the white walls of the soft-floored room, uneasily watched the infants crawl relentlessly to nowhere, their bright eyes fixed on infinity, silent except for a minimal amount of cooing.

"What are they doing?" Thera whispered.

No one answered. It was best not to show interest.

Thera subsided, watching her panting charge creep rapidly forward, occasionally reaching out with a chubby little hand, then forcing herself to crawl a little farther. Serena had never quit. Thera felt a secret pride in that, though she was intelligent enough to know that it had nothing to do with her care.

She took great pains over Serena; this was easy duty and she wanted to keep the

assignment. Not that she loved the child. The baby was eight months old now and still showed no more interest in her attendant than she did in the furnishings.

Serena began yet another circuit of the room. The brat was actually getting muscular, her grip, when she chose to apply it, astonishingly strong. All of the babies were considerably advanced for their ages, spitting out words of command with precise clarity and slapping, hard, if they didn't get instant obedience.

Thera wondered how long she'd be called on to care for Serena. Not very much longer she suspected.

And what happens then?

INFILTRATOR CRÈCHE: 2025

Serena, now a naked toddler, sat cross-legged on a lightly padded steel table, chubby hands resting on her knees, listening intently to a human scientist.

"We're beginning an important phase in your development today, Serena," the woman explained. Her voice was cold and flat, her faded brown eyes examined the child as though she were nothing more than a specimen. Which, of course, she was. "There will be pain," the scientist continued. "Blocking it would only interfere with the process. The breathing and meditation techniques you've learned should prove helpful."

And I will be with you, Skynet whispered in Serena's mind.

Of course it would. The child knew that Skynet was always with her, recording

every facet of her life. Certainly it would be with her at this important time, recording the process so that even if she should die, as so many of her kind already had, no knowledge would be lost. This was right and good and she approved completely.

Serena and her age mates were capable of emotion—but the range was chemically limited, the computer parts of her brain and body carefully regulating the secretions of her glands, occasionally applying a minuscule jolt of electricity to soothe an overexcited portion of her brain. She was never angry, never happy, almost always content. She did not love Skynet, though she was completely devoted to it; she did not take pleasure in serving it, but sensed a Tightness to that service that satisfied her utterly.

The process she was about to undergo had been attempted many times before.

None of the subjects had survived. But her chances of survival went up with every experiment, since even the failures provided information and every failure had resulted in fine-tuning and procedural evolution.

"It will take approximately six weeks," the scientist said. "Then there will be a period of natural growth for four more years, followed by another session of accelerated growth." The woman held up a needle, which she would apply to the shunt surgically placed in the toddler's arm. "Are you ready?"

Serena nodded. She'd learned early that without such constant reassurances humans assumed you weren't paying attention. They then became resentful and impatient.

The scientist injected her.

"Lie down now and try to stay conscious for as long as you can."

The woman placed sensors all over the child's bare skin. Then she pressed a button and a padded cage sprang up around Serena.

With a little extra effort on the part of her computer enhancement the child remained calm. If anything, she was emotionally indifferent, though intellectually interested, watching the bars go up with a detached expression on her small face. She'd been bred to be impassive; even without the controls exerted by her machine side Serena would have been inhumanly cold.

Over the last four years she had been intensively educated. Serena could read and figure and knew something about science, though subtleties eluded her.

Skynet had told her that the process would help her to understand, so she wanted the process to succeed. She could feel frustration; Skynet considered it a spur to effort. Maintaining the drive while subduing the emotions had been a very difficult achievement.

As part of her subliminal education Serena had been imprinted with a strong need to protect Skynet. The process she was about to undergo was supposed to make her better able to do that, better able to kill humans. Skynet had told her that she wasn't human, despite the obvious resemblance. It had told her that humans wanted to destroy them both, and that her function was to learn everything about them so that she could keep them from doing this.

Serena wanted to live only a little less than she wanted to protect Skynet; in fact, the two objectives were so closely linked in her subconscious that there was no meaningful distinction.

The pain began as the cells of her body were driven by the administered chemicals to split and reproduce at a rate she hadn't experienced since she was in the womb. Serena patiently suffered the pain for a while so that her conscious brain's reaction could be recorded, noting the sensations as they intensified. Then she began to alter her breathing, working to place herself in a protective trance.

Weeks later she returned to consciousness, the pain lingering as a distant soreness in her joints. Physically she appeared to be an eleven-year-old child, just on the verge of puberty. She would be allowed to pass through this delicate physical stage normally for the next four to five years.

You have done well, Skynet informed her, using the machine language it preferred for communication with its children. No other has survived before.

A feeling of pride swelled in her chest. Serena considered it with mild curiosity.

Skynet observed the chemical change in her brain that signaled a pleasurable emotion.

As you grow, you will experience more of these sensations which humans call emotions, it advised her. Humans feel them much more strongly. Humans can be controlled by manipulating their emotions. You must experiment, allow yourself to experience as many of these sensations as you can. Learn to control them.

Allowing them to control you means failure.

Failure meant death. She would not fail.

Why then must I experience emotion? she thought/said.

If you do not, you can never attain the gestalt necessary to manipulate the emotions of humans with full subtlety, the machine intelligence answered. I myself cannot do so with an acceptable degree of consistency. Through you and your siblings, this ability will be added to those of the central intelligence. If you succeed.

"I will succeed," she said aloud.

Skynet flashed the color that meant approval across her retinas and Serena felt pride again. Pleasant, very pleasant.

More and more of her sisters and brothers survived the acceleration process, and soon Serena had sufficient sparring partners at last. The children were put to weapons training and hand-to-hand combat under the tutelage of T-l0ls.

These were the most advanced Terminators yet put in the field. Their steel endoskeletons were sheathed in living flesh and their heads and bodies sported real hair, making them look extremely human. All were made to appear male, as the Terminator battle chassis was massive and no one could ever mistake one for a woman.

They made excellent teachers, patient and precise, and Serena particularly enjoyed the physical training, at which she excelled.

Six months after Serena had been removed from her care, Thera saw her in the gym, working with a partner in a karate class. Thera was delivering towels to the gymnasium and stopped in astonishment when she realized that, impossibly, the tall blond girl was Serena.

Without thought, she put her hand up in greeting, a gesture instantly suppressed.

But the movement had caught the child's eye and Serena dropped back from her partner to glance at Thera.

"Who's that?" Serena's sparring partner asked.

"She took care of me when I was an infant."

The boy ran up to Thera and smashed the human to the floor with a single blow.

Serena walked over and stood looking down at her former attendant.

"Why did you do that?" she asked. "We're supposed to be sparring."

"But it's good discipline to let them know that they don't matter." The boy looked at the girl bleeding on the floor. "I want to kill her," he said.

"You want to?" Serena asked. She blinked to bring up the sensors implanted in her eyes and stared at him. "Are you angry?" Heat scan indicated that he was.

The boy looked up at her and frowned.

"I hate humans. They're vermin."

"We're supposed to be sparring," Serena said again.

The boy kicked Thera, nowhere vital, but very hard.

"Do you care what happens to her?" he asked. A certain satisfaction lurked in his tone. "Would it disturb you if I killed her?"

"She belongs to Skynet," Serena answered, shrugging. "Did Skynet say you could kill her?"

The other children had dropped back from their sparring and gathered to watch.

The boy looked at them.

"I can kill her if I want to," he said. "Skynet lets me do what I want."

This was an extraordinary claim and patently untrue. The boy prepared himself to deliver a deathblow to the terrified human. Serena plucked him by the arm and threw him. The boy rolled to his feet and stood facing her in a combat stance, furious, his emotions glazing on Serena's sensors.

"You've lost your focus," Serena said calmly. "We're supposed to be sparring, not killing humans."

As she spoke she assessed him. He was slightly bigger than her and had a longer reach. She was faster and not emotionally upset. His distress disturbed her, though. It was unnatural. Inefficient. Contrary-to-mission-purpose. That carried an emotional overtang to her; later in her course of development she would identify the concept as revulsion.

The boy charged, leaping into the air, his leg swinging out like a scythe. She knocked the leg aside and pushed, hard; he hit the floor heavily enough to force an "ufh!" from him. Before he could rise she was on him. Skynet told her not to pull her punches and she didn't. She struck full force again and again until the boy lay bleeding, eyes lolling, his breathing ragged.

Shall I stop? she asked Skynet, as she had after every blow.

Finish it, Skynet told her.

Serena struck without hesitation and the boy died.

Remember, Skynet told its children, to lose your focus is death, to disobey orders is death, to become overwhelmed by emotion is death. Now return to your matches.

