Terminator 2_Hour of the Wolf

by Mark W. Tiedemann

  “That sounds inconvenient.”

  “It’s presented a few challenges.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  “Who?”

  “Whoever sent you back?”

  He shook his head. “Security, I imagine. If I were captured, the files would be completely inaccessible.”

  Sarah grunted. Plausible. But the Specialists had arrived with no such fail-safes, nor, she thought, would they have been useful. The TX-A hunting them had been capable of leeching the thoughts even from a dead brain. Would a few files in an augmentation be so different? Still, she could think of no other explanation, unless Portis was a Skynet agent. That was also plausible.

  But it doesn’t feel true…

  Her instincts had gotten her through a great deal. She had learned to trust them. But there were limits. She 222

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  wondered if she would recognize them when she reached them.

  She rounded the last turn before the approach to Destry-McMillin. Rows of high shrubbery rimmed the property.

  “Those were humans in that apartment,” she said.

  “They were.”

  She saw the sign directing her to turn right, into the driveway leading to the guard kiosk. As she made the turn, she saw that only the central booth of three was manned.

  In the early twilight, the harsh fluorescent filled the enclosure with a spectral glow, silhouetting the man within.

  Sarah tapped the brake, slowing until she pulled up beside the open window.

  “May I help you?”

  Sarah took her ID from the center island. “Yes, my name is Philicos. I’m here to see Mr. McMillin.”

  She handed the card up to the window, then stopped.

  The face peering down at her, unblinking, dark hair cropped close, froze her in place for a few moments. Not the same, but very familiar above the wide shoulders. A hand extended toward the card, eyes never leaving her face. He took her ID, pulled it inside the kiosk, then glanced at it quickly.

  “One moment while I check,” he said.

  Then Sarah noticed that he wore a plain white shirt instead of the traditional guard uniform. Collar open, sleeves rolled part way up the forearms, all wrong.

  “Drive,” Portis hissed beside her.

  Sarah jerked the stickshift into REVERSE, and stomped on the accelerator. The man inside the booth lunged. The car lurched backward. The Terminator bounced onto the hood, then, as Sarah twisted the wheel hard to the left, slid off onto the pavement.

  The car whipped around, still in reverse.

  The Terminator snapped to its feet and came at them.

  Sarah braked, shifted to drive, and steered directly at it.

  They collided deafeningly, the big man-machine crunching the hood, flipping onto the windshield, smashing it. Sarah 223

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  braked again and it rebounded back to the pavement. She tried to hit it again.

  The car tilted up and back. Sarah kept her foot on the accelerator, but the front wheels found no traction.

  “Out!” Portis shouted.

  Sarah opened her door and rolled out of the car. She hit the ground in a crouch, spun around, and backpedaled, reaching for her pistol.

  The Terminator stood holding the front of the vehicle up.

  He flexed, turning the car onto its side, then focused on her.

  Twenty-three years. Sarah felt her legs lock in place under that look. Twenty-three years ago the first one came for her. She had fought them, destroyed them, survived them, and still she always experienced a moment of helplessness when a new one appeared and it all began again.

  It took a step in her direction.

  She drew her weapon, chambered a round, and fired. Ten shots slammed into its upper torso and face. It flinched backward. One eye shattered.

  Sarah thumbed the release, dropping the empty magazine to the ground, while drawing a fresh one from her belt. She rammed it home, pulled the slide back, and found her legs all at once. She ran.

  She ran toward the gate. The Terminator beat her to it, sprinting with inhuman speed to intercept her. She came to a halt, then backed away.

  Curiously, it hesitated.

  Lee Portis crashed into it bodily. Both of them went to the ground. Sarah stared, stunned. She had never seen a human tackle one of these things successfully. They stood their ground like heavy machinery, immobile to anything less than wrecking ball power. But Portis had knocked it down.

  They rolled, the Terminator rising to one knee and drawing back its fist. It launched a punch, but Portis managed to slip aside. The sharp crunch of asphalt shattering 224

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  startled her, and Sarah raised her pistol again. She fired four rounds into the side of its head.

  It jerked away from the impacts, but did not fall. It looked at her briefly, then stood, turning in one seamless motion, and caught Portis by the coat. It heaved. Portis flew, flailing, through the air, into the overturned car.

  Sarah fired two more shots, then ran toward Portis.

  Blood ran from his nose, but he managed to sit up. He grinned at her. “Do you believe me now?”

  Sarah offered her arm. He took hold. She leaned away from him while he got to his feet.

  He looked past her, the grin vanishing, then shoved her to one side. He broke in the opposite direction.

  The Terminator advanced on Sarah.

  She rounded the car, dancing back. Portis caught her arm.

  “It might be a good idea to keep it away from your son,”

  he said.

  She fired again.

  A car rolled by in the street. Sarah glimpsed a passenger staring at them, mouth open in shock. Across the road, set well back amid neat landscaping, stood a low building with small windows.

  Portis tugged on her elbow. She fired one more shot at the Terminator, then ran.

