T2 - 01 - The New John Connor Chronicles - Dark Futures

by Russell Blackford

  Robert drove quickly to the address of the El Juicio cyber cafe. As he brought the police car to a halt, a message came over the radio that a car had been stolen and its occupants killed. The car description and registration number were for the vehicle they were driving. Worse, it gave this address as the expected destination for the stolen vehicle.

  "Everybody get out" Danny said. "We can't use this car."

  "I'll get rid of it" Robert said. "I'll find another and meet you round the back." As the others piled out, he grabbed the radio microphone, imitating the voice of the tall cop whose uniform he was now wearing, speaking with an amused laugh. "What is this?" he said in Spanish. "No one has stolen our car..."

  All the same, Anton realized, the police would investigate, no matter what Robert told them. They would have to deal with the Connors quickly, and find another car.

  Anton hammered on the thick wooden door before he even noticed a doorbell. Anton pressed the doorbell several times, and then a female voice shouted from inside. "We're closed for the night. We open at five tomorrow afternoon."

  "Is that Sarah Connor?" Anton said.

  There was a pause and the woman's voice now came through a grate in the doorframe. "No, I'm sorry... you're talking to Deborah Lawes," the voice said. "Who are you?"

  "My name is Anton Panov," he said, speaking into the grate. Presumably there was a microphone there.

  "That doesn't mean anything to me."

  From the distance came the sound of a police siren, then another, from a different direction.

  "There's no time to explain," he said. "Come with us, quickly, if you want to live."

  John didn't know what to make of the voice. It spoke in English with an accent that sounded Russian, like the name it had given. Whoever Anton Panov was, he knew their real identity, which was very dangerous. John and Sarah were still wanted by U.S. law enforcement authorities. Worse still, what if he was another emissary of Skynet? That would confirm Judgment Day was still coming.

  There were police sirens, coming closer.

  The security camera mounted outside, over the doorway, showed a big, gray-haired man in a dark brown police uniform. That was Panov, the one doing the talking. He looked really tough. There seemed to be three others with him: two young women dressed for a night out at a dance club, and a black guy in a flashy dinner suit. The black guy looked familiar. It was hard to tell from the low-quality image, but he looked awfully like Skynet's inventor, Miles Dyson. Yet Miles had died seven years ago.

  "How many of you are there?" Sarah said. "I count four. Don't try to fool me."

  "Four of us and one other, on his way back here."

  As Sarah spoke, John shifted the wooden cabinet, then pulled back a strip of carpet and removed a loose floorboard to reveal a trap door. He opened this and took out a CAR-15 assault rifle. Quietly, he passed it up to Sarah. She checked it over quickly. John found two .45 caliber pistols, then a 12-gauge shotgun-the only light firearm that had ever shown enough stopping power to be useful against a Terminator. He stuck one pistol in the belt of his jeans and handed the other to Sarah.

  "Is John with you?" Panov said.

  "I'm with my son, David." Then she whispered to John, "Check the fire exit."

  "Okay." As he stepped round the desk to check out the back, he opened the desk's large bottom drawer and took out his backpack, which had everything they might need in an absolute emergency: a stash of paper money, both American and Mexican; some of their papers; electronic equipment; a hand grenade; spare ammo; and an extra gun if they needed it-a 9mm. Beretta. All this might not be much use if they ever had to survive against another T-1000, but it gave them a start.

  The police sirens were very close now. Their cars must be just around the corner.

  Another voice spoke through the security system, one of the women this time. John couldn't see the screen, but she had a Japanese accent, so she must have been the Oriental-looking one he'd noticed. She sounded infinitely patient and sad, like some kind of saint returned from heaven. "Please, Ms. Connor, my name is Miho. You can call me 'Jade.' It is no good checking the fire exit. We are coming in now. You will have to trust us."

  How had she heard them? Sarah had spoken so quietly, and you had to project your voice loudly into the security system to be heard clearly. The woman's hearing must be superhuman. Sarah signaled for John to stay put. She took up a position in the middle of the room, facing the door, backing away from it slowly, training her rifle.