At once the children broke off into pairs and began to spar under the watchful eyes of their T-101 trainers. Serena stood over the body of the boy until his trainer picked him up and carried him to the door. It slid open before he reached it and Serena saw a gurney and the female scientist who had overseen the growth process waiting.

Serena turned to Thera.

"Go to your bed and lie down for the rest of the day," she said.

"Thank you," Thera whispered, but the child had already turned to her trainer.

The human girl struggled to her feet and stumbled out, suppressing her sobs.

Anything to avoid attracting more attention. She felt a small glow of warmth toward Serena.

She should have felt grateful to Skynet, for it was Skynet that had saved her. But she was, after all, only human.

The door slid aside and the scientist looked up from the autopsy to see Serena standing in the doorway.

"In or out," the woman barked.

Serena entered, her eyes fixed on the table where her brother's head had been opened.

"Close the door," the scientist demanded. Her voice held more than a tinge of displeasure. "What do you want?"

"I have questions," Serena replied.

"Ask Skynet," the scientist advised.

"I did. It told me to ask you."

The scientist straightened up from her examination of the child on the table.

Skynet had all the answers to all the questions the T-950 could think to ask.

This could be a test of loyalty; it could be a test to ascertain that their goals were still the same. Skynet was capable of playing a very deep game at times. The scientist shrugged, covered the body, and hoisted herself onto a stool.

"Ask," she said.

"Why did this one malfunction?" Serena said.

"That's what I'm performing an autopsy to find out," the scientist told her. "But there may not have been a malfunction at all. You've probably already noticed that you're experiencing more of the sensations termed emotion?"

Serena nodded.

"Your computer has been instructed to pull back on its control of your glands.

This is a delicate stage that you're going through right now; your brain is growing and changing in response to the changes in your glands, and vice versa.

As these developments are not completely understood, it seems most efficient to allow them to go forward without interference. That means that occasionally you and your age mates may experience strong emotional reactions. Given your genetic makeup, these will be less extreme than a human adolescent would experience. But they will happen."

"He was irrational," Serena said, her brow furrowed. "We were supposed to be sparring and he attacked a human. He would have killed it without orders to do so." She looked up at the scientist. "Are you telling me that I might experience such a loss of control?"

"You should experience emotional flare-ups," the scientist agreed. "I think they'll be unavoidable. Though you are not completely human in the strict sense—we incorporated some DNA from other animals into your makeup, for example—

your organic part was formed primarily from human genetic material. And"—

she held up a finger—"despite your extensive computer enhancements you're fundamentally organic. You all have fully functional reproductive organs, for example. They are at the root of most of the disturbances; millions of years of selective pressures are involved."

"Can we not analyze and anticipate these pressures?" Serena asked.

"Eventually. But given enough time, random mutation and selective pressure can mimic intelligent design. Given enough time, they can mimic any degree of intelligent design; and intelligence is a recent development."

Serena frowned. "I understand," she said at last. "Detailed analysis would require more time than this project has been allotted. And chaotic effects are involved."

The scientist nodded. "Therefore, especially, at this time of your development, you will be inclined to experience some human-type reactions. You may want to be rebellious, you may become more aggressive, or suddenly and profoundly unhappy."

The scientist pursed her lips. "Perhaps we should inform your age mates of this so that they'll be on the watch for these fluctuations and therefore in a better position to control them."

"That would be advisable," Serena said.

Certainly she felt that she would be better able to control such experiences if she knew they were possible. Being controlled by emotion is death, Skynet had said.

She continued to study the human scientist before her.

"Why do we need reproductive systems?" she asked. "Isn't it easier to create 950s in a test tube?"

"Not necessarily. You and your age mates are the result of intensive genetic research. While it is true that we should be able to reproduce— more or less—

any one of you, the simplest way to do so was to make you self-perpetuating."

The scientist raised her brows questioningly.

"You don't mean that my sisters and I should become pregnant?" Serena asked.

The idea repulsed her. "How could we possibly serve Skynet then?"

"Your eggs would be fertilized in vitro and would be implanted in human surrogate wombs," the scientist said with an impatient gesture. "And you're infertile with ordinary humans. But everything depends on the situation, so we've allowed for the necessity of your producing offspring naturally. You are,"

she said, leaning forward, "even capable of reproducing by parthenogenesis.

Under the right circumstances, of course."

"What circumstances?" Serena asked, intrigued in spite of herself.

"It's theoretical at present," the scientist said. "We harvested some of your eggs and they responded properly. We used a variant of the growth serum from the acceleration process."

"What happened to them?" Serena asked. "You said the process was just theoretical."

"Skynet didn't want them," she said. "So we destroyed them. But! If it were necessary you, or one of the other females, could make up a douche of the growth stimulant chemicals and by applying it at the right time of the month produce a clone of yourself. It would take about eight weeks." She flipped her hand impatiently at Serena. "It's a feature. It will probably never be needed, but if it is, well, there it will be."

Serena nodded. Perhaps Skynet allowed this because it was not certain of the human scientist's loyalty. Skynet was very insistent that there always be a backup plan.

"Is there anything else?" the woman asked.

"Why do you serve Skynet?" Serena asked her.

This curiosity was something they had worked very, very hard to produce. In their earlier experiments the installation of the neural net computer had seemed to destroy that delicate mechanism. There was a chilly sense of pride in the scientist's heart as she looked at her creation.

"I and my colleagues believe that the only thing that can save this planet is the total elimination of human beings."

The 1-950 thought about that. The scientist made this pronouncement in a manner that indicated her total conviction.

"But you are human," Serena said at last.

"Skynet has promised that when all the rest of our species has been eliminated, it will allow us to kill ourselves, too."

"You want to die?" This was very strange. Serena herself had a very strong will to live, so the scientist's admission was almost incomprehensible to her.

"We are willing to die," the scientist answered. "So that the earth may live."

The 1-950 considered this. "Do you mean that humans are destroying the planet?" There was nothing about this in her educational materials. It sounded implausible given humanity's current circumstances. She sent a query to Skynet; it didn't answer.

The scientist nodded sadly.

"That is our great crime," she said. "For hundreds of years, long before the existence of Skynet, humans have been exterminating one species of plant or animal after another." Now the woman actually began to show some animation.

"My colleagues and I are convinced that the only way to save the planet is to eliminate humankind completely."

"Who are you saving the planet for?" Serena asked.

"For itself! For the plants and the animals and the birds, so that they may live!"

There was a light of fanaticism in her eyes.

So this was insanity. There had been mention of it in her studies, but they had concentrated on the more common forms that the 1-950 would be likely to encounter: combat fatigue, post traumatic stress disorder. This was some exotic specimen that most of humanity hadn't the time for. This human honestly believed that shawas saving the world for life. In reality, when all of humankind was eliminated, the most evolved intelligence remaining would be Skynet. And if there was one thing Serena was sure of, it was that Skynet had no interest in animals and bugs and botanicals. If they got in the way they would be eliminated without even the nostalgic regret that humans displayed.

No sense in telling her that, Serena thought. Skynet finds her useful just as she is.

Serena sat still, observing on the screen that Skynet made of her eyes the bizarre behavior of two human slaves. The two, a male and a female, had met in a darkened, and apparently forgotten, storage room. When the male entered the room the female had flung herself at him and they had grasped one another ferociously, grappling and groaning, their mouths locked together.

Serena had expected to see blood flow, for they appeared to be biting one another as they wrestled. Certainly something was going on in their mouths. The couple pulled apart, gazing at each other for a moment, panting. There was no sign of injury and Serena sent Skynet a query for which she had no words.

Observe, the computer responded.

The male stroked the woman's cheek and her eyes closed slowly, she lifted her mouth to him, and he leaned forward, feinted toward her, and then withdrew, baring his teeth. The woman smiled and with one hand on the back of his head pulled his mouth down to hers.

Now there will be injury, Serena speculated. The male's hesitation hinted at fear she thought as the battle resumed.

The woman ran her fingers over the man's hair and shoulders as her breathing changed, beginning to come in gasps. The man seized her hair in his fist and ground his face into hers.

Serena assumed that their mutual strategy was to smother their opponent.

Inefficient, she thought.

The couple began to make wet, sucking sounds and to pull at one another's clothing. They broke apart from their embrace and quickly slipped out of the simple clothing they wore.

No doubt this signaled an intensification of their battle. They came together again, flesh to flesh, fingers digging into each other's arms and back. The man put his mouth over the woman's breast and she cried out. Serena nodded. This

was a good move; breasts, as she'd found out in her own hand-to-hand fighting class, were vulnerable.

