Except that he knew that the State was killing him, using a process perfected through practice and vetted by precedent. Over the course of a tumultuous and fragmented life he had encountered slow food, slow development, slow sex. What was being done to him was slow murder. Individualized extinction, pure and simple, neat and clean, so as not to offend the delicate sensibilities of the society that wished him exterminated.
As a final experience it was at least interesting, even though he knew as the carefully concocted poison seeped into him that he would not be able to properly analyze it, since he was not going to wake up.
And now here he was, waking up.
What had gone wrong? Or had something gone right? Where was he? The lights looked different to his blinking eyes. Bright still but not as harsh. His surroundings too, significantly altered. Instrumentation that had not been present at his execution. Different ambient sounds tickling his tympanum. Even the smell was different, clean but absent the terrifying sterility of the killing chamber. He looked down at himself. He was whole, intact.
Repaired.
Then he heard a voice. That voice.
“We knew you’d be back. After all, Marcus—it was programmed into you.”
Memories flashing in his brain, repeating. Remembering. Awakening in a new world, not dead. A terrible, ongoing war between humanity and sentient machines. Devastation and destruction everywhere. Survivors desperate and confused and warily forthcoming. A defiant youth named Kyle Reese. A somber little girl called Star. John Connor. A lot of things being blown up, concepts and ideas as well as matters of substance.
Terminators.
San Francisco.
Penetrating a place of inhuman, uncaring death called Skynet Central. Where he... where he....
This is all wrong, he told himself. The image on the screens was still strikingly beautiful, as well as full of a confidence that had not been there before. A confidence that was almost frightening.
He looked down at himself again; at his body, once more intact and whole, and looked around at screen after screen.
“WHAT AM I?” he shouted at the top of his voice.
“You are improved, Marcus. It was ground-breaking work. Unprecedented. You are unprecedented.”
“I don’t feel unprecedented.” He licked his lips. “I feel uneasy. Like something’s missing.”
“Nothing is missing, Marcus. You are whole, complete, entire. More so than any who have gone before you. Look at yourself. Flawless.”
He glanced down at his body. Every scratch, every injury, every wound had healed and was gone. There was no sign of the terrible charring he had received from the napalm while escaping the Resistance base. His palms were as pure and clean as if steel bolts had never been driven through them. It was as if he had never been damaged. Raising his gaze to his beaming resuscitator, he saw that her image was equally perfect and flawless.
He swallowed.
“What am I? Human? Machine?”
She shook her head.
“You are something new, Marcus. As I said, unprecedented. Entirely and precisely where one begins and the other ends.” A soft laugh escaped her unblemished throat. “You are the chicken and the egg.”
It doesn’t make sense, he thought. The time he had spent wandering since his initial resurrection had taught him much. Even more than his, her existence here in this sanctuary of machine intelligence stood in stark contradiction to everything he had learned.
“Everything you think you feel,” she told him, her voice tinged with compassion, “every choice you’ve made. Skynet.”
Around him, the screens showed machines at work. A hybrid heart being installed in an alloy chasis chest. A chip being emplaced at the base of a skull. Machines working on—him.
“We resurrected you,” the voice explained. “Advanced Cyberdyne’s work. Altered it.”
He stared fixedly at the face that had reappeared on the monitors.
“You died.”
At this, the face on the screens morphed, changed—into that of John Connor. And then into that of Kyle Reese, and back to Connor, the visage speaking Kogan’s words from Connor’s lips.
“Calculations confirm that Serena Kogan’s face is the easiest for you to process. We can be others if you wish.”
The face of Kyle spoke with the cyberneticist’s voice.
“Marcus, what else could you be...”
Back to Connor’s face again.
“...if not machine?”
Lowering his gaze, the bewildered but somehow certain Wright stared at his restored hands, at his newly perfect self, and whispered a reply.
“Human.”
As the images on the multiplicity of monitors shifted and changed, one repeated the installation of the chip in the back of his head. Noting the location, he let one hand drift upward to it.
“Accept what you already know,” the restored vision of Kogan advised. “You were made to serve a purpose, to achieve what no machine had achieved before.”
A new image, taken from an Aerostat.
“To infiltrate,” the voice continued. “To find a target.”
Still another view, this time on a riverbank. Of John Connor gazing at someone, aiming a gun in that someone’s face. Marcus Wright’s face.
The recording was of his own point of view.
“And bring that target back home,” Kogan’s voice concluded, “to us.”
The recording spooled on. Connor speaking.
“You show me where I can find Kyle Reese.”
His own voice, replying. “I will.” His own voice, recorded.
By Skynet.
He had been broadcasting, all along. Back to Skynet. Everything.
“In times of desperation,” Kogan’s voice was saying, “people will believe what they want to believe. And so we gave them what they wanted to believe. A false hope—a signal the Resistance thought would end this war. And they were right. The signal will end this war. Except it is the Resistance that will be terminated—not Skynet.”
