It would have to be.
CHAPTER TWO
In another reality, however, the events surrounding the siege at the Cyberdyne complex-and the fateful confrontation with the T-1000 Terminator-took an entirely different course...
SKYNET'S WORLD
NORTHWEST OF CALEXICO, CALIFORNIA
MAY, 1994
As he fooled around with the T-800 at the Salceda compound, John was aware of Sarah watching him, though he couldn't tell what was on her mind. When she'd finished checking and cleaning the weapons, they let her rest for a minute. In her boots and military clothes, she looked almost like a Terminator herself, but also tired, drained by years of struggle and the stress of escape from the Pescadero Hospital, with the T-1000 close on their tail.
John helped the T-800 pack the guns in the back of the Bronco, together with their maps, documents, jerry cans of gasoline, fuel siphons, radios, and explosives. If the T-1000 tracked them down. it would not find them helpless.
The Salceda kids were playing by the trailers and vehicles that made up Enrique's compound. Their scrappy dog yapped round them happily. Everyone had told John J his mother was some kind of psycho-crazy, tried to stop him believing in her. But now that he'd seen Terminators in action, he realized that everything she'd ever said was true. The deadly T-1000 was still out there, planning how to track him down and kill him.
John stopped work for a moment, thinking about Judgment Day. Out here in the desert, the Salcedas might escape the initial explosions and the chaos caused by the electromagnetic pulses, but how long could they last against fallout, nuclear winter, then the machines? There must be safer places—he and his mom would need to persuade as many of their friends as possible to move south, well away from the U.S.
Sarah had drooped over the picnic table, with her cheek on the back of her hand. While the T-800 went on working, John walked over to her, quietly, thinking she was asleep. She looked up—she must have sensed his presence, perhaps his shadow falling over her. 'I was thinking about Judgment Day,' she said.
'It's okay, Mom,' John said. 'We'll get through all this. We've just got to tough it out.'
She sat up, giving him a tired smile. 'We have to be strong.' Her jaw clenched and she picked up her knife, toying with it. Then she drove it point-first into the surface of the picnic table. She'd carved there the words: NO FATE. 'We can stop them,' she said.
'Mom? What are you talking about? If it's what I think you're thinking, don't even go there. Not now. This isn't the right time.'
'Cyberdyne,' she said. 'This guy Miles Dyson, the guy who invents Skynet—we can stop it happening. We can blow up Cyberdyne, or take out Dyson, make sure no one can follow his research.'
'You tried that before,' John said, 'with that government lab last year. They put you away, remember? The cops will be expecting you to try something like that.'
Her jaw was set firm. 'We have to keep trying.'
'You only just got out of Pescadero. You don't want to go back.'
'We can't just wait for Judgment Day.'
'Okay, okay. But we can try later, or try something else. But we can't just kill people, and we can't attack Cyberdyne just when the T-1000 could be expecting it.'
That struck home. Obviously, Sarah was weighing it all in her mind.
'There's got to be another way,' John said.
Sarah lit a cigarette and drew back on it. She chewed her lips, then took another drag on the cancer stick. 'All right,' she said grimly. 'We'll wait.' She sounded resentful, like she knew better, but then she went quiet and her face softened. She stood and stepped close to him, opening her arms. She hugged John to her tightly, not saying anything, just sobbing. 'I love you,' she said. 'I always have.'
And he realized: he'd always known. 'I know. It's okay, Mom... I love you, too.'
Three hours later, they were in Mexico. The two of them, and 'Uncle Bob.'
LOS ANGELES
The T-1000's shapeshifting abilities were almost unlimited, constrained only by its constant body mass. Its default appearance was that of a young, serious-looking male human. Since arriving in 1994, it had found the value of mimicking a police uniform and using police vehicles.
At the Pescadero Hospital, the Connors had evaded it, stealing a car and accelerating out into the city streets That was a setback, but the T-1000 still had resources. Down the road, within the Hospital's grounds, police and paramedics milled about like ants around a honey jar. A motorcycle policeman rode up to the T-1000, mistaking it for a human colleague. 'You okay?'
'Fine,' the T-1000 said. 'Say... that's a nice bike.' Its finger became a metal spear, quickly stabbing the man] through the throat. If he lived, he might interfere. Quickly, the T-1000 hid the body in a nearby garden, then slipped away into the night, following the direction the Connors had taken. It had little chance of reacquiring them without assistance, but the authorities would pursue them, and it could easily obtain police information.
Hours passed as it cruised round the city and its mile of sprawling suburbs. The Connors would need to hide somewhere overnight and deal with their wounds from the breakout. As the night passed, the T-1000 listened to the police radio. Numerous messages came through, including several sightings of the Connors, but they were alarms. This was a waste of time, and the trail was getting cold. By now, they would have disposed of their vehicle. In this situation, the T-1000's programming offered no clear solution. It knew very little about the resources and associates of the Connors during this period of their lives, except that they were known to have come from Los Angeles. Unfortunately, many records had been lost in the Judgment Day war and the chaos that followed.
As morning approached, the T-1000 returned to the home of John Connor's foster parents: Todd and Janelle Voights. It had terminated the Voights and their dog before
taking action to acquire Sarah Connor at the Pescadero Hospital. Everything here was quiet.
It rifled through the pages of letters, diaries, and address books, seeking anything that might suggest the Connors' next move or any hiding place they might use. Among the papers were letters from Sarah Connor to her son, sent from Pescadero, but they were not useful. If there was information here, it was too privately coded. The house also contained computer disks, a hard drive, and many video and audio tapes. The tapes were mostly in commercial packaging, but that could be a deception--any of them might contain hidden messages. As the sun rose, the T-1000 played the audio tapes on the Voights' sound system. They were all as advertised: various commercial recordings.
It lacked the resources to analyze the other material. Dealing with the disks and hard drive was the most difficult There was too much information on them for the Terminator to waste time reviewing them itself. Nor could it stay here watching the videotapes—sooner or later, someone would interrupt it and cause complications. It dismantled the computer and stuffed everything it needed into a shopping bag. At 10:35 a.m., it left the police bike in a downtown alley. Unobserved, morphed its appearance back to that of an orderly whom it had terminated at the Pescadero Hospital. Taking the computer materials, it walked to the police station, where a desk sergeant was seated behind a screen of bulletproof glass, talking to a wildly gesticulating middle-aged couple.
The T-1000 pushed through and handed over the disks and the hard drive. 'This came from the Voight residence,' it said in the orderly's voice.
'Hey, you can't barge in like this,' said the middle-aged man. 'Wait your turn.'
'This is evidence from the Voight residence,' the T-1000 said, ignoring this. 'The foster parents of John Connor, whose mother broke out of Pescadero last night. Do you understand what I'm telling you?'
'What? How did you get this?' the sergeant said.
'Check it. It may contain information about the Connors' whereabouts.' It strode out past the couple, who glared at it with impotent rage.
Minutes later, it found its bike, still parked in the alley. Fine. It left the bike there and changed its appearance once more, this time to that of Janelle Voight, John Connor's foster mother. In that guise, it entered an appliance store two city blocks from the police station. As it checked the racks of gleaming video equipment, a clerk approached. 'Can I help you, ma'am?' He was a gangly teenager with prominent teeth. He wore a striped shirt and a bright yellow tie.