  The other man-it must have been the black man—said, "Jade's right. We're coming in."

  There was a powerful thump at the door, then another. John slipped the backpack over his shoulders and took up a position beside Sarah, aiming his shotgun at the door. As they stepped away, the lock broke and the door flew open.

  "Please don't shoot!" the black man shouted, holding up both hands, palms forward. "We're not Terminators, we're friends. You've met me before." John's stomach turned over as he guessed what the guy was going to say before he said it: "I'm Danny Dyson."

  Perhaps it was foolish of them, but John and Sarah didn't shoot. The shock of seeing a man who was almost the image of Miles Dyson made it impossible, even though he could have been a well-disguised Terminator. One thing was for sure: these people were not police. For one thing, traffic cops didn't break into people's property like this. For another, they were so odd. Only one of them looked Hispanic. Close up, the Russian guy, Panov, looked like a six-foot block of granite with a short haircut. He more or less fitted his police uniform, but he didn't look comfortable in it. The two women were impressively muscled, but they looked no more comfortable in their dance outfits.

  "Don't come any closer," Sarah said. "Prove we can trust you." As she spoke, two police cars pulled up outside.

  The whole lot of them just might be from the future. But, when Judgment Day never happened in 1997, what did that mean? What kind of future had they come from,

  and why?

  "Run now," Panov said.

  Two police officers entered came to the door. "What's happening here?" one said.

  As they took in the scene, they drew their guns. At the same time, Panov and the others ran towards the back, the Hispanic woman grabbing John by the wrist with immense strength and pulling him. Dyson hustled Sarah, pushing her by the shoulder. Panov and the Oriental woman were the rear guard. Panov had drawn his gun and he suddenly fired with incredible speed and accuracy, shooting the guns from the cops' hands like the hero in an old cowboy movie.

  Then another group entered: a spectacular woman with waist-length hair; a German shepherd dog; and another heavily built guy, carrying a huge gun. The woman rushed forward, picked up one of the cops, and threw him aside like a rag doll. The man smashed the other cop with a backhanded blow, knocking him to the floor. The dog leapt for Jade's throat, as the man squeezed the trigger of his weapon, throwing a spear shaft of coherent light.

  John made it to the kitchen and, for a few seconds, he saw no more. That guy's radiation weapon was truly massive, but he'd swung it around with ease, one-handed. Nobody human could do that, at least no one+

  John had seen, though he wondered what Panov and the others could do. He'd only ever seen one humanoid being do something similar: The T-800 making light of a six-barreled mini-gun when they'd raided Cyberdyne. This latest guy had to be some sort of Terminator. The woman likewise, so what about the dog? Was it some kind of Terminator mutt? What had happened to Jade?

  They made it through the kitchen to a back room with a fire door, everything seeming confused. Jade was the last of them. She had a ragged wound in her upper arm, but it was not bleeding, and she seemed unaffected by it. The big Hispanic man-the Terminator-pounded through the kitchen, as Dyson bundled Sarah outside into an alley. John was ready for the Terminator as it entered the back room and took aim at Panov. He fired from the hip with the 12-gauge, and hit the Terminator in the chest, throwing it off balance and making a crater wound of silvery metal. John had seen that
before, on the T-1000 he'd fought in 1994. There was no other damage, and the crater closed up in seconds. So this Terminator was like the T-1000, made of mimetic polyalloy. That meant it would be almost indestructible.

  There was no doubt now who were the bad guys.

  Outside in the alley, an old Pontiac was pulled up, its doors open.

  "Get in," Dyson said. "Quickly!" He pushed Sarah into the bench seat up front, squeezing her between himself and the driver.

  Jade scrambled into the rear, moving like a lizard down its hole, but a lizard sped up by fast-motion photography. Panov snatched the shotgun from John's hands as the Hispanic woman dragged him into the car.

  "Hey!" John said.

  "Don't complain," the woman said. "We know what we're doing."

