Although, somewhat to her surprise, she'd located the office of the base commander quite easily. Clea would have expected a slightly higher level of security for such a sensitive area.
I'm blind here, she thought impatiently, sitting up. I need to find out what's in those unscanned rooms. That would take a little work, but it would be worth it.
She'd discovered earlier in the day that Tricker had locked down the elevator on
the top floor and the only other way to get from one floor to another was the emergency stairs, which were both freezing cold and guarded by alarmed doors.
Not even a challenge for such as she.
The next time the cameras went off she flashed down the corridor at her top speed and disabled the emergency door's alarm. Then she raced to the next level and disarmed the alarm on that level. With less than fifteen seconds left she reached the first mystery door, only to find it locked. She moved on to the second, also locked.
When the security cameras came back on she had stuffed herself into a narrow supply closet in someone's office. A minute could pass quite slowly under those circumstances and she had to force herself to remain still. She couldn't help thinking that it was extremely likely that Tricker was asleep, making it safe for her to roam around. After all, he was only human, he had to sleep sometime—for that matter, so did she. And yet it would be foolish to jeopardize the mission on that assumption, because being Tricker, he might also be looking right at her.
And so, she waited.
When the cameras went off again she was instantly in the corridor working on the lock. It was a good one, but not as complex as she had feared, and she was soon slipping inside. Two of the three doors she'd marked led to a single large room with banks of monitors on the longest wall. Around the other sides of the room were ranks of recording equipment, file cabinets, and a number of desks.
Clea quickly ascertained that this was the room that monitored the bulk of the facility. The third room would be the one she wanted. When she pulled the door closed the room locked behind her, to her great relief; no need to fiddle with the
lock again. She flung herself back into her closet just in time.
It was inconvenient that she had to skulk around like this, but she wasn't quite ready to dispose of Tric:ker vet. Or perhaps it was that she had come to agree with Serena about him. He was more of a challenge than the average human.
Then again, having him around was a complicating factor for Connor and his party—a quick check of her computer component said it skewed the odds in her favor. Marginally, but… It was time again.
The third door yielded readily to her lock picks and she found herself in a room the size of a small office. There were only ten monitors here—two for the security rooms, six for the sheds up above, and two to scan the perimeter.
Clearly the powers that be didn't think that was much of a priority.
The I-950 quickly made the connections that would tie these monitors into the base's main security system and thus into the Skynet computer and through that to her. She went into hiding one more time and studied the new images. First she noted that Tricker was indeed awake and was watching the security cameras flick from place to place. Then she saw that the base was experiencing whiteout conditions again—or was still; she had no way to be sure.
The cameras went down and she rushed back to her lab and lay on her cot. It would be good to know where Tricker was at any given moment. Though it frustrated her to know that if John Connor was coming he'd be delayed by the weather.
John gently shook Wendy awake. She opened her eyes and blinked at him. "Was I asleep?" she asked.
"Most definitely," he whispered. He grinned, them brought it down a few notches with a wince as the stitches tugged at the tears in his face. "You've got a cute little snore."
"I don't snore!" she said indignantly-
He put his finger across her lips, then kissed her. "A very ladylike little snore."
Wendy buried her face in his shoulder with a giggle, then sighed. "It's time, isn't it?"
He nodded silently.
"What do we do?" she asked. "We're still locked in, right?"
"We do one of two things. We break out of here and try and get the drop on him, or we lure him here and try to get the drop on him. Either way comes down to the same thing."
I wish we could have brought weapons, he thought fervently. A weapon would be real nice now. But that would have blown their cover story for good and all…
"Then let's lure him here. We'll get the drop on him after I've had a chance to go to the bathroom," she said practically.
"Good point," he agreed.
A moment later Wendy was knocking quietly on the door and calling out.
"What is it?" Tricker asked.
"I need to go to the bathroom," Wendy whispered.
He unlocked the door and opened it to find the sleep-tousled girl frowning at him.
"How come you locked us in?" she asked.
"Sorry," he said, "regulations."
"Regulations!" she said, as though beginning a tirade.
"Bathroom's the last door on the right."
He stood there, bland-faced, as though nothing unusual was going on. Wendy glared at him for a moment, then flounced off, slamming the bathroom door behind her.
"Hey," John said, sitting up. "Can I have some water? Maybe a couple more aspirin? My head is killing me."
"Sure," Tricker said. "How did that happen?" He made no move toward the front office, but watched John approach.
"Fell," John said. "Couple of times. First time I got the lump, then I got up and fell right down again onto some sharp ice."
"You're lucky you didn't lose an eye," Tricker said.
John shuddered. "Tell me about it." He looked at the agent and tipped his head toward the office. "Could we… ?"
"Sure," Tricker said with a glance at the closed bathroom door. "After you."
Clea's eyes widened. They were here! They had come and she hadn't known!
Didn't Tricker realize who they were? How could he miss it? But the agent was relying on a padlock to keep John Connor contained—and that indicated that he didn't know who they were.
