Perhaps it was foolish of them, but John and Sarah didn't shoot. The shock of seeing a man who was almost the image of Miles Dyson made it impossible, even though he could have been a well-disguised Terminator. One thing was for sure: these people were not police. For one thing, traffic cops didn't break into people's property like this. For another, they were so odd. Only one of them looked Hispanic. Close up, the Russian guy, Panov, looked like a six-foot block of granite with a short haircut. He more or less fitted his police uniform, but he didn't look comfortable in it. The two women were impressively muscled, but they looked no more comfortable in their dance outfits.
'Don't come any closer,' Sarah said. 'Prove we can trust you.' As she spoke, two police cars pulled up outside.
The whole lot of them just might be from the future. But, when Judgment Day never happened in 1997, what did that mean? What kind of future had they come from,
and why?
'Run now,' Panov said.
Two police officers entered came to the door. 'What's happening here?' one said.
As they took in the scene, they drew their guns. At the same time, Panov and the others ran towards the back, the Hispanic woman grabbing John by the wrist with immense strength and pulling him. Dyson hustled Sarah, pushing her by the shoulder. Panov and the Oriental woman were the rear guard. Panov had drawn his gun and he suddenly fired with incredible speed and accuracy, shooting the guns from the cops' hands like the hero in an old cowboy movie.
Then another group entered: a spectacular woman with waist-length hair; a German shepherd dog; and another heavily built guy, carrying a huge gun. The woman rushed forward, picked up one of the cops, and threw him aside like a rag doll. The man smashed the other cop with a backhanded blow, knocking him to the floor. The dog leapt for Jade's throat, as the man squeezed the trigger of his weapon, throwing a spear shaft of coherent light.
John made it to the kitchen and, for a few seconds, he saw no more. That guy's radiation weapon was truly massive, but he'd swung it around with ease, one-handed. Nobody human could do that, at least no one+
John had seen, though he wondered what Panov and the others could do. He'd only ever seen one humanoid being do something similar: The T-800 making light of a six-barreled mini-gun when they'd raided Cyberdyne. This latest guy had to be some sort of Terminator. The woman likewise, so what about the dog? Was it some kind of Terminator mutt? What had happened to Jade?
They made it through the kitchen to a back room with a fire door, everything seeming confused. Jade was the last of them. She had a ragged wound in her upper arm, but it was not bleeding, and she seemed unaffected by it. The big Hispanic man-the Terminator-pounded through the kitchen, as Dyson bundled Sarah outside into an alley. John was ready for the Terminator as it entered the back room and took aim at Panov. He fired from the hip with the 12-gauge, and hit the Terminator in the chest, throwing it off balance and making a crater wound of silvery metal. John had seen that before, on the T-1000 he'd fought in 1994. There was no other damage, and the crater closed up in seconds. So this Terminator was like the T-1000, made of mimetic polyalloy. That meant it would be almost indestructible.
There was no doubt now who were the bad guys.
Outside in the alley, an old Pontiac was pulled up, its doors open.
'Get in,' Dyson said. 'Quickly!' He pushed Sarah into the bench seat up front, squeezing her between himself and the driver.
Jade scrambled into the rear, moving like a lizard down its hole, but a lizard sped up by fast-motion photography. Panov snatched the shotgun from John's hands as the Hispanic woman dragged him into the car.
'Hey!' John said.
'Don't complain,' the woman said. 'We know what we're doing.'
The Terminators were right behind them. The dog leapt at Panov but he made it miss, and it collided with the side of the car, denting it Panov fired with the shotgun before the male Terminator could aim, hitting it in the side. He scrambled into the rear with John and the two women from the future-there were now seven of them in the vehicle, since another guy in a traffic cop's uniform was driving. Even before Panov closed his door, this other guy slammed down the accelerator, and the car jerked forward with a squeal. At the same time, the female Terminator leapt with inhuman speed and landed on the car's trunk. John was squashed between Panov and the Hispanic woman, whose name he still didn't know.
The Terminator smashed the rear screen with its fist as Panov squirmed around, crushing John in the process, and brought up the shotgun. He fired at close range, and the shot took the Terminator right in the head, which exploded like popped corn. The Terminator was thrown to the street, but a bolt of concentrated light hit the car, burning a hole in the door near Panov, who grunted hoarsely with pain.
They found a proper street For Mexico City, the traffic was light, but they still had to weave in and out of lanes to make ground, getting as far from the Terminators as they could, as quickly as possible.
'Who's hurt?' Dyson said.
'The dog component bit my arm,' Jade said in a strangely factual way, no passion in her voice. 'It's ninety percent healed.' John had seen the wound that the demonic canine Terminator had taken out of her. It would have slowed down anyone normal for weeks.
'Burns from the phased-plasma laser,' Panov said, just as factually. 'The vehicle's structure absorbed most of the heat.'
'You think you'll heal up okay?' Dyson said.
'Yes, but I'll need nutrients.'
'Right. We'll do something about that.'
The driver was still hammering the accelerator. 'I hope you know where you're going,' John said.
'We have nanoware implants with all the files we need,' the Hispanic woman said. 'We know our way round this city. Trust us. We know what we're doing.'
'Yeah, so you said a minute ago.'
'John?' Dyson said.
'Yeah?'
'Just chill out. Okay?'
He thought about it for a moment. He did have to trust these guys. What choice was there? 'All right,' he said. 'I get the message.'
'How about some introductions here,' Sarah said. She'd been in these situations before. She didn't sound panicked, just pissed off at having her routine disrupted. 'Then someone can tell us what's going on.'
'Right,' Dyson said. 'We're sorry to bring this down on you.'
'You're from the future?' John said. 'You fight Skynet?'
'Exactly.'
'From 2029?'
'No.' Dyson sounded puzzled. 'We're from 2036-fif-teen years after Judgment Day.'
'We have a lot to learn from these people,' Jade said to him.
'Obviously.'
'How about you give us the highlights,' John said, trying to make sense of all this. 'Then we can give you ours.' Dyson had just implied that Judgment Day would happen in 2021. That was a very different story from the one Kyle had brought back from the future, or that the T-800 had told him in 1994.
Dyson craned round for a second. 'All right. We're enhanced human commandos-Specialists. We're with the Resistance.'
'I can relate to that,' John said. 'So does it mean you've come back to help us?'
'In a way. We may even be able to save your lives. You see, you die in six years' time. Maybe we can stop that.'
John's mind suddenly went blank-between the attack and this startling revelation, it was all too much to take in. He couldn't figure out which was worse: the news of his ultimate fate, or the dispassionate way in which it had been delivered.
'Primarily, however,' Jade said, cutting across all this. 'We need your help.'
'
