Cameron James - Dark futures: based on the world created in the motion picture written by James Cameron and William Wisher

TERMINATOR 2 @

THE NEW JOHN CONNOR
CHRONICLES

Book 1:

DARK FUTURES

RUSSELL BLACKFORD

BASED ON THE WORLD CREATED

IN THE MOTION PICTURE WRITTEN BY

JAMES CAMERON AND WILLIAM WISHER

PROLOGUE

MEXICO CITY , MEXICO AUGUST, 2001

A fat, smug-looking dog foraged in the dim light, checking through the back alleys near the Zocal : the Plaza de la Constitucin . Out the back of a restaurant that fronted the huge public square, it found a trashcan full of scraps and bones. It nuzzled the lid off, and started to feast. Then it sensed something, something dangerous, in the alley, as papers, discarded cans, and dust began to move of their own accord. The dog backed away, with a low warning snarl, its tail low and nervously flicking from side to side. The fur along its back prickled up, like the devil's nightmare of a bad hair day.

Flashes of blue electricity disrupted the darkness, raising dust and rubbish in a sudden upward spiral, like a miniature tornado. Trashcans shook and rattled, as if someone had stuck big electric motors inside them, then suddenly flicked the switch. The dog cowered and whined, as the lid it had nuzzled off flew away in the dark, and a geyser of trash spurted from the can, then rained back to earth. Bones, broken crockery and glassware, empty cans and bottles, vegetable peelings, discarded fruit, and leftover pieces of meat danced about the alley. Something hit a window two stories up, breaking it, and a light came on. There was shouting in Spanish. A metal Dumpster rocked from side to side on the paving stones.

The dog ran from the alley, as blue lightning snapped and crackled all round it.

Then, as abruptly as they began, the atmospheric effects ceased, and five human forms appeared in the air, falling quickly to the hard stone pavement, bodies twisting in pain. Some of them gave little strangled cries. They were naked In the faint glow of a distant streetlight, and the lit-up window overhead, their skin varied in color from ivory white to black.

Close by came the sound of a police siren just for a few seconds.

Miho Tagatoshi-always known as Jadefound her feet while the rest of the Specialists were still doubled up in pain, or leaning for support against the brick buildings. She shook her head quickly, then stretched her neck in every direction, groaning with the agony she felt, but letting it wash out of her like water. Having dealt with the pain, she looked round dispassionately. They needed clothes and weapons.

Jade looked about twenty. Her black hair fell raggedly around her shoulders. Her oval face was almost perfect, but something about her lips and eyes was always solemn. Jade was something beyond human, something fast and strong, hard to kill or even hurt. She gave a sad smile. "Time displacement successful."

The black man, Daniel Dyson, took command. He was clean-shaven, with short, curly hair that fitted his scalp like a helmet. "Give the rest of us a minute, Jade."

"Very well."

She waited for the others to recover. They were less deeply morphed than Jade, closer to the human norm, yet engineered by experts. They were well placed to complete their mission.

Elsewhere in the huge, densely populated city, more blue lightning played, like a crown of writhing hair, above a four-story building in the Zona Rosa. What emerged on the building's roof looked human, but quite extraordinary. It was a naked, shaven-headed man, over eight feet tall, with hands the size of shovels.

The giant T-XA Terminator looked round quickly, alert as a bird, getting its bearings. It was alone on the building's roof, looking northeast at the city's lights. Mexico City was a teeming nest of humans such as the experimental, autonomous Terminator had never seen in its own time. It had geometric skyscrapers as stark as razor slashes, and endless high-density sprawl: row after row, mile after mile, of medium-rise glass, steel, brick, stone, and concrete. All of it built for humans, many millions of them. Whichever direction it looked, the city lights showed more of the same.

It was repulsive.

Time to act quickly. The T-XA changed, losing the characteristics of any specific human. It became smooth, sexless, abstract. Clawing the fingers of one powerful hand, it reached inside its massive chest, which parted viscously. Its arm sank in nearly to the elbow.

The T-XA felt no pain from its time displacement. Its carefully tuned, multiply redundant nanoware had ridden the space-time displacement field better than living flesh.

It withdrew the arm, a phased-plasma laser rifle now gripped in its big boulder of a fist: a black metal weapon almost three feet long, with no stock attached. The rifle looked like an oversized, elongated handgun, and that's how the Terminator gripped it. If other small arms were honeybees, this device would have been an angry, deadly

Now the T-XAs mass adjusted inwards, filling the cavity left by its weapon, and the Terminator scaled town just slightly-yet was still fully eight feet tall. It resumed it's original appearance of a giant, naked man.

Termination of humans was its purpose. Pointing the laser rifle ahead, it commenced a course of action.

CHAPTER ONE

LOSANGELES,CALIFORNIAMAY 1994

Their running battle with the shapeshifting T-1000 Terminator had brought them to a steel mill, its crew working the night shift.

The workers ran for their lives when a tanker truck jackknifed and turned on its sidesliding, in a screeching agony of rent metal, right into the mill, where it cracked open like a huge, elongated egg, and spilled its dangerous freight: thousands of gallons of liquid nitrogen. The nitrogen sizzled into vapor when it touched the air, surrounding the T-1000 as it tried to struggle clear of the wreck. The shapeshifting, liquid-metal Terminator literally froze up. Stubbornly, it tried to walk, but soon, it was totally immobile, like a sculpture of painted glass.

The T-800 raised its .45 caliber pistol. " Hasta la vista, baby," it said-then fired once. The T-1000 exploded.

But even that was not the end. When its fragments warmed through on the floor of the steel mill, the T-1000 still managed to reform, even as they ran to escape it. Or tried to run, with their injuries and bruises. John Connor wondered how it worked. There had to be a limit to the redundancy of its artificial intelligence, a size too small for a fragment to retain its programming. But they hadn't found it so far. The T-1000 came after them.

In the end, the T-800 fired a grenade right into its body. It exploded, and the T-1000 splashed out into a bizarre free-form shape, its programming still straining reform

it, even as it fell backwards into a huge vat of molten steel. And that, finally was too much. In the pool of steel, the killing machine struggled to free itself, morphing into numerous shapes, but ultimately melting down. Then it was gone altogether, its high-tech liquid-metal alloy dispersing through the steel in the vat.

"I need a vacation," the T-800 said. It was now a terrible sight. Its left arm had been torn off, fighting the T-1000 after they arrived at the mill. Much of its outer organic structure had been shot away.

John looked down into the molten metal. There was no sign left of the T-1000. "Is it dead?"

"Terminated."

They threw in the arm and hand of the first T-800 from 1984-the one that had tried to kill his mother, Sarah, before he'd even been conceived. John had taken it from the Cyberdyne building. Then he tossed in the chip from its head.

"It's finally over," Sarah said.

"No." The T-800 touched a finger to the side of its head. "There is another chip. It must be destroyed also."

John immediately realized what it meant. But the T-800 had become his friend. In interacting with humans, it had begun to seem human itself. John had already taught it so much. After all that, it couldn't be simply melted down like scrap, like a worn-out machine, just in case the wrong people got hold of it. "No!" he said.