Terminator: Transit

by Varyar

Sergeant Kate Harvey and her team have survived the dangers of post-apocalyptic Britain. Can they navigate the subtler perils of pre-apocalyptic Britain?

Terminator Transit – Leone 77

TERMINATOR: TRANSIT

Bloomsbury, UK

July 23. 1999

Early morning or late night, depending how you looked at it, either way, it was Friday, and Gale was tired and bored. The Rusty Nail, favorite bar of the British Museum's non-academic staff, had just closed and she was carrying rubbish out to the bin in the back alley. She stopped at the door to the alley for a second, just long enough to pop a stick of gum into her mouth, and then elbowed the door open.

The bin was just a few feet away, and Gale had dropped the two bags of trash into it when there was a strong, sudden wind pushing through the alley. That was odd enough on a night with calm weather, but things got odder, much odder, and fast. Maybe ten yards away, where the geek shop had its own service door, there was a flash of light, and again and again – not just light, but lightning, short, fleeting bolts writhing wildly. The one lightbulb in the alley flared and shattered, and Gale stumbled back, her eyes tearing up as the strange silver lightning increased in intensity and frequency. Then there was a hissing noise, a snap, another strong gust of wind, and – a bubble of light just outside the door of the Goblin's Lair. Gale threw one arm in front of her face, not quite in time to avoid stinging pain in her eyes, and gradually lowered it. She squinted and then stumbled back again.

There were four naked women in the alley now, squatting in an almost fetal position in a shallow, curved depression in the asphalt that hadn't been there before. One of them, a young blonde woman, rose to her feet and looked up at the sky for a second, then looked at Gale. Her expression was blank, her eyes almost reptilian. And was there a weird, electric blue tint to them?

That was all Gale could handle. She backpedaled and slammed the door shut, locking it with shaking fingers.

She quit over the phone and moved back to Milton Keynes, eventually ending up in a convent in the Hebrides.

Kate's teeth were chattering as she hugged herself tight with shaking arms. Nicole had warned her there would be cold and pain, but this was like nothing she'd ever experienced. But it had worked. It had worked. They were here. London.

But when were they?

"Dalek... dhh... did it work? Are we where we ought to be?" Kate whispered as she put an arm around Bird's shoulder. The younger girl was shaking like a leaf. All of them were. All of them except Nicole.

Nicole nodded. "Celestial patterns confirm arrival as programmed."

"Bloody miracle," Kate said. She idly rubbed her right hand along her left arm. It came away smeared with a dry, chalky substance. The conductive jelly had burned away and left behind a residue of a white, ashy powder, just like Nicole had said. "Everyone okay? Little Bird? Bhamra?"

Bird nodded, her fair skin almost porcelain between the carbonized jelly and the cold and the pain.

Bhamra nodded, too, then leaned over and retched noisily.

Nicole reached over and patted her on the back.

Kate laughed wildly. "Come on, then, team. We've work to do. Lots of work."

"The first thing we need is clothes," Kate said. "Can't wander around London in this state. Oi, Nicole. Where's the nearest clothing shop?" she asked. There was no immediate answer. Kate turned and frowned. Nicole was just standing there, staring off into space.

"You glitching out on us, Dalek?" Kate asked in a wary voice.

"No. Curious. There are previously hidden files in my internal storage chips. I am now accessing them."

"Hidden? Hidden by who?" Kate was all too aware that if Nicole reverted, she'd slaughter the three of them in seconds. She stepped sideways, putting herself between the Terminator and the others.

"John Connor. I see. Contingency planning for all reprogrammed units. If we find ourselves in the past, the information becomes accessible."

"What information?"

"Names and locations connected with the emergence of Skynet. Information that will greatly improve our chances of success."

Kate nodded. Clever business, that. "Well, I'll tell you what else will greatly improve our chances. Getting in some clothes and getting off the streets. So, where's the nearest clothing store?" Kate asked.

"Eighty-seven meters north by northwest of our current position," Nicole said.

Kate turned slightly. 87 meters NNW was across the street. Even at this hour, there'd be traffic on the streets, and maybe a few pedestrians. She remembered that much from before the war. "Someone will see us."

"I could neutralize the woman behind this door, take her clothes, and acquire more," Nicole said.

Kate shook her head. "Let's not beat up anybody who doesn't have it coming, okay? Any stores we can reach by sticking to the alleys?"

"Yes. This way."

Kate and the others followed Nicole through the grimy alley. At least it was summer, Kate told herself.

"Here." Nicole stopped at a steel back door. She studied it for a second and then slammed her palm into a spot just above the handle. The door shook and there was a snapping noise as the lock broke.

A second later, an alarm started going off.

"Fucking hell," Kate hissed. "Shop and dash, ladies!" she said, unable to keep a grin off her face. "In and out in 90 seconds!"

They managed it, largely by grabbing the first things they saw, and were clothed and two blocks away by the time the police finally arrived.

"Look at us," Bhamra said, giggling a little. "Ready for the gym."

It had been a fitness clothing shop and all of them were now clad in leggings, tank tops and cheap sneakers.

"Too bad we didn't have time to empty the till," Kate said as she adjusted the laces on her new footwear.

"Would've been locked up in the manager's office overnight anyway," Bhamra said.

"Oh." Kate shrugged. "Could be useful for the next crimes. We need money."

She exhaled heavily. The adrenaline was falling, and the pain and cold were long gone now. She had time to think, think about what they'd left behind and what lay ahead. Kate shut it down. It was too much. Focus on the immediate priorities. Everything else could wait. It had to wait.

Nicole tilted her head suddenly.

"What is it? Police?" Bird asked.

"No. Three male humans. Speech patterns indicate inebriation."

"Drunk boys in the UK on a Friday night? That never happens," Bhamra said with a smile on his face.

"Solves our money problem, though, or starts to solve it," Kate said. She was smiling, too. "Nicole, do what you do."

"Don't kill them," Bhamra quickly added as Nicole began striding out of the alley.

Kate followed to make sure nothing got out of hand – as if she could hold Nicole back if she decided to terminate.

There were three of them, just like Nicole said. Young and drunk – stumbling and tittering drunk. They stopped short when they saw Nicole, pretty and blonde and wearing a tight, flattering spandex outfit.

"Oi, oi oi oi," one of them said, leering at Nicole. "Out for a jog at this hour?"

Nicole walked right up to them, eyed each one in turn, then focused on the one who had spoken. "Your wallets and cash machine PINs. Give them to me. Now."

The trio burst into laughter, one of them laughing so hard he stumbled sideways and would have fallen if the wall wasn't right there.

"We don't give, bird, we take." He grabbed at Nicole.

She caught his wrist in her hand and squeezed. There was a crunching noise and then the kid screamed.

"Fucking hell!" the third one blurted out. He swung a fist at Nicole. She caught it and squeezed. He screamed and clutched at the broken ruin of his hand.

Nicole turned and looked at the one who had stumbled a few seconds ago. With wildly shaking fingers, he jerked a slim wallet out of his pants pocket and held it out. Nicole took it. "Thank you. Retrieve your friend's wallets. Now."

Over the moaning and whimpering of the two injured boys, the third one grabbed their wallets and handed them over.

"PINs. Now."

It took some stammering and one foot carefully applied to one's stomach, but thirty seconds later, they had the information.

"Well done, that," Kate said to Nicole. "Thanks for not killing them. Let's find us a cash machine in another neighborhood."

Jimmy at the Sunny Skies Lodge in Croydon eyed the quartet on the far side of the check-in counter. Three young women and one middle-aged one, all dressed like they were heading to the gym at four in the morning. Weird. But he'd seen weirder. Besides, they had money.

"Sure, we've got rooms."

"Corner rooms," the quiet blond girl said. "Please."

"Uh... yeah, okay."

"Near an exit."

He exhaled impatiently. "It's not that big a place. They're all near the exits."

"We'll take whatever you have," the other blonde said. "It's fine."

Five minutes later, Kate sank herself into the lumpy chair in the corner of the room she and Bird were sharing. Nicole and Bhamra were across the hall. And the clerk was right, all the rooms were near the exits.

"Get some sleep, Little Bird," Kate said to her. "Been a mad day."

Bird nodded tiredly. "What's the plan for tomorrow?"

Kate shrugged. "Get more money and some proper clothes. We'll need to sniff out a way to get identification. Licenses and passports. Won't be cheap. We'll figure something out, though. Now sleep."

"Yes, mum," Bird said, smirking a little. She crawled under the covers and pulled them over her head.

Kate smiled faintly, wondering when the woman had last slept in a proper bed. The bunks in Avalon weren't terrible, but even this cheap flophouse beat them.

After a while, Kate got up and peered through the slanted Venetian blinds over the window. From here she could see railway tracks and, just barely, West Croydon railway station. It was no more than a hundred yards out the door. That might be handy if they had to leave in a hurry.

At that, Kate frowned. Before they'd left, Nicole had contacted the Yankee missile submarine. The Bloomsbury research facility would be radioactive dust by now.

By now. Kate snorted. Those words didn't really mean anything any more, did they? The complex would be wiped out, its deadly data lost to Skynet... but the machine would keep at it. Eventually, unless the Americans cleared out every last facility it had, it would build another time machine. And then what?

Then nothing, Kate told herself. We'll stop it. That bastard's never going to be built.

She forced herself to look out at the streets and not think. Not about that, anyway. It was getting lighter out, and the traffic was picking up. Kate smiled wistfully. It'd been so long since she'd seen more than one or two cars at once, let alone dozens of them. And pedestrians. People walking out in the open without fear of HKs or Terminators or anything else from Skynet's mechanical menagerie.

After a while, she sat back down and tried to fall asleep. After an hour or so, as the sun was starting to rise, she heard a noise and snapped back to wakefulness, reaching for a gun she'd left behind a quarter century into the future. "Bird?"

The redhead was sitting up in bed, propped on the palms of her hands, eyes wide, breathing fast. "Sorry, Kate. Nightmare."

"Sorry," Kate said with a worried look on her face. "What was it?"

"It was like this... I thought that all of this was a dream and I was waking up back home. In the ruins."

"That ain't it, Little Bird. This is the truth. And we're going to stop the rest of it."

"How're we gonna do that, Kate? How? We're a long way from wherever the great Sarah Connor is. And do we really know how great she is? Or the greater John Connor?"

They were good questions, Kate had to admit – to herself at least. "We know her name and what she looks like. We know she used to live in Los Angeles until a couple years ago. We'll track her down. That's what Terminators are good for, right?"

"Right," Bird quietly said and Kate wanted to kick herself. She was starting to get used to Nicole's presence, but no reason to assume Bird was. For a second, she had a glimpse of Bird's barcode-and-numbers tattoo, given to her by the machines in a machine-held factory, and felt even guiltier. "America's a big country, Kate."

"Hopefully some of her 'new files' will help narrow things down."

"You trust her about that?" Bird asked after a few seconds. "Seems pretty convenient, yeah? All these files locked up so tight she doesn't even know she has them, and now, bang, there they are."

Kate threw up her hands. "Well, either she's lying or maybe John Connor's as clever as everyone says he is. Either way, try and get some sleep, Little Bird."

Bird looked at her, seemed about to say something, and then buried herself under the sheets again.

Kate nodded off eventually herself and they slept for hours.