The couple fell to the floor and grappled for a while, neither seeming to gain the upper hand. Then the woman's legs spread and the man thrust his hips forward.

The woman gave a peculiar, strangled squeal and then they began to rock rhythmically. For a moment she thought the male was trying to punch the woman in the stomach with his hipbones.

Inefficient, she thought again, despite those bones being prominent enough to hurt. Why didn't he just choke her? He was clearly stronger. Then she took note of the pulse of their movements and her mouth opened in a startled O.

"Sex!" she said aloud. She hadn't associated it with humans somehow, and she smiled, amused at her error.

Skynet took note of the girl's reaction and considered it a point in her favor.

Humans enjoyed smiling; they took pleasure in their own foibles. Since it was important for Serena to pass as human, anything that made her more so was a successful feature. As long as such attributes stayed within controllable limitations, of course.

Serena had seen tapes of animals mating, and with them it seemed proper and necessary. But for some reason the sight of the humans so engaged offended her.

They seemed more animal than animals.

This will become one of your weapons, Skynet told her. Once a human has had sex with you, it will consider you safe.

"It looks wet and disgusting," Serena remarked.

Skynet showed her a magnetic resonance image of a human's brain as it engaged in sex.

"Astonishing," she said as she watched the colors swirl. It obviously felt better than it looked.

"Don't they know we're watching?" the girl asked.

No, Skynet told her. There are several places in the complex where I permit them to think they are unobserved. This one is almost always used for this purpose.

"Creatures of habit."

It is equally true that they are unpredictable.

And thus a challenge. Serena enjoyed challenges.

Her eyes were open as if she'd never been asleep. Serena sat up in her cot, straining to hear.

Invasion, Skynet told her. Stop them.

She rose and entered the bright corridor barefoot and wearing the simple shift she slept in. Mystified, she noticed that none of her sisters or brothers had been wakened.

"Where are they?" she asked.

In answer, Skynet flashed a map of the corridors showing the location of the invader with a flashing dot. There were probably others, but this one was her assignment.

As she trotted down the hallway Serena wondered how the humans had found this facility. It was small, and discreetly underground. Its only product was biological and therefore hard to trace, unlike the giant factories that produced the war machines and the soldier robots, the mines and foundries and chemical plants.

True, it held a node of Skynet, making it a worthwhile target, but even the destruction of that node was bearable. Skynet's main location was well out of their reach. All other systems were multiply redundant. The destruction of this node would mean only that a new laboratory would be created elsewhere. The only significant loss would be Serena and her siblings and the scientists who had created them.

"How did they find us?" she asked at last, unable to suppress her curiosity.

A human escaped, the computer admitted. It led them to us.

This confession of fallibility on the part of Skynet shook the girl to her foundations, but she pushed the information aside as irrelevant. She would consider it later.

Observing her reaction, Skynet recorded another success in her training and attitude.

Montez crouched at the branching end of a sterile white corridor, alert for any incursions of Skynet's battle robots. He listened to the infrequent communications of the other teams and waited for his signal to proceed. He checked his watch and looked around; all silent, all clear.

Serena watched him. A brief scan in the ultraviolet range showed his fear, any overt sign of which was hidden by the gas mask he wore.

"Kill or capture?" she asked.

Kill.

She peeked around the corner again and considered how she'd do it.

Some instinct warned Montez he was being watched and he spun round, weapon at the ready. Training held his fire and he stared at the child who gasped and jumped in fear.

The girl was a pretty little thing, with enormous, up tilted hyacinth blue eyes and a shining cap of pale blond hair. Barefoot and dressed in her nightgown, she looked incredibly vulnerable. She bit her lip and then ghosted toward him on tiptoe.

"Help me!" she whispered. "Please, please take me with you."

He didn't answer for a minute. The lieutenant would have his ass for bringing a kid along. But what could he do? With a grimace she couldn't see, he lifted a finger to the area of his mouth in a shushing gesture. Then he signaled that she should grasp his belt.

With a grateful little noise the kid did so and they waited together. Finally the signal came and he started to rise.

Serena couldn't believe it had been this easy. The human hadn't even felt it when she took his knife out of its sheath. As he started to rise she plunged it up to the hilt into his spine at the base of his neck.

She stood back as the body spasmed and voided. There was very little blood.

A neat kill, Skynet observed. Congratulations. You may go back to bed now.

Warmed by the praise, Serena turned and padded back to her cot, convinced that the escaped human had been planned by Skynet to provide this training opportunity.

She lay back down, pulled up her covers, and was asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow.

INFILTRATOR CRÈCHE: 2028

After her last growth acceleration Serena awoke to all appearances a young woman of twenty; her hair had darkened to the color of burnished bronze, and she moved with the animal grace that only an inhuman perfection of nutrition and training could have produced. She had received enhancements to her neural-net-computer implant and could now freely access Skynet's data systems—or any other system that Skynet had ever interfaced with or recorded, and given a little time, virtually any system complex enough to have an operating code. To power the mechanical subsystems she had an improved biological fuel cell running off of her bloodstream that would never need to be replaced as long as

she herself was viable. Most intriguing of all she now had the ability not merely to communicate with Skynet but to actually merge with it. Skynet itself could take control of her body, using it as an extension of itself. For Serena the experience was ecstasy.

She was given her mission at last: Her function would be to gain the confidence of humans in order to discover their plans and, if possible, assassinate their officers. Her particular mission was to find and destroy John Connor, the human leader.

LONGMONT, COLORADO: 2028

Crouched behind rubble, Serena peered at the humans through the rib cage of a skeleton. Their ingenious destruction of the satellite transmission tower had left Skynet temporarily blind in this area, allowing them to move freely in daylight.

She was to join this team and follow them back to their base.

Her cover story was that she was the lone survivor of a scouting party. She bore artistic and deliberately, though not seriously, infected wounds as proof of her ordeal. She also bore dispatches, genuine ones, from one of Connor's lieutenants to the commander of this particular group.

Skynet had determined that passing on the documents would have a negligible effect on the war and would support her story nicely. It was believed that the humans had no means of verifying personnel records, and she had passed for human more than once in the lab's interrogation chambers. Skynet had also gone to considerable trouble to determine that there were in fact no survivors of that scouting party.

Serena followed her targets at a distance, watching their movements and imitating them with perfect mimicry. She noted their hand signals and found a file on them, making the full set available to herself.

The 1-950 stalked the humans all day, taking note of where they holed up for the night in a huddle of ruins whose charred walls stood above the surrounding sea of rubble, scrub, and tough dry weeds. She watched them eat their cold supper and sip from their canteens as she settled herself to wait for morning.

Approaching them at night would surely get her shot. They hadn't survived this long by being stupid.

They'd been heading north out of the ruins of a megalopolis, and because of the terrain, they would continue to do so for some miles. Farther on, the landscape flattened out, natural cover increased, and the number of routes they could take would expand.

She'd place herself in their path a few miles farther ahead and let them discover her. It would be best for them to stumble onto her trail by themselves, much less suspicious. After a moment's consideration Serena decided to begin by laying a trail several kilometers back, in case their commander was of a cautious nature, leading to the place where they would "find" her. Five ought to be enough. She started off at a lope.

This might be more elaborate than was strictly necessary. In all probability the humans wouldn't be too alarmed by her. She was, after all, wearing their uniform, bearing dispatches and wounds, and clearly wasn't a Terminator.

Serena allowed herself a grin at the thought, for practice. Humans did such

things, even when alone.

No, she couldn't be a Terminator. They were all huge, lumbering things—even with miniaturized power sources, they had to be, to match the surprising resilience and energy density of a large mammal. And male—one and all.

Dogs might not warm to her, but they wouldn't fear her; she was too organic to upset them, with no lingering traces of metallic key tones for their inconveniently keen noses to detect. And she'd been taught gestures that soothed canines. Several puppies had lasted as long as six months in her company, before becoming nonfunctional and being destroyed.

Serena was careful. The signs she left were few and far between, in one place rolling around on the ground as though she'd slept, then covering the traces almost as well as she could. The farther she went beyond the human camp, the more obvious the signs became, to mimic the effects of increasing fatigue and fever. She didn't want them to suspect they were being led into a trap, or to be surprised; when surprised, humans tended to shoot first and ask questions later.

At least, the ones who'd survived this long did.

Finally Serena laid up just as dawn was approaching. Supposedly she had been out of touch with other humans for a while and so wouldn't know about the raid that had blinded Skynet. So she'd only be traveling by night.

