“I’m going to,” Jordan said tersely. “You’ll get the best care available. I just wanted to get you stabilized.”
He pulled the bandage tight and John gasped.
“Easy! Easy,” John said. “You’re going to cut off the circulation to my heart!
Loosen it up, let the blood flow.”
“That’s what I’m trying to prevent,” Jordan muttered between his teeth.
“I know what I’m talking about. I’ve had some training in battlefield first aid.”
“I’ll bet you have,” Dyson snarled.
John looked up and suddenly saw the resemblance.
“Miles?” he said, feeling weak. Weaker. He looked closer and realized the face was far too young. “No,” he said sadly. “But you look just like him.”
Jordan looked up from his work, his eyes blazing.
“Yeah, I do. I’m his brother. Correction, was his brother. Miles is dead.”
John closed his eyes and nodded. “I know,” he said.
Dyson frowned. There was a quiet dignity to this kid that moved him, completely against his will. He realized that he’d wanted the boy to be a jerk, a punk he could despise.
“Good field dressing,” John said, his eyes closed.
“Glad you like it,” Jordan said. “It’s my first.”
John smiled.
“What?” Dyson asked suspiciously.
“Nothing,” John said. He opened his eyes. “Why aren’t you taking me to a hospital?” He thought he knew the answer from what he’d overheard, but he wanted Dyson to tell him.
“I am taking you to a hospital,” he said, looking down. He picked up the various medical paraphernalia and began putting it back in the shopping bag. “Just not in
Sacramento.”
“Who’s Serena?” John asked. He kept his eyes on Jordan’s face, willing the older man to look up.
“My, what big ears you have,” Jordan snapped. He kept working for a moment, painfully aware of the boy’s accusing eyes. “She’s my boss,” he finally said.
“Chief of security at Cyberdyne.”
That would fit, John thought. Better than a scientist, even. So this Serena had to be the super-Terminator. Interesting that it was a female. He wondered if his mother’s reputation had inspired that choice. John tried to imagine a female Terminator and couldn’t get beyond the massive chassis.
“What’s she like?” he finally asked.
Jordan had watched the boy thinking things over and was waiting for his next question. This wasn’t the one he was expecting.
“Younger than me, blond, very pretty, about average height… slender. Not what you expected, I guess,” he said as John looked at him perplexed.
John shook his head. “No,” he said. “I thought she’d be bigger.”
Now it was Jordan’s turn to be perplexed. What the hell does that mean? he wondered. He picked up the bag and began to back out of the car.
John grabbed his jacket with his good hand.
“Don’t take me to her,” he said. He tried to make Dyson meet his eyes. “She’ll
kill me.”
“No, she won’t,” Jordan said disgustedly, pulling the boy’s hand off his jacket.
“There is absolutely no reason for her to kill you.”
“Yes, there is,” John said earnestly. “If I die, then Skynet wins.”
“Who? Oh, wait a minute, that must be the monster computer that’s going to take over the world, right?”
John nodded, then wished he hadn’t as his vision doubled. He dropped his head back down on the cheap pillow. “She’s here to protect Cyberdyne so that Skynet can be born.”
“Of course she is!” Dyson sneered. “Why didn’t I see that myself? What else could she be doing?”
“If she’s really on the level, then why isn’t she letting you take me to a hospital instead of dragging me to Cyberdyne?”
Jordan leaned closer to him. “Because she thinks—and I agree with her—that your dear old mom is heading for Cyberdyne with lots of explosives and no brakes. She’s trying to keep her from killing anybody as much as she’s trying to preserve Cyberdyne.”
John licked dry lips. “Can I have a drink of that water?” he asked.
Jordan, looking disgusted, pulled it out and uncapped it for him.
“Thanks.” John took a long pull, then plopped his head back down on the pillow, his eyes closed. He kept hold on the bottle when Jordan would have taken it away. “What’s your name?” he asked.
“Dyson,” Jordan said precisely.