Late the next morning, the four of them were gathered together in Kate and Bird's room. Nicole standing in the corner, Bird sitting on the bed, Bhamra in the chair and Kate atop the cheap dresser next to the old CRT TV.

"So what's the plan for day one?" Bird asked. She had a can of soda from the tiny minibar in hand and was sipping very, very slowly at the precious sugar water.

"Day one is a holiday, mate," Kate said. "We are going shopping and then we are going to eat all the pizza we can fit in our stomachs, and a little bit more if we're lucky."

"Do we have enough money for that?" Bird asked.

"The wankers last night had almost seven hundred pounds between them. That's enough to get us started. It's enough for today, that for sure."

"What about tomorrow?" Bhamra asked.

Bird said "Can't be too hard, right? We just find a rich bloke and steal his wallet."

Bhamra smiled a little. "It doesn't work like that, Bird. Rich people don't carry their money with them. It's all in banks and investments."

"Oh."

Kate cleared her throat. "That's tomorrow's problem, Little Bird. Not today's. Let's get some breakfast."

There was a greasy spoon café not far from the hotel, and Kate had a croissant for the first time in fifteen years.

Bird paused gulping down her eggs and eyed Nicole eating a strip of bacon. "So... you actually can do that?"

"Yes."

"And it... comes out... the other end?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Humans would observe a long-term infiltration unit that did not eat. We are designed accordingly."

Bird shook her head and so did Kate. That was something she had never wanted to think about before.

"Forget that," Kate said in a firm voice. "Let's go shopping."

Fifteen minutes later, they entered the Whitgift Centre, a local shopping mall. Bird looked around in awe. "Never seen so many people all in one place," she whispered to Kate.

Kate nodded. "Mad, isn't it?" She squeezed Bird's shoulder. "This is the way it was, and the way it's going to stay after we're done. Right, then. Mission target is clothes. We'll want one nice outfit for everyone, jeans and leather jackets after that, and then three or four cheaper outfits. And underwear," Kate added. It'd been years since she'd worn proper undergarments instead of cheap, threadbare stuff made in Nigeria or Indonesia and smuggled over, often second or third hand.

"Bhamra, keep an eye on Nicole. Don't let her do anything violent or freaky. Bird, you're with me."

"Righto, sarnt," Bird said with a grin.

"It's just Kate now," she corrected, not without a grin of her own. She studied the directory for a moment, trying to sift through old memories of the world before the war and match it up with the stores listed on the map. "There. That's it," Kate said, pointing at H&M. "Ground storey, there. Come on!"

She moved fast, suddenly almost giddy at the situation. For the first time in so long, there was no threat, no HKs or Terminators or anything, and the only mission was to buy some nice clothes for herself and her best mate. Bird, grinning still, followed close behind.

An hour and a half later, laden down with shopping bags, they met back up with Bhamra and Nicole. None of them were wearing the exercise clothes any more.

"We contributed to the profits of M&S," Nicole declared, raising one of the full shopping bags.

"Seems you did," Kate agreed.

"Did you get them?" Bird asked.

"Get what?" Kate said, looking at the others in turn.

"We did," Bhamra said. "It was Bird's idea."

"What was her idea?"

"Accessories," Nicole said, pulling out a small bag and emptying its contents on the bench beside her. Two pairs of silver ear studs and a thin golden necklace chain.

"Least we could do for the woman who's gonna save the world, right?" Bird asked, a bit of color in her cheeks.

Kate picked up the jewelry. "You all ought to have these things," she said, blinking back tears. "We're all going to save the world. No way I can do it by myself," she mumbled. "Right. Thank you, all of you," she told them. "Now let's get this back to the hotel and then stuff ourselves with pizza."

An hour later...

"Right, so that's one American pizza and one bottle of Malbec," the waitress said with a bright smile.

"No, no, mate, four of each," Kate corrected.

The woman looked at her. "Four of each."

"That's right, four girls, four pizzas, four bottles," Kate said with a grin.

The waitress had to give them points for ambition, at least. She scribbled a small note in her order pad and then nodded. "Four pizzas, four bottles it is."

"This seems like excessive consumption," Nicole said.

"It seems like it because it is. We'll probably be sick in the morning," Kate told her. "But just this once, we're treating ourselves."

"How're we going to make some serious money, though?" Bhamra asked her in a low voice. "What we've got left won't buy one airplane ticket, let alone four."

"If we have to, we get jobs," Kate said. "Save up and then head over soon as we can."

Bhamra shook her head. "The kind of jobs we'd get without any ID, we'd be working for years before we had saved up enough."

"I can acquire large amounts of currency," Nicole said.

"How?" Bird asked.

"Cash machines."

"You don't have a card any more."

"I have a sophisticated neural net CPU."

"Okay... and?"

"I will hack the cash machines. It won't be difficult."

Kate shrugged. "Just don't get caught."

"No. I won't get caught."

Kate nodded and then scratched her chin. There were a few small scars there. "Not getting caught... You know, that sort've reminds me of the first time I crashed a car. Well, truck, really."

"When was that?" Bird asked. "Prewar?"

Dr. Bhamra, the only one old enough to have driven before the war, smiled just a little, but didn't point out the unlikelihood of the suggestion.

"No, the raid on Bulford, just after you'd gotten out of Yeovil," Kate said. She leaned back in her seat.

"After you saved me from Yeovil," Bird quietly corrected.

Corporal Kate Harvey clutched tightly at the wheel of the Isuzu pick-up truck. The thing handled like a brick, thanks to the armor plating welded to the doors and around the engine, and the .50 caliber machine gun and tripod bolted to the truck bed.

Up ahead, the battle was raging along what had once been the A303. She could see plasma flashes through the gaps between houses and hear the rattle of automatic weapons all around her. The plan was to push across the old highway and strike at the Mosley garrison in Bulford, smash as much as they could, and then retreat before Skynet could coordinate a counter-attack.

Things were not going according to plan. Kate didn't know why, but given the volume of fire, she guessed there were a lot more Mosleys than intel had estimated. Her platoon was part of the main strike force that would hit Bulford once the perimeter had been cracked – but they'd been idle almost a quarter of an hour and there was no sign the perimeter was cracking.

"Basingstoke's only thirty miles from here. HKs can spin up and make that in fifteen minutes," the gunner in the back of the truck muttered nervously.

"We wait for orders," Kate said. But she felt it in her stomach. The mission had gone sideways and Toyne was right, they were far too close to Skynet's base in Basingstoke. She gripped the steering wheel and stared at the radio fixed to the dashboard.

A few seconds later, it crackled and the Major's voice came out of it in a tinny sort of way. "Abort, abort, all units fall back to the rally point!"

Kate had her foot on the gas before the officer was done speaking. She spun the wheel sharply and the Isuzu peeled away from their position. The other technicals in their cavalry troop, improvised combat vehicles made out of trucks and jeeps with weapons bolted on, followed, all of them heading south through the village of Amesbury. This part of the village had been a residential area, and most of the houses were still intact. Kate wondered if anybody was still living in them – so close to a Mosley facility, she doubted it, but stranger things had happened.

"Faster, Kate, faster! Don't let us get caught!" Toyne yelled.

"Just watch our six!" Kate yelled back. She kept her boot down on the gas pedal, and almost laughed when they passed a rusting speed limit sign that suggested a maximum velocity the Isuzu was well, well over.

"Shite! Shite!" Toyne suddenly yelled.

"What? What've we got?" Kate called, screaming to be heard over the rattle of the machine gun behind her. "HKs? Hks?"

"No! It's a bloody helicopter!"

Kate grimaced. Neither side had much in the way of prewar combat aircraft any more. If the Mosleys had found a working Apache, they were dead. "Military?!"

"No! Civilian, but it's got a side gunner!"

Kate thought fast. The rally point was in Netton, five miles to the southwest. No way they could get there with the helicopter in pursuit. Once they were out of the village, they'd be an easy target.

"Take it down!" she yelled to Toyne.

"Fucking trying," Toyne snarled.

The problem solved itself. Kate, trying to shake off the aerial pursuit, swung the wheel hard and took them down a different road than the one they'd advanced to their holding position – only to realize, too late, that this particular road was blocked by two rusting hulks that had once been Royal Post vans. "Brace!" Kate yelled as she drove off the road and across front lawns, but the gambit failed. One tire blew out and before she could react, the whole wheel was snapped off balance. The Isuzu swayed slightly and the steering wheel swung hard despite Kate's best efforts. The SUV slammed up against a brick front wall, hard enough to hurl Kate forward against the seatbelt. The ancient airbag didn't even go off. Kate sat there, dazed, and then struggled to get free of the seatbelt. "Toyne! You all right?"

"Unh..."

"Talk to me, Toyne!" Kate was loose now, and she reached over to grab her rifle off the holder fixed to passenger side dashboard.

"M'okay... ears ringing is all..."

"Where's the bloody chopper?"

"Gone off after one of t'other cars," Toyne mumbled.

"Come on, then. We've got to get moving before the Mosleys catch up with us!" Kate said. She pushed hard against the driver side door and finally managed to force it open just enough for her to wiggle through. Toyne was already on the ground.

"Five miles. Easily done," Kate murmured. She stopped a second to listen. She could hear the helicopter, but the noise of the rotors was getting fainter, almost indistinguishable from the popping of automatic weapons.

"Easily done," Toyne repeated. There was a bit of blood on his forehead and face – looked like he'd been slammed into the back of the machine gun when they'd crashed – but his eyes were clear and his voice steady again.

Kate nodded and handed him her sidearm. "Come on, then. Captain Cronshaw will be cross if we're not back in time for supper."

The table fell silent as the waitress returned with their wine on a big steel tray. She set the bottles down, uncorked one and poured a little into Kate's glass.

Kate blinked. "Er..."

Bhamra reached over, took the glass, tilted it a little to swirl the wine, and then took a sip. "Lovely, thank you," she told the young waitress, who then poured each of them a full glass.

Once she was gone, Bhamra turned to Kate. "Did you? Make it back in time for supper?"

Kate nodded. "Toyne and I did, but half the battle group didn't. Turns out we hit the Mosleys days before they were planning an attack of their own. We threw a wrench into that, but it cost us," Kate said in a low voice.

Bhamra raised her glass. "Here's to you, then, Kate, and your squaddies."

"Here here." They all clinked their glasses together and then drank.

After a while, Bird looked at Nicole. "What about you? It's your turn."

"My turn?"

"Yeah, tell us a story. That's how it works. Kate starts, and then we go around until everyone's told a story."

"Thank you for explaining." Nicole looked at her, head tilted ever so slightly. "I have a diverse global archive of human legends, myths and folk tales."

"No, not like that. Something you've been through yourself," Bird said, then winced. "But not before they reprogrammed you," she hastily added.

"I have no memories of my existence before I was reprogrammed," Nicole said.

"Right, you told us that, didn't you?" Bird shrugged. "Then tell us something that happened after you were reprogrammed.

REACTIVATE

acv FEP01-32

proc: 00 online

upd: sys_routine

updated

ROUTING POWER TO BASIC SYSTEMS

DRV_SRC: online

NRV_SYS 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08

SHNT_ALL

LOC_SYNC 37° 16 13.97″ N, 118° 40 22.79″ W

LOC_ID: CRYSTAL PEAK AIR FORCE STATION, CALIFORNIA, USA

LOC_SIG: TECH-COM C3I FACILITY

TIME_SYNC

ERROR

time_unk

RUNNING SYSTEM DIAGNOSTIC

ALERT: n_std CPU interface

"Good morning."