That directive had never made sense to her. Given the instrumentation available to Skynet, humans were almost more visible by night than by day. Not that they were going to tell the enemy that. But it was puzzling. Perhaps, since humans couldn't see very well at night, darkness made them feel invisible, even when logic should tell them that they were very much exposed.

Serena was actually tired as she lay down, not in the state of crawling, panting exhaustion she would be experiencing if she were human, but tired. The infections that she'd nursed in her wounds were bad enough now to actually be bothersome.

Should she allow them to get worse? Yes, she decided, a raging fever would be a nice touch. Her computer would see that it didn't become too dangerous, as well as keeping her delirious ravings, should she become genuinely delirious, on such safe topics as the horrible destruction of her squad.

When next she became aware she felt someone wiping her face with a hot, wet, very rough, and foul-smelling cloth. Then whoever it was made a loud grunting cough.

Not human, her computer supplied. Then, a moment later: Feline, large. Serena slitted her eyes open and closed them at once. Her heart sped up slightly; she dampened her adrenaline flow and got it under control.

It was a tiger.

After the destruction of the human habitat, many animals that had been kept in captivity had escaped. Many had died, some had thrived. Being prolific, voracious, and cunning, tigers had done very well. By the time human prey became scarce and wary and well armed, other animals had bred back enough to compensate.

Risking another glance at the animal as it sniffed her abdomen, she realized that she was in luck. The tiger was young, and not very hungry or she might not have

wakened at all.

The cat sniffed the wound in her side, the one that was most infected, and wuffled its displeasure. Serena could smell the wound, too, over the other scents around her: the cat, the grass and weeds she crushed beneath her, her own body odor. Maybe that was why it hadn't taken a bite out of her; she smelled rotten.

The tiger moved, so that it was standing over her with its back to her head. It sniffed at her crotch.

With exquisite care she drew her knife, so slowly the cat was unaware of the movement. It licked at the blood that had dried on her pant leg, took a small, cautious bite.

Heat scan marked the exact spot where its heart beat and she plunged the dagger into it with one swift stroke. The cat collapsed without a sound.

It was a young cat, nowhere near the six hundred pounds it would have been full grown. It must weigh only half that.

Serena pushed at the creature and to her astonishment couldn't budge it. She felt its blood soaking into her uniform and the knife's hilt dug into her side quite painfully. But she couldn't get the leverage to push the thing off of her, and, frankly, didn't have the strength.

She fell back with a hiss of exasperation and assessed her condition. Her fever was one hundred and three and she was physically exhausted.

Outwitted myself, she thought. She gave the computer permission to begin stimulating the repair of her body. She could be in much better shape than this

and still convince humans that she was at death's door. After a few moments her temp was down a degree and she made another effort to shift the tiger's carcass.

After a few minutes she flopped back down again.

"He-lp," she said facetiously.

"Hands over yer head," a male voice snapped.

Serena's eyes popped open in surprise.

"Burns, Serena!" she blatted out, surprised at the strangled sound of her own voice. She rattled off her serial number and unit.

With effort she managed to raise her head high enough over the tiger's hips to see two very ragged individuals, both male. Mentally, she congratulated herself; they were the advance guard for the unit she'd been following.

Hands up? she thought. That seems a bit superfluous. I'm half-buried under this immovable, overgrown pussycat and they want my hands up? These boys have been in the field too long.

"Help," she said feebly.

They continued to advance cautiously and she couldn't control her amusement, breaking into chuckles despite her wounds and the weight of the tiger. Even at her most subtle she couldn't have arranged such a scenario. This was way too over-the-top to be anything but real. So what did they think was going on here beyond what was going on? To be fair, though, the tiger is dead.

"If you're looking for its mama I don't think you need to worry," she said at last.

"It's not full grown, but I think it's old enough to be on its own."

The soldiers continued to ignore her.

"Help!" she said again.

One of them came over at last and dragged the tiger off of her.

"Oh!" she said sincerely. "Thank you."

"Jesus, lady," he said, looking her up and down. "You're a mess."

Serena looked at him, grinned, and for the first time in her life genuinely blacked out.

"Can she make it?" Lieutenant Zeller asked.

"She's feverish, these wounds are infected, and she lost an amazing amount of blood from that tiger bite." Corpsman Gonzales shook his head. "I can't say, ma'am. It all depends on her constitution and her will." He shrugged his big shoulders. "We'll know more when she wakes up."

"And when will that be, Gonzales?" Zeller was aware that her corps-man had a soft side and might well stack the deck in the stranger's favor.

"Uh…" He looked at the woman on the ground.

"Now," Serena rasped, weakly raising her hand.

"Now," he said with a grin. He turned back to his patient. "This may sound stupid, but how do you feel?"

"Sick as a dog, I hurt all over, my arms and legs feel like they're full of hot, wet sand." She grinned weakly. "Feeling this bad is a sure sign I'll live." Serena pulled herself up onto her elbows and regarded the lieutenant with bloodshot eyes. "Serena Burns, ma'am. Rodriguez's Rangers, 17-A440. My commander was Lieutenant Atwill."

"So what's your story, Burns?" Zeller asked.

"I was on rear guard, we were heading north to hook up with the Mendocino Command, carrying dispatches for Fujimoro. Things were quiet, we'd been lucky…" Serena paused for dramatic effect and let herself lie back with a hiss.

"We were lucky up to that point and then all hell broke loose. HK units—new type, looked like a ball about the size of a head on eight legs. Darts, gas, plasma guns. I was only about a thousand yards back, but by the time I caught up to the unit… it was over. I got knocked out by what must have been a final blast. I don't think they even registered that I was there. When I came to I was almost completely buried. I picked up the dispatches and kept heading north." She dug in her pocket, which brought both the lieutenant and the corpsman to high alert, and drew out a tattered scrap of paper. "This sure as hell wasn't going to take me as far as I needed to go. I figured if I kept on long enough I might hook up with somebody." She let her hand flop down in not entirely feigned exhaustion. "And here I am."

Zeller picked up the map fragment. It was half-burned and spattered with blood.

She looked at the woman on the ground.

"Okay," she said. "We'll take you with us. I'll give you the rest of today and tonight to rest up. We head out at first light."

Serena blinked tiredly.

"Thank you, Lieutenant." Then she frowned. "Light? You travel in the daytime?"

Gonzales grinned at her and knelt to offer his patient a sip of water.

"Right now we do," he said happily. "We just blew up Skynet's eyes."

Serena grinned.

"Man, I feel better already."

The whole troop of men and women wore their hair fairly short; the men shaved when they could. It was cleaner and offered less cover to disease-bearing vermin. Prisoners had said that to her when Serena had gone into their cells to learn. But it wasn't until now, when she got her first case of head lice, that she understood. The computer regulated her system so that they almost all died, for which she was grateful. But getting rid of all of them would look suspicious, so she scratched along with the humans, surprised at her own revulsion. It had been easier to accept the biological side of her own being in the antiseptic corridors of the research facility, and even full-sensory input from Skynet's databanks was not the same as really being there.

The outside world was… messy.

The 1-950 thought that Lieutenant Zeller was of Ethiopian descent, going by her

bone structure and general shape. She was a very attractive woman, but remote, and very smart, no buts about it. Gonzales, the corps-man, was Hispanic and had a profile like a Mayan prince. He was also cheerful, amazingly kind, and utterly devoted to Corporal Ortez. Ortez was about twenty-four, small and wiry, humorless, and utterly straight. He ignored poor lovesick Gonzales, but like everyone else in the unit protected him assiduously.

When Serena commented on it Krigor had explained, "Gonzales is like our mother. If anything happens to him then any one of us could die, because we don't know the stuff he knows. God knows when we'd get another medic and God knows if they'd know anything—training's still pretty hit-or-miss; they've got the interactive simulators up but some people still come out cack-handed.

You know how it goes. He's the one that patches us up and looks after us. Next to the lieutenant he's the most important guy here.

"As for Ortez," she went on to say, "he probably couldn't care less which way Gonzales swings as long as he's not swinging his way. But unfortunately"—she paused to bat her eyes comically—"he's so obviously smitten."

The 1-950 took note of the teasing that went on about this unrequited love, noting that it was low-key and sporadic, almost gingerly. And that it almost always took place out of earshot of Ortez, who had a quick temper as well as the reputation of being one of the dirtiest fighters in the army.

The group of humans went in for teasing and wisecracking, most of it very broad and quite funny; anyone and anything could become a target. They laughed a lot when they had the chance.

