c.14

I need help.

Paul woke up on his back, staring up into darkness.

The surface he moved on was moving—rocking, swaying, jostling. He was in a car or truck. It stank of gasoline.

The voice that awoke him spoke again. I know you’re awake. Say something, but whisper, please. Otherwise they’ll hear you.

“This is bullshit,” he whispered.

You just said, “This is bullshit.” I heard you. Please believe me, it’s real.

He shook his head, trying to force the strangeness of the situation out of his head so memory could return. He had no idea how he had come to be here, where “here” was, or anything. The last he remembered, he was going to work, day after day after day … “Who’s speaking?”

It’s Eliza. Do you remember me? For God’s sake, say you remember me.

“Eliza.” He sat up, remembering her, the bar, the bouncer. Something strange had happened, but there was a cloud between him and those memories. There was a little light in the direction he faced, and he was certain that he was staring over a tailgate, under a cloth canopy, at a moonlit road. Beside him was a camouflage-pattern backpack he didn’t recognize.

We’re in danger, she said. Very, very great danger. And I’m going to die if you don’t help me. I’m not the only one, either. Please help.

He moved on hands and knees to the tailgate. His new position gave him a better sense of what he was seeing. It was a roadway, all right, a two-lane blacktop lit only by a half-moon and the stars. It was so dark he found it inconceivable that the truck was even running its headlights.

I’m not like you, Eliza said. I can communicate with just my mind.

“Telepathy,” he whispered.

Yes.

“I don’t believe in telepathy.”

What else that you experience do you not believe in? How else do you explain what’s happening?

“You’re right, I’m sorry. Why can’t I remember anything?” It was so hard to think. Paul wanted to beat his head against the cloud that obscured his memory, but it was not a physical thing he could overcome. Enough time, though, and he was certain he’d think his way through it.

You’ve been drugged. The government came for me. To study me. To dissect me. You tried to stop them. They shot you with a dart. You managed to get in the back of their truck anyway. But you passed out.

“I’ve read that before. Or seen a movie like that.” He could almost remember telling Eliza such things, the plots of movies he’d seen and books he’d read. But that memory, too, was deep in the cloud layer. “It can’t be real.”

It is real. You’ve got to get me out of this crate, out of my restraints. But don’t make a noise. They have microphones back here. If you make a sound, they’ll do something awful.

He turned back to the crate. He was still wearing his belt pouch, and within it were a penlight, his multitool, and other items he dimly remembered. He brought out the penlight and turned it on.

The crate was made of old, dirty softwood. The lid had been nailed on, but the nails were small ones and had been tacked down in only two places around the lid’s edge. He brought out his multitool, folded out the flat-edge screwdriver, and carefully worked it into the gap between the lid and the body of the crate.

Carefully, he exerted leverage, quietly prying up the lid. Once all the nails on one side were exposed, he moved around to the other side and repeated the process.

He set the multitool down beside the crate. Then, as silently as he could, he hefted the lid and set it aside.

Within the crate, looking to his eye for all the world like a cinema vampire within a coffin, lay Eliza. But something was wrong with his eyes; even in the darkness, under his flashlight beam, her face seemed oddly blurry.

Nor was that the only strange thing. There were two devices on her, one resting on her chest, the other clamped to her neck and shoulders.

He recognized the first device instantly. It was a large charge of C-4, plastic explosive, with a radio detonator attached to it.

That took him aback. He didn’t know anything about plastic explosives or detonators. But he knew what he was seeing.

The other device was an assemblage of clamps and cables. Some of the cables were attached to her neck and the bare skin around her collarbones by bandages. His eyes blurred whenever he looked at them. Nor did he want to look at them. This was horrible, some sort of insanity that did not belong anywhere near a nice, quiet life such as his.

The bomb first, Eliza said. That’s the part with the microphone on it. When we dispose of that, they can’t hear us anymore.