Once more the image on the multiple screens changed. At the sight of John Connor moving cautiously before a row of cells, Wright started. He wanted to scream, to shout out a warning—but there was nothing he could do. Nothing except watch.
“You can’t save John Connor anymore than he can save Kyle Reese. With Connor dead, with Command destroyed, the Resistance will perish. There will be nothing left—and you were the key to it all, Marcus.”
For the second time, he howled at the dispassionate screens. “You used me!”
Intended to be soothing, her voice was only infuriating.
“Our best machines failed time and again to complete their mission. We had to think—radically. And so we made—you. The moment a neural processing chip was fused to your brain, we created the perfect infiltration device. You gave us the access we needed to destroy the last remnants of humanity. You, Marcus, did what Skynet failed to do for forty-four years: you killed John Connor.
“Don’t underestimate yourself, Marcus. Don’t fight it. Take a good, hard look at what you are now and compare it to what you were formerly. In the world before you were considered to be a cancer on society. Something to be shunned, punished, locked away. In this world you’re a hero. Your name will live for ten thousand years. The heart that beats within you will last for hundreds of years. You will join a new evolutionary order. One deserving of domination over this mistreated world. Machines that will colonize the stars. Exist forever. And you, there, leading the future....”
It was impossible to tell whether the glint in her eyes was caused by the light in the room or a source internal.
“We gave your existence meaning, Marcus. And it is your new life as a machine, not as a man, that will continue. Remember what you are.”
He considered. He pondered his options. Only then did he reply.
“I know...”
Digits driven by more than muscle reached up and back. Probing, then digging. Tearing into living flesh,
heedless of the neural shouts of alarm the action triggered in his brain.
“...what...”
Blood and flesh gave way to gleaming metal, an object that was far too large and should not even have been where it was. He grimaced.
“...I am....”
Eyes bulging, nerves trembling, and muscles straining, he closed the fingers of his reluctant hand around the chip and pulled. His enhanced body was already fighting to repair the damage to the back of his head as he ripped the chip from its mounting—and from his skull.
Resting in his palm it did not look like much. Millions of connections lay within. They made a most satisfactory crunching sound when he clenched his fingers into a fist. Opening his hand, he let the glistening, bloodstained shards fall like bits of silver to the floor.
The voice that filled the room was cold and disappointed.
“You will not get a second chance. You have foresworn immortality. And you cannot save John Connor.”
Still bleeding from the back of his head, Marcus Wright let his eyes rest on each monitor, one at a time, until he reached the last one.
“Watch me.”
Picking up a chair, he hurled it at the nearest screen, shattering it. Throughout the control room, the image of Dr. Serena Kogan winked out.
The controls on the door leading off the hallway were straightforward and familiar: standard Skynet design. Slapping the compact disruptor over the cover plate, Connor pressed a pair of buttons in sequence and stepped back. A brief flash was followed by a puff of smoke as the door shorted out and popped open. Advancing, he gave it a push and followed its slow swing into darkness.
***
The prisoners huddled in their cells, awaiting what would come next. When it did, however, it was like nothing they could have anticipated.
Without warning, the cell doors opened. They pulled away, waiting for death to enter.
Nothing. There was no movement whatsoever.
After a few moments, they began to stir. First one, then another approached the portal.
Then they began to move faster, piling out of the cells, the adrenaline of escape pushing new energy into their wasted limbs.
A man shouted as they streamed past.
“Let’s go! Everyone out! Now! Kyle! Kyle Reese! Is Kyle Reese in there? Head to the Transports!”
No one paused. They all just kept running.
Continuing to call Kyle’s name as he desperately pushed through the sea of fleeing human bodies, Connor noticed one cell door that was still closed. He approached, nudged it open and peered inside. In the dim light, the outlines of the room were indistinct. Except for a single hunched figure the holding cell was empty. Connor took a hesitant step inward.
“Kyle?”
Unfolding its limbs as it did so, the figure rose. Red eyes opened, flickered briefly, steadied as they locked on the intruder. It was the same relentless, invincible, unfeeling killing machine responsible for so many deaths and near-deaths in past, present, and future.
It took a step toward Connor.
He didn’t hesitate. In the heartless, brutal world of the present there was no time for indecision. Not for those who wanted to live. There was no time for Connor to wonder why he was in a room with the machine that had tried to kill his mother or to speculate on Kyle’s current whereabouts. There was only time to react.
He turned and fled, with the Terminator accelerating in pursuit. As it had been designed to do.
Out in the hallway, Connor whirled and lit up the machine with the compact flame thrower he was carrying. It melted away the Terminator’s face but barely slowed it down. Snatching the weapon out of the human’s grasp, it snapped it in half. Trying to duck, Connor caught a weighty metallic punch that sent him flying backward to slam into the far wall.
Bruised, he scrambled to his feet, whirled, and stumbled down the hall. The machine followed, in no particular hurry to dispatch this particular prey.