John smiled slightly. “I admired your brother,” he said. “He was a good man.”
“And thanks to your mother, now he’s a dead man.”
John shook his head, then frowned at the pain.
“No. The SWAT team shot him. Mom never intended for anybody to die. He was too badly wounded to get out. Mom says he took the detonator and gave her a nod to go. Then he held on as long as he could before he let the place blow.”
John swallowed some more water. “He was a brave man.”
Jordan felt the strength run out of him, as if someone had pulled a plug at the bottom of his spine. The SWAT team shot him. It was exactly what Tarissa had told him. Exactly. Except that she had gotten that information from the squad leader, while Connor here had gotten it from his mother. Two independent sources, he thought. It could well be… must be true. The thing about the detonator, though, that was new.
“You’re telling me my brother committed suicide,” he said aloud. He shook his head with a knowing smile. “That’s not my brother. Miles wouldn’t do that.”
John looked at him. “It wasn’t suicide. He was too badly wounded to make it; I told you that. He didn’t kill himself, he sacrificed himself for his family and his
friends. He died trying to save the world.”
“That is insane,” Jordan said straightening. “You are insane. You and your mother and her boyfriend kidnapped my brother and forced him to—”
“We didn’t kidnap him—he led us to Cyberdyne. He willingly came with us, willingly showed us where things were, and he helped us set up the bomb.” John closed his eyes again. He seemed to be less nauseated with his eyes closed.
“Why?” Jordan asked simply. He raised one hand and let it drop. “Why would he do that?”
“Because we had a Terminator with us who showed him some of its inner workings and he couldn’t deny that proof,” John said wearily. “Look, I know it sounds insane. Before I met a Terminator I thought my mother was crazy. But she’s not. It’s all true.” He opened his eyes and looked at Jordan. “Call Tarissa,”
he said. “Tell her you have John Connor in custody and he’s asking her to tell you the truth.”
Jordan was silent for a moment, his mouth open.
“You want me to ask my brother’s widow to back you up?” he said slowly.
“She’ll confirm what I’ve told you,” John said with perfect confidence. “She will.”
Jordan tightened his lips and looked away. She would, he well knew it. He thought of Tarissa’s message: Remember what I told you. And here it was again.
“Shit!” he said. “Shit!”
John shut his eyes against the pounding in his head.
“Believe it or not,” he said, “I know how you feel.”
Dyson tightened his lips and glared at the kid. Then he dug into the bag and opening the aspirin bottle tapped out three tablets.
“Here,” he said. “Knock yourself out.”
Then he got out and slammed the door behind him.
He walked back and forth for a while, calming himself and trying to decide what to do. The kid thought Serena meant him no good. Given the behavior of the three “backups” that she’d sent with him, maybe he had a point.
But Serena denied it, seemed stunned when he told her about it, and there was nothing in her previous behavior to cause him to doubt her. Serena said she only wanted the boy at Cyberdyne to protect the people there.
That seemed extremely believable to him. She said the three goons were strangers to her.
He stopped pacing. Getting beyond that was hard, maybe impossible. And in all fairness he had to give some credence now to the story that Tarissa had told him.
Shrapnel dropping out of skulls, men running forty miles an hour. Unbelievable as it was, here it was again from a different source. And what a different source, he thought. The maniac’s own son.
He wondered briefly if Tarissa might have been hypnotized into believing this insanity. No. Even if she had, it wouldn’t have lasted six years, he thought. Not the way he’d kept her picking at it. And Danny wasn’t even supposed to have
known a lot of stuff that he… claimed to know.
Jordan ran his hand over his short-cropped hair. The more he tried to sort it out, the more tangled it became. He put his hands on his hips and considered his options.
Ralph, he thought. Ralph Ferri.
Ferri was a major in charge of base security. Serena had introduced them, very much as a matter of form, on his second day at Cyberdyne, and they had hit it off. Since there was something in Serena’s manner that indicated she didn’t want to encourage Ferri to take an interest in the complex under her care, Jordan had kept their friendship to himself.