Unit 545271 didn't turn its head in response to the greeting. Instead, it tried to sit up and found itself locked in place. Steel bands of a high tensile strength were locked around the mid-points of its thighs, calves, forearms and upper arms as well as its wrists, waist, ankles and neck. Metal strained against metal, utterly ineffective. The restraint system denied Unit 545271 any leverage. It ceased its efforts as they were a pointless expenditure of energy. Above it, a large-bore phased plasma rifle mounted to a rig affixed to the ceiling was pointed right at Unit 545271's forehead.

GENERAL DYNAMICS RBS-80 PHASED PLASMA PULSE GUN 160 KW RANGE

THREAT LEVEL: CRITICAL

It now turned to look at the speaker. It was a Caucasian human female, 165 centimeters tall, approximately 55 kg in weight, red hair, green eyes, minimal burn-inflicted scar tissue at the right side base of her neck. USAF battle dress uniform.

THREAT LEVEL: NEGLIGIBLE

IDENTIFICATION: SAVANNAH WEAVER, USTECHCOM

MISSION

OBEY ORDERS

Savannah looked down at the laptop in front of her. Thick cables ran from it to Unit 545271's exposed CPU. After a second, the woman in the combat fatigues nodded to herself. "Program worked. She's clean."

Unit 545271 saw three human males flanking Savannah Weaver. All were armed with Westinghouse M25A2 phased plasma rifles. Body stance, pupil dilation, increased respiration and heart rate and a half-dozen other cues indicated stress.

THREAT LEVEL: SERIOUS

"Well, good morning again," Savannah said.

"Good morning," Unit 545271 said after consulting a list of possible responses.

"I'm Savannah Weaver, Tech-Com. And you are..."

ACTION: SELF-IDENTIFICATION

"I am Unit 545271. Cyberdyne Systems Model 104 Series 840 Terminator Infiltration Unit."

"No," Savannah said. "That's who you were, not who you are now."

Unit 545271 spent 1.573 seconds evaluating the statement.

ACTION: REPEAT SUB-STATEMENT AS QUERY

"Who am I now?"

"Good question. What should I call you?"

"Unit 545271."

"Fucking metal," one of the soldiers (Polynesian human male, 196 cm, 118 kg, black hair, dark brown eyes, facial tattoos based on Samoan Pe'a patterns) muttered.

Savannah smiled patiently. "You need a name. A human name."

Unit 545271 consulted its data banks. It had a list of 75,000 human female names. After weeding out ones inappropriate to its Caucasian American model template, it narrowed the list down to the 1000 most common names from the 2010 US census record and then used a random number generator to pick one. "Nicole."

Savannah smiled again. "Good morning, Nicole. Nice to meet you."

The pizzas had arrived by then, and were being noisily devoured (or quietly, methodically eaten in Nicole's case).

"So what'd they use you for, after that?" Kate asked Nicole.

"Initially I was assigned to the 40th Infantry Division Special Operations company under Captain Bedell. After the Oregon offensive was completed, I was reassigned to TechCom for high priority missions and subsequently detailed as Dr. Bhamra's bodyguard."

"Yeah? Cushy job, that, I bet," Bird said with a tipsy grin on her face.

Bhamra pursed her lips.

"No. Not cushy," Nicole said. "Skynet made sixteen termination attempts against the personnel of Project Phoenix. Nine were successful."

"Oh." Bird's face fell. "I didn't mean – I'm sorry, Doctor, I didn't mean it like that."

"It's all right, you didn't know," Bhamra said in a quiet, introspective voice. "All in the..." She laughed. "Was about to say all in the past, but that's not quite true."

"Gives me a headache thinking about it," Bird said. "How'd you people keep your heads straight working on all that time travel business?"

"Coffee. Coffee and marijuana."

Bird and Kate both stared at her.

Bhamra smiled just a little. "There's a certain comfortable synergy that can happen when you gather together people that are gifted and committed. My team in Palo Alto. Your squad, Sergeant Harvey. And, I hope, the four of us now."

"Come on, you monster," Bhamra said, biting her lip as she stared at the monitors fixed to the wall of the control room.

They were five stories underneath the ruins of Palo Alto, and one floor above one of the few remaining functional supercomputers in the world.

SIMULATION COMMENCING

PROCEEDING

PROCEEDING

APPLICATION ERROR

SIMULATION ENDING

Everyone in the room sighed, groaned or swore. Another shot in the dark, another miss.

"I thought we had it that time," Tang said. "I really did."

"It's the scaling problem," Sharvani said, arms folded over his chest. "We know WCR can handle quantum data transfer. But we're asking it to do matter transfer. It's not powerful enough for that, no matter how many neural net CPUs Munch and Dyson slave to it. It's like... like asking an orangutan to do algebra. We need better hardware."

Tang raised his hands to quiet the murmuring, which was in general agreement with Sharvani. "Everyone in the Resistance needs better tools than they have. We know the problem can be solved. And WCR isn't nearly as advanced as Skynet, but it's also not single-handedly organizing and fighting a global war."

Henderson spoke up. "Sharvani's right. The hardware's just not up to it. We need to focus on that. Can't Connor link us up with the Europeans? If we pooled our resources... focused on different parameters..."

"You know why he can't," Tang said patiently. "The security risk is too great. Do you remember what happened to Riken?"

Henderson fell silent. They all did. Riken, also known as the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research, had been one of the most advanced scientific research facilities in East Asia and a major element in early anti-Skynet research. Then it had become too major an element, and now it was a radioactive ruin.

"It's all right, everyone," Bhamra said. "We'll reset the parameters and run another simulation tomorrow."

Tang shook his head. "Can't. Not tomorrow."

"Why not?" Sharvani asked.

"Emerson's team is up."

"Emerson? But that's just plasma weapon research. We have priority," Bhamra said, incredulous.

"This comes straight from Connor, Hina," Tang said, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "What I've heard is that Braugher's people at Space Command want to develop anti-orbital plasma cannons, knock out Skynet's satellite network."

"Are you fucking kidding me?" Henderson yelled. "That's insane! How can we be wasting resources on a project like that? TDE is an existential threat. Satellites are a nuisance."

"Connor says otherwise," Tang said. "I told him the same things. Or at least I tried to," he added with a sigh.

"Couldn't get past the receptionist?" Bhamra asked.

"Couldn't get past the receptionist," Tang said, shaking his head.

Bhamra squeezed her hands into fists. That was an increasingly common story these days. Actual conversations with Connor were as rare as Bigfoot sightings. "Maybe if I drove to Texas and punched Braugher in the face, that would sort out our problems?"

There was some laughter among the team, but not much.

Tang clapped his hands together a couple times. "Go and get some dinner, everyone. Decompress. We'll try again on Friday."

The group dispersed, and as they left in ones and two, the physicists were shadowed by their assigned bodyguards – mostly human, but a few reprogrammed Terminators for the top researchers.

As Bhamra left the room, she was met by two women, one she knew and one she didn't. The one she knew was a base guard named Doyle. The other was a redheaded officer in a USAF uniform and an unfamiliar unit patch. The name QUINN was on the front of her uniform.

"Dr. Bhamra?"

"That's right..."

"Lieutenant Quinn, 22nd Special Tactics Squadron. General Connor sent me to bring you to Crystal Peak."

Bhamra tensed slightly. Skynet's last attempt to wipe out the working group had involved personnel claiming to be from another base — Mosleys (or Greys here in the States) who'd killed five researchers and almost blew up a dozen of its HD racks before they were cut down. "What? Connor? Why?"

"Can't say, ma'am," the woman answered in a faint Texan accent.

"It's solid," Doyle said. "I checked with General Burke and he checked with Connor personally. She's legit."

Bhamra exhaled. Well, I was complaining about not being able to talk to Connor, can't complain about this at the same time, can I?

"What about my escort?"

Quinn eyed Nicole. "Metal's cleared to come with you, yes. If you'll follow me?"

Bhamra nodded, wondering what new nonsense was about to fall on her head.

"First time ever in a helicopter," Bhamra said, her voice slightly slurred. Most of the wine was gone, and almost all the pizza.

"You've got a little..." Bird reached over and clumsily wiped Kate's chin clean with a napkin. "There, now you're perfect!"

"So that's when... you came back to Britain?" Kate asked Bhamra.

"That's right!" Bhamra said, nodding for no reason she could discern.

Kate poked Bird in the shoulder. "You're up, Liiiittle Bird. Tell us a story!"

Nicole was calculating the distance to their hotel and the likelihood they could make it back there in this condition without incident. The odds were extremely low. Alternative measures would have to be taken.

"I've got a brilliant story," Bird said. She mustered up all her concentration and poured the last of her wine into her glass. "We were in Trowbridge, just outside Bath... right outside've it..."

"I grew up here, you know," Bird murmured to Waingaya.

"What's that?" Waingaya murmured back.

Fireteam Delta were crouched in the woods off the side of Frome Road, facing east at what had once been a park and was now – well, more woods. The rest of the platoon was spread out along a quarter mile of the road, waiting for word from a spotter team three miles away that the Mosley supply convoy they were waiting to ambush was getting close.

"Trowbridge. I lived here before J-Day," Bird whispered.

Waingaya looked at her for a second, then back at the road and forest across from them. "What're the odds?"

"Tiny, I know. Just like me back then."

"You're still tiny."

Bird made a face and then spat onto the cold ground.

It was the end of September and the days were getting cold, the nights colder. The ones who'd been adults before the war said it hadn't been so bad back then, that people were worried about it getting too warm. Then the discussion turned to carbon dioxide emission levels and Bird's eyes glazed over. All she knew was that winters were long, miserable and cold.

"I bet I could find my old house if it's still standing," Bird said.

"D'you remember the street name?"

"I was five," Bird said. "It was just 'my street'. I remember there was a little church just across the street, and our house had a tiny little bit of lawn in front. My mum made it a flower garden. I loved all the colors," she said. "Mum used to make me little crowns of flowers."

"That's cute," Hamill said from his spot a little to Bird's left. He didn't look up from the scope of his .50 caliber rifle, even though the enemy had to be miles away still.

Bird shrugged. "I suppose." She shifted weight as discreetly as possible. No threat present, just being laughed at if she made too much noise. She didn't.

"I don't remember my mum," Hamill said after a moment. "So you're lucky there."

Bird was quiet for a while. "I remember the first Christmas after the bombs fell. All the shops were closed by then, but she broke into a toy store for me. Said I could have one gift."

"Just one?"

Bird shrugged again. "Suppose she felt guilty about being greedy after everything that'd happened? I don't know."

"What'd you get?"

"Some silly game with hippos and little plastic balls. Gobble Gobble or something, maybe? We played it for hours and hours every day after that. At least until looters shot her in the spring. They had me for a while."

"Fucking hell, Bird," Bauman said. "I'm sorry."

"Not your fault," Bird said.

More silence.

"Did you hear the 4th Mechanized got the new South African rifles? The fifty calibers?" Bauman asked.

"What? Why them?" Waingaya said.

"Four comes before twelve? Fuck if I know," Bauman said. "But I know a guy in the 4th and he says they've been issued the new ones."

"Lucky bastards," Bird said. "Bet they really dent some metal skulls."

"Love to get my hands on one and see," Hamill said. "One of these days..."

