c.1

Present-Day

California

Paul Keeley was afraid of the bouncer. It bothered him that he was afraid, and it bothered him that he didn’t know why he was afraid.

Paul was well above average height and in good shape. Regular workouts in the solitude of his apartment, regular jogging in the park nearby, kept him that way. And for him, “continuing education” after college had included enrollment at a series of schools of martial arts; he’d studied bits of shotokan karate, kempo, tae kwon do, and jeet kune do, and spent one summer with a school that claimed to teach ninjutsu, the art of the ninja.

Sure, it was a dilettante’s approach, but he was less interested in learning a philosophy or a world view than he was in learning how to hurt people … should the need arise.

He wondered if the need would arise with this bouncer. The man, who had a build like a weight lifter’s, spent every night at Bear’s Bar at a stool in the dimly lit corner near the phones, keeping an eye on the business, which Paul supposed was only right. But the man seemed wrong in so many other ways. He never relaxed, never leaned back against the wall; his posture was perfect. He wore the same clothes night after night—jeans, a black T-shirt with a Harley-Davidson logo, a jeans jacket, black cowboy boots; did he clean them every night, or did he have a series of identical garments in his closet? And his hair was a Mohawk in a purple-magenta color never found in nature. Paul thought it was several years out of date, but couldn’t quite remember when the style had actually been in fashion.

And the man always seemed to be staring at Paul.

Now, Paul had to admit that this was just guesswork, or a feeling, because he couldn’t see the bouncer’s eyes. No matter how dark the bar’s interior, the bouncer wore sunglasses. But it always felt as though the man’s attention was on Paul. It was unsettling.

Tonight, as usual, the bar was crowded. Sitting at a tiny round table against the wall near the entrance, as far away from the bouncer’s stool as it was possible to be within the establishment, Paul felt the bouncer’s eyes on him. Well, Paul comforted himself, maybe it’s because he thinks of me as a real bad dude.

“Can I join you?”

Paul looked up to see the most beautiful woman he’d ever encountered in person standing over him.

She looked like something a libidinous Dr. Frankenstein would have created after perfecting his craft. She had Scandinavian features and eyes the color of a cloudless winter sky. She was a few inches shorter than Paul, with what he thought of as a swimmer’s build—athletic, broad in the shoulder but not too broad. Her hair was long and dark blonde, streaked by artifice but perhaps wavy by nature, and her skin was flawless.

And she was dressed all in shades of yellow: yellow slacks, yellow blouse that was invitingly unbuttoned at the top, yellow wide-brimmed hat.

But he saw these details only peripherally, because her face wouldn’t let his attention wander. She possessed a simple, unobtrusive beauty, features that one could look at and pronounce gorgeous, yet that were just a trifle anonymous, lacking a hook that made it easy to hang memory upon. The curve of her lips, even at rest, gave her face the appearance of someone who was amused at whatever she saw.

Paul had seen her on many occasions at the bar. She always sat alone, watching the other patrons with an expression that reminded Paul of a cat surveying its surroundings, pronouncing every object, every person it saw to be a possession or, at best, a mere worshiper. Her aloofness was so distinct that Paul wondered whether, if some band of madmen were to break in and begin murdering the bar’s clients, she would object, or merely continue watching in curiosity.

Despite her beauty and the fact that she never had companions, he’d never approached her. He really didn’t know how to strike up a conversation with a stranger.

But she apparently did.

Paul got to his feet, feeling awkward in his haste. He gestured at the other chair beside his table. “Uh, sure. Please.”

She sat, graceful, but the impression was slightly spoiled by the way the chair creaked as she settled upon it. She didn’t seem to be alarmed by its protest, or by the prospect of the rickety thing collapsing and depositing her on the floor. “I’ve seen you in here a number of times. You always sit alone.”

He reclaimed his seat and gave her a dubious look. “I find it kind of unlikely that I’d have made any sort of impression.” Immediately he felt like hitting himself. It wasn’t his job to shoot himself down as a prospect. He suspected she could do that all by herself.