The I-950 considered the situation. The girl was negligible, no threat at all, but she could be the key to getting Connor right where she wanted him. Therefore, she needed to get control of the girl.
On the same wall as the bathroom, toward the front room that held the office, was the door that led down to the elevator. It was locked, but Clea knew the code; she'd noted it when she'd first arrived.
Accessing the security room, she found the remote for the door and tripped the lock. Through the security camera she watched it swing open about a foot.
As the I-950 watched, Connor accepted some tablets from Tricker and a cup of water. Unwisely, in her opinion; she'd want a chemical analysis on anything medicinal that Tricker handed to her. Wendy left the bathroom and started down the hallway. She then exhibited a curious trait that Clea had noticed again and again in human beings; she looked at the open door.
Wendy stood stock-still, glanced toward the front office, then leaned toward the door. She gently pushed it open just a bit farther and peeked inside.
"HEY!" Tricker shouted. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" He rushed
toward her and yanked the door closed. "How did you get that open?"
Surprised, Wendy took a step back. "I was just curious," she said.
"This door is always locked," he said. "How did you get it open?"
"It was like that," she squeaked, holding her hands up as though she thought he might hit her.
John ghosted up behind him.
Then, to Clea's intense annoyance, the cameras cut out. "Shit!" she said aloud.
She should have taken care of that.
"I didn't do anything*." Wendy shouted, backing away. "I didn't touch anything!
Why are you being like this? What's wrong with you?" Her voice turned whiny.
> "I didn't do anything!"
Tricker spun round just in time to block John's strike and easily reached through John's defense to strike him hard on the jagged cuts on his face. John staggered back, blinded by tears, as the stitches broke and blood began to flow.
Wendy squeaked in horror and rushed forward shouting, "Stop it!"
Without really looking, Tricker kicked her in the stomach, sending the girl flying backward. She landed gasping for breath, tears streaming down her face.
Something happened within John at the moment. He became the calm center of the storm, just as his sensei had told him he would. John judged that their skills were about equal, especially with the asset of his youth, even compromised by
his wounds. But before the advantage had been all Tricker's; for his experience, for his ruthlessness. Now they were considerably more equal.
John was hyper-aware of everything around him, of Wendy writhing on the floor trying to get her breath…
Tricker flicked a series of kicks at him—low, middle, high—balancing effortlessly. There was no room to dodge; John backed a little, blocking with his forearms and sliding in with his weight on his back foot.
" Isa!" he shouted, driving bladed palms at his opponent's groin and eyes.
Those eyes widened as Tricker slid back in turn, blocking high and low and trying to capture a wrist; that nearly cost him a kneecap, as John snap-kicked in the moment they were in contact. What followed in the next thirty seconds was like a savage, precisely choreographed dance— one that left John's face wound bleeding again and Tricker favoring one leg. The younger man waited, hands up and weight centered; it wouldn't last much longer. It couldn't, not when experts were fighting for keeps. The least little advantage…
After what seemed to her to be an eternity, Wendy got her breath back and struggled onto her hands and knees to watch the two men battle.
"Are you crazy?" Wendy shouted at Tricker, still gasping. "Are you completely insane?" she demanded, tears streaming down her face.
The question and her expression were so convincing that for a split second Tricker thought that he might have made a mistake.
John's booted foot caught Tricker in the side of the head and the agent went down, temporarily paralyzed by the blow. Instantly John followed up with a carotid hold and Tricker's world went black.
John looked at the unconscious man, reached down to check his pulse, then went to Wendy. "You okay?" he asked, deeply concerned.
"I've been kicked in the stomach by an expert!" she snapped. "No, I'm not okay!
But I'll live," she added grudgingly. She took his offered hand and let him help her to her feet, then she got a good look at his wounds. "Oh God, John! Your face!" She reached for him, but he held her off.
"No time," he said. "We've got to get this guy tied up. Help me look for something."
The first thing that John noticed was that the computer screen was flipping through views of rooms a great deal snazzier than this one. Laboratories, by the look of them. "Hey, check it out," he called to Wendy.
She stood by his side for a moment, watching, then shook her head. "So how do we get there?" Then she looked at him and smiled. "That door!"
He nodded, wiping the blood off his chin before it could drip on the keyboard.
"But first things first, all right?" He tipped his head toward Tricker. "See what you can find." it wasn't long before Wendy straightened up with a glad cry.
"Duct tape! The force that holds the universe together."
John had made a happy discovery of his own, a Sig-Sauer 9mm that he found under the desk in a quick-release clip. "Most excellent," he murmured, caressing
the gun.
"Hands tied in front or back?" Wendy asked.
"Back, most definitely." John went to stand beside her. "Let's get him onto one of the bunks," he suggested. "I'll take his head, you take his feet."
They flung him on the bunk and John got to work winding the tape tightly around the agent's hands and feet.
"That's a little snug," Wendy said, looking worried.
"Yeah, but if he gets loose he's gonna try and kill us."
