T2 - 01 - The New John Connor Chronicles - Dark Futures (24 page)

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

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

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

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

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

"Unknown."

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

"Insufficient data."

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

"Correct."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Tell me, John."

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

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

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

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

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

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

ARGENTINA

2003
   
   

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

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

Juanita started the vehicle, and it roared into life.

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

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

"Right!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Raoul said, "This..."

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

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

"That's not nice," he said.

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

CHAPTER ELEVEN

John's world Mexico city, Mexico

AUGUST 2001

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

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

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

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

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

"Keep going," Jade said, still running.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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