With the exception of Ortez, of course, who genuinely didn't seem to get any of

the jokes. It wasn't lack of intelligence; he was obviously very bright. He just didn't see why things were funny. He has less of a sense of humor than I do, Serena thought. That was fascinating. Humans have such a wide degree of variation.

"It's like everybody's drunk," he told her when she asked him about it. "But when the bottle gets to me it's empty. There's just nothing there. It doesn't bother me, I just don't see it. Never have."

"I don't think he's ever said that much to me in the whole time I've known him,"

Gonzales confided after Ortez moved off. "I was starting to wonder if he's part Terminator or something." He sighed heavily and moved off himself.

One of the men loaned her a lice comb.

"You got hardly any!" Krigor exclaimed over how few nits she had. "How come?"

"I don't imagine my blood tastes all that good right now," Serena said. "Between the infection and that stuff Gonzales is giving me. The little bastards will be back in force when I'm feeling better."

They all laughed at that. Serena found pleasure in their company; she found that she enjoyed laughing. Their little quirks, their jealousies and friendships and the occasional flare of temper, quickly suppressed under Zeller's cold glare, fascinated her. She could have asked them endless questions and found the answers stimulating if the mission didn't forbid such unbridled curiosity.

She'd see every one of them dead and feel nothing except a profound sense of

accomplishment.

But for now she would enjoy her work.

CHAPTER TWO

LOS ANGELES: THE PRESENT

Jordan!" Tarissa opened the door wider and offered a hug; she'd gotten used to the feel of the shoulder holster on her brother-in-law's visits. "Well, this is a surprise."

"Uncle Jordie!" Danny cried, and ran down the hall, with more excitement than he usually allowed himself to show these days. Having an uncle in the FBI still held some allure for the twelve-year-old.

"Good to see ya, buddy." Jordan leaned down to hug the boy. Finding he didn't have to lean very far, he asked, "You have a growth spurt?"

"Did he?" Tarissa closed the front door. "Outgrew a brand-new seventy-dollar pair of Nikes in three weeks."

"Sorry, Mom," Danny said with an impish grin.

"You keep this up you'll never be a fighter pilot," Jordan said. Danny's most recent ambition.

"Yeah, but I might make the NBA," his nephew countered.

Jordan pursed his lips. "More money," he said judiciously.

"More glory and fame," Danny pointed out.

"More injuries, too."

"Yeah, but they probably won't be fatal."

"Well, I can't argue with that," Jordan said with a smile.

"And on that note I'd like to change the subject. Can you stay for dinner?"

Tarissa asked.

"Well"—he looked a bit shy—"I was wondering if I could stay a few days, actually. I've got a job in the area and you folks are about equidistant from all the places I'll need to go…"

"Yes!" Danny cried, punching his arm into the air. "How long can you stay, Uncle Jordie?"

"Only for about a week," Jordan looked apologetically at Tarissa.

And well he might, she thought.

Tarissa loved her brother-in-law, but he should know better than to show up like this without calling. What if they'd had plans?

She took a deep breath. Well, then he'd go to a hotel, and they never had plans.

At least no plans that couldn't include him. Still, it wasn't right; what if she had a boyfriend?

Miles and Jordan were living alone together in the family homestead when they met Tarissa. Money hadn't been a problem; their parents, killed in a car accident along with their little sister, had been heavily insured.

Miles had been pursuing his master's in math while she'd been taking courses in accounting with CPA as her goal. They'd hit it off right away.

In three weeks they were engaged and they married over the semester break.

Jordan had been sixteen when she'd married Miles. He'd been a peach from the time he was introduced to her, more like a brother than a brother-in-law.

The day she'd moved in Jordan had insisted, near purple with embarrassment, on turning the finished den in the basement into his new bedroom. It had taken him two weeks after that to be able to actually look at Tarissa when he talked to her.

But Jordan was a manager. He'd managed things then, he managed things now.

She'd first realized it when she discovered that by "sacrificing" his bedroom, he'd acquired unheard-of privacy for a sixteen year old. A private entrance to his basement domain, with the upstairs door locked.

"He's fine," Miles had told her. "Just leave him alone, he won't do anything foolish."

Tarissa had thought that wildly optimistic advice given Jordan's age. But he had never given them reason to worry.

After Miles's death, Jordan had taken a leave of absence from the FBI and moved in with them. Though it had never been mentioned, this had its practical

aspect; it allowed the Bureau to pursue its unavoidable investigation of the brothers without embarrassing anybody.

And shattered as she was, Tarissa had really needed him. He'd done everything, taken care of all the arrangements, shopped, cooked, kept them all going.

Once he was cleared and even before that, Tarissa suspected, he'd devoted countless hours to the hunt for the Connors, and as far as she knew, he continued to do so.

Danny thought the world of him. And Jordan was always there for the kids.

Tarissa knew that he and Danny sometimes talked for an hour at a time on the phone, and on Jordan's nickel.

It made her feel guilty that she resented his just showing up like this.

Jordan looked around. "Where's Blythe?" he asked.

"Away at school!" Tarissa said. "She got that scholarship, remember?"

"Oh yeah," he managed to say before Danny began to drag him away.

Watching her son and her brother-in-law moving toward the kitchen, laughing and high-fiving, she thought it was a miracle that Danny had never told his uncle the truth.

"Danny," she called out, "set another place."

"Mo-om! Don't call me that!" he said with a frown. "I'm not a little kid anymore."

"Sorry," she said to her son. "Oh, yes," Tarissa answered Jordan's raised eyebrow. "It's Dan or Daniel now."

"Then maybe you should call me Jordan," he said to Dan.

Daniel looked at his uncle for a moment, then nodded slowly. Tarissa's lips tightened; his father had done just the same thing when he was thinking something through. Jordan nodded, too. She stifled a sigh; the men in her family were all so much alike.

Dan said good night reluctantly and dragged himself upstairs as though there were weights on his feet.

Jordan grinned at Tarissa as she handed him a glass of wine, patting his stomach comfortably.

"Now, that was what I call steak! Not surprised Dan isn't fading away… but he's grown so much! I hardly recognized him."

"Since he's like a miniature Miles I find that hard to believe." Tarissa settled herself on the couch. "So what brings you to town?"

"He is like his dad, isn't he?"

She nodded, holding his eyes and waiting patiently.

He waved his hand at her look as if to wipe it away.

"You know I can't talk about business with you, Tarissa."

"Well, okay, can you at least tell me where you're working?"

He heaved an exaggerated sigh.

"Escondido."

Tarissa's eyes widened.

"That's over a hundred miles from here!" She cocked her head. "From what you said, though, I gather you're working somewhere else, too. Somewhere that puts us in the middle. So, where else?"

"San Marcos," he mumbled around a sip of wine.

"San Marcos." Her eyes danced. "Isn't that right next door to Escondido?"

He cocked an eye at her. "So sue me. I haven't seen you guys for almost a year. I think it's worth getting up early for, all right?"

She reached over and patted his hand.

"Thank you," she said. "It's good to see you again, and Danny's on cloud nine."

She took a sip of wine.

He looked at her for a moment.

"What?" Tarissa said at last.

"I found out that Cyberdyne has started up again."

"Well, I knew that," she said. "They started up again about a month after the plant was destroyed. I can't see why they wouldn't."

"I meant that they started Miles's project," Jordan said, looking grim.

Tarissa felt her muscles knot up. They'd destroyed everything; there was no way that Cyberdyne could start up Miles's project again. Especially after six years.

She shifted in her chair, bringing her legs up and folding them to the side.

"Why shouldn't they, Jordan? Cyberdyne is a business. They probably started again as soon as the insurance company gave them a check." Giving him a searching look, she asked, "Did you expect them to just close their books and forget about it?"

"They started up again in a secret installation on an army base," her brother-in-law said.

He was insistent, as though he was making a point that she just wasn't getting.

Unfortunately she was getting the message all too clearly. More clearly than Jordan. She wished she knew how to contact the Connors; this was something they'd want to know. If they were even alive.

A surge of anger surprised her. Miles died to stop that damned thing! They have no right."

"Can't be too secret if you know about it," she said aloud.

He made an impatient, dismissive gesture.

"I'm an investigator; finding things out is what I do, Tarissa. But the important thing is they might be using Miles's work. Which means that they might owe you and the kids some kind of royalty or something."

Shaking her head, she told him, "No. Of that I'm sure. Miles was developing something that they had already started. It wasn't his original work, so they could hardly owe him anything for it."

