“We said we would get through this together. That’s the only reason we’ve made it this far. If you die....”
Her voice trailed away, unable to complete the sentence, unable to countenance the thought. Her strength was wavering, as was her conviction. She had been fighting a long time, and she was tired. She knew he was too, but somehow he always managed to bounce back. Always managed to summon strength from depths unknown, find confidence even in the darkest moments. She was strong, but not that strong. Not as strong as John Connor. That was why he had to stay alive. For the Resistance. For everyone. For her.
He saw what she was going through even as he sensed her emotional exhaustion.
“You live—and that’s all that matters to me, Kate. You’re the reason I’ve kept fighting for all these years. You have my whole heart. You always have, and you always will. You’re what I live for.” As he moved toward her, she let go of the gun. It dropped to the floor beside her, silent and no longer threatening.
Tears were running down her face, streaking her cheeks. Smiling affectionately, he placed his scarred hands gently on her stomach. Reaching up with one hand she touched his face, let her fingers trace the side of his jaw.
“This is not ‘goodbye,’” she whispered to him.
“No.” They kissed.
She pulled away. Someone had to. “See you later—okay?”
“Yeah.”
She managed a smile. “Every time I look into your eyes I know we’re still headed in the right direction,” she murmured softly. “I know that, somehow, we’ll make it. And I’m not the only one.”
She gestured to her right, toward the armory door that stood slightly ajar.
“You have a responsibility to those people out there, John. They believe you’re going to lead them to victory. What am I going to tell them when they find out you’re gone?”
She paused, sniffling and swallowing, trying to keep from breaking down completely.
“What am I going to tell myself?”
Looking into her face, unable to avoid the naked longing and desperation on display, he wondered what he could possibly say in response. Then he smiled anew, reassuringly, and gently wiped at her tears.
“I’ll be back.”
He turned, picked up the pack, shouldered his methodically chosen weapons, kissed her long and deep, and headed purposefully toward the doorway. Silently, she watched him go. Though his words hung in the air, she doubted them. Then she gathered herself and headed out in his wake. By the time she exited the armory he was gone.
Realizing there was nothing to be gained from trying to follow him, she strode purposefully toward the infirmary. Unable to do more than internalize her own suffering, she could at least help to alleviate that of others.
For the pain and the ache she was feeling, there was no medicine.
Like all scavengers, the crow and its brethren had done well out of the war. Not every person could be accorded a fit burial, far less the thousands of domesticated animals who had been left to live and die on their own when their human masters had been murdered by the rampaging machines. In addition, there were the wild creatures who perished of natural causes whose corpses could no longer be neatly swept up and disposed of by park authorities, ranchers, and others now occupied with simply trying to survive.
The crow had no reason to avoid the huge wall it was approaching. Though abnormally stark and utilitarian, it did not differ (at least from a crow’s perspective) all that much from the urban ruins it and its cawing relatives had inherited. When the twin turrets began to whirr softly and alter their attitude, the crow simply dipped a wing and angled to its left.
Detecting the presence of an organic creature in the forbidden zone, the automated gun emplacements made no distinction between a small feathered avian and a trained member of the human Resistance. Programmed to destroy anything carbon-based that entered the zone designated as Skynet Central, they responded to the intrusion with typical machine overkill.
The relative still of the evening air was shattered as the weapons of both turrets let loose with a barrage of intersecting rounds that utterly obliterated the intruder. When seconds later they quieted, there was nothing left of the passing passerine. Not even a single black feather survived to reach the hardscrabble ground outside the wall.
The solitary figure that emerged from the stream advanced in silence through the surviving trees that lined its banks. Wright knew he did not have far to go to reach the outer limits of Skynet’s death zone. Assuming he succeeded in crossing that boundary in one piece, then things would really start to get interesting.
It was just as the information from the Resistance people had indicated: there was the enormous wall, the integrated gun emplacements, the sensors spotted along the length and breadth of the structure—and not a moving shape in sight.
Well, that was a lack easily rectified.
Taking a deep breath, he stepped out from the trees and deliberately exposed himself.
As speedily as they had trained their muzzles on the unlucky bird, both massive turrets now swiveled around to bring their weapons to bear on this new profile. If they fired once, it would all be over. All the confusion and hurt he had suffered since being revived would vanish in a single explosive inferno of fire and destruction.
A part of him wished for it, hoped for it, desired it. No more wondering about what he had become. No more speculating on how it had come to pass. There would be peace, at last.
But not for a while yet, it seemed. The guns remained trained on him for several seconds. Then they shifted back to their original watchful positions, once more awaiting the appearance of the unauthorized. Wright slumped. Plainly, that did not include him. Within the exposed portions of his upper body a vast variety of mechanical components hummed softly, helping to keep him alive.
Alive, he thought solemnly, but not human. Not necessarily machine, either. Having crossed Skynet’s boundary, passed the test, surmounted the critical obstacle, he found (somewhat to his surprise) that he was after all glad to still be living. The corollary to that quiet elation was that he was disappointed in the reason he still was.
The automated turrets continued to ignore him as he hurried across the intervening landscape between forest and wall. Reaching the base of the massive barrier, he tilted his head back and regarded it thoughtfully. It was a long way to the top and there was little in the way of visible handholds.
He went up it like a spider, periodically using his fists to punch holes in the sheer wall where none otherwise existed.
Though he hesitated before topping the obstacle, he needn’t have worried. There were no sentries pacing the crest, no ambulatory patrols, no razor or barbed wire. There was no need for such traditional defensive fripperies. Not with the high-powered instantly reactive automated cannons mounted in gimbaled turrets that protected Skynet Central. They would detect and annihilate anything organic that attempted to violate the perimeter. Only machines could pass, and then only those that continuously broadcast their assigned identification according to recognized Skynet protocols.
That realization had already told him far more about himself than he wanted to know.
Dropping down the far side of the wall, he rapidly made his way deeper into the complex that had been raised atop and in some cases made use of the ruins of greater San Francisco. An approaching rumble caused him to swerve to his right. Had he continued on his course he would have found himself in the path of an automated, self-aware bulldozer. The giant demolition machine was methodically razing what had once been a lovingly decorated church. Watching the process, Wright found he was unable to identify the congregation from what remained of the ruins. The sculpted statues that were being ground to powder beneath the ’dozer’s treaded weight spoke to nothing but the machine’s cold indifference.