Russell Blackford - The New John Connor Chronicles 02 - An Evil Hour.pdf

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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
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CYBERDYNE RESEARCH SITE,COLORADOSPRINGS AUGUST 2001
They'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 peo-ple to listen.
The T-XA had pursued them fromMexicotoColorado, the journey ending at Cyberdyne's heavily
guarded re-search facility. Their running gun battle with the Termi-nator had taken them through the
facility to the twelfth floor, where the company's AI Operations Center was lo-cated. 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 appa-ratus
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 cubi-cal 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 1994—and 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 ofL.A.had been a turning point in John's life and the his-toryof 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: en-hanced human warriors from its own world and time.
Now three of them were dead.
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Miho Tagatoshi—the 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 sci-entist 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."
"Idon't care what you think," Rosanna said, jerking away from her touch."Idid 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 unat-tainable superwoman. Jade had been engineered to
grow up quickly, then cease aging altogether, making her ap-pear older than she was, while being
potentially immor-tal. 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 abil-ities, she was
beautiful, in a strange, sad way. Framed by black, shoulder-length hair, her oval face was almost
per-fect. . .yet her eyes looked haunted, as though she'd al-ready 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 inMexico City, the T-XA had killed one of the Specialists:
Robert Baxter. Two more had died tonight: Danny Dyson and SelenaMacedo. Jade had survived, along
with her Russian com-rade, Anton Panov, a big granite block of a man with shortgray 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, hisveins and arteries swarmed with millions of tiny
nanotechdevices, 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 al-ways made sense when he explained something. He
wasnow the last person, at this time, in this world, with thememory of a different Judgment Day from the
one thatJobs had grown up expecting. The one that was supposed tohave happened in 1997, the one
that would have createdSkynet's World, had Sarah-with the aid of yet an-otherTerminator-not destroyed
Cyberdyne's advanced(computer research and the T-1000 sent to kill John.
AntonandJade bad come from a different world, witha different Judgment Day. They had traveled back
from2036. from a new reality that John now thought of asJade'sWorld. In Jade's World, Judgment Day
had been postponed,thanks to what Sarah had done in1994. Inthatreality, Cyberdyne's work had been
set back foryears. Judgment Day had taken place in place in 2021 when Jade was only a baby. She had
lived through the nuclearholocaust, but could not recall its horrors, only thosethat came after.
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Judgment Day had happened in two different realities: in Skynet's World in1997, inJade's World in
2021. Was itpossible 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 over-sized, 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 explo-sion. 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 in-timidate. "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 Ter-minator's atoms across
the space-time continuum.
They found a fire door, which opened into a long tun-nel. After fifty yards, this turned at ninety degrees,
then led up a flight of steps. At the top, another fire door
opened to the outside world. Not far away, helicopters droned and hovered. Cops and military
personnel were everywhere, but looking the wrong way, just at this mo-ment, concentrating upon the
ravaged building or worry-ing about their own safety.
"Quietly," John whispered. "If we're quick, we just might make it."
They needed to get back to where they'd left the Ford Explorer belonging to Sarah's old friend, Enrique
Salceda, then return to Enrique's compound in the Californian Low Desert, without being followed or
detected. As John considered the possibilities, Jade nodded in the di-rection of an empty police cruiser,
parked slightly away from the others. It seemed that no one had spotted them.
Jade touched Sarah, then smiled at John. "I'll be back," she said.
She moved like a blur, accelerating into a superhuman sprint, and reached the cruiser. John had already
seen how quickly she could start a stolen vehicle. Her hands were so strong that she could do it like a
Terminator: by smashing open the ignition mechanism and turning the starter with her bare fingers. It took
her only seconds. They'd soon be out of here.
They just might pull this off.
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PART ONE
JOHN'S WORLD
CHAPTER
One
PATRIOT HOTEL,COLORADOSPRINGS AUGUST 2001
Charles Layton was often feared, and very seldom loved. On first meeting, he seemed gentle, almost
kindly. With his silver hair and watery blue eyes, he might have been a wise, patient judge, or a medical
doctor with a calm bedside manner. But there was an inner hardness. Until he'd reached his thirties, he'd
never appreciated how much he was different-that most people actually cared what others thought of
them.Laytonnever did.
Three decades later, he had thoroughly mastered the lesson. Not only was he different it gave him a kind
of power. Then he'd met the T-XA Terminator, Skynet's emissary from 2036, and it had taken him even
further, further than he could have imagined. The Terminator had modified his brain, reprogramming him
to do Skynet's bidding. He would now work tirelessly, seeking mankind's destruction.
Tonight's events had reached a crisis point Layton needed to be on the spot at Cyberdyne's research
site. Whatever the outcome of the attack on Cyberdyne mightbe, there'd be problems ahead. As 11:00
P.M. approached, he patted the 9mm. Beretta pistol that he wore in a shoul-der holster—concealed
beneath the coat of his charcoal gray suit-then found the electronic keycard that opened his room on the
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