  The Terminators were right behind them. The dog leapt at Panov but he made it miss, and it collided with the side of the car, denting it Panov fired with the shotgun before the male Terminator could aim, hitting it in the side. He scrambled into the rear with John and the two women from the future-there were now seven of them in the vehicle, since another guy in a traffic cop's uniform was driving. Even before Panov closed his door, this other guy slammed down the accelerator, and the car jerked forward with a squeal. At the same time, the female Terminator leapt with inhuman speed and landed on the car's trunk. John was squashed between Panov and the Hispanic woman, whose name he still didn't know.

  The Terminator smashed the rear screen with its fist as Panov squirmed around, crushing John in the process, and brought up the shotgun. He fired at close range, and the shot took the Terminator right in the head, which exploded like popped corn. The Terminator was thrown to the street, but a bolt of concentrated light hit the car, burning a hole in the door near Panov, who grunted hoarsely with pain.

  They found a proper street For Mexico City, the traffic was light, but they still had to weave in and out of lanes to make ground, getting as far from the Terminators as they could, as quickly as possible.

  "Who's hurt?" Dyson said.

  "The dog component bit my arm," Jade said in a strangely factual way, no passion in her voice. "It's ninety percent healed." John had seen the wound that the demonic canine Terminator had taken out of her. It would have slowed down anyone normal for weeks.

  "Burns from the phased-plasma laser," Panov said, just as factually. "The vehicle's structure absorbed most of the heat."

  "You think you'll heal up okay?" Dyson said.

  "Yes, but I'll need nutrients."

  "Right. We'll do something about that."

  The driver was still hammering the accelerator. "I hope you know where you're going," John said.

  "We have nanoware implants with all the files we need," the Hispanic woman said. "We know our way round this city. Trust us. We know what we're doing."

  "Yeah, so you said a minute ago."

  "John?" Dyson said.

  "Yeah?"

  "Just chill out. Okay?"

  He thought about it for a moment. He did have to trust these guys. What choice was there? "All right," he said. "I get the message."

  "How about some introductions here," Sarah said. She'd been in these situations before. She didn't sound panicked, just pissed off at having her routine disrupted. "Then someone can tell us what's going on."

  "Right," Dyson said. "We're sorry to bring this down on you."

  "You're from the future?" John said. "You fight Skynet?"

  "Exactly."

  "From 2029?"

  "No." Dyson sounded puzzled. "We're from 2036-fif-teen years after Judgment Day."

  "We have a lot to learn from these people," Jade said to him.

  "Obviously."

  "How about you give us the highlights," John said, trying to make sense of all this. "Then we can give you ours." Dyson had just implied that Judgment Day would happen in 2021. That was a very different story from the one Kyle had brought back from the future, or that the T-800 had told him in 1994.

  Dyson craned round for a second. "All right. We're enhanced human commandos-Specialists. We're with the Resistance."

  "I can relate to that," John said. "So does it mean you've come back to help us?"

  "In a way. We may even be able to save your lives. You see, you die in six years' time. Maybe we can stop that."

  John's mind suddenly went blank-between the attack and this startling revelation, it was all too much to take in. He couldn't figure out which was worse: the news of his ultimate fate, or the dispassionate way in which it had been delivered.

  "Primarily, however," Jade said, cutting across all this. "We need your help."

  "You need our help?" Sarah snapped. John could tell the anger in her voice was meant to conceal her true feelings, but the fear that shone brightly in her eyes as she looked back at him was only too evident

  "Yes," Panov said. "That's why we came to Mexico City. There's no one else we can trust."

  "Those were Terminators after us, right?" John said, his thoughts slowly beginning to come together.

  "No, only one Terminator. You saw a mimetic poly-alloy unit operating as three components."

  "You mean it's made of liquid metal."

  "Correct," the Hispanic woman said. "How did you know?"

  Sarah said wearily, "We've seen something like it before."

  "Somehow I doubt that," the woman said. There was a strange silence for a few seconds, as if the newcomers were conferring by telepathy or something. Then the woman added: "Whatever you've seen, raise it to the nth power."

  "It's an experimental autonomous model," Dyson said. "A T-XA. It can merge or split itself at will, at least down to a certain size. It can look like anything it wants. And that's about the least of its abilities. You seriously don't want to do a dance with this thing."

