Rising Storm

began to rise again.

Sarah ran then: the gift of seconds was precious luck she didn't intend to squander. She heard it coming after her, slowly at first, then with a rising patter more like the foot skittering of some monstrous insect than a human being, and

far too fast.

At the last instant, as they came into the living room, she swayed her hips aside like a matador with a motion of hips and torso.

The young girl— Terminator! Sarah's mind screamed—came flashing through the space she'd occupied, left hand extended with the palm like the blade of a spear. The same stroke that had nearly gutted Sarah last year, that had put her in a hospital for six months…

Reflex flung her on her back, and she kicked out with the steel-shod toe of her riding boot. It connected with the Infiltrator's kneecap with a dull thock, and yet the ruined face still had the graceful calm of a Boticelli angel and the body of a model with the hilt of the knife protruding from its taut young stomach. Only a trickle of blood came from the wound, despite the way the knife's movement must be razoring through tissue inside.

Then Sarah was up and running down the hall to the sitting room with an athlete's raking stride. Feet came after her—light, still quick, but limping a little.

Time slowed, and everything—the sudden racing of her heart, the salt taste of fear, the acrid smell of her own sweat—was irrelevant.

Pain doesn't affect it, she thought as she cleared the sofa like a hurdler. Only actual mechanical damage. It won't bleed out soon enough to do me any good.

Don't let it get close. Too strong, too quick.

She landed on a low table on one foot and flung herself headfirst at a big upholstered chair. It went over with a clatter and thump, and she landed painfully on her side. Her hand darted under the cushion, to the holster Velcro'd to the

fabric. She scrabbled it out, jacked the slide as she scrabbled backward, and began squeezing the trigger even before she felt the thump of her shoulder blades against the floor.

The gun was ready to go as soon as there was a round in the chamber. Dieter von Rossbach wasn't the sort who'd allow fumbling with a safety to be his last action.

Crack.

The first round went wild. The girl—the thing—was climbing over the chair rather than vaulting it; then she effortlessly knocked the heavy wood-and-leather furniture out of her way. Her face had the emotionless purity of an artist's sketch, made more horrible by the slight hint of glee in the wide blue eyes; one hand was held up, ready for a classic sword-hand strike with the outside of the palm. It could crack her head like an ax, but even then Sarah flinched at the red-painted nails…

Terminators were bad enough. These hybrid monstrosities were like picking up a baby and having its smile show the fangs of a wolf.

Crackcrackcrackcrack—

Four of the 9mm rounds punched into the thing's torso and stomach. Blood welled out, and the slight form stumbled backward for an instant. The hand lashed out, but shock spoiled the perfection of the blow; it merely slapped the gun out of Sarah's grasp, sent it skittering over the dark beauty of the hardwood floor. The Infiltrator collapsed, but her hand closed around Sarah's ankle even as she scooted backward.

Sarah screamed in involuntary agony as bone and tendon gave way beneath the grip. Her flailing hand closed on a poker where it rested in a wooden rack beside the clean-swept fireplace. She lashed out with it, a double- handed death grip on the black wrought iron, striking again and again with the hysterical loathing she might have used on a giant spider…

Sarah crawled to the couch and hauled herself onto it. Without warning, her body was racked by shivers, her teeth chattering in her head as if the temperature had dropped below freezing. She felt something liquid tickle her face as it ran down toward her chin and started to lift her hand to brush it off. To her surprise she still held the poker.

She studied the bent and bloodied implement as though she didn't quite know what it was or how it had come to be in her hand. Indeed, it took Sarah a moment or two to remember how to let go of it. She dropped it at last, and watched it fall, then stared at the imprint of the handle embedded on her palm.

She flexed her hand, then touched it with her other hand and saw the blood on her fingers. Suddenly she began to cry, great openmouthed sobs like a young child that stole her breath and dignity. Sarah dropped onto her side and wept, pulling her legs up to her stomach; covering her battered face with her hands, she gave herself over completely for once to the shock and the sorrow and the horror that her life had been for too many years.

It was darker when she came to herself and her mouth was very dry. Her eyes burned, but they were clear; all her tears were spent. She was lying on her side, arms stretched out before her on the carpet. Everything hurt. Sarah sniffled, then sat up, holding her aching forehead with one hand. She could see the

Terminator's feet in their Nikes poking out from behind the couch. The sight sent her scrabbling at the big leather-covered sofa, pulling out the folding-stock shotgun and jacking the slide with a one-handed motion on the forestock… just as she had when she'd confronted the liquid-metal thing in the steel factory…

The shoes moved. Sarah bit her lip until it bled, and forced herself to crouch behind the sofa and then snap herself up over the edge. The thing was drawing up its feet, pulling the knife out of its middle with one hand and holding the gaping wound closed with the other; blood pulsed around it, slow and very red.

The shotgun had a laser sight designator that came on when you took up the trigger slack. Sarah put the red dot over the thing's forehead and pulled the trigger. The gun was also loaded with rifled slugs, massive things like miniature grooved beer cans made out of lead alloy. Police used them for breaking down doors—they were known as the 'universal passkey'—and the cyborg's merely human skull splashed away from the first round.

Sarah kept firing until the magazine was empty, and very little of her target was left above the neck. She could see silvery wires glinting amid the ruin of all-too-human flesh and bone and brains, and spattered bits of hair and scalp and…

Oh God, she thought, unutterably weary and full of a deep sickness. How am I ever going to explain the stains? The back of her mind immediately got busy concocting a plausible story. With a gasp she checked the time. Three o'clock.

Epifanio and Marietta would be home anytime now.

What was she going to do with the thing's body, and the car? How did you hide something like that on a flat plain? She climbed to her feet like an old woman and swayed for just a moment, testing the pain in her ankle. It was swollen and

sore, but not broken. I'm going to live, she thought. Again. In which case she'd better get moving a little faster.

Sarah walked around the couch, bracing herself lightly with her hand on its back, and looked down at the Terminator. Very distantly she wondered if she should try to salvage some of the computer components that no doubt lurked inside all that damaged brain tissue. Her stomach rose at the thought, and closing her eyes, she decided that no, that strong she wasn't. Even as she thought, her hands were reloading the shotgun; some reflexes became deeper than thought.

There was surprisingly little blood on the floor, given the damage she'd done.

Sarah licked her lips. Something to do with the computer, she thought. It would probably be programmed to preserves the life of its organic tissues. Sarah shuddered. If it hadn't done this she'd have had a lake of blood to deal with.

A hand almost caught Sarah's ankle as she lurched backward. The shattered remnant of head lolled as the body began to pull itself to its feet, and the pupil of one dangling eye cycled open and shut, like the lens of a camera…