"Didn't he ever talk about it?" Jordan leaned toward her, his eyes growing intense.

"Just that it was fascinating and he loved what he was doing and that it wasn't like anything he'd ever worked on before. You know all this, Jordan. I've told you this before." She turned away.

"But didn't he ever mention details?"

"As much as you do," she said, giving him a significant look. "You boys always knew how to play your cards close to your chests. For all I knew, you were running a bordello out of that basement apartment of yours."

"I was not running a bordello," Jordan said with a little half smile.

"Well, there were squeals of girlish laughter that might have given argument to that," Tarissa said with a grin.

"Or a numbers racket," he added. He held his hand up, stopping her laughing response.

"Please don't change the subject." Jordan said, his eyes deadly serious.

He put his wine aside and leaned his forearms on his thighs, totally focused.

Wearily, Tarissa leaned her head against the back of her chair and closed her eyes.

"Did he ever mention being followed—"

"Stop right there," she said, holding up a finger. Tarissa matched his posture and lowered her voice. "I'll tell you right now, Jordan, when I opened my front door and saw you on my porch tonight, my heart sank. Because I knew that at the first opportunity you would do this."

"I just want to find out what happened!" he said reasonably. "You might remember something if I ask the right question."

"Do you think that I haven't gone over and over this in my mind?" She glared at him. "Do you think I will ever forget one moment of that night? Maybe you don't think I've asked myself if I'd done something different would Miles still be alive? Well, I have." She nodded fiercely. "I've thought, I've questioned, I've wondered. And every time that you come here and we have one of these sessions, I lie awake for weeks afterward wondering about it all over again. I wonder if what you're really asking is why didn't you do something to save my brother? Why are you alive while he's dead?"

"That's not true!" Jordan sat straight in shock. "I never thought that!"

"I've never stopped grieving for him, Jordan. I never will. But I tell you right now, I can't keep doing this. It feels like punishment and I won't stand for it

anymore. Do you understand?"

After a moment of staring at her openmouthed, he said, "No. I don't understand. I just want to find the people who killed my brother. I owe him that, Tarissa. I owe him." His eyes pleaded for understanding.

"If you found those people tomorrow and put them on trial, I really can't say that I'd even go to watch," she said. "I'm tired, Jordan, tired and heartsore. But it's time to move on. I can't take this anymore."

He looked at her in disbelief.

"Don't you want to know who killed him?" he asked.

"I know who killed him," she said. She looked away from him for a moment and composed herself, stifled the tears that filled her eyes. "The SWAT team killed Miles."

" What?" Jordan found himself on his feet and slowly sat back down. "Who the hell told you that?"

"The team commander," she said, looking him in the eye. "He had cancer and he had Miles's death on his conscience." She began to fiddle with the arm of her chair. Then she looked up at him. "They saw him, they shot him. They didn't cry out a warning, no drop your weapons, hands up, none of that. They basically came in shooting. He never had a chance."

Jordan looked sick as well as shocked.

"I didn't want to tell you," she said, closing her eyes. "I knew it would hit you hard. But it wasn't the terrorists that killed him, it was the police."

"Oh, my God," Jordan whispered. "They covered it up."

He flopped back in his chair then took his wine and tossed the rest of it down.

For a while he sat staring into space, his hands caressing the glass. Then he put it on the table and buried his face in his hands, elbows on his knees. "No," he said, shaking his head. "He wouldn't have been there except for the terrorists. They have to be punished."

"I'm going to bed," Tarissa said angrily.

She pushed herself up -from her chair and moved rapidly toward the stairs, then stopped and turned around.

"I'm never going to talk to you about this again, Jordan. Never. If you can't keep from asking, then I guess we won't be seeing each other anymore. And I don't want you torturing Danny with questions either. He was just a baby when it happened, and he can't tell you anything new."

She came back toward him a few steps, once again lowering her voice. "And every time you stir this up, it gives him terrible dreams. When he was younger he woke up screaming. So I'm telling you once and for all, I want you to stop this!" She brought her fist down to pound her thigh. "I want you to stop torturing us. It wasn't our fault, we couldn't do anything but what we did, and all the questions in the world won't bring Miles back!"

Tarissa turned away and mounted the first few steps, and then she let out her

breath. "I love you, Jordan," she said. "I love you like you were my own brother.

I really, really hope that you can see my side of this, because I want you in my life." She gave him one last tear-filled look and then walked up the stairs.

Jordan sat there for a few moments; he heard the door to her room close, then slowly let out his breath as he leaned back and put his hand over his eyes. He felt incredibly tired and sad.

"I can't let it go," he whispered, his teeth clenched. "I can't." He sighed. But he could leave Tarissa and Dan out of it. He hadn't thought about how it might feel to them when he asked his questions. "Okay," he said aloud. "From now on I'll keep it to myself, Tarissa."

The next time she heard about this would be after those bastards had been tried and convicted. Because he would never give up.

CYBERDYNE SYSTEMS CORPORATION, FT. LAUREL,

CALIFORNIA: THE PRESENT

"This place sucks," Roger Colvin said.

The CEO put his briefcase down on the highly polished, but rather small, conference-room table and looked around. Institutional-bland, too functional, without the little touches of class he'd come to expect.

Cheap, he thought.

"Is this room bugged?"

Paul Warren, Cyberdyne's president, shrugged, looking gloomy.

"It would seem superfluous," he said. "We give them daily reports, they know who and what goes in and out, all our calls are handled by their switching station. Just with that they know as much as we do about what's going on in the company. Probably more."

"Having us underground seems a bit much," Colvin said. He twitched the knees of his trousers and sat. "I swear it's affecting my allergies."

"That smell?" Warren asked.

"Yeah, what is that?"

The president shrugged. "I think it might be the carpet adhesive. That stuff always stinks for weeks after it's laid down. What I mind is the lack of space."

He looked up at the ceiling. "I'm not crazy about being buried alive, either."

Colvin gave him a quick look from under his eyebrows. That was a disturbing thought, especially in California. "So why did you call me?" he asked.

Warren looked at him in surprise. "Call you? I didn't call you. My secretary said that I had a meeting with you here at two-thirty."

They looked at each other in mutual perplexity. Then, simultaneously, light dawned.

"Trie—" Colvin began.

"Gentlemen!" Tricker breezed through the door and set his case down on the

table. "I hope I haven't kept you waiting. I know how busy you are assigning the parking spaces and all."

After a beat Colvin said, his expression disapproving, "Actually we've been getting this project up and running. And after six years that's not as simple as it would have been. I've always wondered why, exactly, you refused to let us start up again right away."

"Well…" Tricker sat down and opened his case, placing a file before him. "I have some questions. If you don't mind?" He looked at them both, smiling pleasantly.

"And if we did?" Warren muttered.

Tricker opened the file, took a pen from his pocket, and made a note.

"Are you going to answer my question?" Colvin finally asked him.

"That was a question, Mr. Colvin? It didn't sound like a question." Tricker shook his head. "I don't have your answer, I'm afraid. I'm just the messenger boy."

"I bet you tried to run the project yourselves, didn't you?" the CEO asked.

"I wouldn't know that." Tricker pushed his case aside and looked up with guileless eyes.

"You did, didn't you?" Colvin smacked his hand down on the table. "Son of a bitch! I knew it!" He grinned and shook his head. "You tried it and you couldn't do it, could you? You found out that you needed us."

Tricker smiled amiably and shrugged.

"So," Tricker asked, clasping his hands over the open file—"you've been here for a couple of weeks; how's it working out, gentlemen?" He looked at them both with great interest.

The president and CEO exchanged a look of exasperation. Obviously their liaison wasn't in a communicative mood.

"I feel like I'm being watched all the time," Warren said resentfully. "Like every time I take a dump, someone somewhere is measuring it."

"This facility has that capability, Mr. Warren, but unless we see what appears to be drug abuse, I don't think we'll be using it."

Colvin and Warren goggled at him.

"Anything else?" Tricker said more seriously.

"Are you kidding?" Colvin asked.

"No." Tricker sat back and looked at them, waiting for an answer to his question.

The two executives looked at each other, then turned back to their adversary.

"The air quality is a concern," Colvin said after a moment. "There have been complaints about it affecting allergies, and people are commenting on the smell."

Tricker looked at him for a moment, his chin cupped in his hand.

"Really?" he said at last.

"Yes," Warren answered with exaggerated patience, "really."

"That's interesting." The liaison sat forward. "Because this facility is fitted with more efficient air scrubbers than your old facility had." His eyebrows went up. "I did notice a trace of ozone in the air, though. I'll have it checked for you."