She merely smiled. “I can prove I’ve seen you. Let’s see … last week, you wore a suit every day, and on Thursday, you had on a horrible dark tie with paisley decorations. This week it’s all casual clothes … did you get fired?”

Paul shook his head. “Different dress code.”

“For a whole week?”

“Yeah.” He took a deep breath and made the admission he didn’t much like to offer. “I work at different places all the time. I’m an office temp worker.”

“Really?” She didn’t seem at all put off. “Do you find that sort of work interesting?”

“Not really. There are things I’d much prefer. Like a regular set of coworkers, real health coverage, and the opportunity to work in my field.”

“What is your field?”

“History, my degree’s in history.” He offered her a self-deprecating smile. “And, as you know, there’s always a need for professional historians. Hundreds of jobs listed in the classifieds every day.”

She blinked and looked confused. “Really?” Then her expression cleared. “Oh, you’re kidding me.”

“That’s right. How about you? What do you do?”

“I kill people for a living.”

“Uh-huh. Is there a method you prefer? Bombs, poison darts, handguns, swords at dawn?”

“Bare hands. It’s economical.”

“Well, I suppose I deserved that. No, really, what do you do?”

She considered. “I’m in advertising.”

“Much more sinister than assassination.”

“That’s right.”

“I’m Paul.”

“Eliza.”

“That’s a name you don’t run across very often.”

She smiled again. “It’s a tradition in my family.”

September 2029

San Diego, California

Once upon a time it had been a place where the injured were rehabilitated, the ill were treated, babies were born, and those whose bodies could no longer withstand the abuses of time or disease were cared for as they died. The San Diego Naval Medical Center had been a place of humans, of people. A sprawling medical complex deep within Balboa Park, its centerpiece had been a pale main building a handful of stories high stretching approximately from north to south.

Even now, decades after the fall of mankind from power had sent humans scurrying into holes to hide and had deprived cities of their nighttime lights, the building shone in the moonlight. Framed in the view from David “Ten” Zimmerman’s binoculars, the building seemed remarkably intact.

But, then, much of San Diego did. When Skynet, the computer program that had been intended to coordinate U.S. military defensive and offensive capability, had seized control and begun its process of exterminating mankind, San Diego hadn’t received the nuclear barrage that many populated areas had; instead, some of the nation’s supply of neutron bombs and chemical warfare weapons had rained down on this region, leaving the city remarkably intact. San Diego and a handful of other military centers had been spared, to this degree at least, in order that Skynet might be able to make use of their extensive resources of military materiel.

Ten lowered the binoculars to the cracked, broken pavement he lay upon. He scratched at an itchy spot on his cheek. It itched because of the several days’ growth of blond beard he wore; it was just at that transitional stage between short enough to be innocuous and long enough to soften. Now it was bristly and irritating to his skin. A few weeks back, he’d shaved it to please a young lady he’d met at Tortilla Compound, but she’d never become interested in him. He knew he looked better with the beard; it tended to disguise the fact that his features were actually quite undistinguished. So now he grew it back, suffering the kidding of the men and woman he commanded; they had all correctly guessed why he’d scraped it away.

Ten was stretched out at the edge of the broad parking lot that had once served the medical complex. Just behind him, eastward, the pavement gave way to ground that immediately sloped down into what had once been the Balboa Park Municipal Golf Course. “Still no movement, no lights,” he said, his voice low. “Just hundreds of dead cars. Opinions?”

“I think you should shave your head and tattoo ‘I’m desperate, please love me’ on your scalp,” said Mark Herrera. He sat upright, his back to the crumbling rubber and corroding hubcap of a car wheel; he rested within the deep shadow of the mostly intact Dodge van that had been almost new when Judgment Day had occurred. Mark could nettle Ten about his love life without suffering much retaliation on the same subject; taller than Ten, with dark Latino good looks, he managed to be dashing whether groomed or windblown, hygienic or sweat-drenched, clean-shaven or scruffy. His size and considerable physical strength were at odds with the stereotype of the electronics and programming specialist, which was the role he served with Ten’s team.

