Trial By Fire

He turned to Preston and Hope.

“Thanks for the assist,” he shouted over the gorge.

“No problem,” Preston called back. “What do you want us to do?”

“Go back to town, I guess.” Barnes jerked a thumb over his shoulder toward Jik. “This the guy you were expecting?”

“Not really sure who I was expecting,” Preston admitted. “But he’ll probably do.”

“What about the T-700?” Hope asked, pointing toward the dead Terminator at Barnes’s feet.

“I need to make sure it can’t be used for spare parts,” Barnes told her. “We’ll meet you back in town.”

Preston nodded. “Watch yourselves.” Touching his daughter’s arm, he headed away from the gorge along a narrow path. A few seconds later, they were out of sight.

“We’re worried about spare parts?” Williams asked, coming up behind him. With the adrenaline rush of the battle over, he noticed, she was limping badly on her injured leg.

“The T-700 you dumped into the ravine was the one whose hand you wrecked when you blew up its gun, right?” Barnes asked.

Williams’s lips puckered.

“Right,” she said. “Good point.”

Barnes grunted and took aim at one of the Terminator’s shoulder joints.

“Stand back.”

A minute later Barnes had blown all four limbs off the dead Terminator. The right arm required a second try when it fell close enough to the torso after being disconnected that the T-700’s automatic electromagnetic recoupling lock was able to draw it back into place. Another shot to the stubborn joint, followed by a quick kick to move the arm out of range, did the trick.

He and Williams were collecting the severed limbs when Jik arrived, coiling a length of fragile-looking rope over his shoulder as he walked.

“Was that Danny Preston?” he asked, peering across the river.

“You know him?” Barnes asked.

“I spent a few summers here with an uncle.” Jik nodded toward the bridge. “In fact, Danny and I were the ones who built that thing.”

“Really?” Barnes said. “He didn’t seem to recognize you.”

“I doubt he does,” Jik said. “It’s been forty years, and they’ve been kinder to him than they have to me.” He nudged the T-700’s torso with his toe. “They don’t look so tough when you chop off all their limbs, do they? Except those teeth. I always wondered why Skynet bothered putting teeth on its Terminators.”

“It’s psychology,” Williams told him. “It makes their heads look more like human skulls. Awakens those deep, dark fears we all have locked inside us.”

“Like Terminators really need more of that than they already have,” Barnes said. He lifted one of the severed Terminator arms and wiggled it in front of Jik. “See this? Watch.”

He lowered the shoulder part of the limb and touched it to his leg.

“See there?” he asked, pulling the metal limb away and then swinging it past Williams’s leg. “See? The electromagnet doesn’t stick.”

“Were you expecting it to?” Jik asked, frowning.

“You were,” Barnes countered. “Remember? You were talking about cutting us open to see if we were Terminator hybrids.” Turning, he tossed the arm over the edge of the gorge into the river below and reached for the next one. “Just wanted to show you that we aren’t.”

“Ah,” Jik said. “Thank you. Though, I was already pretty well convinced. Someone with a Skynet chip in his head should have been able to quote the last Connor broadcast verbatim.” He nodded down at the partially disassembled Terminator. “Besides, you’d hardly have helped me destroy my attackers if you were on their side. A house divided against itself, and all that.”

“Yeah.” Barnes picked up the final leg and tossed it over the edge. “Let’s get out of here.” He glanced at Williams.

And paused for a longer look. She was staring down at the limbless Terminator, a sudden tightness to her throat.

“What’s the matter?” Barnes asked. “Leg bothering you?”

“Terminator hybrids,” she said, her voice as rigid as her throat. “You just called them Terminator hybrids.”

“So?” Barnes asked. “That’s what they are, aren’t they?

“T-600 is short for Terminator six hundred,” Williams said, her eyes still on the machine. “T-700 means Terminator seven hundred. Right?”

“Yeah,” Barnes said, frowning. Why was she lecturing him on the obvious? “So?”

She looked up at him.

“In that same format, a Terminator hybrid would be T-Hybrid, or just T-H.”

Barnes looked at Jik, who looked as lost as Barnes felt.

“Meaning what?” Barnes asked.

“Meaning that in Greek,” Williams said, “T-H is the letter theta.”

And like a sudden kick in the gut, Barnes got it.

“The Theta Project,” he breathed.

“What’s a Theta Project?” Jik asked.

“Something a bunch of damn traitors are going to have to do some explaining about,” Barnes told him darkly. “Come on. And keep an eye out for that other T-700.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

For Kyle, the first hour was the hardest.

It wasn’t just the darkness. Darkness was a familiar part of the post-Judgment Day world, and like everyone else he’d learned how to adapt and adjust. Not knowing where they were going, or even if the passageway beneath the Terminators’ tunnel would lead anywhere at all, was also not a big deal. Uncertainty was as much a part of life as darkness.

What set Kyle’s skin crawling was the periodic rhythmic thumping overhead as the lines of T-700s first marched to the face of the excavation to collect rubble, then headed back again with their fresh burdens to wherever they had found to dump them.

Those were the hard moments. Because those were the moments when a careless move on Kyle’s or Callahan’s or Zac’s part—a slip of a foot, an accidental dislodging of one of the jagged pieces of concrete or metal they were crawling over—would alert the Terminators to the human intruders.

And once the machines knew where they were, they would be dead. All of them.

Just like Yarrow.

Kyle thought a lot about Yarrow as they traveled. He thought some about the man’s last big mistake, the mistake that had trapped Kyle and the others down here.

But everyone made mistakes. Mostly, what Kyle thought about was the way Yarrow had done what he could to atone for his error by sending the others to safety.

He also found himself wondering how exactly Yarrow had died.

Kyle hadn’t heard any sounds as the T-700s had reached him. Maybe Yarrow hadn’t had time, or maybe the rolling echo of his last gunshots had covered up whatever screams or moans of agony he’d made before the end. Kyle hoped it had been quick, that the Terminators had simply broken his neck or hammer-crushed his chest or done something that would let their victim die quickly.

But all he actually knew was that the death had involved blood. A lot of blood.

He also knew that if the Terminators found him, he would probably die in very much the same way.

It wasn’t Kyle’s own death that worried him. He’d learned long ago not to focus on that, because it did nothing but freeze his will and paralyze any chance of thinking his way out of a bad situation.