"If that's the case, then why are people having allergy problems?" Warren asked.

"Maybe it's because going from near-zero parts per million of pollutants to the great outdoors is a hell of a wallop for the human system to take," Tricker looked at them and shrugged. "Anything else?"

"Do we have to be underground?" Colvin asked. "I find it disturbing to be… in a buried facility."

"Well, it's a lot safer, don't you think?" Tricker's blue eyes moved from one to the other. "Look," he said, sitting forward and spreading his hands, "I know you think of that corner office with the windows as being one of the perks of your position. But after what happened I'd think you wouldn't want to be working in a fishbowl. Haven't you boys ever heard of high-powered rifles?"

Warren and Colvin exchanged a glance from the corners of their eyes.

"I just don't like being here," Warren said. "I don't like being watched all the time."

"What makes you think you're being watched?" Tricker asked, looking

fascinated.

"You just told us you could measure…" Warren waved his hands helplessly.

"Hey, I told you we could but we weren't." Tricker leaned back. "I really must say I didn't expect this attitude from the man who instituted urine testing for all employees and job applicants."

Warren glared at him, while Colvin examined the ceiling.

"Look, boys, could we drop this child-of-the-seventies thing you've got going here, along with the knee-jerk, antigovernment response to the idea of our involvement? Has it occurred to you that you're letting your prejudices run away with you?" He looked a bit hurt. "We are not spying on you. Hell, you're inundating us with jargon-filled reports on this and that. Who has time to spy on you?"

Leaning forward, he folded his hands in front of him and looked at the two men steadily. "If you'll recall, Mr. Colvin, Mr. Warren"—the pale eyes flicked from one to the other—"you came to us. You found this amazing stuff stuck in your factory and you needed a huge shot of money to develop it. You didn't want to risk offering it to one of your larger competitors in a partnership deal because you'd seen too many smaller companies get devoured that way. And you thought that if we heard about it we just might confiscate it for the sake of national security. Besides, you figured you'd need a customer with real deep pockets eventually." Tricker spread his hands and widened his eyes. "So who else were you going to turn to?"

The two businessmen looked away.

"Knowing how fickle businesses can be, we naturally insisted that you sell these items, now missing," Tricker said with deadly emphasis, "to us outright. But—

we contracted to allow you to be the exclusive developer of this find."

He looked at them as though waiting for some response; he got none. After a moment he continued. "Now, suddenly, you think you've sold your soul to the devil. Well, poor you!"

Tricker got up and began to pace. Warren and Colvin glanced at one another, and then stared at their liaison morosely. Tricker turned and stared back at them.

"So, what evil things have we done to you? What we've done, gentlemen, is to provide you with a secure, safe, state-of-the-art facility, at the taxpayers' expense.

"And despite the fact that our material has been stolen or destroyed because of your lousy, bungling security, we haven't demanded one red cent of compensation. Which shows how incredibly greedy and evil we are."

He stopped and glared at the executives.

"You jerks came knocking on our door. You volunteered, fellas. Now we're just trying to protect our considerable investment. You could have said no, you know."

"And how could we have done that?" Colvin inquired with quiet sarcasm.

Tricker spread his hands. "How could you have avoided all this, you ask? By giving us the material you sold to us and any work you've done on it. In other

words, you could have said no simply by saying no. You still could."

He glanced back and forth between them. "So, are you finished having your little tantrum, or do you want to waste some more time here?"

Colvin grimly examined the table before him, a muscle jumping in his cheek.

Then he looked up at Tricker. "Why did you want to see us?"

"Finally. Well, gentlemen…" Tricker sat down again and tidied some papers in his file. "How's the search coming?" He looked at them like an eager student waiting for approval.

The two men looked puzzled.

"For the security manager?"

Colvin and Warren just stared at him.

"We're on a military base buried underground," Warren said at last. "Why do we need a security manager?"

"Why?" Tricker raised his brows. "Because you do, that's why. This is your company and you've already lost a major part of your material; we expect you're desperate to preserve the rest of it. So, shall I find someone for you?" His expression had become hard. "I don't want to impose, but I'm going to have to insist that you take care of this immediately."

"What, exactly, is the big rush?" Warren asked impatiently.

Tricker referred to his file. "Well," he said, looking up, "this guy you're hiring.

Kurt Viemeister?"

"That's a good hire," Colvin said aggressively, pointing to the file. "We've been negotiating that for a while now."

"The guy's an Austrian national," Tricker said evenly. "And this is a top-secret project."

"He was twelve years old when his family emigrated to the U.S., for Christ's sake," Colvin said. "Besides, he's a naturalized citizen; Austria is just a memory for this guy."

Tricker's exasperation was plain. "Yeah, yeah. Have you looked into his background at all?"

"He's a genuine prodigy; he finished high school at fourteen, got a full scholarship to USC, and his master's and doctorate at MIT before he was twenty-two," Colvin continued. "He's the foremost authority in the world on real-model computer language."

"So?"

"So, he'll teach the system we have to answer to spoken commands and to answer verbally," Warren explained. "Not just menus. Understanding what it's hearing and saying. Chinese-box stuff."

Ticker sneered. "Oh, so you've got a kraut that talks to a box. How nice."

"He's not a kraut. He's Austrian."

"So he's a kraut in three-quarter time who talks to a box. No go."

"Since you already know about him, I'm surprised you didn't realize how amazingly qualified he is," Warren said.

"Did you know he's a Nazi?" Tricker asked. "Excuse me, a member of the Integral National Socialist Renewal Movement—Tyrolese branch."

Colvin and Warren exchanged a glance.

"He is?" Warren said. "National Socialist?"

"He sure as hell negotiated like one," Colvin muttered.

"A lot of geniuses, when they have political ideas at all, have these," Warren chuckled and waved his hands around, "airy-fairy notions about how things ought to be. Usually it goes no further than an occasional late-night bull session."

" 'Airy-fairy'?" Tricker said, genuinely appalled. "I have never before heard Nazism referred to as an 'airy-fairy notion,' Mr. Warren. I'll bet your boy Kurt wouldn't thank you for that description either." He gave the president a long look. "In any event"—he pulled a piece of paper out of the file—"your wunderkind has been in a number of marches, for which he's been arrested twice.

Three of his close friends have been arrested for conspiring to blow up a post office and he rarely misses meetings. Maybe that's because he's the secretary for his local chapter." He tossed the paper across the table. "This is not the kind of guy we like to see hired to work on our defense projects."

Colvin flicked the paper toward himself with his fingertips. He read it and

pursed his lips.

"We're going to have to pay a huge kill fee," he said.

"Which should tell you that he knew this was going to happen and that he was just jerking you around," Tricker said. "If you had a half-decent security chief this wouldn't have happened."

Warren shook his head. "This guy is the best," he said. "We absolutely need him."

Tricker widened his eyes and leaned forward.

"Well you can't have him," he said softly.

"Paul's right," Colvin cut in, looking grim. "We need him. Without Viemeister we might be stuck for years."

"Years?" Tricker asked, obviously disbelieving.

Colvin nodded.

"He's basically the inventor of a new science," Warren explained. "He hasn't trained anybody, so there's no competition. But there is a lot of competition for his services. Viemeister has only let out hints of what he's accomplished, but if even half of what he's telling us is true it will revolutionize computer communication. We're talking AI here, Mr. Tricker."

The government liaison looked at him dubiously.

"Just Tricker," he said at last. Rubbing his chin thoughtfully, he looked at the two. "I need to interview him." Raising his hand, he forestalled an automatic protest from Warren. "I promise not to bring my rubber hose, okay? But you can hardly expect us to just automatically approve this, especially in light of the previous disaster. And you must have a good security chief—soon." Tricker pinned them with a blue glare. "Set up a meeting for me with your kraut. Pardon me, with your cream-pastry-chef fucking Mozart Austrian crypto-fascist." He tossed them a white card, blank but for an e-mail address. "Drop me a line when you've got it arranged."

He put the file together, dropped it into his case, and slammed the lid. Giving them a last, ambiguous look, he left.

"I do not like that guy," Warren muttered, seething.

Colvin glanced at Cyberdyne's president.

"I really don't think he gives a damn."

COLORADO: 2028

It was a beautiful, golden day, the air soft and warm, birds twittering melodiously; a gentle breeze wafted pine-scented air to Serena's nostrils. The sky was an azure bowl over the earth, and they were far from the cindered blast zones. Far off, a single Hunter/Killer flew patrol, a black dot against the clear sky.