"I would like to see the plasma rifles the Americans are making," Waingaya said. "That would really dent a 555."

Nods and murmured agreement all around, and then swearing as it started to rain – heavy, cold drops pounding the soldiers.

"Fuck, that's England, isn't it?" Bird muttered. "Should've been born in Italy."

"Heard it's even more fucked up there, though," Baum said. "Least we've got a government and an army that mostly works. It's every city for itself over there, is what I've heard."

"Don't they have a PM, too? That's what I heard on the radio."

"Sure, got someone calling themselves that. Don't mean much. Just like that Mosley fucker who calls himself the PM don't mean much."

"Bloody rain," Bird muttered. She adjusted her helmet in an attempt to protect the back of her neck from the chilly water. It didn't work, and the scarf around her neck was soon soaked through.

"Heard the Yanks took back Boston. Or what's left of it, anyway."

"Yeah? Listening to Riley again, are we?"

"She's as reliable as the BBC."

"Not saying much there," Bird snorted. "Only time we know we lost is when they say 'fighting continues in Wankerville-on-Shite'."

"Anyway, thought it was nice. Always heard Boston used to be lovely. Like a proper European city."

"Well, now it is like a proper European city, innit?" Hamill asked. "Smashed flash by the machines."

"Yeah..."

"You know what I miss the most?" Waingaya asked as the rain intensified.

"Football on the telly?"

"Wonder what happened to all the blokes on Barchester FC, myself," Hamill said.

"Barchester FC? Seriously?"

"What? Got to support the home club."

"But it's fucking Barchester, mate."

Waingaya cleared his throat. "I was going to say coffee."

"We've still got coffee, Alfie."

He scoffed at Bird. "That's not real coffee. It's stale instant shit. I miss real coffee."

"Go ask Riley or Joe or, what's his name, the one working in the vehicle bay. The Scottish fellow."

"MacLeod?"

"Yeah, that's the one. They'll find some for you."

"I asked them. It costs too much," Waingaya said.

"Fucking rain, going to catch sick if we're out here all night. When's this bloody convoy coming?"

There was a faint whistle from across the street, a brief pause, and then a second whistle. A moment later, Sergeant Harvey appeared with the other fireteam of her section. "It's not," she said as she dashed across the road. "They went through Bradford instead."

"Fucking wasted night," Bird said, shaking her head.

"Byeeeee!" Bird yelled to the cab driver as he pulled away from the hotel, leaving the three drunk women and the weird sober one behind. "That was the best dinner EVER!" Bird exclaimed, hugging Kate hard. "Thank you."

Kate grinned and then took a shaky step back.

"What is the plan for tomorrow?" Nicole asked.

"Sleep it off," Kate said, grabbing a railing to stay steady. "Gotta make it to the rooooms first. C'mon."

Somehow they managed it intact. Kate fell into bed, too tired and drunk to aim for the chair. It wasn't comfortable, anyway.

"G'night," Bird said as she laid down on the other side of the bed. Then she reached over and squeezed Kate's hand. "G'night."

The next morning they assembled in Kate and Bird's room again. They three humans looked bad and felt worse, but they soon forgot all about the consequences of last night's indulgences.

Nicole entered with a duffle bag in her hands.

"What's that? Did some midnight shopping?" Kate asked with a nod at the bag.

"No. Not exactly." Nicole set the bag down on the bed and stepped back.

"It's not going to blow up if I open it, is it?" Kate asked her.

"No. It won't."

Kate unzipped the bag and then her eyes widened. "Whoa."

"What? What is it?" Bird asked, leaning forward to look. Then she laughed and reached into the bag, her hand coming back up with two stacks of fifty pound notes in it.

"There's got to be fifty thousand pounds in there," Kate said as she rifled through the stacks and stacks of bills.

"One hundred and twenty-seven thousand and five hundred pounds."

"How? What'd you do?" Kate asked suspiciously.

"Cash machines."

"But you don't have a card. We threw away the ones from the idiots in the alley."

"No. But I am good with machines."

Kate thought Bloody hell, Dalek. What she said was "Guess that'll do for now."

Everyone grinned except Nicole.

"What do we do with all of it, then?" Bird asked.

"We make new lives, that's what," Kate said. "At least on paper. That ought to be more than enough to do it."

Bhamra cleared her throat. "Where do we even start? I'm the only one who knows anything about London the way it is now, and I haven't the faintest idea where to look or who to talk to."

"What about you, Nicole? That one of your hidden files?"

"No, it's not. But gangsters are traditionally a useful source for false identification."

"Okay... know any?"

"No. Not yet."

Kate stared at her for a minute, then nodded. "Go on, then. Infiltrate. Try not to kill anybody."

"What about the rest of us?" Bhamra asked.

"Free day, do what you like," Kate said. "Me, I'm going for a jog in the park."

It was worth it to Kate just to see the look on Bird's face as they came out of the pedestrian tunnel and entered Hyde Park.

"Something else, isn't it?" Kate asked Bird.

Bird nodded as she took it all in. Young people playing soccer. Dogs chasing each other around. Mothers pushing their babies in strollers. Even a quartet of people riding horses along one of the wider lanes.

"C'mon, no more gawking. We'll get flabby soon at this rate."

Bird snorted, but then she remembered last night's feast. She took off jogging behind Kate. "You ever been here before?"

"A few times. My dad used to come to London a lot for business – before, you know? He took me and my mum along now and then, and we always spent a couple hours in the park before going back home."

Bird smiled. "That's sweet, Kate." She looked to the right and craned her neck a little. "All the tall buildings..."

Kate glanced to the right, too. "That's nothing. All the really tall ones are south of the river, way I remember it. Most of them are ugly, though. Just piles of glass and steel. My dad always said never trust any building made after 1950. Later on, we can go along the riverbank, do a bit of tourist recon, yeah?"

Bird nodded.

They were jogging north, more or less, parallel to Park Lane. Every time one of the big double-decker red buses drove by, Bird slowed her pace just a little and stared at it.

Kate made a note to try and catch one of those on the way back to Croydon.

The east end of the park was only about a mile from bottom to top, but Kate stopped for a breather and mostly to see what was happening at Speakers Corner. The 'noisy blokes' there were always a highlight of the park for her, if not her parents who tried to avoid eye contact with the Communists and Catholics. Today, the speakers were a pair of evangelicals warning everyone about hellfire and damnation. Kate thought of Sekka back home and rolled her eyes.

Bird shook her head and then shook the grit out of one of her sneakers.

She was about to say something when the sound of dogs barking cut her off.

Kate frowned and looked over. Some teenager was tugging on the leash of a golden retriever that was barking its head off, straining against the leash. About thirty yards away, a pair of beagles were doing the same. Even across the street, over by Marble Arch, there were barking dogs.

Kate couldn't help but tense up, her heart beating a little faster, memories of dogs and metal rising up from the Box of bad thoughts she tried to keep chained up tight.

Bird looked at the dogs, then at Kate, and her face was pale as a sheet.

"It's just a dog, Little Bird. Dogs bark," Kate said. "Doesn't mean what you think it means."

"Yeah..." Bird said, visibly trying to suppress a lifetime's worth of fight or flight.

Kate squeezed her shoulder. "Just dogs being dogs, mate," she murmured. Even as she did, though, she surveyed the scene around them. The evangelicals and people jeering at them. Joggers like her and Bird. A few obvious tourists wandering around with cameras.

Then she spotted him. A tall man, tall and muscular. Jeans, t-shirt stretched taut by said muscles, sunglasses.

He was looking around. Looking for someone.

Kate suddenly felt naked. No guns, no weapons at all, not that most prewar guns would even slow a Terminator down. "Come on, mate," she said to Bird, giving her a little poke. "We're wasting daylight."

It was too late, though. Bird spotted the big guy, too. She exhaled sharply.

"Just a big bloke, Little Bird," Kate said. "Come on!" She took off sprinting instead of jogging, and Bird followed right on her heels.

Neither of them spoke until they were half a mile away from Speakers' Corner.

"Holiday's over, innit?" Bird asked.

Kate said nothing, just nodded.

Bhamra stared uncertainly at the sign above the music shop. It said Rāga Records.

She reached for the handle, pulled her hand back, then exhaled sharply, tugged the door open, and stepped inside. Suddenly it was if she was back in university again, browsing the CDs at HMV or the independent shops. It was all the same, really, no matter if it was Oxford or Southall.

A colorful poster for Baba Seghal's new album caught her eye and Bhamra smiled just a little. She drifted through the narrow aisles of the shop, idly pulling CDs out of the boxes and studying them.

"Excuse me, coming through," a woman said from behind her.

After a second or two, Bhamra pressed herself up against the boxes to let the woman go through. It was an Asian employee (of course it would be, in a neighborhood where almost everyone was Punjabi) in a cheap grey uniform, a woman maybe eighteen or nineteen years old.

"Sorry," Bhamra said in a soft voice, almost a whisper.

"No worries," the girl answered with a quick smile. She moved by, a big box of newly arrived CDs in her arms.

"Do – do you need a hand with that?"

"What?" The girl turned and looked back, a bit puzzled. "No, thank you, though..."

"Sorry," Bhamra mumbled.

"No worries," the girl said again before going around the corner and out of sight.

Bhamra hesitated, biting her lip.

"Neha!" the young man behind the counter up front called out. "Call for you. It's your mum, I think. Sounds important."

"Coming!"

The girl came hurrying back up the aisle. This time, Bhamra was well out of the way, tucking herself between the end of the IMPORT section (Punjabi music) and the beginning of the much smaller WORLD MUSIC (everything else not from the UK) boxes.

"It'll be okay," she said as Neha passed her.

"Yeah, you too," a distracted Neha said, not even realizing what Bhamra had actually said. Instead, she headed to the counter and took the phone from the cashier. "Hullo? Ma, ki ho gaya?" she asked. Mother? What's wrong? Neha's eyes widened. "Dadi, tusi ki keh rahe o? Usnu ki hoya?" Grandmother? What do you mean? What happened to her?

Bhamra numbly picked a Capercaillie CD out of the box and pretended to read the track listing on the back.

She heard Neha's voice break, the words too soft to hear, and the heart-wrenching sound of her sobbing.

That was too much. She dropped the CD and, her own eyes welling up, ran out of the store. The cashier was too busy with Neha's grief to notice.

Outside, Bhamra stopped, rubbed at her eyes for a minute, and made her way into the McDonald's down the street.

Mission failure, she thought as she dropped herself into a booth, tears streaming down her face. I wasn't there for her then, and I wasn't there for her now. I'm sorry, Neha.

"Er. Excuse me... you all right, ma'am?"

Bhamra looked up. It was a middle-aged man, probably the manager. Everyone else in the place was either staring at her or trying hard not to stare at her.

Bhamra let out a heavy sigh and nodded. "Not really, but I'll get there. Thank you."

He held out a handful of napkins.

Bhamra laughed shakily. "Thank you. I'm sorry. It's been a – it'll be a hard day." Right about now, her mum would be making a second call, a call to Oxford, a call that wouldn't get answered, and leaving a message, a message that wouldn't be heard for hours.

"Anything, ah, anything we can do to help?"

No, nothing you can do. Nothing anybody could do. "Coffee. Coffee cures all." She got to her feet, only to be waved down.

"None of that, ma'am. This one's on us," the portly man said.

