slowed him, often enveloped him—but they did not stop him. He reached the river.
Moving far faster than Wright, Connor’s ’copter now hovered just above the water, its searchlight scanning the surface, hunting for him. One of the gunners tossed out a flare, further illuminating the scene.
Something bubbled within the river, as if the water was being brought suddenly to a boil. Then the surface erupted.
There were at least a dozen Hydrobots. Segmented like worms, wholly serpentine in shape, eyeless but equipped with a host of other sensors, they exploded out of the water to clamp razor-lined metal jaws on the underside of the low-flying chopper. Though barely four feet in length, the weight of their numbers caused the helicopter to skew wildly to one side.
Screaming, one of the gunners fell out of the open door on his side while his counterpart scrambled to maintain a grip and footing inside the sharply slanting cabin.
Connor could not help. With the hydraulics already damaged by the initial attack from below, it was all he could do to maintain minimal stability and stay airborne. Meanwhile several of the rapacious steel serpents had chewed their way into the main cabin where they were wreaking havoc on anything within reach of their whirring jaws.
Frantic kicking and firing didn’t save the surviving gunner. As his desperate shots spanged harmless off the armored intruders, one bit through his right leg. Blood spurted in all directions. A sharp crunching sound filled the cabin as metal teeth began to munch their way through bone.
In the water below, the soldier who had been dumped out of the helicopter barely managed to fight his way to the surface before he was pulled under, eyes wide and shrieking as he was sliced up from beneath.
When the last of the chopper’s hydraulic fluid ran out, control was lost completely. As it lurched toward the dark surface below, Connor half jumped and was half tossed from the mortally crippled machine. Slowing blades barely missing him, the ’copter crashed into the shallows that fronted the riverbank.
Gasping for air, he floundered in the water a moment before realizing that it was barely hip-deep where he had landed. Drawing his pistol, he struggled shoreward. The ground underfoot was a maddening composite of sand and mud that did everything it could to slow his progress. Somewhere behind him the Hydrobots were butchering the last remaining soldier.
Then they found him.
Even in the dim light it was hard to miss their gleaming, reflective, deadly surfaces. One after another took a slug from his oversized pistol and went down, writhing and convulsing in a horrible approximation of real life. A stride at a time, he battled his way toward the shore.
At last the muck underfoot gave way to more stable gravel and rock. Water drained from his legs as he staggered out onto dry land. Designed to operate and survive in water, the limbless Hydrobots could not follow. But they could still fling themselves high out of the shallows. One did, aiming to lock its cutting jaws on his skull. Detecting its prodigious leap out of the corner of an eye, Connor whirled, trained his lethal pistol on it, and fired. Nothing.
Dry round.
Instinctively, he brought one arm up in a desperate attempt to ward off the attack as he struggled to eject the bad round and chamber another shell. The Hydrobot plunged toward him—but metal never met flesh. Hands snatched the writhing machine out of the air and as easily as they would break open a chicken leg, snapped it in half. Spasming independently, both sections were thrown back into the river. Connor did not linger on their sinking shapes. Instead, he straight away trained the muzzle of his weapon on the man who had saved him.
His clothing and skin largely gone, not even breathing hard from his flight from the base, Marcus Wright stared back at Connor. In the shallows, a mass of Hydrobots had gathered. But none attempted a repeat of the aerial assault on the human. A gasping Connor used his free hand to gesture in their direction.
“Look at them. They’re not attacking. Not attacking me because you just indicated how you want them to behave. Not attacking you because they know what you are. Even if you don’t.”
Wright replied without rancor, indicating the pistol gripped tightly in Connor’s fist.
“Guess that means that gun isn’t going to do you much good, even if it’s still functional. No gun’s going to stop me.”
Connor studied the powerful figure confronting him, letting his gaze rove over the remarkable amalgamation of the metallic and the organic. Napalm having burned away much of the carefully nurtured epidermal layer, the details of the unparalleled fusion were more visible than ever.
“Nobody’s shot you in the heart,” he wheezed. “I see that thing’s beating a mile a minute. I’d bet that it’s been modified, adapted, and juiced just like the rest of your ‘human’ components, but it still looks like there’s enough of the original left to respond badly to a heavy slug.”
The observation gave Wright pause. Then he nodded.
“That seems pretty close to the mark.” He straightened. “Do it then. Kill me.”
Still shaky from the crash and the frantic flight from the Hydrobots, a panting Connor struggled to fix his aim. His finger began to contract on the trigger.
Wright did not look away, showed not the slightest sign of fear.
“Kyle Reese is alive.”
Connor tried not to react to the claim, but exhausted and exposed as he was, this time he could not keep his expression from giving his feelings away. His finger eased off the trigger.
“How can you be sure?” Connor spoke guardedly. Though his finger had eased off the trigger, he did not lower the pistol.
“I told you before, but you wouldn’t listen. He and a little girl who befriended me were part of a group taken
