Rising Storm

He and his mother defeated Serena Burns, her computer reminded her. They have twice destroyed Skynet.

A ripple of unease disturbed her. Then she pushed it away, assuring herself that all of these side issues were unimportant. What was important was that the enemy was here and that she must prepare to deal with him.

Separate them, she thought. Maybe leave the girl until later. Connor is the important one. Connor was the first one she'd kill.

John had made Wendy crouch down and hug the front of the elevator. He stood in front of her, plastered against the wall. When the doors opened it would appear from the outside that the elevator was empty. He waited until the doors closed by themselves, then waited some more. Wendy stirred and he put his hand down to warn her to stillness.

In the security room the I-950 watched, both amused and impressed. She assumed that he was counting to some high number and wouldn't move until he'd reached it. Good tactics, if you were dealing with a human.

Finally John hit the door button and did a forward roll into the hallway, coming up on one knee, his gun pointing down the empty corridor. His heart was beating so hard that he thought he could see the gun in his hands bob to its rhythm. Get it under control, John, he warned himself. Get it under control or he'd be useless

when the time came to face the Terminator.

He signaled Wendy to come out of the elevator, then gestured to her to stay behind him and keep low. When they got to the first door he made her stop several paces short of it, then moved up himself. He listened, then Hung the door open with a crash, pulling back out of the line of fire. He reached around the door frame and found the light switch. When the lights came on he swung back to one knee in the doorway, gun at the ready, then carefully stood and gave the room a quick search.

Then he moved on to the next.

'Hey,' Wendy whispered, 'shouldn't we—'

John hissed her to silence and with a gesture told her to stay right where she was.

Wendy rolled her eyes but obeyed. She glanced at the elevator; they probably ought to lock it down, but oh well. John knew what he was doing.

In her lair in the security room Clea was silently agreeing with her. John Connor was doing everything right. And he was taking a damn long time doing it, too.

I'm glad the lab is only halfway down the corridor. Otherwise he'll be at it until the generator runs out of fuel. And she wanted to know, with a very human curiosity, what the girl was for.

At last John came to a door marked K. VIEMEISTER, the name of the man who'd taken over the Cyberdyne project. This could be it, he warned himself. If the Terminator was anywhere in the facility this was the logical place. He took a deep breath and flung the door open and himself into the brightly lit room. He peeked over a counter and looked around.

Clea laughed out loud at his expression; she looked forward to showing Alissa the recording. Even her too- solemn little sister would find this funny. She watched him check every inch of the room with exquisite care; it was obvious to her that he placed the safety of his companion above his own. Interesting, and possibly useful.

John came to the door and gestured Wendy in. 'Okay, sweetie, I'm gonna finish checking the other labs; you do your thing. Lock the door after me and don't open it unless I can answer a personal question about us.'

'A personal question? You mean like—'

He quickly put a finger across her lips. 'Something only you and I would know,'

he said sternly. 'They can imitate anyone's voice. I've heard them.'

She nodded, wide-eyed. 'Okay, I'll think of something.'

'You do that.' He pulled her to him and kissed her, caressed her hair, and turned to the door. 'Remember, lock this,' he said over his shoulder.

'I will, I will,' she said, smiling.

'And get to work.' His eyes were already roving up and down the corridor.

'I will, I will,' she repeated, closed the door, locked it, and went to the computer bay.

Clea spit the feed, watching Connor fruitlessly check the labs while his 'sweetie'

got to work. The girl stripped off her bra and slid a pair of microdiskettes out of

a slit in the lining. Not bad, the I-950 thought, amused. She watched fascinated as the girl put the disk into its drawer and began to work.

The I-950 was reasonably confident that the security protocols they'd installed in the Skynet program could defeat any worm that this child could come up with.

Viemeister might be a prick, and he hadn't yet made Skynet intelligent, but he was no slouch in the security department. So this material would be shunted into a buffer, where the computer would evaluate it.

At first she was puzzled by what she was reading. Then she sucked in her breath in amazement. This was it! This was the key to Skynet's living intelligence. Why would their worst enemy deliver it to them?

And then she understood; they would enumerate every possible path that led to sentience and then program the machine to ignore any paths or commands leading to that result. Unless the programmers knew those codes were there, they could batter their heads against an impenetrable wall of cross-commands for a very long time.

Viemeister might figure it out eventually, but probably not before his funding ran out. Or his patience. He wasn't the kind of human who clung to a project that didn't work out. Well, there was the Nazi thing, but he was really involved with that more to annoy people than for any sincere belief.

Clea rose from her chair. The girl had brought two disks; she had to stop her before she installed whatever was on the second one.

Dieter studied the GPS unit and it told him that he was very close to the base, possibly within ten minutes if he could keep up this pace. Good. he thought.

Because he suspected he was getting a nice little case of frost-nip on his toes and face.

He'd turned the balaclava around and made tiny holes on the solid back surface in hopes of protecting his eyes from snow blindness, and now that the wind had turned, he hoped it would keep them from freezing all together. It felt like his lungs were raw right to the bottom, not that he could breathe that deeply. He held his arms tight around himself to keep his ribs as still as possible, which wasn't very, and tried to ignore the pain. He had so many to choose from by now that it was almost easy.

There was a copper-penny taste in the back of his throat as though he was bleeding, and he was very thirsty. Ice kept forming on the wool around his mouth and nose, making his lips sore and increasing the likelihood of frostbite.

All in all, not one of my better days.

He slogged on as quickly as he could push himself. When the first of the base's sheds came into view, he said a heartfelt 'thank God!' and hurried toward it.

It was small on closer examination, obviously a storage shed, but by then he could see a larger building looming up, and headed for it. Off to his right a moving shape came toward him and he paused, thinking it must be someone from the base. It was almost upon him before he could make out what it was.

'Oooh, no! Not another fucking seal!'

The creature barked and stretched its neck out at him, teeth bared.

With all the strength that frustration, desperation, and outrage could lend a man,

von Rossbach hauled off and belted the exhausted animal. It made a small sound and collapsed at his feet, rolling onto its back with flippers extended in a limp V-shape. Dieter swayed in the wind, looking down at it for a moment, not quite believing it had been that easy. It stayed down.

'Good,' he said with a satisfied nod, and headed for the largest shed.

Burns, Tricker thought, must save Burns. No, not Burns, Bennet. Bennet was the asset. Burns was an asset to Cyberdyne. And she had assets. She'd tried to use those assets to vamp him. But she didn't try very hard, he thought