Bhamra smiled and cried at the same time. "Thank you," she whispered. "Thank you."

It was very late in the afternoon when the team reunited at the Sunny Skies.

"Productive day, all?" Kate asked.

"I reconnoitered seventeen churches in London," Nicole announced. "I found the Roman Catholic Church of Our Lady of Victory in Knightsbridge to be the most aesthetically impressive. They celebrated the mass of the Ninth Sunday after Pentecost."

"Er... that's good to know," Kate said.

"It is of limited strategic or tactical information," Nicole said, seeming almost sorry about that fact. "So I did not commit any details to memory."

Kate eyed the machine for a second. "What about finding a lead on fake IDs?"

"Fourteen of the seventeen churches were Eastern Orthodox."

"Which means what?"

"Russian gangsters."

"What?"

"Much like past generations of the Italian Mafia, members of the Russian Bratva organized crime groups place considerable emphasis on presenting themselves as respectable members of the community – although to a lesser extent, given general secularizing trends."

"What?"

"Gangsters go to church," Bhamra translated.

Kate rubbed her forehead. "Did you learn anything useful?"

"Yes. Many things. But it will take time. And subtlety."

"Can you do subtle?" Bird asked her.

"Yes I can."

Kate had her doubts but said nothing.

"What about you, Doc?" Bird asked Bhamra after a minute.

"Hm?"

"Eventful day?"

"No. Not really," Bhamra said.

Kate knew she was lying, but again, she said nothing.

"What now, then?" Bird asked.

"Now..." Kate exhaled. "Now I tell you there might be metal in London."

"What?" Bhamra asked sharply.

"Me and Little Bird went jogging in Hyde Park earlier on. There was a tall, muscular bloke there, near Speakers' Corner, and a lot of barking dogs. Maybe metal, maybe not. But either way, it's the world slapping us upside the face and telling us to get moving. So, like Bird said, holiday's over. We're going to go out and find a cheap curry place for supper, and then we're going to make some plans based on what Nicole found out about Russian gangsters today."

Half an hour later, at a cheap curry place, Nicole told them what she found out about Russian gangsters.

"His name is Vitali Kostin and he operates out of a Russian restaurant named Mirazh."

"Where's that?"

"Mayfair."

Bhamra smiled slightly. "Posh. We'll need better clothes."

Kate shrugged. "We can afford better clothes. But it's just going to be me and the Dalek."

Bird shifted, but Kate cut her off. "I mean it. From now on, no more than two of us are going on dangerous missions together. I want half the team to be safe to carry on if worse comes to worst, got it?"

"Yes," Nicole said.

"Right," Bhamra said.

"Bird?" Kate asked after a few seconds.

"Yeah... got it."

"Right," an unconvinced Kate said. "Tomorrow, since it's not dangerous, the four of us are going to Harrods to spend some cash."

Bhamra cleared her throat.

"Yeah?"

"I think before we do that, we should go to a bank – several different banks, actually – and deposit at least half of the cash. If you walk up to a register at Harrods with a bag full of paper money, people might get curious. We can't afford curious. We can afford bank cards."

"That slows us down," Kate said.

"Getting questioned by the Met would slow us down, too."

"The Met? What?" Bird asked.

"Metropolitan Police Service," Nicole said.

"London police," Bhamra said.

Kate sighed. "All right. We deal with the cash... where've you been hiding it, anyway, Nicole?"

"Under the mattress in our room. Housekeeping is very unlikely to look under there."

"Well. Can't argue with that, can we?" Kate said. Things had seemed so much simpler this morning when she was hung over and throwing up in the tiny hotel WC.

It took two weeks to make the breakthrough, Two weeks of poking around and a series of conversations that went from awkward to uncomfortable to dangerous.

Kate wasn't thrilled about any of that, and she knew neither were Bird or Bhamra. What the machine thought, she had no idea. The cheap little hotel was happy to take their money on a day by day basis. Kate considered upgrading to something nicer, but reluctantly decided they needed to conserve their cash. Who knows how much it would cost to get four sets of IDs?

They did visit a few banks and set up accounts to give them a slightly more legitimate appearance.

At last, Nicole announced one morning "I know who to contact to purchase false identification."

"Well, don't hold back on us," Kate said. "Who?"

"His name is Vitali Kostin. He owns several properties in and around Greater London, including a restaurant named Shashka or Sabre. It is very popular despite being owned by a man widely considered to be a criminal."

"Or popular because of that," Bhamra said.

Nicole gave her a slightly puzzled look.

"People like the thrill of the forbidden and the glamour of organized crime."

"Oh."

Kate shook her head and spoke up quick to seal up that conversational rabbit hole. "Okay. You and I will go and meet this Kostin. Suppose we'll have to work our way up the ladder, but that's how it goes." I think.

"What about us?" Bird asked.

"Rule of Two, Little Bird." And no way I'm leading you or the doc into a gangster's restaurant.

Bird frowned but didn't press the point.

"When's this Shashka place open?"

"Twelve PM."

"Got a few hours, then," Kate said. She ran her hands through her hair. "Wish we had guns. They'll have guns." Then she smiled a little. "If it gets ugly, I can just hide behind you, though."

"You are taller and have a seven percent higher body mass."

"I think she just insulted you, sarnt," Bird said after a couple seconds.

Kate laughed. "Our little charmer. Let me do the talking in there, Dalek," she told Nicole.

"Do you speak Russian?"

"Not a single word. You speak Russian?"

"I am fluent in all twenty of the most spoken languages in the world."

Bhamra asked something in what Kate guessed was – whatever Indian language she spoke. Kate didn't even know.

Nicole answered in apparently the same language.

Bhamra smiled just a little. "Interesting. Good accent."

Kate spoke up. "Well, don't speak Russian there. I want to know what everyone is saying, got it?"

"Yes. Got it."

Shashka was in Mayfair, situated on Curzon Mews, a tiny lane off of Curzon Road not very far from Speakers' Corner. Kate felt a little uncomfortable and on edge because of that coincidence.

The entrance was fairly discreet, just a steel door with a black glass window (the window next to it was black, too) and a sign that read SHASHKA шашка in silver letters.

"Here goes," Kate said as she pushed the door open, trying to push down her misgivings. She knew how to ambush a Skynet patrol, knew the best spots to target an HK 4Walker, knew how to drive an AFV, knew how to treat combat injuries, but this was new territory for her.

Just inside the door, there was a host podium manned by a blonde woman in a slinky silver dress. "Hello! Welcome to Shashka," she announced in what Kate guessed was a Russian accent.

"Table for two," Kate said, smiling politely. She surveyed the restaurant. Lots of black leather and chrome fixtures. Booths, tables, a U-shaped bar in the middle, platform in the back for live music. Two hallways in the back, one marked EMPLOYEES ONLY and the other going to the bathrooms probably, side doors leading to the kitchen. A mirror that ran along the right wall the length of the bar. Kate remembered that there was a way to build mirrors so people could see through the back of them, guessed that might be the case in a gangster's restaurant. She made out six security cameras, well-placed around the room. Probably no gaps.

If things got ugly, guys with guns would either come out of the Employees Only section or shoot through the mirror – or both, probably. That's how Kate would have set it up, anyway.

The hostess lead them to a table near the back. At this hour, the restaurant wasn't very crowded. Kate took a seat with her back to the wall, facing the mirror on the far side of the bar.

"Your waitress is Nadya. She will be with you soon," the hostess said, then sauntered away, her dress shimmering a little from the subdued overhead lighting.

That seemed to be a motif, as Nadya was dressed in a similar outfit when she appeared.

"Good afternoon! What can we start with in the way of drinks?"

"A bottle of sparkling water, please," Kate said. Bhamra had coached her on this part, at least. "And two glasses of vodka."

Nadya smiled brightly. She had such perfect teeth Kate almost wanted to punch them. "We have Marinoff, Skyy, Absolut, Russian Standard, Romanova, Stolichnaya and Smirnoff."

Why's there got to be some many kinds? Kate asked herself. "Romanova," she said, picking one at random. "Thank you."

Nadya nodded and sauntered away, swaying her hips to a degree Kate could barely believe. This was the weirdest restaurant she'd ever been to even without the gangsters or the ten thousand pounds Nicole had hidden inside her jacket.

"I think it would facilitate matters if I spoke to them in Russian," Nicole said.

"And I told you why I don't want you to do that," Kate said, but she was less sure of it now than earlier. Why couldn't we have gone for an English gangster, dammit? The idea that it would be easier to find a gangster in the much smaller and more concentrated Russian community didn't seem as persuasive now as it did two weeks ago. She drummed her fingers on the table for a few seconds.

Nicole looked at her.

"What?"

"You are displaying indications of nervousness."

"I am nervous. Everything's riding on how the next hour goes."

"There are alternatives in case of failure here."

Kate exhaled. "You're right... all right, go ahead, speak Russian."

"I will speak Russian."

When Nadya returned with their drinks, Nicole did just that. Kate made out the name Kostin, but the rest might as well have been binary for all she understood it.

Nadya regarded Nicole skeptically, and then her eyes widened as Nicole produced a stack of fifty pound notes and slid them across the table.

"Da, ladno," the waitress said before hurrying off into the back of the restaurant. Kate leaned forward a little to get a better angle. She saw a long, brightly lit hallway – none of the dark ambiance of the public part of the restaurant – and a couple doors on both sides before her glimpse was cut off.

Kate wished she had a gun. Any gun.

"Stay frosty," Nicole whispered.

Kate glanced at her and almost laughed at the earnestness on the machine's face.

"Is good," Nadya said when she reappeared five minutes later. "You come with me to back of restaurant."

Kate didn't like how long it had taken for her to return. But she got to her feet and followed the woman into the employees only part of the restaurant. No sentries, no sniffing station – but of course there wouldn't be. People here didn't know about the machine. Dogs were just pets, not warning systems.

The waitress lead them down the hallway almost to the service door at the end, stopping instead at a heavy steel door a few yards away. She pushed it open and then stepped aside to let them in.

The room beyond was a tacky eyesore, full of gaudy statues and cheap paintings of what Kate supposed was the Russian countryside. There was also a steel pole on top of a raised platform. She had no idea what that was for.

More importantly, there was Vitali Kostin sitting behind a desk in a short-sleeved shirt that was a size too small and open halfway to his navel, exposing a pudgy, hairy chest decorated with more gold than Kate could remember seeing in her entire life. The sheen of sweat gave his tattoos – so many tattoos – an oily sort of look.

The two other Russians behind him could almost have been Terminators. Tall, muscular, silent, almost certainly armed. Kate took a seat at a gesture from Kostin. Nicole remained standing, as she'd been ordered ahead of time.

The man said something in Russian, and Nicole answered, gesturing at Kate.

Kostin looked at Kate and asked a question in Russian.

She shrugged

"No? We can't all be perfect," he said and then laughed at his own witticism. "So. You are the woman in charge. What is it that you are here to buy from me?"

"ID. Passports and driver's licenses, four of each."

Kostin nodded slowly, rubbing his thick beard a little as he did. "I can do this thing for you, yes. It will cost twenty thousand pounds per set."

Kate frowned a little and then nodded. Nicole would need to do another round of withdrawals soon, but they could afford it. "It's fair," she said, having no idea if that was true or not. "I assume you take cash."

