Trial By Fire

to think again.

“If you want to blame someone, blame your friends there,” Oxley continued. The voice was definitely closer now. “They’re the ones who forced our hand. We’d have been perfectly happy to keep things going the way they were.”

“He’s lying,” Williams muttered. “None of them had the slightest idea of what Skynet had turned them into.”

“Why the hell is he talking so much?” Preston muttered.

“He’s buying time,” Williams said. “You saw how Lajard took off back there. If he’s the one real human among them, he’s probably the only one who did know what they were.”

“He was the experiment’s observer?”

“And its controller,” Williams said. “That Latin he spouted just before Oxley’s attack was probably the code to activate them.”

“And to put them under his and Skynet’s control,” Barnes added.

“Right,” Williams said. “I think Oxley’s stalling to give Lajard time to get to cover.”

“Wait a second,” Preston said, frowning. “If the Latin was code, then Oxley should be the only one who got activated.”

Williams shook her head. “Sorry. They’re all linked via short-range radio through the control chips in the backs of their heads. When he activated Oxley, he activated Valentine and Jik, too.”

Preston hissed a sigh. “And Valentine’s got Hope.”

“Yes,” Williams said grimly.

“Mayor?” Oxley called.

“You know how to kill these things?” Preston asked.

“We know how to make them hurt,” Barnes said, thinking back to his target practice with the chained-up Marcus. “They’ve got human skin, and all the nerve endings that go with it.”

“It’s a start.” Preston took a deep breath. “Okay. We don’t have a whistle signal for a situation like this, so the quickest way to warn everyone in town will be to fire off a few shots. We might was well put those shots to some use. Get ready.”

He stood upright and looked over the hedge.

“Oxley?” he called. “You want me? Come and get me.”

Barnes felt his lips pull back in a tight grin. He’d seen first-hand how tough Thetas were, as tough as any other Terminator model Skynet had come up with. With these wholly inadequate weapons, and with a lot of the town’s best hunters out of reach across the river, he and Williams were going to have a serious fight on their hands.

But at least they finally knew who their enemies were. That was worth something.

He hefted the rifle, throwing a quick glance behind them and then settling down with his eyes and weapon toward the town.

Bring it on, he thought silently toward Skynet. Bring it on.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

“They hate me, don’t they?” Susan asked quietly as Hope led the way along the path toward Crescent Rock.

“What?” Hope asked, most of her mind on the forest around her. They hadn’t hunted this area for a while, which meant there was a chance that some of the bigger game might have returned.

“The people in town,” Susan said. “I saw the way they looked at me when they came back from the battle with those T-700s.”

“I think everyone’s mostly just tired,” Hope assured her. “They’ll get over it.”

“I’m not so sure,” Susan said. “You heard what Connor said earlier, back at your house. If Nathan, Remy, and I had died instead of letting Skynet pick our brains, maybe there wouldn’t even be T-700s for them to have to deal with.”

“I didn’t think you ever worked on the T-700s.”

“You know what I mean.” Behind her, Hope heard Susan sigh. “I wish to God I was you, Hope,” she said. “With my whole life still ahead of me. Instead of—” She broke off. “I’m sorry, Hope. I’m so very sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Hope said. She looked back over her shoulder.

And froze. Susan was staring straight ahead, her face suddenly cold and rigid and agonized. Hope threw a quick look in the direction the older woman was staring, wondering if she’d spotted a bear or another Terminator. But there was nothing there.

“Susan?” Hope asked carefully, looking back at her.

Slowly, the cold eyes turned to focus on Hope.

“I’m sorry, Hope,” Susan said again as she started forward. “I have to kill you now.”

For a moment Hope just stared at her, the words buzzing around her ears like angry hornets.

“What are you talking about?” she asked as she started to back away.

But it was too late. Susan didn’t seem to be hurrying, but her stride was longer than Hope’s, she was walking forward instead of backward, and she was rapidly closing the distance between them.

“Susan, please,” Hope said, trying desperately to think. “What are you doing?”

“Don’t you understand?” Susan asked, a quiet horror filling her voice. “I’m one of them. God help me. I’m one of them.”

“One of what?” Hope asked, trying to keep her talking. To her left, her hand brushed against the branches and leaves of a sapling. “I don’t understand,” she continued, pressing her palm against the slender trunk and bending the young tree over as she continued backing up.

“I’m a Theta,” Susan said, her voice shaking now. “I didn’t know. God, I had no idea. But I am. I’m a Terminator. I’m a Terminator.”

“You don’t have to be,” Hope told her, slowing her backward pace as she felt her hand nearing the top of the sapling, holding it down with every bit of her strength and weight. “You can fight it. You don’t have to do what Skynet tells you.”

“But I do,” Susan said sadly. “You don’t understand. I’m so very sorry.” She reached out a hand toward Hope’s throat.

And jerked backward as Hope released her hold on the bent tree, sending it snapping up to slap against Susan’s chest and face.

An instant later, Hope was dashing through the trees, running as fast as she could. The horror of Susan’s revelation hovered at the edges of her mind, but she pressed it back into the shadows. There was no time to think about that now. No time to think about anything except survival.

There was a crash behind her, and she spared a quick look over her shoulder. Susan was coming after her, her expression ice cold, her face crisscrossed with small red lines where the sapling’s branches had cut into her skin.

Human skin. Not metal. Human skin.

It was a small chance, Hope knew. But at the moment she didn’t have anything better.

Watching her footing with one eye, looking for the right spot with the other, she drew an arrow and nocked it to her bowstring. This was going to take careful timing.

Ahead and to the right she spotted a large, thick-boled oak. Shifting direction, she headed toward it.

Susan was maybe ten paces behind her when Hope reached the oak. She ducked around it, ran another five paces, then jerked to a halt. Spinning around, she raised the bow and pulled the arrow back to her cheek.

And as Susan came around the tree she sent the arrow whistling into the woman’s right arm. The arrowhead punched through the leather of Susan’s jacket and the human flesh beneath it, skittered its way around the unyielding metal beneath the skin, and reemerged through flesh and leather to bury itself solidly in the oak.

Susan gasped, a sharp, eerily inhuman sound as the arrow pinning her to the tree brought her to a sudden halt. She tried to tug her arm free, her face contorting with pain and anger as the movement dragged more of the