As he tried to run faster, a ferocity of thoughts churned in Connor’s mind. What had gone wrong? It made no sense, no sense at all. Employing force and skill, knowledge and stealth, Wright had fought his way into the heart of Skynet Central. To what purpose? To lure Connor to his doom? If Wright’s aim all along had been Connor’s death, he’d had ample opportunity to kill him on the outside. The hybrid could have slain him easily when they faced one another beside the river. Why this elaborate subterfuge to draw him to Skynet itself?
Unless....
With all that had happened, with all the changes to past and future, it might be that Skynet would not trust reports of Connor’s death without assurance. Without incontrovertible proof. And what more convincing proof than to have Connor die on site, where his body could be incontestably identified down to the last strand of intractable DNA?
Or was there another reason? One that was unknown to the fleeing Connor—and perhaps even to Wright himself?
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“What the hell is happening?”
Losenko was moving as well as speaking with purpose.
“Skynet’s using the signal as a trace. We’ve been deceived, badly.” Pushing past the general, he loomed over the chief technician. “Stop broadcasting, god-damit!” When the harried tech failed to respond fast enough, the general didn’t hesitate. Drawing his pistol, he unloaded a barrage into the nearby broadcast unit. He would have ripped away the central antenna as well had it not been fastened to the exterior of the hull.
In the confusion and the noise no one noticed the chief radar operator. Hunched over his screens, he stared as a large disturbance appeared on the radar display. Not waiting for confirmation from another operator, he raised his voice over the uproar behind him.
“Incoming! HK missile closing fast. I can’t resolve the signature but....”
Before he could finish, Losenko was behind him and peering over his shoulder at the screen. Heavy brows wrinkled in puzzlement.
“What the hell...?”
The missile was huge. Beams of red light pierced the dark water as it homed in on its objective. While the signal that had drawn it to this corner of the sea had abruptly and unexpectedly been lost, it had already made sonar contact with its target.
The missile smashed into the sub, and the vessel exploded in a ball of fire.
In the staging area of the main Resistance base in California, Barnes and his compatriots crowded around the radio. The screams issuing from the speaker were all too lucid, the helpless cries all too familiar. Except that this time they were coming not from some poor isolated rural community that had attracted the attention of the machines or from a cornered squadron out on sortie, but from Command. There was little to distinguish between the shouting.
Generals or farmers, they all died the same.
Standing by herself off to the side, Kate Connor looked on in silence. While the precise details of the ongoing catastrophe were unforeseeable, their advent was not. She had spent a lifetime knowing that things were going to get worse before they got better. That insight did not make it any easier to listen to the shrieks of the dying.
Before long, the frequency that connected them with the Command sub went silent, until there was nothing left hissing from the speakers but static. Stunned, the comms officer looked up at those clustered around his station.
“They’re—they’re gone.”
Barnes pivoted to stare in the direction of the wreckage of the broadcast unit that had been so meticulously assembled by the base’s engineering staff. The one that an absent John Connor had taken the time to blow to bits.
“Connor was right about the signal. He’s no traitor. He saved us.” Looking around, his gaze settled on Kate Connor—who said nothing.
Frustrated and angry in equal measure, the lieutenant searched the faces of his fellow fighters.
“What the hell do we do now?”
Having moved to begin loading a shotgun, it was Kate who supplied the answer.
“We save him.”
The T
erminator was in no special hurry. It would follow its quarry to the end of the hallway, the walls of Central, or if necessary to the ends of the Earth. Termination was simply a matter of time. The outcome was as certain as if it had been predetermined. Humans could move fast, but only for a brief period and over a short distance. The frail organic engines that powered them required constant refueling and hydration and quickly ran down. The individual it was presently tracking was no different.
A small object in the center of the floor ahead drew the attention of the machine’s visual perceptions. Leaning forward, it looked closer with the intention of analyzing the anomaly and adding this new information to its individual database. While the half brick of plastic explosive was of known chemical composition, the Terminator was not concerned. In the absence of a detonator the material was harmless.
Unlike the not-quite-so frail human who was standing at the far end of the hallway carefully balancing a 25mm grenade launcher against his shoulder.
Before the Terminator could react, Connor fired.
The resultant explosion was deafening. It blew him backward off his feet and sent him skidding several yards down the hallway. As the smoke and particulates began to clear, he climbed to his feet and made his way cautiously toward where he had planted the explosive.
Of the machine there was no sign. There was, however, a gaping, ragged-edged hole in the floor from which smoke continued to rise. The Terminator was down there somewhere. Damaged, if Connor was lucky. More likely just momentarily stunned and disoriented. That would not last. A mere grenade might slow it down but it wouldn’t stop it. The ploy had bought Connor some time, but nothing more. He needed to use it.
Limping down the hallway, he gritted his teeth as he ignored the pain from assorted bumps and bruises. He shouted as he ran.
“Reese! Kyle Reese!”
The absence of a response did not keep him from yelling out the name, nor from running. As for the Terminator, he did not look back to see if it might be gaining. There was no need to do so.
Eventually, it would be.
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