“Everything you think you feel,” she told him, her voice tinged with compassion, “every choice you’ve made.
Around him, the screens showed machines at work. A hybrid heart being installed in an alloy chasis chest. A chip being emplaced at the base of a skull. Machines working on—him.
“We resurrected you,” the voice explained. “Advanced Cyberdyne’s work. Altered it.”
He stared fixedly at the face that had reappeared on the monitors.
“You
At this, the face on the screens morphed, changed—into that of John Connor. And then into that of Kyle Reese, and back to Connor, the visage speaking Kogan’s words from Connor’s lips.
“Calculations confirm that Serena Kogan’s face is the easiest for you to process. We can be others if you wish.”
The face of Kyle spoke with the cyberneticist’s voice.
“Marcus, what else could you be...”
Back to Connor’s face again.
“...if not machine?”
Lowering his gaze, the bewildered but somehow certain Wright stared at his restored hands, at his newly perfect self, and whispered a reply.
“Human.”
As the images on the multiplicity of monitors shifted and changed, one repeated the installation of the chip in the back of his head. Noting the location, he let one hand drift upward to it.
“Accept what you already know,” the restored vision of Kogan advised. “You were made to serve a purpose, to achieve what no machine had achieved before.”
A new image, taken from an Aerostat.
“To infiltrate,” the voice continued. “To find a target.”
Still another view, this time on a riverbank. Of John Connor gazing at someone, aiming a gun in that someone’s face. Marcus Wright’s face.
The recording was of his own point of view.
“And bring that target back home,” Kogan’s voice concluded, “to
The recording spooled on. Connor speaking.
“You show me where I can find Kyle Reese.”
His own voice, replying. “I will.” His own voice, recorded.
By Skynet.
He had been broadcasting, all along. Back to Skynet. Everything.
“In times of desperation,” Kogan’s voice was saying, “people will believe what they want to believe. And so we gave them what they wanted to believe. A false hope—a signal the Resistance thought would end this war. And they were right. The signal
Once more the image on the multiple screens changed. At the sight of John Connor moving cautiously before a row of cells, Wright started. He wanted to scream, to shout out a warning—but there was nothing he could do. Nothing except watch.
“You can’t save John Connor anymore than he can save Kyle Reese. With Connor dead, with Command destroyed, the Resistance will perish. There will be nothing left—and you were the key to it all, Marcus.”
For the second time, he howled at the dispassionate screens. “You used me!”
Intended to be soothing, her voice was only infuriating.
“Our best machines failed time and again to complete their mission. We had to think—radically. And so we made—you. The moment a neural processing chip was fused to your brain, we created the perfect infiltration device. You gave us the access we needed to destroy the last remnants of humanity. You, Marcus, did what Skynet failed to do for forty-four years: you killed John Connor.
“Don’t underestimate yourself, Marcus. Don’t fight it. Take a good, hard look at what you are now and compare it to what you were formerly. In the world before you were considered to be a cancer on society. Something to be shunned, punished, locked away. In this world you’re a hero. Your name will live for ten thousand years. The heart that beats within you will last for
It was impossible to tell whether the glint in her eyes was caused by the light in the room or a source internal.
“
He considered. He pondered his options. Only then did he reply.
“I know...”
Digits driven by more than muscle reached up and back. Probing, then digging. Tearing into living flesh, heedless of the neural shouts of alarm the action triggered in his brain.
