T-850 did not process information as quickly as T-X. As he himself had already admitted to John Connor, his model was morally outdated compared to her. Still, the speed of the chip allowed Terminator to realize in about half a minute that a time loop had occurred, as a result of which the events of July 24-25, 2004 were repeating themselves. Just like its more modern counterpart, T-850's face showed no emotion at all.
The cyborg stood in the bowl-shaped depression left by the luminescent sphere that transported him back into the past and walked swiftly away; half-hardened sand crunched under his bare feet, breaking into small shards of glass. Behind him was Joshua's lone tree, cracked in half and on fire when he arrived, and a large rattlesnake with a diamond-shimmering scaly back, staring after him with fear and curiosity at the same time.
Last time, the reptile managed to attack Terminator by sinking its five-centimeter fangs into his left shin, but this time it just didn't have time. Terminator was moving too fast, much faster than it was then. He felt neither cold nor warmth, nor impatience to begin the initial phase of the mission, although he knew, with the additional information, that he had to get to the clinic where Catherine Brewster works a second time faster, in order to prevent him and John Connor from colliding with T-X. Nothing will stop him. No force can distract him from his path except by damaging the components of his nervous system or completely destroying the combat chassis.
He remembered the direction perfectly, and he was moving straight to the village club building next to the highway with the Desert Star bar, where the music was blaring, shaking the bass of the surroundings to accompany an evening of male striptease.
Last time, Terminator classified it as a roadside diner/drinking establishment, which is common in the continental United States; the most similar can be found in the West and the desert Southwest. A gathering place for ritual mating and aggressive behavior, as well as food for the poor. Well, there was nothing to add to that.
A large, muscular man in jeans, a leather vest, and a wide-brimmed cowboy hat sat on a chair near the main entrance. His eyes narrowed at the sight of the naked Terminator, but it didn't seem to come as much of a surprise to him.
"You're going through the back door," he said, unaware that he was repeating himself, but T-850 ignored the cowboy again, slapping him the head with the door.
Terminator opened the door and stepped inside the noisy, smoky hall, which was crowded with about two hundred women, cheering, whistling, and applauding the stripper performing on a small wooden stage at the back of the auditorium. Music blared from huge speakers suspended from the ceiling and standing near the stage. The glittering curtain was illuminated by red, green, blue, and pink rotating lanterns. A large poster in the middle of the curtain read: "Women's Evening. Male striptease".
The women noticed him. They jumped on the spot, greeting Terminator with shouts and whistles. Most of them thought it was the best part of today's show. But the cyborg walked past them with even more indifference than the last time. With the kind of indifference that only Terminators are capable of. T-850 already knew what he needed.
A loud, rhythmic song suddenly blared from the speakers — "Macho Man" by the Village People, and a tall stripper with a strong physique with a red neckerchief, a cap, biker boots, and a leather jacket and pants jumped onto the stage. Terminator immediately stepped through the crowd of frenzied women to the stage.
"Take off your clothes," he ordered the stripper. He smiled interestedly, but shook his head.
"Be patient!" — and then threw a leather glove in Terminator's face.
Terminator took the stage, and the women, still convinced that this was part of the show, went wild: they shouted and whistled much louder than before.
"Wait, man! Wait in line!" The stripper was indignant. He was absorbed in his act, swaying his hips and shoulders.
"Clothes," Terminator repeated flatly.
The stripper threw his hand right into his opponent's face.
"Watch your hand!" He was rude and turned away.
Terminator grabbed his hand, his wrist crunching like wheat biscuits.
"Hurry up!"
The stripper roared in pain and fear, and when Terminator let go of his hand, he jumped a step back. The stripper hurriedly tore off his cap and handkerchief, then his jacket, awkwardly, because his wrist was dislocated, or maybe even broken. But the adrenaline level in his blood rose from fear, and he felt almost no pain.
The women on their feet seem to have gone mad. The best show they've ever seen in their lives. Everything is so realistic!
Terminator put on the clothes of a stripper, except for a cap and a scarf, the boots turned out to be a little stiff. Then, without saying a word, he walked across the stage to the backstage, where there was a dressing room for the artists.
Several strippers stared in amazement at the guy in the Larry costume, who was not Larry. He didn't skip the show.
"Macho Man" was still ringing and the women were screaming when Terminator entered the parking lot through the back door, leaving a crowd of excited drunken ladies inside. Without putting it on, he tossed aside his star-shaped sunglasses to keep them out of the way, and rushed into the parking lot to a Dodge pickup truck with large wheels and a shotgun strapped above the rear window.
As he approached the pickup truck, he smashed the driver's side window with his fist, opened the door, and climbed into the cabin. The alarm went off and the lights flashed. Ignoring it, Terminator calmly ripped the ignition wires from under the steering column, and the alarm went silent. Then he cut the wires, striking sparks, and started the ignition.
The engine roared. Terminator picked up the sunglasses lying on the dashboard. He put them on, shifted into gear, and put the gas pedal to the floor.
The car sped out of the parking lot, spewing a rooster's tail of gravel from under the wheels.