  The driver swung left to pass a battered truck carrying boxes of fruit. "Don't you think we should introduce ourselves, Daniel?" he said. "Like the lady asked?" He glanced across at Sarah, then into the rearview mirror. "My name is Robert Baxter. It's a pleasure to meet you."

  "All right," Dyson said. "In the back seat with John, we have Miho Tagatoshi-better call her 'Jade'-Selena Macedo, and Anton Panov."

  "And you're all from the Resistance?" John said.

  "Yes."

  "So we didn't stop Judgment Day," Sarah said. John could almost feel the disappointment in her voice.

  "No," Dyson said. "We told you, you got killed trying. In February 2007."

  "What are you talking about?" Sarah demanded. "Judgment Day was supposed to happen four years ago. We stopped it from happening... didn't we?"

  Macedo said, "Not in our universe."

  "Your... ?" John said. There were sirens behind them. Baxter pushed the accelerator down even harder. John couldn't see the speedometer from here, but they must have been doing 90 mph. Dyson turned round to look out the back. "We've got cops on our tail."

  Up ahead, another police car came out of a side street, siren blaring, trying to cut them off. Baxter managed the traffic like a Formula-1 driver, easily getting round the police car, hardly slowing down, though John was tossed about in the back, or would have been except the forces the car was generating simply pressed him harder against Panov or Macedo.

  "I figure they're real cops," Dyson said. "They're driving like humans, not like a Terminator."

  "Lose them, Robert," Jade said.

  "Your wish is my command," Baxter said, suddenly steering towards an alley, almost hitting the brick wall of a medium rise building. The back of the Pontiac swung around, tires locking up and skidding, then the car straightened out and headed down the narrow alleyway, missing Dumpsters, trashcans, parked trucks, and a road cleaning vehicle, with only inches to spare. As John craned his neck, two police cars went past the entry to the alley. Another skidded to a halt, trying to make the turn, but hit something and stopped.

  Baxter reached another street as the police car backed up and headlights shone behind them. He swung the wheel and snapped the Pontiac cleanly into plac
e in a tiny break in the traffic. Horns were honking all round them. Someone cursed loudly in Spanish. The police car followed them, several places back, its siren on and lights flashing.

  Baxter ignored it all and kept driving. "We're going to need another vehicle," he said.

  "Yeah," Dyson said. "Every cop in Mexico City will have the registration of this one."

  “See what you can do," Jade said. "Maybe find a car park."

  "No time for that now," Baxter said, glancing into the mirrors. "I think we've got trouble."

  John looked round and saw yet another police car veering through the traffic, catching up behind them. It overtook the car with the siren. Its front screen was smashed out, and there were two figures in the front, a man and a woman. The pseudo-woman drove, while the man aimed the phased-plasma laser rifle.

  Baxter took another left, and the T-XA followed, tires screeching. Further back now, falling behind, the other police car also followed. A shot from the laser rifle went wild as Baxter twisted the wheel: right-left-right, then hard left at still another intersection, driving straight across on-coming traffic. Cars skidded and crashed behind them, but the T-XA got around them all and hardly lost any distance. In another minute, it was gaining once more, as Baxter took yet another turn, then another, working his way through a maze of roads, never staying on a straight stretch long enough for the T-XA to get a clear shot.

  They seemed to have lost the other police car, but that was little consolation. Seemingly ignoring the traffic, Baxter headed onto a huge roundabout, planted in the center with a sixty-foot palm tree. That led them into an eight-lane highway, and Baxter took the outer lane, weaving through the traffic, taking whatever lanes he needed to keep going, never touching the brake, trying to keep ahead of the T-XA. For a minute, they were pulling away. Baxter's reflexes were unbelievable, like nothing human, but the Terminator was just as good. It got round some slower cars and was soon sticking to them like glue.

  Just ahead, a cluster of cars and trucks blocked all the lanes. "What do we do now?" Sarah said

  As they entered a long tunnel, Baxter nudged a big purple SUV, forcing it over. "Just watch."