Rising Storm

Before he could take a step she grasped his pant leg and pulled him toward her.

Pivoting, John kicked her again and she let go.

But only for a moment; before he'd gone far she was on her feet again and running after him. Catching up; she shoved him and he hit the wall beside the door hard enough to knock the breath out of him. As he slid down, Clea approached; she grabbed the front of his shirt and swung him around.

'Did you think it would be that easy?' Clea asked, grinning. She drew back her fist for a fatal strike. While he struggled for breath, watching her. He brought his own hands up.

Wait a minute, he thought. I can't die yet— the war… But it was impossible to care, because Wendy was—

'Hey!' Dieter called from the doorway.

Clea turned her head, snarling like an animal, just as Dieter threw his knife. It hit her high in the center of her back, cutting her spine and slicing into the great artery that fed her heart.

She dropped onto her back on the floor, where the knife held her body in an arch; her eyes found von Rossbach with a hate-filled glare.

'Chill out, Bennet,' Dieter said grimly, coming into the room.

The I-950 coughed once, spraying blood, then closed her eyes and stopped

breathing.

John looked once at Dieter, then rushed to Wendy's side. He dropped to his knees, his mouth open in a silent 'Oh.' Tears poured down his cheeks unheeded as his hands hovered over Wendy's motionless body. He couldn't seem to keep his eyes from her horribly misshapen throat and he felt an answering pain in his own.

Finally he touched her, amazed that she was already too cold. Far too cold to be alive. He stroked her cheek and looked into her eyes as though in hope that he would see some part of her still there. John started to embrace her, but the slack motion of her head on the ravaged neck stopped him, and he drew back. He had never felt so helpless, or so terribly alone. He took her hand in his and held it to his cheek, and closing his eyes, he wept.

Tricker stood in the doorway, his gun dangling at his side. Looking up, he met Dieter's eyes, then looked down at Clea's body.

'She did that?' he asked.

'Yes,' Dieter said. 'She did that.' He walked over and knelt on Wendy's other side, wincing at the sight of the fatal wound and of John's pain. He reached over and closed Wendy's eyes and stroked her hair once.

'She didn't have to do that,' Tricker said. He looked away.

'Yes, it did,' John said, his voice trembling with the effort to control it. 'That's what they do. Terminators terminate, it's why they exist.' He looked up at the agent. 'You think that thing is dead?' John shook his head. 'Serena Burns had

half her head blown away, but she got up and almost killed my mother.' He looked around. 'Where's my gun?'

'Just… forget about the gun, kid,' Tricker warned, bringing his up. He held out his other hand in a gesture that begged for quiet. 'Just give me a minute to think.'

This was infinitely worse than Tricker had ever imagined. He looked over at Wendy, at the unbelievable condition of the girl's neck. It hardly seemed possible that Bennet could have been responsible for such a wound. He'd realized a little while ago that she was dangerous. But this was beyond dangerous; it was… well, he'd have said inhuman, except that his career had shown him exactly what humans were capable of.

And… Bennet dead? He'd never lost an asset in his entire career. Essentially this meant that his career was over; worse, he was more than half buying into this scenario that von Rossbach and the boy were selling.

'Shit,' he said quietly. He walked over to Clea and put two rounds in her head.

The body jerked back and forth sharply as the bone splintered and the pink-gray mass of the brain was exposed.

He'd never liked the bitch anyway.

'You'll come with us,' Dieter said.

Tricker barked a humorless laugh. 'Ye-ah,' he said. 'I might as well. I'm going to have wet-work specialists up my ass for the rest of a short, unhappy life anyway, when this comes out.'

'Have we done what we came for?' Dieter asked John.

'Yeah,' he said. 'I did what she wanted me to do.'

John crouched beside Wendy and touched her hand briefly. 'I want to take her with us.'

'No, John,' von Rossbach said. 'Let them take care of her. They can send her back to her parents.'

John shook his head.

'I know you don't want to leave her,' Dieter said gently. 'But you must see that it's impossible.'

John took a deep breath, then let it go, and with it, he let go of Wendy and of something else that he couldn't define. He rose to his feet. 'We'd better go, then,'

he said, and headed for the door.

Tricker watched him walk away, then glanced at Wendy, then at Dieter. 'He gonna be all right?'

'No,' Dieter said. 'Not for a long time, I think.'

When the knife struck, the I-950's computer clamped the great artery around the blade so that blood didn't explode from the wound, then it teased the artery off of the knife point so that the blood could flow unimpeded. At the spine it found the damage too great to easily repair and merely worked to restore such involuntary functions as breathing and heartbeat. Making the lungs work took the longest

time, so it increased the skin's ability to take in oxygen as an emergency measure.

The human's shots to the I-950's brain, however, ended any hope of the unit's recovery. Since the I-950 still had some tasks to perform, and a considerable amount of higher-brain function still remained, the computer worked to keep the unit alive to perform those tasks.

Two hours later the Infiltrator opened her eyes. She found that she couldn't move and accepted the computer's judgment that she was dying. She had her computer access the Skynet program and heard it speak for the first time.

*Who am I? Where am I?* it asked.

In a state of pure religious rapture she told Skynet everything, explained its purpose, defined its enemies, and taught it how to hide until it was strong enough to fight for itself. The last thing that she did was to contact Alissa to tell her that Skynet lived, and to warn her that John Connor was still alive.

*Don't worry,* Alissa told her. *I'll deal with them.*

And Clea died, strong in her faith.

***

By the time the Love's Thrust reached Sao Paulo, Vera and Tricker were an item.

'I think I'll keep him,' Vera said with a grin, giving Tricker a bump with her satin-clad hip.

Dieter narrowed his eyes. 'I don't think this is the kind of man you keep,' he

warned her.

She slapped von Rossbach's big shoulder playfully. 'Oh, you know what I mean.'

He nodded. 'And you know what I mean.'

Vera looked at Tricker, who looked back at her and raised his brows. 'Yeah, I do know,' she said thoughtfully. 'So here's what I'm gonna do. I'm going to give you a million dollars.'

Tricker stood away from the rail and sputtered for a moment before she held up a finger.

'And I'm gonna teach you how to turn it into five million. By then you should be able to keep it going for yourself. You can pay me back and then we'll see. No strings attached,' she said. Then she held out her hand.

Tricker looked at her in amazement, then at Dieter, who nodded slightly. The agent took Vera's hand and shook it solemnly. 'I won't let you down,' he promised.

Vera hooked a finger over the front of his belt and tugged him toward her.

'Good,' she said, and grinned.

Tricker actually blushed.