T2 - 01 - The New John Connor Chronicles - Dark Futures (25 page)

Selena hit the floor. "Down!" she said.

John stretched on his stomach, head toward the front. A second later, a laser burst went straight through the body of the van, burning the passenger seat up front next to Jade. It must have passed close to her, but she never slowed or reacted.

"Trouble ahead, everyone," Jade said. "Brace yourselves." She swung the van hard right, cutting across a footpath. "We had some police cars trying to stop us."

John sat up, looking out the windows, trying to make sense of what had happened. It looked as if they'd entered a T-intersection, and Jade had taken them down the pedestrian pavement instead of the road. She swung the wheel again, narrowly avoiding a guy unlocking the door of his shop, then got back on the road and crushed the accelerator to the floor. A moment later, there were more cops on their tail.

In the corner, Anton groaned, then managed a faint smile. "Mark my words," he said. This is going to be a long night."

A van like this had heavy steering. You had to bend over the wheel, pulling it towards you, but Jade controlled it with an ease that implied immense strength. As the police pursued them, she weaved through the huge city's labyrinth of streets, past its rich jumble of shops, houses, churches, squares,
 
colonial
 
and modern architecture, proud public art, and seedy alleyways with trash and beggars. She managed the traffic, or any other obstacle that came her way as if she had a sixth sense.

But the police wouldn't let go of them easily. A harsh thrumming followed them and a powerful spotlight focused down from overhead.

"We've got a chopper tailing us," Sarah said.

Jade didn't look back. "I realize that, Ms. Connor."

"Jade," Danny said, "we've still got the same problem. We need to get rid of this van."

"I know. It's conspicuous, and the police have its registration."

"Worse than that," Sarah said. "If the police have it, that Terminator will get it."

She glanced at John, who said, "Trust us. We've had some experience in this kind of situation." Rummaging in his backpack, he found a spare magazine for Sarah's assault rifle and passed it across to her. Quickly, he swapped the magazine over.
                                          

"That makes sense," Danny said. "See what you can do, Jade."

"You can all assume I'm working on it," Jade said. She sounded slightly sarcastic, though so controlled it was hard to be sure. She swung the van hard into another alleyway, and a police car went past. Then she picked up a one-way street, placing the van neatly into the line of flowing traffic. John's wristwatch showed it was just past
4.00 a
.m.
Some traffic was starting to build on the roads. For the moment, they'd lost the police cars, but the chop- , per was still overhead. As long as it could follow them, , they'd never be clear of the cops.

John took stock as Jade drove straight for a couple of miles. They still had Baxter's corpse to deal with. He didn't know what the Specialists would want to do with it, but he wasn't happy with it there in the back of the van. All the same, that was probably the least of their worries right now.

"So what's the deal?" Sarah said quietly, looking Danny's way. "Are we still trying to stop Judgment Day, or what?"

"Something like that," he said.

"All right. That's all I needed to know. Desperate times make desperate measures." Sarah crawled to the back of the van and aimed the CAR-
15 in
the air, through the broken window. She fired upwards at the police chopper. "It's backing off," she said. "They probably think we're mad enough to shoot them down." She fired off another burst. "In fact, if everybody's going to get killed anyway, maybe we are."

Jade found a narrow street on the left, kicked the brake down, and got them round the corner somehow, rear wheels sliding. She straightened out and headed for a big
Liverpool
department store car park, checking it out. The car park was closed, so she cruised on past, looking
 
for a better opportunity. Behind them, the police chopper was getting noisier again. There'd be more cops any second now.

"Hang on, please," Jade said. She drove to the right, onto the pavement, then plowed into the shop's locked doors, shattering the glass and setting off more alarms. The van careered through the dimly lit space of a cosmetics department, smashing counters and displays.

"Great," John said. "This'll sure attract attention."

"It doesn't matter," Jade said with a strange certainty. "Everyone, get out. Now." She wrenched her door open-it was jammed where the metal had deformed while they'd been escaping from the car park. The sliding side door was also jammed and it took too long to force open. Selena smashed the last of the rear glass and they climbed from the vehicle, maneuvering Baxter's body as carefully as they could. John retrieved his 12-gauge.

They followed Jade up a flight of stationary escalators, then another. She moved like a shadow past racks of CDs and videos. Softy glowing signs pointed them to an emergency exit As they ran, Anton leaned on Danny for support. Of the Specialists, Danny was the only one who was still unscathed, though Jade now showed no ill effect from her wound. While she'd been driving, she'd somehow grown stronger. Then again, Selena's badly cut body also seemed to have healed, even the parts that were worst mangled in her fight with the pseudo-dog. She was covered in blood, but nothing like you'd expect from the way it had savaged her.

As they passed a women's shoe department, Jade grabbed a pair of low-heeled sandals, hopping about as she put them on. She tossed a pair to
Macedo
, who caught them in one hand, the other balancing Baxter across her shoulders. Jade pointed the others to an exit door, but Sarah was already headed in that direction. Outside, they all huddled on a metal landing, thirty feet above street level. The police chopper was cruising round the building, searching with its spotlight, but it hadn't found them yet. As Selena propped up Baxter's uniformed body against the wall, then changed her shoes and tossed away the high heels, it struck John that this was all kind of macabre.

"I'd better do this bit," Selena said, looking over the rail to the street. "I'm the least conspicuous around here."

"I don't think so," Jade said, looking her up and down. "Have a look at yourself."

Selena checked out her arms, and legs and the front of her dress, as if noticing the rips, and all the blood, for the first time.