Ten decided not to give Mark the satisfaction a sigh would afford him. “Relevant opinions,” he amended.

“Stay cool,” offered Earl Duncan, the oldest member of the team. “The spotter who’s been tracking the traffic pattern says that it’s regular. It’ll be tonight.” Earl was black, nearly twice Ten’s age. Stubbornness and a physical regimen he’d adopted back when he was a member of the Air Force police kept him, year after year, from wandering over the threshold into old age.

Kyla Connor, the team’s sniper, didn’t say anything. She was asleep, a heat-diffusing thermal blanket draped over her to obscure her appearance in case this spot fell within the view of the sort of infrared sensors used by Skynet and many of its units in the field. Her head was propped against the side of Ginger, her reddish-yellow dog, a mix of husky, sled dog, and one or two other large breeds. Ginger cocked her eyebrows at Ten, a very human expression, and thumped her tail, but offered no opinion. Kyla’s other dog, Ripper, a bullmastiff mix who outweighed Kyla by a double handful of pounds, didn’t even open his eyes and remained nearly invisible in the darkness. Both dogs were outside the negligible cover Kyla’s blanket represented.

Kyla was the youngest of the human members of the team, still a teenager, though her manner usually suggested she was ten or twenty years older. Ten supposed this was only appropriate for the daughter of John Connor and Kate Brewster, the leaders of the human Resistance on the North American continent. Kyla had the fair complexion of both her parents, the simple, down-to-earth beauty and blonde-brown hair of her mother. Now, at rest, her features relaxed, she did look like a teenager. There was nothing to suggest that she was as proficient a killer as anyone else in the unit.

Ten didn’t solicit an opinion from the last member of the team, didn’t even look at him. He’d prefer that this newest member be somewhere else, such as dead at the bottom of a landfill.

Glitch lay apart from the others. He was a big man, muscular in a way that suggested an athlete’s high-protein, high-carbohydrate diet—a diet that was rare in these lean times. He was stretched out beneath a car fifteen yards to the south of the others, an irregular bump in the road—his overloaded backpack gave him the contours of a large piece of debris, perhaps part of a sofa abandoned on Judgment Day. His position gave him a better perspective on the road leading up to the main building. He was completely motionless, as inert as a corpse. He would, Ten knew, be staring fixedly at the area he was supposed to be watching, no expression on his heavy-boned, brooding features.

Except for the dogs, they were all dressed in a shades-of-gray urban camouflage pattern. They’d draped ponchos of brown-and-green camo across themselves when moving over the old golf course and other natural terrain, but the urban camo was better for the miles of streets and unmaintained buildings that had served as their cover for the majority of this mission.

They were the Hell-Hounds—officially Company A, Squadron 3, of the Resistance 1st Security Regiment. When they weren’t in the presence of Resistance leaders John Connor and Kate Brewster, protecting them, they were either plotting or executing damnfool operations like this one.

“All right,” Ten said. “We wait.” Exposed, visible to any of Skynet’s camera satellites or high-altitude reconnaissance flights. He didn’t need to say those words aloud. He just pulled his own thermal blanket out of his pack and draped it around himself.

*   *   *

It seemed like only minutes later that a tapping awakened him. Ten opened his eyes but remained perfectly still—it was an instinct that had kept him alive in many field situations in which he found himself hunted by Skynet forces. But there was nothing moving in his immediate view, only the brilliant starfield overhead.

The tapping repeated itself. He turned to look in Glitch’s direction. The big man had not moved, but was rapping his knuckles on the pavement. Once Glitch saw he had Ten’s attention, he pointed southward.

Ten turned to look. Initially he saw nothing, but a suggestion of distant movement on the road drew his eye.

It was a car or van, headed this way, its lights off. Of course its lights were off; Skynet’s robotic forces didn’t need ordinary illumination.

