out to the side, letting it burn down. Some ash dropped on the wooden floor. 'Poor John. It's a tough job, right?'
'What do you want me to do, Mom? You taught me how important it is.'
'I know, I know. But I wouldn't want you to be my boyfriend. You'd never keep a date.'
'Mom!'
She laughed. 'Maybe you could take things a little bit easier.'
'But if they ever build Skynet, Judgment Day could still come.'
'I know. God, don't you think I know that? Skynet nearly killed us both. I won't forget it in a hurry. That's why we keep training. That's why we're holed up here at the end of the Earth.'
'I
'Sure, sure.' She shook her head like it wasn't important 'We can't ever let up, John. I know that. But we need a better life than this. Both of us do. This isn't normal. Everyone out there in the real world thinks we're crazy.' She waved the cigarette around, then ashed it in a saucer on one of John's shelves. 'If we're not careful, it'll make us crazy. Then there are the people we're shacked up with here. They really are crazy, and dangerous-type crazy at that. Same with Enrique.'
'Don't worry, I know. I can tell the difference.'
'If not for Judgment Day, we'd run a mile from someone like Raoul. Just don't grow up thinking Raoul's normal. He's cunning as hell, and he's cultured and charming, and all the rest of it. But he's living in a world of his own.'
'Don't worry, Mom. You always worry. I know about Raoul. He's cool, but he's nuts. Right?'
'Yeah, something like that.'
'He's not like my
'And do what? We can't show our faces back home. They'd catch us sooner or later.'
'Where's home?' he said, making a joke of it. An angry look crossed her face again, and he said, 'I mean really. We should be safe now. We could go somewhere else. Anywhere you want.'
He knew that she still thought of California as home, but it didn't seem like that to him. After she'd met Kyle Reese, and Kyle had died fighting the first Terminator, Sarah had lived for a while in Mexico. John had been born there. He had no family in the U.S., hardly any friends. That first Terminator had also taken out Sarah's mother and her best friend. They had no one left. He'd grown up in so many countries that being in one of them in particular wasn't all that important. If it mattered to his mom, maybe they could move back closer to California.
'Why not?' he said. 'Where do you want to live? We can move on, Mom. If Judgment Day's not going to happen now, we could go somewhere by ourselves. You know we could do it. We'd be okay. We can do all sorts of stuff.'
'You're serious, aren't you?' she said. She looked at him wonderingly, as if she'd never thought of upping and leaving the estancia.
'It's only three months to Judgment Day. If nothing happens then, we could set up some kind of shop—I don't know-maybe back in Mexico. Maybe we could meet some normal people, for a change.'
'I'll think about it,' she said, sounding surprised at what she was saying.
John felt proud that he could talk sensibly like this to grown-ups, not like the kids his age back in LA. If there was no Judgment Day, why not head north? There was so much to see and do in Mexico. They could even visit the U.S. occasionally, if they were very careful. 'I want you to be happy,' he said. 'I love you, Mom.'
'I love you, too, John. But how about you finish up and get some sleep? Just this once, okay? Humor me.'
'Okay,' he said.
He hadn't expected the conversation to go like this. He felt a weight lift off his chest and fly away somewhere. They could probably live in different places as John grew up. They could move around, and see the sights. But they'd need to start somewhere.
They could lose themselves in the biggest, boldest city of them all: Mexico City.
CHAPTER FOUR
SKYNET'S WORLD
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
1994
The T-1000 morphed into its Janelle Voight form, and waved down a taxi.
'Say,'' it said. 'That's a nice cab...'
It abandoned the cab in a downtown back street, then returned to its hotel room, taking a route through a narrow alleyway. Once there, it fast-forwarded through the remaining videos from the Voight house. None were of any help. Time to make a long-term plan. The police had the other evidence and would, no doubt, review it carefully. For the next seven days, the T-1000 would check developments within the L.A.P.D. That was something it had mastered.
There was no other immediate lead, and it assessed a probability that the Connors would avoid leaving any truly useful information on computer disk. That suggested another approach. In the future that the T-1000 came from, Skynet's records showed that John Connor's guerrilla forces first appeared in rural Argentina. The records were patchy until 2022, when Connor was encountered back in California, but it stood to reason that he would be in Argentina, or a neighboring country, on Judgment Day. That also explained how he would survive the nuclear devastation in the Northern Hemisphere.
For the T-1000, it was easy to morph into whatever form was required to outwit security systems and board airplanes. It could infiltrate the Argentinean information systems just as easily as it had those of the Los Angeles police. Even if it had to wait until after Judgment Day, sooner or later Connor would show his face in public.
The T-1000 could be very patient. It would complete its mission, using police information from as many countries as it had to.
Seven days later, it left the hotel for the last time.
'I won't be back, dear,' it said to the woman at the front desk.
'Hold on,' she said. She raised the hinged counter and ran after the T-1000, touching its arm. 'How do you want to pay?'
Its right hand morphed into a sword-like weapon as it turned to her.
The liquid-metal Terminator smiled sweetly. 'Like this...'
ARGENTINA
1997
It all unfolded as they knew it would, as the messages from the future had said. First, the announcements from Cyberdyne about its radical new computer hardware, then the major defense contracts. The U.S. upgraded its stealth bombers to operate unmanned, controlled by Cyberdyne nanochips. The government announced funding for more and more ambitious projects, culminating in the Skynet system.
Now he was growing up, John realized the burden that his mother had taken on. For him, it had been slightly unreal, back in 1994. He'd been just a kid, able to treat almost anything as cool—getting shot at, having his own Terminator to order around. Some things went deeper, like finding out his mom was an okay human being. But, like the adults around him always said, kids were so adaptable.
Well, he didn't feel so adaptable anymore, just determined, and scared, and angry.
He was not yet thirteen.
It seemed like he'd been given the worst of both worlds. Nothing they'd done had changed the march of events. Maybe they should have tried harder, as Sarah had wanted, before they left the States. At the same time, even his predicted victory over Skynet was uncertain. He'd need to fight every single inch, as if he'd never had the message from 2029. As his father had told Sarah, that was only one possible future.
Now he watched as the people around him came to understand what was happening, where their world was heading. It was just like he'd experienced in L.A., the realization that Sarah was sane, and the rest of the world was crazy. For the Tejadas, it came as a shock, the way events fell into place exactly as John and Sarah had said they