He looked over the mass of plastic explosive and the apparatus on it. It seemed impossibly simple. The detonator seemed to have a metal pin extending from it into the C-4; he could see perhaps an eighth of an inch of the pin. Pushed into another portion of the explosive was a small microphone; a wire encased in black plastic trailed from it to a small black case the size of a fist but flatter. A red LED on the black case gleamed dully.

If he correctly interpreted what he was seeing, all he had to do was pull the detonator out of the plastic explosive. Then it would be harmless. His heart in his throat, he reached over and did exactly that, slowly withdrawing the metal pin from the charge. When it was clear, he set the detonator aside.

Now the microphone. The wire leading into the black case was not permanently affixed to it; it was attached to the case by what looked like a standard jack. With similar care, though this was no detonator, he pulled the jack free. The LED slowly faded to complete darkness.

“Done,” he said aloud.

Good. But that was the easy part. The thing that has me paralyzed, that’s going to be more complicated.

“Do you know what to do?”

Yes. But I need you to take a long, slow look at it. I’ll see it through your eyes.

He did so. He found that his vision blurred worse than ever, the lines of Eliza’s face and of the apparatus refusing to solidify into a single, clear vision. But he forced himself to keep his eyes open.

Yes, this will be simple, too. One by one, I want you to grab the cables attached to my neck and chest and pull them free. You’ll have to pull hard.

“Not too hard. They’re just attached by bandages.”

No, they are sunk into me. Trust me, it’s not going to hurt much. I have a high pain threshold.

“All right.” Not at all certain about this, Paul took hold of one of the four cables and tugged.

Eliza’s skin pulled, but the cable did not come free.

He spared a glance for her face. His eyes still blurred, though he could see her own eyes, clear and beautiful in the midst of the blurry picture, fixed on him. She did not seem to be in pain.

He took the cable in both hands and yanked.

Her skin stretched alarmingly as the cable held. Then it came free. At its end, horribly enough, were denuded copper wires.

“Eliza, there’s no blood.” There was something very wrong with that. A suspicion tickled at the back of his mind, but would not resolve itself.

The imbedded shunts keep the blood from the wires, she said. Please hurry, the others—

He hurried. The second came free in his hands, then the third. “What are we going to do once you’re free?”

My father is very rich. He controls companies all over the world. We’ll go to one of them. He has a job for you.

The fourth and last cable came free in his hands.

Eliza sighed. He looked at her, and his vision cleared. Suddenly her features were as he remembered them, arctic and beautiful.

She sat up and wrapped her arms around him.

“What does he do?”

“He rules the world.”

“Very funny.”

She stared at him impassively. “I’m not joking. Here, let me free up your memory. And ask you a question. Is John Connor in this convoy, and is he ahead of us or behind us?”

“Ahead—” And in that moment, he knew who she was, what he had just done.

He shoved at her, a desperate, adrenaline-charged attempt to escape, but her grip was like that of a hydraulic press. He opened his mouth to scream, to warn the people in the cab of this truck, but she released him with one arm and struck him in the solar plexus.

It was, perhaps, a trifling blow by Terminator standards, but it drove all the wind from him and he sagged.

She stood out of her crate and bent over him. She yanked the other ends of the cables free from the apparatus that had paralyzed her. She rolled Paul onto his stomach and bound his hands and feet with them, with typical machine speed and efficiency. From the canopy over the truck’s bed, she ripped strips of cloth and used them to gag him.

And all the while she spoke, calmly and dispassionately. “I told you the truth, though I calculate that it will not comfort you. You will be returned to your previous occupation, teaching me and then others like me about human behavior. Whether or not I am able to terminate John Connor tonight, you will be taken to our new training facility to resume your duties.” In his mind’s eye, Paul saw glimpses, little flashes of trees, nearby mountains, an atrium with a water fountain, the water’s surface still and green. “Paul, you may end up being the last surviving human on Earth. Won’t that be nice?” She moved up to the front of the truck bed, reached up to rip a hole in the canopy there, and scrambled up out of Paul’s sight.