Ten reached over and shook Earl. The older man awakened, took in Ten’s rising-hand “Get everyone up” gesture, and nodded. Keeping his blanket over him, Earl silently moved on hands and knees to where Mark lay.

Ten returned his attention to the incoming vehicle. He calculated it would be here in two minutes or less. From this point on, accurate calculation and timing would be crucial—to their mission’s success and to their own survival. Attention to detail was an equally important factor; Ten absently patted himself down, making sure that his weapons and gear were still strapped, pocketed, and holstered where they should be, that nothing had fallen out to remain behind on the pavement.

The oncoming vehicle took the final turnoff onto the road that would bring it up to the parking lot. The Hell-Hounds, all now awake and alert, kept vehicles between themselves and the incoming machine, between themselves and the front of the hospital—against the high probability that there were visual sensors at the hospital’s entrances.

The vehicle was a white van. As it neared, Ten could make out its engine noise; it clattered with the distinct sound of bad lifters. Though Skynet did maintain the machinery that served it, the computer network eventually ran into the ground every piece of materiel it commanded—Every piece that the Resistance didn’t steal or destroy, Ten amended.

The van parked directly in front of the main entrance. Ten had situated himself off at an angle so that he could still see the entrance if anything did park there. Peering around the front bumper of the ancient pickup truck he hid behind, he saw the van’s driver emerge.

It was a large, muscular man, built like Glitch, but with long, dirty blond hair; he wore a black T-shirt and red shorts with palm-tree designs in yellow. Not him, it; Ten recognized the thing as an older T-600 variant. The T-600’s skin was a little too shiny, the rubber surface unblemished and unrealistic. Ten grimaced over the fact that the Terminator’s clothing-choice software appeared to be malfunctioning.

Though it didn’t matter what the Terminator wore. Under the right circumstances the T-600 could kill every living member of the Hell-Hounds.

The T-600 opened the sliding door on the near side of the van and pulled out a wooden crate larger than a coffin. The way the box creaked as it was handled, the way it sagged slightly when it was placed over the T-600’s shoulder, suggested that it weighed a few hundred pounds. The T-600 carried it without apparent effort to the hospital’s main entrance and began tapping at a plate inset in the wall beside the doors.

Ten resisted the urge to signal Glitch. He’d given Glitch precise, difficult-to-misinterpret orders. Now he had to rely on Glitch’s own sense of timing, not second-guess or micromanage him.

Glitch rose, near-silent, and began moving toward the T-600.

There was a quiet buzz from the hospital main doors. Light appeared, outlining the doors—top and bottom, then between them as the doors swung inward. Then the T-600 turned just enough to look at Glitch, who was twenty yards away and closing.

The T-600 did not react. Glitch did not alter the pace of his approach. They merely looked at one another, a long moment—all it took for the two Terminators to exchange signals that established their respective identities, model numbers, missions, and priorities. Glitch’s data, of course, was a fabrication, based on the scraps and leavings of data the Resistance could sometimes intercept from Skynet communications traffic. It wouldn’t hold up to a detailed check at Skynet’s end.

The T-600 turned away and entered the building.

Glitch waited there and pulled objects from his jacket pocket. As the spring-loaded doors swung back to close, he bent over to place the objects before them—wedge-shaped pieces of wood. Door stops. The doors hung half-open.

Glitch returned to the parking lot, his heavy steps loud. Ten could feel them in the pavement as Glitch neared him. Now was the part Ten had hated since this plan was conceived … and he’d been the one to suggest it. He wrapped himself in his thermal blanket, pulling it around him like a cocoon so that it hid head, feet, and everything in between.

Blind, he lay there as Glitch came around the vehicle that served as his cover. He heard the jingling of metal clasps on Glitch’s gear and could smell lilacs as the Terminator bent over him. Glitch picked him up, as effortlessly as a grown man might pick up a wicker basket, and carried him.

It was forty long steps. Ten could see light increasing in intensity. Then Glitch set him down on a hard, flat surface, turned, and was gone.