Jade vaulted the rail, saying, "I'll be back." She landed like a cat on the concrete below, then ducked round a corner and vanished from sight.

"Now what?" Sarah said, leaning over the rail, looking round vigilantly, with the CAR-15 at the ready.

Danny hefted Baxter's body and headed down the stairs towards ground level. Anton seemed much better— he was walking okay. They emerged in a deserted alley. Again, there were sirens in the distance, getting closer.

"Jade will be fine," Danny said. "As you've seen, she can act quickly."

Thirty seconds later, a big 1980s
Toyota
sedan pulled up. Jade popped the trunk lid and they folded Baxter's body into the trunk. Then they piled in, Danny sitting up front with Jade. She drove out of the alleyway quietly, passing a knot of police cars and merging smoothly with the city traffic. The chopper came by, going low, but it didn't recognize them in the new car. They turned north, then picked up the
Anillo
Periférico
, heading west, then north again, following the signs to
Quértaro
.

"Where are we going?" Sarah said.

"To the
U.S.
," Danny said. "But we'll have to stop and bury Robert. How's everyone else?"

Anton groaned, then said, "I'll get over it. I wasn't sure for a while." John had seen the man's wounds, some of them. He should have been dead at least a couple of times by now.

"Good," Danny said. "The rest of you?"
                      

Jade and Selena were obviously okay. John and Sarah were exhausted from running and fighting, but otherwise unscathed. The T-XA had concentrated its attention on the others, not seeming to care much about the Connors. That was unlike the Skynet they knew, but there had to be a reason.

"So what's this all about?" Sarah said. "What have you dragged us into?"

"Right," Danny said. "You know about Skynet, of course."
                                                                       

"Of course we do."
                                                    

"We're here to make a better future, one without Skynet."

"What do you mean, 'one without Skynet'? We thought we took out Skynet seven years ago."

"You might have, in a sense," Anton said. "But only in a sense."

"What does that mean?"

"We came to you for help," Danny said, "because you're the only people we can trust. In the future, you'll campaign against the Skynet project and try to blow up Cyberdyne. We know you're committed, and we know what you did in '94. Remember, my mother was part of it. So we know you'll believe us. Hopefully, you'll trust us as much as we trust you. I realize we have to earn it."
          

"All right," John said, figuring this out. "So this time it's you trying to change the future-not Skynet?"

Danny sighed. "That's more or less right. It's more complicated than that. In the world where I came from, my mother died in 2007, at the same time as you. Later on, I found out she was right. It's just that she didn't succeed."

“Tarissa tries to help us out?" John said. That's right." Danny sounded haunted. "I was nineteen
 
at the time. I didn't believe her. If I had, I might have died as well."

"So you're going to save her, doing this?"

"No," Anton said firmly. "That's the tragedy of it, John. Whatever we do, no one ever gets saved."

They changed cars again half an hour later, picking out a 1960s Chevrolet sedan with big rear fins. It was still pretty conspicuous, once someone reported it missing, bit it was easy to steal. By the time it was reported, they would be far away, in yet another vehicle.

Sarah sat up front this time, squeezed between Danny, when he got in, and Jade, in the driver's seat. Jade smashed the ignition mechanism with a blow of her fist and started the car.

"Wow!" John said from the back, seated just behind her.
  
"You sure you're human, Jade? I've never seen anyone human do that."

"There's always a first time, John."

He didn't know what to make of that. She had a way of talking that was gentle and sad, as if she'd seen and understood stuff the rest of them could only imagine. As the car pulled out of its parking spot, John craned forward to talk to her. "I mean, I've seen a Terminator do it, but not a human being."

"That's what I thought you meant."

"Yeah. Uh, don't take it the wrong way. I'm not trying to compare you to a Terminator." Back in 1994, when the T-800 was protecting him, it had stolen cars that way. If Jade could do it, too, no wonder she kept stealing cars so quickly-and that she could do so much else.

"I'm not offended," Jade said. "And I think you'll find that stealing cars is the least of my talents." Though it was obviously a little joke, she didn't laugh. "We're all biologically human, but we've been upgraded."

"Jade gets sensitive about this,"
Macedo
said. "She's the most enhanced member of the team."

Jade shrugged as they passed a big Mercedes tourist bus. "I'm the youngest, so I'm the most enhanced. Judgment Day came just after I was born, so the technology doesn't get any better than this." She wasn't boasting. It sounded more like she saw it as tragic.

"You mean there was no chance to develop it further?" he said.

"Exactly."

"But Danny was born back in, I don't know, 1990 or something."

"1988," Danny said.

"Right, so you can't have been enhanced then. We didn't have that kind of technology back in the '80s—we still don't."

"There are different kinds of enhancement," Anton said. "The rest of us have had somatic cell engineering at different points in our lives, but Jade is different. She's re-engineered through and through, from before she was born. Every cell of her is more efficient than you or me, or any of us."

"Just don't pick on her," Danny said. "She'll make you regret it."

"I could do without all the attention," Jade said.

Danny glanced over at her. "Sorry, Jade. I know you're not a curiosity piece. You're one of us. You're the best."

"Thank you, Daniel."

"Hey, Jade, I'm sorry, too," John said. "I didn't mean to offend you."

He was figuring out something else. Jade looked at least twenty, maybe a bit older. But she said she was born not long before Judgment Day. Let's see, he thought. If Judgment Day was 2021 and these people came from 2036, she must be only fifteen or sixteen. That didn't add up.