"A point," she conceded, "most definitely a point."
He wound the tape around their prisoner and the bed at his neck and hips, binding him to the bunk until the tape ran out.
"No gag?" Wendy asked.
"No point," John said. "There's nobody to hear him. I'd rather use the tape to make sure he doesn't come after us. Besides, they're risky. Too much chance of his choking to death."
She looked startled, but nodded wisely. This wasn't her world; in matters like these she'd best let John be her guide.
They left the room and looked across the short hall at the door that Tricker had pulled closed. It stood open a foot.
John's body turned to ice and he could feel his blood pounding in the cuts on his face and the lump on his head. Then he shook it off.
"She… it's here," he said quietly. "And it knows we're here."
Wendy looked at his pale face and bit her lip, knowing who he meant and taking fright from his obvious apprehension. She knew instinctively that there was only one thing to do in a situation like this—pretend it didn't matter.
"Aw, you can do it!" she said, giving his arm a little slap. "You handled that guy all right."
" He is human." John looked at her and wished her gone with all his heart.
As though she knew what he was thinking, Wendy leaned in close and kissed his cheek gently. "You need me," she reminded him firmly.
He could see her pride as she said it, and putting his hand behind her head, he drew her close and kissed her. It hurt, but it fed his soul. He leaned back and smiled at her. "I'll go get the gun, then we'll get started," he said.
Wendy smiled and nodded. When he was gone she gave the door beside her an anxious glance, took a deep breath, and rubbed her aching stomach. Looking across the hall, she could just see Tricker lying on the bunk.
So far, she thought, so good.
He needs her? Clea thought. Whatever for? She certainly can't fight. And if she wasn't here to back him up then what was her purpose? It had also surprised her
that Connor was unarmed. To the I-950, that was synonymous with unprepared.
But from what he'd said, he expected her to be here. This suggested an unreasonable degree of self-confidence. But why? What reason had he to be so confident?
He and his mother defeated Serena Burns, her computer reminded her. They have twice destroyed Skynet.
A ripple of unease disturbed her. Then she pushed it away, assuring herself that all of these side issues were unimportant. What was important was that the enemy was here and that she must prepare to deal with him.
Separate them, she thought. Maybe leave the girl until later. Connor is the important one. Connor was the first one she'd kill.
John had made Wendy crouch down and hug the front of the elevator. He stood in front of her, plastered against the wall. When the doors opened it would appear from the outside that the elevator was empty. He waited until the doors closed by themselves, then waited some more. Wendy stirred and he put his hand down to warn her to stillness.
In the security room the I-950 watched, both amused and impressed. She assumed that he was counting to some high number and wouldn't move until he'd reached it. Good tactics, if you were dealing with a human.
Finally John hit the door button and did a forward roll into the hallway, coming up on one knee, his gun pointing down the empty corridor. His heart was beating so hard that he thought he could see the gun in his hands bob to its rhythm. Get it under control, John, he warned himself. Get it under control or he'd be useless
when the time came to face the Terminator.
He signaled Wendy to come out of the elevator, then gestured to her to stay behind him and keep low. When they got to the first door he made her stop several paces short of it, then moved up himself. He listened, then Hung the door open with a crash, pulling back out of the
line of fire. He reached around the door frame and found the light switch. When the lights came on he swung back to one knee in the doorway, gun at the ready, then carefully stood and gave the room a quick search.
Then he moved on to the next.
"Hey," Wendy whispered, "shouldn't we—"
John hissed her to silence and with a gesture told her to stay right where she was.
Wendy rolled her eyes but obeyed. She glanced at the elevator; they probably ought to lock it down, but oh well. John knew what he was doing.
In her lair in the security room Clea was silently agreeing with her. John Connor was doing everything right. And he was taking a damn long time doing it, too.
I'm glad the lab is only halfway down the corridor. Otherwise he'll be at it until the generator runs out of fuel. And she wanted to know, with a very human curiosity, what the girl was for.
At last John came to a door marked K. VIEMEISTER, the name of the man who'd taken over the Cyberdyne project. This could be it, he warned himself. If the Terminator was anywhere in the facility this was the logical place. He took a deep breath and flung the door open and himself into the brightly lit room. He peeked over a counter and looked around.
Clea laughed out loud at his expression; she looked forward to showing Alissa the recording. Even her too-solemn little sister would find this funny. She watched him check every inch of the room with exquisite care; it was obvious to her that he placed the safety of his companion above his own. Interesting, and possibly useful.
John came to the door and gestured Wendy in. "Okay, sweetie, I'm gonna finish checking the other labs; you do your thing. Lock the door after me and don't open it unless I can answer a personal question about us."
"A personal question? You mean like—"
He quickly put a finger across her lips. "Something only you and I would know,"
he said sternly. "They can imitate anyone's voice. I've heard them."
She nodded, wide-eyed. "Okay, I'll think of something."
"You do that." He pulled her to him and kissed her, caressed her hair, and turned to the door. "Remember, lock this," he said over his shoulder.
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