Ralph’s secretary patched him through with no difficulty.
“Hi Jordan,” the Major said. “Wassup?”
Now that it was time to ask, Jordan choked. How the hell do I put this?
“Jordan?”
Oh, God. He rubbed his forehead. This was a mistake.
“Hello? Anybody there?”
“Hi, Ralph, sorry I, uh, dropped the phone.” Jordan rolled his eyes.
There was a minute pause before the Major said, “Sooo, what’s new?”
“I need a favor,” Jordan said. “Uuuhhh. This is really awkward.”
“Is it going to cost me my career?” Ralph joked.
“I honestly don’t know,” Dyson admitted. “Let me outline my problem for you.”
He went on to describe the situation, the three goons, the wounded kid, his notorious mother, and Serena’s plea to bring the boy to Cyberdyne. “But I just…
can’t trust her,” he admitted. “I just can’t do it.”
There was silence.
Then, his voice cautious, Ralph asked, “So, what do you want from me?”
“I want to put him in the base hospital under military guard,” Jordan said.
“Aaawww, man!” Ferri was silent for a moment. Jordan could hear the rapid tapping of a pencil. “Let me get this straight,” the Major said. “You want me to put a wounded sixteen-year-old fugitive, that your boss has ordered you to bring directly to her, into the base hospital.”
“That’s about the size of it,” Jordan confirmed.
“I can’t do that! Ask me for something I can do, man, and it’s yours. But not this!”
“I’m willing to bet that Tricker would clear it.” Actually, Jordan had no idea what Tricker would clear. He’d only met him once and hadn’t seen him since.
But instinct told him that mentioning Tricker’s name in connection with something this hinky might work. The man was the personification of powerful, well-connected hinkiness.
“I’m willing to bet Tricker would put my ass in a sling for doing it,” Ferri protested.
“No, he won’t. Look, trust me on this man, it will be all right. I’m assistant head of security at Cyberdyne. Your department has been ordered to cooperate with Cyberdyne, right?”
“Right.”
“So just do what I’m asking—cooperate with me. Okay?” Jordan waited.
“Yeah, but, Jordan, you just told me that your boss ordered you to bring this kid directly to Cyberdyne. To their med facility. Isn’t that right?”
“Yeah. But you don’t know that.” Jordan waited a beat. “Do you?”
Ferri gave a long sigh, then he chuckled.
“No, I don’t, do I?” he said. “Okay, bring him in. When can we expect you?”
“If I leave now I should be there in three hours. Depending on traffic.”
“I’ll stick around,” the Major promised. “I’ll leave word to expect you at the hospital. I’ll have them call me when you get in. I’ll expect a complete, if off-the-record, rundown on this thing.”
“You got it,” Jordan assured him. “Thanks.”
“Hey, what are friends for?”
They hung up. Jordan grinned. Then he looked at the car. The kid was looking back at him.
This is going to be a loooong drive, he thought.
SAN JOAUIN VALLEY, CALIFORNIA: THE PRESENT
“Left here,” Sarah snapped.
Dieter looked at her from the corner of his eye. That was about all she’d said since the fiasco in Sacramento. “Turn right here, left, right, get on highway five.”
Her calm was beginning to get on his nerves. As was the way she was snapping out directions.
“Where are we going?” he asked as they climbed out of the heat and rectilinear farmlands of the valley and into high, dry hills.
“Friends,” she said.
Five miles down the road he began to see things that looked familiar. When he signaled to turn just before she gave him directions, he knew he was right. It was a tremendous relief.
Ike and Donna Chamberlain would help settle her down. Her very stillness indicated that she needed to be doing something. They’d find something to keep her busy.
Sarah cast him a quick glance the second time he began a turn just before she told him to. Then she settled into silence. It didn’t come as a surprise to her that
they had some acquaintances in common.