*   *   *

Silent and careful, the T-X climbed up onto the roof of the truck’s cab. She distributed her great weight on all four limbs, positioning them as close to the cab back and sides as possible for maximum support. It would not do to have the cab roof sag and alert those within.

She leaned out over the driver’s-side door and scaled up her audio sensors to their highest level of receptivity. She also comformed her ear on that side into a conical shape, transforming her ear into the equivalent of a shotgun microphone.

The humans were talking.

“… pranged it right across the stomach and cut it in half. So it was lying there in two pieces. Mind you, it was still pretty dangerous. It started crawling toward me, and those things can crawl fast.”

“Do you talk about anything but fighting?”

“Sure I do. I talk about women. But not while Libby’s here. Unless you like women, Libby.”

A female voice: “Not that way, thanks.”

“So, it’s fighting.”

“Ever think about broadening your horizons?”

“Like how?”

“My engineering unit puts on the Christmas play.”

“Oh, God, spare me.”

The T-X leaned away. The humans were not communicating with other vehicles in the convoy, and they were not aware that she had escaped. These were the two most important things.

She looked around. Her infrared sensors picked up heat traces, one approximately half a mile ahead, one close to a mile behind. This convoy appeared to be negotiating a winding road, a set of hairpin turns and switchbacks descending a long, low mountain slope.

She gripped the top edge of the driver’s-side window, contorted herself, and swung in through the window.

Her foot smashed into the driver’s head, knocking loose the elaborate set of goggles he wore, snapping his neck, changing the shape of the skull. He slumped. She dropped into place on top of him, sitting in his lap.

The cab’s other two passengers barely had time to look. The human female, in the center, reached for the submachine gun in her lap. The male, by the passenger-side door, reached for his lapel.

She struck each with one arm. The T-X’s right hand penetrated the woman’s torso, shredding her heart and emerging through her spine, while her left hand seized the man’s neck, choking off anything he might have had to say. She squeezed and his neck snapped, causing his head to loll around.

Time expended: two seconds. In that time, the truck had drifted to the right, toward the drop-off. Another few feet and its right-hand wheels would have lost purchase, sending the truck over the edge. But she seized the steering wheel and got the lumbering vehicle back toward the center of the lane.

It was only a matter of moments then to open the passenger-side door and throw out the three bodies, making sure to hurl them far enough that they ended up partway down the mountain slope. That way the occupants of the vehicle a mile back would not detect them.

Her internal diagnostics were still indicating that she could not establish a connection with Skynet. The humans must have damaged her communications systems in some significant way. She would have to establish communication at a Skynet site. That was relegated to the status of secondary goal. The fact that John Connor was near, part of this convoy, made his termination her primary goal.

She had resources. Her weapons systems seemed intact, and this vehicle would allow her to keep up with the convoy. But if the members of the convoy were traveling in this spread-out formation, it would not necessarily allow her to approach the vehicles ahead of her without being detected.

She leaned forward to smash out the glass of the windshield. Using a backpack left behind by one of the dead humans, she braced the accelerator in its current position. Then, one hand always on the steering wheel, she clambered out onto the truck hood.

The T-X peeled up portions of the metal of the hood as easily as a human might peel the rind off a citrus fruit. Beneath lay the machinery of the engine. Into it she extended her hand. Its end reconfigured, the liquid metal skin assuming its natural silvery sheen and drawing back, revealing the tools and weapon heads there.

The T-X had truly been designed to be the ultimate weapon of destruction for twentieth-century time-jumping operations. In addition to the hardened battle chassis required by most Terminator units, she had the broadest array of internal weapons known to a Skynet unit. She possessed a liquid metal skin, adapted from the T-1000 design, that allowed her to imitate the appearance of just about any human alive or dead, real or fictitious. And then there was a final boon, apparati that would allow her to control vehicles remotely.

From her arm poured streams of material. Some were nanites, microscopic robots with very simple programming. Some were cables with musclelike flexion and retraction functions. Some were radio transceivers, others sensors, others connectors. Following her broadcast dictates, they distributed themselves through the engine, into the transmission, into the brakes, configuring themselves so that in minutes they became a fully realized set of remote-controlled servos and cameras.