  She stumbled when her feet hit the grass, but she did not fall. She struggled to keep up with Portis, whom she knew was holding himself back so she would not fall behind.

  They reached the corner of the building and stopped.

  The Terminator still stood by Sarah’s overturned car, watching them.

  “What’s it doing?” she asked.

  “I don’t know…maybe…” He sniffed and wiped at his nose. The bleeding had stopped. “It’s blocking us.”

  “From what?”

  “Getting to your son?”

  Sarah reached for her phone. “Damn,” she hissed, finding 225

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  it missing. “It must be in the car. Do you have a cell phone?”

  “No.”

  “I’m getting pretty fed up with this.” She looked to her left. More innocuous buildings dotted the grounds to the south and east. “There’s got to be another way in.”

  She started off southward, crossing to the next building.

  Portis followed. She hurried along the wall to the corner to the east. The Terminator remained where it stood, watching from the entrance to Destry-McMillin.

  Hidden by the building, they ran to the rear and stopped, studying the route further south.

  “Building to building until we’re out of its line of sight?”

  Portis asked.

  “Then through the shrubs, onto Destry-McMillin grounds.”

  “We don’t know our way around there.”

  “You don’t have detailed files?”

  He gave her an odd look, then shook his head.

  “We should see if we can use a phone,” she said. “Come on.”

  They crossed a parking lot and another expanse of grass.

  Sarah holstered her weapon as they approached a three-story building. The main doors were still unlocked.

  Within the foyer, three men conversed. They frowned at Sarah and Portis when they entered.

  “There’s been an accident,” Sarah said. “Can we use your phone?”

  “Where?” one of the men asked, pointing to
the reception desk.

  “In front of Destry-McMillin,” Sarah said.

  “What about their guards?” another asked.

  “It’s a mess,” Portis said. “I’m Lee Portis,” he added, holding out his hand.

  The man shook absently. “You’ve been bleeding.”

  “It’s nothing. The phone?”

  “Um…sure, go ahead. We were just closing up for the night.”

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  Sarah went around the desk and sat down. She lifted the handset from the complex phone station, then stabbed a button. The dial tone hummed in her ear. She punched in John’s cell phone number.

  Portis shook hands with each of the remaining men and in seconds they were smiling and conversing like old friends.

  One ring and John picked up. “Philicos.”

  “It’s me,” Sarah said.

  “Where—?”

  “Shut up. There’s a problem. A Terminator was at the guard shack out front. It won’t let us in. We’re across—”

  The doors shattered inward, spraying Portis and the three men. Sarah looked up to see a blur of motion bowl through them, directly toward her. She stood. The Terminator reached the desk. It slammed a fist down onto the phone station, exploding it into fragments.

  She bounced the disconnected handset off its head and reached for her pistol.

  Portis’ left arm snaked around its neck. The Terminator leaned back, strained briefly, and then Portis kicked its legs from beneath it. The massive thing dropped to the floor.

  Portis danced away before it could grab him.

  It got to its feet effortlessly, lunging for Portis. Sarah fired from less than two meters away, both bullets impacting its skull, tearing away flesh. The one eye she had struck dangled from the socket, the light absent, useless.

  It paid no attention to her shots. Portis came up against a wall. The T-800 charged him. Portis tried to sidestep it, but the machine anticipated the move this time and caught him. It held him to the wall by both arms, squeezing. Portis’s face contorted in pain.

  Sarah dropped the empty magazine, groping for another one. The three men watched, stunned. She rammed the new magazine into the pistol butt and shouted at them.

  “Another phone! Where?”

  The Terminator’s attention snapped around to her. It released Portis, who slid to the floor, mouth wide.

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  Sarah squeezed off ten rounds at its face. It held its hands up to deflect the shots. Skin and blood flew off the endo-skeleton as it advanced. Sarah backed away, emerging from behind the desk. She changed magazines again, loading her last one.

  The Terminator lowered its hands. The flesh of its face nearly gone, the silvery robot skull caught the low lights, glimmering, housing one glowing red eye.

  The three men were gone, fled through the smashed doorway.

  Portis got weakly to his feet.

  Sarah raised her weapon. “I’m getting pretty fucking tired of this,” Sarah said. “What do you want?”

  It took another step toward her.

  Portis embraced it again. One hand came around. The Terminator reached up to throw him off. Portis moved with the same speed, though, and before the T-800 could grab him, Portis drove two fingers into the socket from which hung the damaged eye.

  Suddenly the T-800 staggered around, trying to throw Portis from its shoulders. Portis clung desperately, keeping his fingers deep in the Terminator’s eye socket.

  They caromed off a wall, across the floor. It stumbled.

  Portis’s legs flailed around. They struck the reception desk, bounced away, and collapsed to the floor. The T-800 kicked its legs like a child throwing a tantrum. The pounding on the floor sounded like gunshots.

  Sarah kept her weapon aimed at them, trying to follow the Terminator’s head.

  Gradually, the hammering lessened, the struggle subsided.

  Within seconds, the T-800 lay still atop Portis.

  Sarah watched, silent, uncertain what to do.