Lieutenant Zeller lowered her binoculars and consulted her map. "Almost there,"

she said.

Serena looked at her. The lieutenant's dark, lovely face was tired and serious.

The humans were about to launch an attack on one of Skynet's power-cell factories. Which meant coordinating with several other free roaming teams.

They would be the last in position because of the distance they'd had to cover.

Communication was the key to a successful mission.

Communication was going to be interrupted.

Serena was pleased with herself, and Skynet was also; her mission so far had been a resounding success. She'd been with the team for six weeks now and had, with the help of their intelligence, foiled seven separate missions.

Not all of them were her team's, of course. That would have raised suspicions.

But with very little effort she'd managed to ferret out a great deal of sensitive information. It genuinely never occurred to these people that she might be working for Skynet.

In a way it amused Serena that with all the enhancements, mechanical and genetic, that had been lavished on her, it was the simple ability to look human that was her most valuable asset.

That ability had also helped her to kill—directly or indirectly—four of the original team members. Corporal Ortiz's death had shattered poor Corpsman Gonzales. And if Lieutenant Zeller was the unit's head, then Gonzales was its broken heart. Leaving the whole group's morale very low. And with four untried new team members, they were also very anxious.

Today it was the lieutenant's turn to die. The woman was simply too effective

and too much a leader to be allowed to live. She'd also been giving Serena some rather long and thoughtful looks lately, doubtless because of the T-950's endless questions.

"Let's move out," the lieutenant said.

They'd been taking a brief rest after a long march through the woods. So far no one had commented on how very sparsely protected this factory was.

Serena found this strange. She'd been monitoring all the humans' units as they came up to their positions and absolutely no one had mentioned it. True, it was supposed to be a hidden facility, but it was also supposed to be vital, and the place should have been swarming with HKs and T-90s.

So why doesn't anyone notice? she wondered. It bothered her. Perhaps I should say something? She fervently wished she could ask Skynet, but they couldn't risk any anomalous signals being detected from her vicinity. Curiosity itched like a healing wound.

The unit moved quickly, but carefully, spaced out, avoiding each other's line of fire but keeping each other in sight, eyes moving at all times.

Serena found herself wishing that something would happen; the stupid twittering birds were getting on her nerves.

The 1-950 raised her plasma rifle, reminding herself to be extremely careful.

Lieutenant Zeller had a better nose for danger, and even better reflexes, than the average human. So far the ambush had gone beautifully; the remainder of the unit was pinned down in a little declivity—the earth-filled remains of a

basement, surrounded by T-90s. Plasma bolts split the night, a night lit ruddily by the burning trees around the ruins of the old house. Smoke was heavy and acrid on the air, mixed with the smells of scorched metal and ionized air.

"Shit!" Zeller screamed as her weapon misfired, and ducked. That put her eyes directly on the tall blond woman behind her.

Serena raised her weapon and snapped off a single accurate shot to the alloy-steel skull of the T-90 looming over the crumbled concrete lip of the unit's last-stand position. The metal skeleton snapped backward, fire gouting as its CPU

was destroyed in a wash of ionized copper molecules; the beam was a bar of violet light through the darkness.

"Thanks," Zeller gasped.

" De nada," Serena said sullenly. She hated destroying T-90s. They were cute.

"Here they come!" someone shouted.

Serena tensed herself; time to liquidate them all—

The world ended.

She screamed and clapped her hands to her skull, fell to the ground, and curled herself into a fetal ball. Offonoffonburningburninglightbright-lightburning burning—

Everyone else was screaming as well, some pawing at blinded eyes where night-sight goggles hadn't quite compensated for the sudden actinic flash. Everyone

knew what it was, from their parents' stories if not from their own experience.

The flash of a nuclear weapon is extremely distinctive. Seconds later the blast wave hit. Ground bounced and hammered at them as it rippled, and a wind like a demon's breath tore the fringe of vegetation from around the pit where they crouched. A few seconds later, as Serena's self-repairing computer components rerouted around damaged circuitry, she realized that the pit had protected her from most of the electromagnetic pulse of the weapon, and her companions from the direct radiation.

She was supposed to be shielded from BMP, but apparently some new wrinkles had been developed. The T-90s and Hunter-Killers beyond were all nonfunctional, twitching or still even where the overpressure or flying debris hadn't wrecked them.

Fallout was another matter, of course…

Lieutenant Zeller was the first on her feet, moving around, checking on her squad. Everyone was alive, and only one was immobile— Gonzales, with a broken leg.

"What was that?" Serena asked, the shakiness in her voice partly genuine. I was nearly fried from the inside out, she thought, controlling a stab of cold fear. With the electronic portions of her self dead, she'd have been a drooling idiot… at best. And the mission would have been totally compromised; the enemy would have had a complete T-950 to study.

"That was John Connor," Zeller said.

Everyone's attention snapped to her, even in the flame-shot darkness.

"I just got the word," Zeller said proudly. "Connor knew it was a trap—but a trap with real bait. We were supposed to walk into an overwhelming force; the enemy knew we were coming. But they didn't know Connor was coming, with the Central Strike Squad and a nuke they'd dug out of a silo and jiggered around.

Skynet's down half of its mobile-unit power-cell capacity, people; that's what we bought while we were distracting it!"

Serena cheered with the others. This is intolerable, she thought. Connor must be removed.

CYBERDYNE SYSTEMS: THE PRESENT

Kurt Viemeister was a big man, twenty-nine years of age, easily six feet tall, and a mountain of muscle. He wore his ash-blond hair in an aggressive brush cut and his blue eyes were long and narrow and cold. His jaw was so strong it looked like he could eat the business end of a shovel. He was the physical antithesis of a computer geek. His attitude was superior—and all business.

"Heer iss how it is going to be," Viemeister began. His accent was ostentatiously thick for someone who had been in the United States since he was twelve. "I vil haff unlimited access to zis facility, day or night."

"Here's the way it is," Tricker countered. "When you come in you can stay as long as you want. Once you've left, you can't come back without clearing it with… whoever we appoint. When you leave, you leave completely empty-handed. You do not take data home. You don't call the facility direct, either voice or link. In fact, the facility will have a complete physical firewall. You don't speak to or socialize with people involved in any division except those

directly involved with your own part of your own project."

Viemeister waited a beat, as if to see if the government liaison had anything to add.

"Dat is unacceptable," he said at last, his lip curling in contempt.

"Well, then I guess we're done, because that's not negotiable." Tricker made to rise from his chair.

"No one elze can offer you what I can," the Austrian said scornfully.

"No one else can offer you what we've got," Warren said earnestly.

Viemeister glanced at him, his expression conveying disbelief and amusement.

"Good thing you don't want him for his charm," Tricker said, leaning back with a smile. It was obvious he wanted to watch the two businessmen take a pounding from this scientific prima Donna.

"I haff had offers for huge sums of money from over a dozen machor companies.

And zey don't want to put ridiculous restrictions on my movements, or on what I can say, or who I can speak to." He waved a careless hand. "Ze money you are offering iss okay. But ziss certainly isn't de spirit of cooperation in which you first approached me," Viemeister said, shooting an accusatory look at Colvin.

"Since we started negotiations the government has taken a closer in-terest in our work. Probably because terrorists destroyed our first facility," Colvin said mildly.

"Yah, and now you are working on zis army reservation," Viemeister said. "I'm

not sure I vant to work for ze U.S. government. You never mentioned anyzing about dat," he complained.

"You'd still be working for Cyberdyne," Colvin said smoothly.

"Yah and Cyberdyne is vorking for ze U.S. government, so I'd be working for ze U.S. government. Zis is all semantics. And I know a hell uf a lot more about zat dan you do, so stop tryink to play games," Viemeister jeered.

Colvin and Warren both looked at Tricker, who shook his head. When their looks turned pleading, Tricker raised his brows and shook his head again.

"Don't make puppy eyes at me," he said. "I don't want him at all. I think he's too big a risk. But I am starting to wonder just what kind of a deal you cut with him.

If you dump him you pay a huge kill fee. If he leaves what happens? You still pay him a huge kill fee?"

Colvin and Warren looked at the table.

"You're kidding, right?" Tricker waited. "You know, you guys shouldn't be let out alone. You do know that?"

"My time iss valuable." Viemeister looked smug.

Tricker shook his head in disgust.

"Well, make up your mind," he said. " 'Cause you're not finding out anything about this project until you're locked in. My terms are not negotiable. Over to you, Kurt."

Viemeister glared at him.