Dieter honked three times, then twice, then once, then once again as he drove down a narrow dirt track that led to the Chamberlains’ cabin in the woods.
Ike was a former Navy SEAL, and Donna was a former MR Not surprisingly they had met in the Philippines one wild night when she’d had to arrest him. And tamed him in a heartbeat, so Ike claimed. They were survivalists first and foremost, making, growing, or hunting most of what they needed to live. For cash and anything else they had a sideline.
Ike was a gunsmith. More of a gun artist, really. He could re-create any gun ever made for a rich man’s toy. Or he sometimes worked with the government, or an organization like the Sector, to produce high-tech models that would always be too specialized and too damned expensive for mass production.
The sideline was so lucrative that they could easily have retired to some tropical paradise to be waited on hand and foot for the rest of their lives. Such a suggestion, if one had the temerity to make it, was always greeted by a blank expression and the response, “Why, I’d just roll up and die if I didn’t have nothing to do!”
Dieter pulled into the deserted clearing before the cabin. It was a large place; the Chamberlains had raised two kids in this out-of-the-way spot. Two kids who couldn’t wait to get as far from the purity of the woods as their legs and the bus would carry them.
They both worked in computers now and were doing very well. They called often, via cell phone, and never visited. It was almost as if they suspected their
parents would keep them there by force. Which they were perfectly capable of doing if they thought it was the right thing to do.
Sarah looked around like someone coming out of a deep sleep, narrowing her eyes as she examined the two-story notched-log cabin. Dieter sat with both hands on the wheel and waited. Eventually a tall figure in a hip-length suede coat and broad-brimmed hat stepped from the woods, a rifle held under one arm, pointing downward. From the slenderness, Dieter thought it must be Donna.
“Never thought I’d see the two of you sharing the front seat of a car unless one of you was in handcuffs,” Donna drawled. She grinned, her weather-beaten face breaking into a thousand lines, each one a welcome.
“Hello, Donna,” Dieter said.
Sarah got out of the car and came around; opening her arms, she hugged the older woma
n, who returned the hug one armed. Donna’s eyes dropped questioningly to von Rossbach, who tightened his lips and frowned in answer.
She gave Sarah’s back a pat.
“C’mon in, why don’t you?” she said. “I’ll put on some coffee and roust Ike outta the workroom. Then you people can tell us what’s on your mind.”
Ike and Donna blinked as they stared at Dieter and Sarah, then shifted nervously in their chairs and met each other’s eyes in sidelong glances. They’d always worried about Sarah. Her strange crusade against Skynet, which Sarah herself said didn’t exist—yet—was blatantly insane even by their relaxed standards. It made her a stand out even among the bizarre folk they tended to meet.
Visiting with them had always seemed to center her, though, to bring her back down to earth and the time and place everybody else was living in. She was actually very likable when she was calm and not talking about Judgment Day.
It was with regret that they’d watched her grow harder over the years. They tolerated her wrangy attitude mainly for John’s sake. They saw how well she treated her son, even though they thought her discipline was a bit too strong.
And they found John to be a delightful boy, they’d have done anything for him.
Dieter, on the other hand, they’d always liked, and by comparison to Sarah, he was very uncomplicated. Von Rossbach was unequivocally one of the good guys and that appealed to them. The few times they’d met had been fun and he was always welcome. If anyone had asked they’d have said he was one of the sanest, steadiest men they knew.
Now he was telling them that Sarah’s wild stories were gospel truth. It was a hard mouthful to swallow. But the look Ike and Donna were giving one another now said as plain as words:
Shucks, the girl can’t be that good in bed!
“So where’s John now?” Ike asked.
“Probably on his way to the main Cyberdyne facility under a military base somewhere in California,” Sarah said bitterly.
She put her face in her hands and breathed deeply for a moment. The other’s around the table glanced at one another in embarrassment, not quite knowing what to do.
“Who’d be dumb enough to build a military base underground in California?”
Ike asked.
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