Ten unwrapped himself. He lay in the hall just beyond the entry doors Glitch had rigged with the door stops. He was up in an instant, scanning the walls and ceiling of this hallway for cameras and other sensors. He wouldn’t be able to detect subtle sensors—fiber-optic camera lenses, pressure plates under the floor—but in a secure area like this, Skynet didn’t generally rely on subtlety.

He saw first that the hall had not only been kept up but had been redecorated since Judgment Day. The paint on the walls was white and fresh. The linoleum on the floor was clean, and though not new—Ten imagined that no factory had manufactured linoleum in decades—it was polished and relatively unscuffed. Visible doorways up the hall showed no signs of decay or neglect.

Cool air was blowing through the building’s vents.

That didn’t make a lot of sense. Skynet facilities tended to operate only the machinery and equipment useful to Skynet. Decorations, comfort, doors for privacy—these were all things machine intelligences did not need and so they were never maintained. Ten felt worry pluck at him. He hated things that made no sense.

Glitch returned, carrying an extra-long bundle, and when he set it down Mark unrolled himself from the blanket. Then it was Earl’s turn—and finally Kyla’s. The two dogs trotted along behind Glitch for that trip, their ears back.

They were properly trained Resistance dogs. They hated Terminators. It had taken a lot of extra training for them to understand that Glitch was a member of the team, was an ally of Kyla. It had helped when, early in that process, the Hell-Hounds had found an old, unlooted perfume shop and Earl had hit on the bright idea to take all the perfumes and colognes that time had not rendered absolutely revolting. Now Glitch always wore perfume, a helpful scent recognition for the dogs, who otherwise would have a difficult time distinguishing him from other Terminators.

Nor was their presence, if captured by the facility’s external cameras, likely to alert Skynet to danger. Dogs were no threat to Skynet … unless they were under Kyla’s direction, that is.

Kyla unrolled herself from her blanket and stood, somehow not hampered or made less graceful by the sniper rifle case she held. Ten kicked the door stops out from under the doors and they closed. The team was assembled.

Now it was time to find out just what the hell was going on in the old San Diego Naval Medical Center.

Present-Day

California

“Actually, I think I’m mentally ill,” Paul said.

Eliza smiled again. This was not the right reaction from a woman receiving that sort of news. “You’re obviously trying very hard to impress me.”

Paul smiled back at her. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean really mentally ill. You’re the first person I’ve had a chance to talk to in, well, I don’t remember how long. And I think the solitude is making me sort of nuts.”

“How nuts?”

“I have odd little moments of paranoia. Thinking everyone is looking at me and trying not to show it. Spying on me. Secretly keeping me from finding a decent job.”

Eliza nodded. “That is nuts.” Her tone was agreeable, not at all alarmed or cautious.

“Do you ever feel that way?”

“Everyone is always looking at me,” she said. “They just don’t bother to hide it. And no one is trying to keep me from finding a decent job. I’m already at the top of my profession.”

“Killing people.”

“Advertising.”

“Oh, that’s right.” Paul signaled the waitress for another round of drinks. He’d never thought of himself as a beer drinker, but whatever they were serving on draft tonight was good. Plus he’d had three already and wasn’t even beginning to feel the effects.

So, now the hard part. How to ask her out? He’d somehow been born without the gene that made it effortless just to walk up to a woman and ask her out, ask her to dance, ask her for her number. Each time, it was a struggle to find a way that didn’t sound awkward and contrived.

“I think you should show me around town,” Eliza said.

Paul’s grip on his glass faltered. He managed, fumbling, to catch it before he deposited the last of his current beer onto the tabletop. “What?”

“I think you should show me around town,” she repeated, her tone patient. “You said you were a historian. I imagine you know a lot about the city’s history.”

“Yes, of course. I’d love to.” Paul nodded agreeably, tried to retain his cool.

Then a new thought occurred to him and caused coldness to trickle down his spine: What city am I in?