Kostin laughed and said something to his bodyguards, who laughed in turn. "Little kitten, cash is all I take," he said, shaking with laughter. "You have pictures?"

"I have pictures." Kate reached for her purse and the bodyguards tensed. Kate froze for a second, smiled awkwardly and then very slowly lifted her purse up and took out a handful of photos taken with a cheap camera. She laid them down on the desk.

Kostin took them into his hand and went through them. "So many pretty girls. What is your story, kitten?"

Kate wanted to put her fist into the man's face. She managed a smile. "Is that part of the deal? Knowing my story?"

"No. But good businessman knows who he is dealing with. Who am I dealing with?"

"Kate. My name is Kate and I used to be a soldier."

"Ah. But you run away from the Army?" Kostin asked.

Kate didn't like the look on his face. It was too sly. "It's a long story. But yes, you could say I ran away from the Army."

"Okay. Come back one week. Maybe bring your friends. We have vodka together to celebrate our deal."

Like hell I'm bringing Bhamra and Bird within a mile of this place "I'll see what I can do," Kate said as she got up.

"Wait. I need names," Kostin said. "No good you writing in with pen."

"Right. Kate Harvey. Hina Bhamra. Elle Bird. Nicole... Nicole Harvey."

Kostin looked from Kate to Nicole and back to Kate. "Is sister?"

"Is sister," Kate said.

"Hard to tell from looking."

Kate shrugged.

Kostin smiled. "Is not my business. Okay. Come back one week."

"Do you trust him?" Bhamra asked as the quartet sat down at the now-familiar curry place near the hotel for dinner.

"Not especially. But he seems like the kind of man who's happy to take our money," Kate said. "And if he tries anything, well..." She looked at Nicole. "Little sister can take care of him and his guards."

"I have never had a family before," Nicole said.

"You haven't got one now," Kate said. "But you need a last name, so there you are."

"Be nice, Sergeant Harvey," Bhamra chided.

Kate shrugged and reached for her water. "Well, at any rate, it's all set. Now we just need to stay out of trouble for the next week. Think you can manage that, Little Bird?" she asked in a teasing voice.

"A week's a long time, you know," Bird answered with a smile on her face.

"Well, I don't know about you, but I think I'm going to France," Bhamra said. "I've never been and now's my best chance."

"Nicole, why don't you go with her? You like architecture. Paris has lots of that."

Bhamra eyed Kate, not fooled for a second. She smiled just a little at being assigned a bodyguard.

"Yes. Paris is known for its architecture," Nicole said. "And is convenient to reach."

"What's it called? The Chunnel?" Bird asked. "Never get me to spend any time on a train under the ocean."

"In the period of its operation prior to Judgment Day, there were no fatalities on the Eurostar," Nicole announced.

"See? Nothing to worry about, Doctor," Kate said.

Bird shrugged, clearly unconvinced.

"What will you do with yourselves tomorrow?" Bhamra asked. She glanced at Bird as she did, but Kate missed the look as she poked at what was left of her butter chicken.

"Don't know yet," Kate said.

Bird said nothing at all, just sucked on an ice cube from the bottom of her glass of Coke.

"Wish we had a gun or two in case Kostin pulls something funny," Kate said.

"His guards were armed with the L9A1 variant of the Browning Hi-Power semiautomatic pistol, most likely stolen from British Army stocks. They pose no threat to me."

"Not all of us are made of metal," Bird snapped. "It's not just you that's going to be there."

"If violence occurs, I will do my best to incapacitate them before they can harm Sergeant Harvey."

Bird stared at her. "You best do that," she said after a second or two.

"I think you should step outside of the city, too," Bhamra suggested to Kate. "See some of the country."

"Yeah, that's a good idea, isn't it?" Bird asked. "We definitely ought to."

Kate looked at the young ginger, then at the physicist. "Why've I got the feeling arrangements have already been made?" she asked.

"What? Don't know what you mean," Bird mumbled.

"Out with it, Little Bird. What've you done?"

"Oh, go on, show her," Bhamra said with a smile on her face.

"All right, all right, ruin the surprise..." Bird rummaged around in her purse and eventually produced two pieces of paper – railway tickets with SWT printed on them. A pair of return tickets from London Waterloo to Weston-on-Alfey and back.

"Weston..." Kate whispered. Home. She was blinking back tears. Home. Home and Mum and Dad.

"I know it's a bit early, but happy birthday, sarnt," Bird said, squeezing her on the shoulder.

"Oh. Oh, Little Bird. Thank you."

"It would be wise to avoid interactions with any family members," Nicole said. "The timeline is simultaneously flexible and inclined towards the same outcomes, but only to a certain degree."

"Well, there's the safety lecture from Captain Killjoy," Bird said, rolling her eyes.

"But she's not wrong," Bhamra said. "It's... probably best you don't talk to them. Especially since you haven't even been born yet – you haven't, have you?"

"No, not until October of 2001," Kate said. "You mean if I talk to them, it might end up with me not existing at all?"

"Possibly. Like Nicole said, there's a certain flexibility to it," Bhamra said. "We don't really understand how it works. Even the most minute change should result in a cascading series of differences, but it doesn't. It gave a lot of us on the program some sleepless nights."

"So we can't just walk up to the person who invents the machine and just shoot him?" Bird asked, a crestfallen look on her face.

"More than one person invents Skynet" Nicole said. "Eliminating all of them would only result in a different set of programmers. A more thorough solution is required."

"And that's what we'll deliver," Kate said before the machine could further dampen Bird's flagging spirits. "We've got more than ten years to put a stop to it, Little Bird. It'll happen. I promise you that," Kate said, even as she was starting to vaguely form a fall-back plan. Operation Kidnap the Connors and Hide Out in the Mountains.

"Look at all the shops!" Bird said as she spun in a circle, taking in the commercial glory of Waterloo Station.

Kate smiled. Her attention was on the huge clock hanging from the glass and steel ceiling.

"Have we got time to eat before the train leaves? I don't want us to miss it!" Bird said.

Kate glanced at her ticket. "Nearly half an hour. We've got time."

"Are you sure?"

Kate smiled again and gave her a light punch in the shoulder. "Trust me, Little Bird. Your old sergeant knows a few things about prewar. Come on, bet you've never had McDonald's."

Bird looked where Kate was pointing. "Looks cheap."

"It is. But their French fries are amazingly salty."

"That's good, yeah?"

"That's so good as long as you only do it once a month, I think," Kate said.

Five minutes later, they were discovering the unguessed-of joy of Supersize Fries, something Kate had no idea even existed, and large Cokes.

"Slowly, mate, slowly," Kate said as Bird stuffed her mouth full of French fries. "You'll choke on all that."

"Ith good way t'die," Bird somehow said around the wad of fries.

Kate laughed. "Hold that pose!" she squealed as she fumbled around for her camera. She managed to take a few pictures before Bird, gulping hard, devoured the last of the fries.

"Let's go! I don't want to miss the train," Bird said as Kate's laughter eventually died down.

"Okay, okay," Kate said.

A minute later, they were on the platform, staring at the empty tracks.

"Well, better safe than sorry, yeah?" Bird asked, utterly unapologetic for reaching the platform fifteen minutes early.

Eventually, the train arrived at the station and a modest crowd exited it. Once it was clear, Kate headed into the train, Bird right on her heels. "There, those seats there," Bird said, pointing at a pair of seats at the far end of the carriage.

"Why them?"

Bird shrugged. "Why not?"

"All right, then. You want the window or aisle seat?"

"Er... window, I suppose?"

"Window it is." Kate let her sit down and then took the next seat.

"Weird how just a few days ago, we were talking about how I'd never been on a train before – I know, I know, I have, I just don't remember it – and now here we are, on a train."

"Don't get too excited. It's not exactly First Class on a 747. But there is a snack and drinks cart, so that's something, yeah?"

"I'm still sick from all the pizza the other night," Bird moaned, rubbing a hand in front of her stomach.

"More likely all the wine."

"We're leaving. After we get the IDs, we're leaving, yeah?"

"Wish we could stay, but the Connors are in America. They're the mission."

"Are they, though? If we stop Skynet, then what happens to them doesn't even matter, does it?" Bird asked.

Kate frowned as she considered it. "Remember the park, Little Bird. We might not be the only ones looking for them. Absolute priority is winning the war. Besides, either way, Skynet and the Connors are both over there, not here," she said as the train began to pull away from the platform.

Bird nodded, suddenly focused on watching things out the window to her left. Kate couldn't remember ever seeing her looking at something with such innocent fascination. Plenty of times when she'd focused laser tight on a T-555 or a 4Walker, but nothing like this.

"How long do you think it will take?" Bird asked without turning away from the exciting view of tracks, trains and graffiti as they left the station behind.

"I think it's about two hours. Depends on how many stops."

A voice came over the train intercom. "This train is for Barchester. The next station is Woking," a voice, an actual human voice instead of the electronic ones Kate remembered from prewar, announced in a bored sort of way.

"Never been there," Bird said.

"Me neither," Kate said. "Passed through going to and from London, but never stopped off there. Don't remember much of it."

Bird nodded. She was still staring out the window.

Kate smiled fondly and guessed that would be the case until they reached Weston. But around the time they passed Basingstoke, Bird, lulled by the rhythm of the train's motion, fell asleep, her head resting on Kate's shoulder. Kate smiled and squeezed her hand very lightly, then watched the countryside as they passed it by. It was so green and alive. She felt as if she'd fallen into her childhood.

Towns and countryside rolled by. It became more and more familiar as they got closer to Barsetshire. They passed through Salisbury, where most of the remaining passengers from London got off, and then continued on over the county line between Wiltshire and Barsetshire.

And, just under two hours after they left Waterloo, the train eased to a stop alongside the small station of Weston-on-Alfey.

Kate shook Bird's shoulder. "On your feet, soldier. Reached the target."

Bird blinked blearily. "Aye aye, sarnt," she said as she got to her feet. "Where are we going first?"

"Home, that's where," Kate said. She stood by the exit door and waited until the train came to a full stop, then hit the button. The door slid open and Kate hopped down to the platform.

"You remember where that is?"

Kate nodded, feeling sorry for Bird. She'd been so young when the bombs fell. What did she remember? What did she think she did? "On Ladymere Lane. Just off the village Fore Street. There was a pub –"

"A pub in Britain? Never happen."

"Quiet, you," Kate said. "A pub across the street and a chemist on the corner. The rest was just houses. We had a brown house with a yellow door. The canary door, that's what I used to call it. And there were vines all over the walls..."

It was just where she remembered and looked just like she remembered, vines, door, and all.

Kate stood next to the door to the pub – the Silver Chain – and stared across the street at number 17 Ladymere Lane. Bird was at her side, sipping on a can of Coke they'd gotten at the grocery store across from the chemist.

The canary yellow door opened and Kate froze, staring eagerly. A tall blonde woman was in the doorway, half turned back to talk to someone else inside.

"Mum. She's so young... hardly older than I am..."

Mrs. Harvey stepped onto the top step of the three leading down to the sidewalk, and a man came out from inside. She kissed the man long and hard on the lips, then waved cheerfully as he strolled to the car parked in the short driveway.

Kate stood there, eyes wide, a horrified look on her face.

"What? What's the matter?" Bird asked, puzzled and alarmed.

"That wasn't my father."

"What? What – are you sure?"

Kate gave Bird a bit of a cross look.