She also retained a transceiver and connected it through nanite chain to her central processor. It wouldn’t increase her transmission range much, just to a few hundred yards. But that would be sufficient for the next stage of her plan.

When she was done, she released the steering wheel. The truck, now a very primitive robot slaved to her instructions, continued down the road at its designated rate of speed.

Up ahead was a hairpin turn. The vehicle a half-mile up had already negotiated it.

The T-X leaped from the truck hood and over the lip at the edge of the road. With a grace and power no human could duplicate, she began running down the rocky slope toward the continuation of the road below.

She would attack the next vehicle in line. If it contained John Connor, her mission was concluded. If it did not, she would kill its occupants, gain control of its functions, and use the same tactic to approach the next vehicle in line. And on and on, until John Connor was dead.

*   *   *

Sick with misery, Paul lay on the truck bed.

The enormity of the betrayal he had just committed, however inadvertent it might have been, was like a hundred tons of rock crushing him.

But punching through his guilt was one fact that would not let him go: He had to do something about it. Had to warn the others.

He could still move a little. He could inch his way to the rear of the truck, sit up—and what then?

If he levered himself over the tailgate, he would fall to the road below. The fall would probably kill him. He wasn’t sure how fast the truck was moving—probably somewhere between thirty and fifty miles per hour—but the speed, plus the fact that he’d probably be falling headfirst, would spell his end. But the next vehicle in line would see his body, an alert would go out, and John Connor would survive.

It occurred to him belatedly that his survival didn’t matter. He had to fix what he’d broken. If he were dead, so much the better. Then he wouldn’t have to suffer the new levels of scorn, suspicion, and hatred that would be heaped upon him for his failure.

He crawled like a sideways inchworm toward the rear of the truck.

Then he saw his multitool, lying where he had set it after prying the crate lid free. He rolled over, putting his back to it, and groped around until he got it in his hands.

It took a bit of graceless fumbling, and one drop and recover of the tool, before he could free its wire cutters. Then, awkwardly, but as quickly as he could manage, he got to work on the cables binding him.

He heard the distant sound of the truck’s windshield being shattered. He supposed that noise spelled the deaths of the crew in the cab and that was more weight on his chest, but he ignored it and kept squeezing the wire cutters, willing them to bite into the cables.

He felt them loosen, and despite the increasing soreness in his palm, where his skin pressed hard against the unyielding metal of the cutter handles, he increased his efforts.

Then the handles closed as the last strand of cable came free. He whipped his hands around, yanked his gag free, and got to work on the cables around his ankles.

A minute later he could stand. He moved to the front of the truck bed, used the multitool’s knife blade to slice through the canopy to the left, and poked his head out.

Just ahead was the driver’s-side door. The side-view mirror showed him, dimly, the interior of the cab, but he should have been able to see Eliza’s face and could not. He leaned farther out through the slash in the canopy, getting a better angle on the driver’s-side window, and even in the moonlight he was certain that there was no one behind the wheel.

He looked down at the roadway rolling by beneath. Suddenly it did not seem like such a good idea to dive into it. Carefully, he levered himself out of the gap in the canopy, reaching forward until he got his hands on the driver’s-side window, and pulled himself free, dangling by just his hands for the moment it took him to scrabble his feet onto the driver’s-side step.

The cab was empty. Still, the steering wheel was correcting for the slight bend in the road.

Paul scrambled up and into the cab. The wind, flowing in through the shattered windshield, battered at his face. Where was the T-X? She had to be controlling the truck by remote control. Which meant …

She had to be ahead, going after the next vehicle in the convoy.

On the floorboards were a couple of backpacks and a standard set of Resistance night-sight goggles. He pulled them on. Suddenly all the world was presented to him in shades of yellow and green, the brighter hues indicating warmer objects … and still there was no sign of the T-X.

He poured out the contents of the backpacks. There were no radios to be had, but he found a web belt with a holstered handgun and an ammunition pouch. He buckled it on.