  Portis grunted, extracting his fingers from the machine’s eye. He heaved, sliding the still body off him.

  Sarah took a tentative step toward him. “Are you all right?”

  Portis got slowly to his feet.

  “What did you do?” Sarah demanded.

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  He looked at her. “Do you want me to turn it back on?”

  Sarah glared at him. “Of course…” But then she began laughing.

  The tension broke and Portis grinned. He waved at the immobilized killing machine, wincing at the pain in his arm. “The optic cable was still connected to the CPU. I introduced nanoware that disrupted its function. It couldn’t cope with the invasion, so it shut down.”

  “For how long?”

  “We need to move it somewhere where we can work on it—”

  People entered through the destroyed doors. Sarah brought her pistol around.

  John held his hands up. “Are we too late?” he asked.

  Sarah watched four men carry the T-800 out to a waiting van. It was nearly night now, a few stars flickering above L.A. Sarah trembled occasionally, but her thoughts came clearly.

  “I don’t know who he is,” she told John. “He showed up at the apartment I traced Porter to. He saved my life—twice now—but…”

  “No good deed comes without a fee?” John finished for her. “He seems to have proved himself. A Specialist?”

  “That’s my thought. But he claims not. At least, not like Jade and Anton.”

  John surveyed the campus. “We need to be gone before police arrive. I’m surprised none have yet. We towed your car away from the entrance. The security guards were both in one of the other booths, unconscious. One of them is pretty badly banged up.” He handed her a small card. “Your ID. “

  ”Thanks. Did you clean up my empty magazines, too?”

  “Absolutely. There are litter laws around here, you know.”

  “There was something odd about this,” Sarah said. “It didn’t seem to be trying to kill us. I mean, it was standing guard at the entrance to Destry-McMillin. It followed us 229

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  only when it realized what we were going to do. That’s my guess anyway.”

  A big man wearing a neat beard approached them. “You must be Sarah Connor. I’m Dennis McMillin.”

  She accepted his handshake. “You know who we are.”

  “Has John explained how?”

  “He has. Before, we’d get an emissary, someone coming through the time vault. Any idea why we’d suddenly be sending ourselves Morse code instead?”

  “As a matter of fact, we do have a good idea. We should all go over this together.” He motioned at the van, now pulling away. “Now I’ve seen one, I still can’t quite believe it.”

  “I’ve seen a few of them,” Sarah said. “I still have a hard time believing it.”

  “Shall we?” John said.

  They strode across the grass to the parking lot, then climbed into the waiting car. Portis was waiting for them inside, flanked by two wide-shouldered security men. Sarah almost laughed at the idea that they could manage him.

  “And you are another visitor from the future,” McMillin said to him. “Which side are you on?”

  “Time’s side,” Portis said cryptically. “For now, that will do.”

  “Only for now,” McMillin said. “We all need to be brought up to speed about this as soon as possible.”

  “I agree,” Portis said.

  In silence, then, they rode into the Destry-McMillin campus, finally coming into the underground garage beneath the main building.

  As they got out of the car, John leaned close to Sarah’s ear. “We have Porter. He’s a very sharp kid.”

  Sarah caught Portis’ sudden glance a few meters away.

  Like the Specialists, all his senses appeared enhanced.

  “There’s a TX-A in charge of Cyber
dyne,” John added.

  “Shit.”

  “You got that right. A Terminator named Casse.”

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  “You said this one was called Gant. What’s with them having names now?”

  “I don’t know. But we’re looking into how it got a position at Pioneer.”

  They took an elevator up, all of them crowded into the oversized box. A short walk down a quiet corridor, McMillin let them into a conference room.

  Portis stepped in. At the other end of the long table a young man looked up. Sarah caught her breath.

  Portis and Porter looked at each other. One much older, the other barely into his twenties, but unmistakably related.

  As far as Sarah was concerned they could be the same man, separated by a few decades.

  They evidently thought so, too, judging by the way they stared at each other.

  A young woman seated beside the young man stared as well. “Bobby…” she said.

  Bobby shook his head.

  Portis walked closer. “I think I understand now,” he said.

  “You’re Jeremiah Porter.”

  The young man swallowed audibly and nodded.

  “So am I,” Portis said.

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  Casse entered his office. The city glowed in its full nightly glory beyond the window. He sat down behind his desk and set his hand, palm down, on the surface. The desktop lit from within, a soft pearl-white glow.

  Before he could enter his report, words flooded his consciousness.

  It has changed again.

  Casse almost removed his hand, shocked by the presence, disturbed by the message. Annoyed with this impulse, he overrode all human mimicry and remained connected.

  “Explain.”

  They have met, they have joined, they have altered the coils, things are no longer what they were, and everything is once more in flux. I must move again.

  “Who?”

  Porter. You did not stop him, you did not keep him?

  “I tried. I proved the hypothesis.”

  Which?

  “The inviolability of key threads. I attempted to kill Porter. I could not.”

  As I suspected. You found it necessary to test?

  “All things are in flux. Possibilities must always be explored.”

  Agreed. I approve. But you do not have him?

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