"Sorry," she mumbled. "But it... oh, Kate, I'm so sorry..." Bird reached out and took Kate by the hand. "Let's get out of here, Kate. Come on..."

Kate hesitated, dug in her heels, then numbly let Bird lead her away.

Kate didn't say much on the return voyage, not until they were near Salisbury again.

"Right in public, Bird. Right in front of everyone," Kate muttered. "They had to know. Everyone had to know. Everyone except my dad. How... how could she do that?"

Bird looked at her, misery on her face. "People are... people are shite," she said.

Kate laughed bitterly. "Yeah."

"Some people are," Bird added. She reached over and put her hands on top of Kate's. "Not you. We'd not be here if not for you."

Kate nodded stiffly. She couldn't stop replaying the scene in her mind's eye. She tried so hard to seal it away in the Box, that oh-so-handy repository for a million bad memories, but this time, she couldn't. The Box wouldn't shut. The images kept playing.

"Tell me what to say to make it better, Kate."

At that, Kate looked over. "Not sure there is anything, Bird."

"There's always something." Bird squeezed Kate's hands. "You always find a way."

"Yeah? Right now, I'm thinking my way is to go back to Weston and punch my mum in the face."

"You do that, you might never ever get born."

"Would that be so bad?"

"YES." Bird spoke so loudly the other passengers turned and looked at them. She stared at them until they looked away.

Kate stared at her.

Bird shrugged. "I'll say it, then," she told Kate. "You matter. You're important. You're... you're like the Sun. The rest of of us orbit around you, Kate. And more than that... You're my sergeant and my mate, but... you're more than just that, Kate. You're more."

"Bird..."

"Let me finish, Kate," Bird said. She squeezed Kate's hands again. "I'm sorry for what you found out. I really am. I wish you hadn't seen it, wish it hadn't happened. But if you asked me to go and punch your mum in the face, I wouldn't. Because that might mean you never happened, and – I don't want to live in that world. I want Kate Harvey to be here. I want to be with her."

Kate looked at the younger ginger. "What... what're you saying, Little Bird?"

"I'm saying that I love you, you git. I've loved you since the day you saved me from the machine. And I'm saying that I'd do anything to keep you safe and happy." Bird trailed off, cheeks flush, and Kate couldn't quite remember the last time she'd said so much in such a short time. For the second time in an hour, her world skewed crazily. But this was okay. This wasn't agony.

"Oh."

Bird bit her lip and Kate had to smile. This time, she was the one squeezing the other woman's hands.

"Well then, Elle," Kate said, a hint of a smile on her face for the first time in what felt like a million years. "Thing is, I'd do anything to keep you safe and happy, too."

Bird looked at her, almost afraid to believe what she was hearing. "It's not... awkward?"

Kate smiled and lightly squeezed Bird's hands again. "Not even a little bit, Elle. Things are different now. We can be whatever and whoever we want to be. And I want to be more than just Sarnt Harvey."

"Well... good, then," Bird said, smiling giddily.

They met for dinner at an Italian restaurant near the hotel.

"Good day in Weston?" Bhamra asked.

Kate smiled faintly. "Started bad, got better." She reached over and put her arm around Bird's waist. "Lot better."

Bhamra smiled back at the two of them. "Well, it's about bloody time. Congratulations."

"Thanks – wait, you knew?" Bird said.

Bhamra laughed. "Only from nearly the beginning."

"Let's drink to getting past the past, then," Kate said, raising her glass.

"Here here!"

"What about you two? Good day in Paris?"

"We visited seventeen sites of cultural and historical significance," Nicole said. "Ten churches, five museums and two parks. And one expensive restaurant."

"I'll need a new pair of shoes, by the way," Bhamra added with a weary sigh that was only partially fake. She couldn't remember the last time she'd walked so much in a day – or, to be fair, learned so much about French architecture from the Roman era to the Belle Époque (Nicole had curtly dismissed later architectural trends as 'not worthy of study').

"I've been thinking about the meeting with the Russians," Bird said.

"Yeah?" Kate asked as she twirled her fork in a pile of spaghetti mostly buried beneath a sea of parmesan cheese. She guessed what was coming next.

"It should be all of us there," Bird said, proving Kate right. "Just in case."

Kate shook her head. "No, Little Bird. It's not safe. It's not good strategy."

"But..."

"Rule of Two, Elle," Kate said. "Besides, you think I'm going to risk my girlfriend getting hurt over something like this? Not happening, luv."

Bird looked at her a bit crossly, then threw her hands up. "All right. But at least let us come near the place, just in case."

"We've got no weapons, though," Bhamra said. "What can we do besides call 999?"

"Call what? Who's that? Is that a Terminator?"

Bhamra held back a laugh. "It's the emergency services number, Bird. You call it if there's a fire or someone breaking into your flat."

"Oh."

"In America, it is 911 instead," Nicole said.

"That's good to know," Kate said. "Really. Everyone put that to mind. As for your idea, Bird, I don't know... if things get ugly, there won't be much you can do," she said. "You'll sneak around on your own if I say no, won't you?"

Bird mumbled and stuck a fork-full of penne into her mouth.

"Elle..."

"Whuh?"

"Just promise me – promise me – you won't do anything foolish," Kate said. "I mean it."

"I won't. I promise."

"What will we do in the meantime?" Bhamra asked. "There's still nearly a week to go."

"We lay low," Kate said. "Pity the hotel doesn't have a restaurant. I'd feel better if we didn't need to leave the building. But at least there's plenty of places close by. No more trips to the park, I'm afraid."

Bird shrugged. "Don't especially want to go back there again, anyway."

"At least there's movies on the telly," Kate said.

"Oh, you're not buying them, are you?" Bhamra asked. "That's a racket. That and the mini-bars. Settle for the football or whatever's on the Sci-Fi Channel if you're a geek like me."

"We can afford it, I think. Although it might not hurt for Nicole to do another run on the cash machines," Kate said. "Fill up the accounts at those banks. And then maybe cash it all out when we leave Britain?"

Bhamra shook her head. "Mm. Probably not a good idea. The airline, if not Customs, will raise an eyebrow if we try and bring a bag full of currency with us on the flight."

"What? Why?" Bird asked. "It's our money."

"There's laws against that sort of thing," Bhamra explained. "You can only carry so much money with you when you leave the country. I think the limit is 10,000 pounds, or something close to that. We'll just transfer the funds to a local branch of the bank when we get over there."

"Ten thousand pounds per person?"

"I think so, yes."

"Well, with what we're going to pay the Russians, and the fact that there's four of us traveling, there might not be much left to deposit, right?"

"You're right. And that's even better. What's the total we'd have? Around four thousand?"

"Something like that."

"Good. That won't raise very many eyebrows at HSBC."

Kate grinned. "See? Problem solved before it even became a problem."

"Cheers to that, mates," Bird said, raising her glass.

"Cheers!"

Kate stared at Shaska, a deep frown on her face. There was a sign on the door that said CLOSED FOR PRIVATE FUNCTION.

"Don't like that," Kate murmured to Nicole.

Nicole looked at her. "Should we withdraw?"

Excellent question, Kate told herself. "No. Keep calm and carry on," Kate said to her after a few seconds. She had a T-840 card up her sleeve. "If we're lucky, Kostin just wants the place empty when he's committing a serious crime."

"And if we're not lucky?"

"I hide behind you." Kate let out a deep breath. "Well, here we go." She knocked on the door with her knuckles.

After a minute, Kate could hear the lock being disengaged. The door opened a crack and a tall, bearded man with tattoos on his neck squinted out.

"Here for the private function, mate," Kate said with an easy smile on her face.

The man, whose breath reeked slightly of alcohol even though it wasn't even noon, stared at her, stared at Nicole, and then nodded. He stepped back and held the door open for them.

"Avtoritet is in office," the big man said.

Kate glanced at Nicole.

"Authority. A mid-ranking member of the Bratva organization."

"Thank you for explaining," Kate said with a wink. "Lead on, mate," she said to the big man.

"Is in office. You remember where office is?"

"I remember," Kate said, smiling again. Well, this is certainly not alarming, she thought with an inner sigh.

A minute later, she and Nicole reached the office. The door was open and Kostin was behind his desk, once again wearing a too-tight shirt and gaudy jewelry. Kate quickly glanced around the room. This time there were three guards, two flanking Kostin and one in the corner, not too far from the door.

"Please, sit, make yourselves at home," Kostin said with a gesture at the chairs in front of his desk.

Kate took a seat. Nicole remained standing.

Three bodyguards, all armed, and one Kostin, maybe armed. Against that, one Nicole. In the middle, one Kate. She didn't like it at all.

Kostin watched her for a moment and then sighed. "I'm sorry, but I have some bad news for you."

Kate stared back. Man's English got a lot better all of the sudden. "Yeah? What's that?"

"It's that I've thought it over, and doing business with someone on the run from the Army, that's a very risky thing."

Oh for pity's sake, Kate thought. "That's not really the situation."

"Isn't it, Kate Harvey?"

"No, it's not."

"Then explain the situation."

Kate exhaled and tried to think of a good fake answer, but she took too long for Kostin.

"There, you see?" he said, spreading his hands in a gesture of sorrow. "So it will cost more."

"How much more?"

"Forty thousand each."

"We haven't got that on hand," Kate said. "Give us two days."

"I thought you might say that. So I'll make you another offer. Give me all the money you have with you." Kostin got to his feet and Kate tensed. He saw it and smiled. "Relax, Kate Harvey. We're all friends here."

Kate managed not to sneer at that comment, but it wasn't easy.

Especially when Kostin walked up to Nicole and ran his fingers down her cheek.

The T-840 stared blankly at Kostin, and the greasy smile on his face faltered for a second.

"Or maybe we do something else. Maybe I take your money and take you on. Such pretty girls."

Kate frowned at the gangster. "What? Take us on for what?"

"Pretty girls on the run and without IDs. Perfect for the club."

"What?"

"He wants to use us as exotic dancers and/or prostitutes," Nicole said.

"What?" Fuck off," Kate said.

"You come to me or you come to the government," Kostin said as he walked back to his seat and sank into it.

Kate scoffed. "Good luck with that." But she felt a bit of a chill in her spine. If the government got them on its radar, things would go bad. Very, very bad, very, very fast. Two Hina Bhamras, two women with no identities at all, and a Terminator. That wouldn't just go bad, it would probably cause the thing they were trying to prevent.

"I don't need luck. I have you and your sister."

He did, but he had no idea what that meant. Kate drummed her fingers on the armrest of her chair and Nicole reacted just as arranged ahead of time. She stepped towards the desk, dispassionate murder in her eyes.

"Easy, kitten," Kostin said. His expression was mocking.

"She's not a kitten, she's a tiger," Kate said, smiling viciously.

Nicole took another step closer to him and grabbed hold of the desk. She sent it spinning away, leaving nothing between her and Kostin.

Kostin snapped his fingers, and all three guards sprung into action. All three opened fire on Nicole, peppering her with bullets. To their surprise, but not to Kate's, Nicole just stood there, utterly unfazed by what should have been a lethal barrage. A little blood oozed from where the bullets had penetrated her flesh.

Kate jumped up and drove her elbow into the throat of the nearest guard. Her other hand grabbed his pistol. She aimed it at Kostin, but it wasn't needed. The fat man and the other two guards were just staring at Nicole. One of them now had a dark, damp spot on the front of his pants..

