He looked beyond her out the windows, but the sky was clear for the moment, as was the corridor behind them. It wouldn't last It couldn't last.
'Let's go,' he said. He took the AK-47 from her, and as they headed for the blasted accelerator entrance door he ejected the spent magazine and dapped in a fresh one from his knapsack. It was his last
They flew down two flights of stairs to the second subbasement, where they entered the particle accelerator control room. The space was no larger than the living
room in an average house, but was crammed with electronic monitoring and control equipment and a dozen computer monitors and keyboards.
A door was open to the accelerator tunnel, through which they could see a blue metal tube, about six feet in diameter, surrounded by mazes of wires and conduits and pipes, gigantic electromagnets every ten or fifteen feet, warning and ID tags everywhere, curving away into the distance.
A large placard was posted over the door.
warning: intense magnetic field.
Connor rushed over to one of the control positions, where he laid his rifle on the desk and hurriedly studied the display. He might never have been taught English grammar or history, but some of the weirdos his mother had associated with had been computer geeks. They'd taught him some things.
After a minute he started flipping switches and entering commands into the computer, following the prompts he brought up.
Kate turned her gaze from the stairwell they'd just come down to what Connor was up to. 'What are you doing?' she demanded. She wanted to get out of there right now.
'Powering up,' Connor replied distractedly. He keyed several more commands and then hit enter.
Kate noticed a bank of closed-circuit television monitors on which were displayed several locations within the CRS complex.
T-ls were hunting down the last of the humans, kill-
ing them indiscriminately. On other screens there was no movement, only bodies.
But on still another screen the T-X was moving very fast down a corridor. Kate backed up a step.
'Oh, God,' she said.
The T-X passed the wreckage of the H-K that Kate had shot down. She was in the corridor just above them.
Connor looked up at the last minute and saw what Kate was seeing. He entered one more command on the computer keyboard, grabbed his gun, and headed for the accelerator tunnel entrance, Kate right behind him.
The big machinery was powering up with a tremendous noise. Super-cooled magnets were being hit with liquid nitrogen, power circuits were coming up, and powerful vacuum pumps were eliminating the air from the accelerator tube itself. It was like being inside someone's insane idea of a factory gone mad.
Over that noise they could hear the T-X in the tunnel behind them.
Connor turned in time to see her less than thirty feet away, her outstretched right hand surrounded in a blue plasma glow.
There was no way that they could outrun her.
No way. He was sure of it.
CRS
Connor and Kate ducked behind one of the outcropping electromagnets as the T-X's plasma weapon fired, the intense blue beam missing them by inches.
The noise in the tunnel was increasing in volume and pitch as the coils around each of the toroidal magnets were cooled by liquid nitrogen. The closer to absolute zero the wiring got, the more electric current it could pass and the stronger the magnetic field became. It was building exponentially now.
Red warning lights began to flash as Connor charged his AK-47 and stepped around the magnet to fire at the oncoming T-X.
A klaxon began to blare, blotting out even the powerful noise of the vacuum pumps and the hum of the magnets.
The T-X was less than twenty feet away. The blue glow at the transmission head of her plasma weapon was so bright it was almost impossible to look at with the naked
Connor lined up on her head and started to pull off
a round when the AK-47 was ripped from his hands. It smashed into one of the electromagnets with a resounding metallic clang and held fast.
Connor looked from the T-X to his weapon. He stepped back a pace. 'It's working,' he shouted to Kate.
The T-X raised her weapon arm directly at Connor, but it was jerked violently to the left, dragging her to one of the magnets.
She looked at Connor, and then tried to pull her arm free, the metal shell around the accelerator tube distorting under the pressure she was putting on it
But she was caught fast, and as the magnetic field intensified her entire body was drawn to the tube, stretched out as if she were on some medieval torture
rack.
Even the T-X's tremendous power was not sufficient to free her, and as the field continued to build, her features began to distort, her mouth and eyes sliding to impossible angles, her entire body flowing toward the core of the magnet.
Her endoskeleton began to vibrate like a horribly stretched violin string, shrieking and squealing, as the artificial liquid steel that was used to lubricate her mechanical joints was slowly forced through her body and into the center of the magnetic field.
Still, the T-X continued to fight with every gram of her strength, her programming forcing her to continue up to the very point of her own destruction. She had no
other option.
'
Her mouth opened, and as if she were a human being
in pain and anguish at being burned to death at the stake, she emitted a powerful scream.
Kate stepped out from behind the magnet, and stood behind Connor, watching what was happening to the monster.
'Just die,' she screeched, not able to take any more. 'You bitch!'
Connor lingered for just a moment longer, fascinated by what was happening to the T-X, but then he turned and with Kate raced down the tunnel in search of the way up to the flight line in front of the hangars.
Most of what could be thought of as Terminator's artificial intelligence, his main CPU circuits, were intact As were ninety-five percent of his subroutines.
But the rest of his functions, mental as well as physical, operated as if he were in a fog. As if he were a human trying to wake up after a particularly deep sleep, or an alcoholic whose functions were impaired.
His motivational programs had been especially affected. Much like a schizophrenic who realizes that what he is experiencing is not real, and yet can do nothing about his fantasies, Terminator understood that he had been altered by the T-X.
But there was nothing he could do about it
Terminator slowly raised his hands to his cranial case, which he lifted into place on the three support strut ball joints, and snapped them back into place.
Able to sit up now and hold his head upright, he got to his feet where he remained for several moments, his head cocked to one side as if he were trying to figure out where he was, what had happened to him, and what he was supposed to do next.
He didn't feel as if he were under the direct control of the T-X, but he couldn't be certain.
A small hole had been drilled into the temple of his cranial case, and it crackled with blue plasma energy, but he could feel no pain in the human sense, only the dull fog obscuring a portion of his motivational programming.
He headed to the nearest emergency exit, his movements jerky at first but smoothing out as if he was learning all over again how to move and function.
limeter by millimeter the blade edged against the wall of the accelerator tube.
