Blackford - An Evil Hour

TERMINATOR 2 @

THE NEW JOHN CONNOR
CHRONICLES

Book 2:

AN EVIL HOUR

RUSSELL BLACKFORD

BASED ON THE WORLD CREATED

IN THE MOTION PICTURE WRITTEN BY

JAMES CAMERON AND WILLIAM WISHER

PROLOGUE: JOHN'S WORLD

CYBERDYNE RESEARCH SITE, COLORADO SPRINGS AUGUST 2001

T hey'd defeated the T-XA Terminator, but at a terrible cost.

John went to his mother, Sarah, to check how badly she'd been hurt in their battle. "You okay, Mom?"

Sarah nodded, fighting back tears of relief.

How much had they really achieved, John wondered. Cyberdyne's research would continue; Skynet might still be created. So much work lay ahead. They had to get people to listen.

The T-XA had pursued them from Mexico to Colorado , the journey ending at Cyberdyne's heavily guarded research facility. Their running gun battle with the Terminator had taken them through the facility to the twelfth floor, where the company's AI Operations Center was located. And there they'd struck Skynet a blow, in a blast that had almost brought the facility down on them. They'd escaped, though, and wound up in the building's basement, where Cyberdyne's prototype time vault apparatus was installed.

And here the T-XA had finally been destroyed, scattered across space and time by the powerful energies of the device.

The basement was a concrete chamber twenty feet high, and as long and wide as a football field. Eight rapid-response security personnel now lay on its hard floor, some of them wounded in their legs, others merely stunned-but all disarmed. Security cameras looked down from several angles, monitoring every event The huge chamber was dominated by the time vault, a hollow cubical block that reached to the ceiling-a block now empty, thankfully.

John had survived unhurt, and Sarah appeared okay as well, not like last time when they'd encountered the T-1000 Terminator in 1994and she'd been wounded in the shoulder and thigh. She still had a slight limp, almost too small to notice. That night, when they'd fought the shapeshifting T-1000 through the streets and factories of L.A. had been a turning point in John's life and the his-tory of the world. Tonight was different: their newest en-emy, the T-XA, had come from a different future, perhaps even darker than the T-l000's. And the T-XA had been focused on more formidable opponents than John and Sarah, for its mission had been to kill five Specialists: enhanced human warriors from its own world and time. Now three of them were dead.

Miho Tagatoshithe young Specialist known as *Jade"-crossed the room to Rosanna Monk, the time vault's inventor, passing by John and Sarah without a word. Rosanna was Cyberdyne's most senior research scientist She had followed in Miles Dyson's footsteps, working on the advanced computer hardware that would be used to create Skynet

Jade touched Rosanna on the shoulder. "You did well."

"I don't care what you think," Rosanna said, jerking away from her touch. "I did it for myself, not for you."

Jade was superhumanly strong and fast, hard to kill, far superior to any merely human athlete. She was the most advanced and formidable of all the Specialists. She had taken several bullet wounds, but had healed quickly. Now she turned to John and Sarah. "Thank you both for everything."

"Hey, no problemo" John said, trying to sound cool about it.

He feared he was falling in love with her, this unattainable superwoman. Jade had been engineered to grow up quickly, then cease aging altogether, making her appear older than she was, while being potentially immortal. Though she looked about twenty, she had lived only the same number of years as John; in those terms, she was just fifteen or sixteen. Apart from her extraordinary abilities, she was beautiful, in a strange, sad way. Framed by black, shoulder-length hair, her oval face was almost perfect...yet her eyes looked haunted, as though she'd already lived for centuries and seen too much human suffering.

Well, there'd be time to worry later. John would sort out his feelings for Jade, discover what she might feel for him; right now, there were higher priorities. One of them was Rosanna: what should they do with her? She'd been reprogrammed by the T-XA, but she'd helped them in the end. Without her, they could never have defeated it

The Terminator had been armed with a powerful phased-plasma laser rifle, and had used it to devastating effect. When they'd first battled it in Mexico City , the T-XA had killed one of the Specialists: Robert Baxter. Two more had died tonight: Danny Dyson and Selena Macedo. Jade had survived, along with her Russian comrade, Anton Panov, a big granite block of a man with short gray hair.

"I need a good meal," Anton said. He looked as if he'd been chopped to pieces, then stitched together, like Frankenstein's monster. As with all the Specialists, his veins and arteries swarmed with millions of tiny nanotech devices, designed to heal him rapidly when he was injured . But the Specialists still needed nutrients to complete the healing process and replenish their reserves.

Anton was smart: often he had little to say, but he always made sense when he explained something. He was now the last person, at this time, in this world, with the memory of a different Judgment Day from the one that Jobs had grown up expecting. The one that was supposed to have happened in 1997, the one that would have cre ated Skynet's World, had Sarah-with the aid of yet an-other Terminator-not destroyed Cyberdyne's advanced (computer research and the T-1000 sent to kill John.

Anton and Jade bad come from a different world, with a different Judgment Day. They had traveled back from 2036. from a new reality that John now thought of as Jade's World. In Jade's World, Judgment Day had been postponed , thanks to what Sarah had done in 1994. In that reality, Cyberdyne's work had been set back for years. Judgment Day had taken place in place in 2021 when Jade was only a baby. She had lived through the nuclear holocaust, but could not recall its horrors, only those that came after.

Judgment Day had happened in two different realities: in Skynet's World in 1997, in Jade's World in 2021. Was it possible for there to be a world without Judgment Day, without Skynet? That was what they were fighting for.

Sarah passed Anton the T-XA's laser rifle, which had fallen on the floor in the thick of the battle. "Yes, thank you," he said, gripping the barrel in a large, powerful hand. The rifle was a black metal weapon almost three feet long, with no stock attached. It resembled an oversized, elongated handgun. Ordinary humans could not wield it one-handed, but the Terminators and Specialists had no such trouble. In the harsh world that he came from, Anton had doubtless used similar weapons against Skynet's forces.

Jade stared at the time vault, where Danny Dyson-the Danny Dyson of 2036-had been scattered across space and time, along with the T-XA. "We loved you, Daniel," she said. "Thank you, friend."

Precious seconds were ticking away. They had to get out of here fast before more police or security officers found them. The building had been rocked by an explosion. Right now, John thought, its security systems must be in chaos, perhaps no one was watching. But that couldn't last.

Jade said to Rosanna, "Come with us. We'll try to help you."

Rosanna looked back with disdain. "Why do I need help?" She was one human being whom Jade did not intimidate. "I've just saved your blasted species, not that it's what I wanted." In the end, Rosanna had acted to save humanity. She had entered the computer codes to slam shut the time vault's huge metal door, trapping the T-XA inside, then she'd activated the vault, scattering the Terminator's atoms across the space-time continuum.

They found a fire door, which opened into a long tunnel. After fifty yards, this turned at ninety degrees, then led up a flight of steps. At the top, another fire door