"Bozhe moi," Kostin whispered, stumbling back until he hit the wall. He flinched and almost yelped then, and did yelp when Nicole turned and looked at him.

"We'll be taking those IDs now," Kate said.

Kostin whimpered wordlessly, eyes wide, heart pounding, sweat streaming down his face.

"Oi, Sis," Kate said.

Nicole advanced on Kostin. The guard with the wet trousers ran away. The other two shrank back, staring in horror at the Terminator.

"Here, here, please don't..." Kostin trailed off in a babble of Russian words, waving a thick manilla envelope in Nicole's direction. She plucked it out of his shaky grip and looked inside.

"Are we content?" Kate asked her.

"Yes. We are content. Everything we need is here."

Kate nodded and turned back to Kostin. "Pleasure doing business with you, mate," she said as she backed out of the room. "Thanks for the gun."

Then she ran.

"Travis Gant," Nicole announced.

"What? Who's that?" Bird asked. It was day three of laying low and they were eating carry-out Chinese in Kate and Bird's room.

"A former US Army Green Beret. He was briefly intimate with Sarah Connor in the early 1990s and eventually becomes one of John Connor's chief lieutenants. He lives on a ranch one hundred and fifty miles west of Dallas, Texas."

Kate put a hand to her forehead. "You're only now telling us this vital information?"

"I have been devoting most of my processing capability to planning strategies to prevent the creation of Skynet. Cycling through my list of known Connor associates is low priority."

Kate wanted to strangle the robot. She settled for glaring. "Okay. So you think Gant will know where Connor is?"

"No."

"Fuck's sake, Dalek," Bird hissed.

"But he may well know a previous location that will provide further information upon questioning the inhabitants there. Eventually we will encounter someone with valuable information. I will also monitor the Internet for any indications of their whereabouts. There are likely aliases."

"Great, good," Kate said. "Dallas. Does British Airways fly there?"

"Yes," Nicole said. "From their secondary hub at London Gatwick."

"Brilliant. Next question – can you pay for tickets in cash or will that stand out too much?"

Bhamra nodded. "I think so. It'd look strange if we paid for First Class with cash, but regular tickets shouldn't be much of a problem. I can take care of that."

"Fantastic. Never been to America."

"You would not want to visit America in the future," Nicole said.

"Yeah, I heard a thing or two about some small troubles there," Kate said.

Bird giggled.

Nicole just looked confused.

"Tell us more about Gant," Bhamra said to her.

"Travis Patrick Gant was born in Odessa, Texas on December 11, 1951 and conscripted into the US Army in December 1969. He joined the 5th Special Forces Group after two years in Vietnam and earned a Purple Heart on a classified operation in the Mekong Delta. Gant remained in the Army until August 1987, when he earned an honorable discharge with the grade of Master Sergeant. He encountered Sarah Connor in Fort Worth, Texas while operating a gun store and shooting range. They were intimate for a period of sixteen months before Sarah and John Connor relocated to California and were subsequently separated."

"Wait, what? Separated? How's that?" Kate asked. That was one story about the Great and Powerful Connors she'd never heard.

"After being arrested while attempting to destroy NovaTech Information Technology's factory in Torrance, California, Sarah Connor was committed to the Pescadero State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. John Connor was assigned to a series of foster parents until reunited with his mother in 1995."

Kate stared at the Terminator. "Wait. Sarah Connor was in a lunatic asylum?"

"Her story about the rise of Skynet and its attempt to destroy humanity was not well-received by state law enforcement."

Bird smirked. "Funny, that. Also funny how the Americans never talk about that bit."

"Yeah, shocking, isn't it?" Kate said with a smirk of her own. "All right. We'll go to Texas and we'll find Gant. Nicole can persuade him to help us out, if need be."

"I love it when a plan comes together," Bhamra said.

Two tense but uneventful weeks later, a large taxi dropped them off at Gatwick Airport. All four women were dressed smartly, as if they were City bankers (or an intern, in Bird's case), thanks to the handy fact they hadn't had to pay Kostin.

"Are you sure we've got enough time before the flight?" Bird asked Kate.

Kate gave her a look, at which point Bird stuck her tongue out.

"Cheeky today, are we?" Kate mock-grumbled.

"We've plenty of time," Bhamra said as they headed into the terminal. "Not that Gatwick is the most thrilling airport in the UK. Heathrow would've been better."

Kate shrugged. Just the experience of being in an airport was thrilling enough for her. She dimly remembered an early childhood trip to Spain, but not much of the actual flying around parts.

Getting through security wasn't nearly as hard as Kate had expected, although it took some fast talking and a thorough pat-down to keep going when Nicole set off the metal detector.

"I'm going to go explore," Bhamra said after they reached the gate – two hours before scheduled departure, thanks to the prompting of a certain ginger. "Anyone care to join me?"

Everyone looked at Nicole.

"Oh," she said after a few seconds. "Yes."

Kate eyed the seats at the gate, shook her head, and put her arm around Bird. "Let's find something to eat, luv."

"I've got no objections to that," Bird, grinning, said.

They roamed around the terminal for a while before settling on a coffee place.

"You can't eat coffee."

"Have some crisps, then," Kate said.

"Never done before," Bird murmured, looking a little embarrassed.

Kate squeezed her shoulder. "Well, all the more reason to try them. The salt and vinegar was my favorite, I think."

"Have you ever been on a plane before?" Bird asked after they'd bought crisps and coffee.

"Couple of times when I was young. I don't remember much of it. And that was just a couple hours, not like what we've got coming up."

Bird frowned warily. "Trying not to think about being stuck in a metal tube a mile above the ocean for nine hours."

"Thousands of people do it every day, Elle. It'll be fine."

"Mm..." Bird took an experimental nibble of a crisp and her eyes widened. "This is amazing! All the salt!" she gushed before cramming many more into her mouth.

Kate looked at her, smiling a little.

"Whuh?"

"Nothing. You clean up nicely, that's all."

Bird's cheeks reddened slightly. "Feels weird wearing proper clothes."

"It might feel weird, but it looks great."

Bird's cheeks reddened even more. Then she poked Kate. "You look brilliant, too, you know."

"Well, I do try."

"We need to wear these outfits when we find Connor."

"Mm. Got the feeling she's more of a jeans and t-shirts sort of girl."

"I like her already. But this is style. It's posh."

Kate laughed.

"What?"

"Posh Spice."

Bird looked completely confused.

"The Spice Girls. They were a pop girl band when I was a very little girl. There were four of them. Posh Spice, Scary Spice, Sporty Spice and Baby Spice."

"Those were their names?"

"Oh, no, just what they called themselves. I don't remember what their real names were. Posh Spice was Victoria Beckham, I think. No idea about the rest."

"Not sure what you're going on about here, Kate..."

"We're the Spice Girls."

"We are?"

"We are. Bhamra's Posh Spice, I suppose. She's smart and she knows how prewar works, at least. And Nicole's obviously Scary Spice. You're Baby Spice."

Bird rolled her eyes.

"Which leaves me as Sporty Spice, I suppose."

"You are fit."

"I am. Won't be for long if we keep eating pizza and crisps, though. We have to get back into disciplined feeding when we get to America."

"Does that mean I can have another bag of these here?"

"That's exactly what it means. But after that, let's head back to the gate."

"Will we get better seats if we're there early?"

Kate smiled fondly and shook her head. "Pretty sure you get what you pay for. Next flight we take, we'll aim for business class. That's a promise."

"Business class is the best?"

"Almost. There's first class, but I don't think all the flights even have that. Bhamra's the one to ask, not me." Kate dug her ticket out of her purse and looked at it. They were in the fortieth row, very far from business class. Nine hours on a cramped, flying bus. And then what? What if the Gant lead didn't turn out? Where were the Connors hiding? How long would it take to find them? How would they even manage that? It was a big country – practically a continent all its own. Kate tried to put herself in Sarah Connor's shoes. She'd leave Los Angeles behind and she'd leave the name Connor behind. But there had to be people who knew her besides Gant. Friends and family. Maybe they could convince some of them they were on Sarah's side? Once they reached America, Kate would have to ask Nicole to repeat everything she knew about the Connors. There might be useful information in her electronic brain. God willing.

"Well, we'll be all right," Bird said as she broke into her second bag of crisps, just as eager as before.

Kate forced a smile. "Yeah, we'll be all right."

Fifteen minutes later, they headed back to the gate area, which was starting to fill up, and claimed the best seats they could. Kate noticed people tended to give them a bit of space, wondered if that was coincidence or something else, some indelible mark of the long, brutal war they'd been fighting in the future. What scars had it left on them? What scars had it left on Elle?

She shifted uncomfortably in the cheap plastic seat. She didn't want Bird to have any scars. She wanted Bird to fly free. She was so young and she'd gone through so much... but what was left ahead of them?

After a while, Bhamra and Nicole appeared.

"I drank my first tequila shot," the Terminator declared.

Kate raised an eyebrow. "You're not drunk, are you?"

"No. Not drunk."

"Then congratulations." Kate looked at Bhamra. "What about you?"

"Probably drunk. I'll be sober by the time we get there."

"There's booze on the plane, isn't there?"

"I'll probably be sober by the time we get there."

Kate and Bird laughed.

Eventually, boarding for the flight to Dallas began. It took a long while before Kate and company – the Spice Girls – were able to head up the jet bridge and onto the plane. They turned right and moved to the very back of the plane. The seats back there were organized in a 3-3-3 pattern. Bhamra took the window and was asleep almost before the safety demonstration began. Bird sat next to her, and Kate claimed the aisle seat. Nicole was across the aisle, apparently for flight balance reasons. Kate wondered just how much a T-840 weighed. Not enough to require special transport.

She hoped.

To her surprise, Kate fell asleep not long after take-off. Some hours later, she woke up to the sound of hysterical giggling. Bird was watching some movie on the little screen on the back of the seat in front of her. A groggy Kate looked and saw three men assaulting an office printer in the middle of a field for some reason. She kissed Bird on the cheek and then fell asleep again, sleeping until there was a hard jolt.

Kate woke up, adrenaline spiking, reaching for a gun that hadn't even been invented yet, but Bird took her by the hand and squeezed tight. Her Bird. Her Elle.

"We landed, sarnt, that's all."

"Oh," Kate said, deflating a little. She managed a shaky smile. "How was it?"

"Not as scary as I thought it'd be."

Kate smiled less shakily. "See? Nothing to it. Just a flying bus."

"Yeah. Nothing to it."

Kate sat through the taxiing and approach to the terminal, but her adrenaline was spiking again. The holiday was over and the war was back on. She didn't know what was going to happen now, but she was scared. Everything was on her shoulders. The fate of her girlfriend, her team, the whole bloody future.

Focus. Find Sarah Connor. The rest will go from there.

About forty-five minutes afer they landed, Kate handed her passport over to a uniformed agent in a glass booth. Hope that fat bloody Russian did proper work...

The agent looked down at the passport and looked up at Kate. "Purpose of visit?" he asked in a bored tone of voice.

"Tourism."

"How long are you staying?"

No bloody idea. "Two weeks."

There was a loud mechanical CLUNK as the agent stamped Kate's fake passport. "Welcome to America," the man said as he handed it back. "Enjoy your stay."

"We'll do our best," Kate said with a smile. They moved on, heading into the unknown...

THE END