All the way to the clinic, his processor calculated possible options for fighting T-X and how to neutralize her. But time after time, the system gave an unequivocal and not encouraging result: the chances of success in an open confrontation with the terminator of her series were less than five percent. When naked, her combat chassis, reinforced with armor made of forged ceramic and titanium, made her a near-invincible fighter on the battlefield. And the additional shell made of metal polyalloy, thanks to which T-X could easily change her appearance, and the weapons built into the endoskeleton, especially the plasma cannon, made her even more dangerous.
This did not embarrass or frighten the fearless Terminator, but he was programmed for self-preservation in order not to fail his mission prematurely. Therefore, T-850 had to behave decisively towards his opponent, but at the same time with caution and not take unnecessary risks until he was sure that John Connor and Catherine Brewster were safe out of reach of T-X.
When the Toyota Tundra took off and began to move away from the veterinary clinic, Terminator took action: first, he rushed directly at T-X, knocking her off her feet with all his weight, and preventing her from destroying the car with a beam of plasma. Then, with his right hand, he began to strike her head one after another, at the same time trying to keep the plasma cannon on a safe trajectory with his left hand.
From the outside, by human standards, it looked wild: a healthy muscular man pressed a fragile girl to the ground and, with all his strength, hit her in the face with a huge fist. If Terminators had a sense of shame, T-850 would probably be ashamed of its own actions. But his electronic brain was guided only by purely logical considerations, which required him to inflict as much damage as possible on the enemy. And it doesn't matter who the opponent is: the same strong-looking man or a beauty with a model appearance.
However, the beating did not last long: T-X used her circular saw built into her left arm and tried to reach the neck of T-850 to saw off his head. Terminator prevented her from doing so, causing the saw to sweep obliquely across his face, leaving a clear and deep groove that nearly damaged his left optical eye sensor.
After that, T-X, bending her legs under herself and using them as a kind of jack, threw her opponent and threw him over herself. Her left arm had returned to normal, while her right arm was still modified to fire beams of plasma.
The reason she allowed herself to be beaten for a while was, oddly enough, because of the peculiarities of her endoskeleton. Paradoxically, being a more technically advanced vehicle and having a more durable body, T-X was lighter, smaller in size, and much sleeker than the T-800/850 series terminators. Skynet had to go for it for the perfect imitation of the female figure. However, due to her reduced mass, T-X was more difficult to deal with T-850 in hand-to-hand combat: he weighed more than twice its own, and his body was shoulder width and chest width than Terminatrix's.
The plasma blast she fired at her opponent landed in his shoulder, nearly tearing off his arm and striking out a sheaf of sparks: she was aiming for the head, but T-850 managed to deviate from the trajectory of the attack, after which he took cover behind the back of the car. But Terminator did not sit there: he effortlessly tore off the front bumper of the car and, using it as a weapon, threw it into the approaching T-X. He tore off the hood as if it were made of plywood and, this time with some effort, tore the engine out of the engine compartment, which he also threw at his opponent.
The bumper gave her almost no trouble, but the massive engine of the Dodge, which hit her right in the chest, knocked her off her feet again. Terminator ran up and grabbed T-X by the arms, flipped her over in the air, and slammed her into the floor of the jeep body with all his might. The rear axle of the car broke in two with a peculiar grinding sound, tilting the pickup backwards as if it had a variable air suspension, and a huge dent had formed in the bottom of the Dodge.
T-X had removed the plasma cannon so that both of her upper limbs now ended in delicate palms with neat manicures. With them, she pushed T-850 so that he flew twenty meters and landed on the asphalt, which cracked at the crash site. Next to him was a shotgun, which Terminator got rid of some time ago.
Grabbing his weapon, he fired all the remaining charges at his opponent who jumped out of the back and approached with lightning speed. At the same time, T-X's face showed obvious displeasure at the fact that the battle was dragging on so long, and she was wasting time. She approached, and they clasped their hands, as they had done once at CRS, like Greco-Roman wrestlers. The asphalt continued to crumble under their feet, unable to withstand the pressure produced by the metal bodies resting on it.
From the side of the highway, the sirens of approaching police cars could be heard, which grew louder by the second. For a few moments, their heads turned in unison towards the road. Undoubtedly, this was where the cops were headed, so it was worth ending the fight as quickly as possible. Of course, neither Terminator nor T-X could be interfered with in any way, but a showdown with them would cause an additional time delay, and would attract unnecessary attention. So both he and she were told by their computer systems that contact with the authorities should have been avoided.
The heads of the terminators returned to their original position. Eyes stared at each other. T-X transformed her finger into a titanium drill bit, through which particles of bluish energy flowed into T-850's arm, carrying with it a charge of nanorobots. They forced Terminator to loosen his grip and step back a little, which his opponent immediately took advantage of. She sent a blast of plasma directly into his chest, seeking to damage the hydrogen fuel cells. T-850 flew into the wall of the clinic and, having pierced through it, disappeared somewhere in the bowels of the building. The sound of a dog's barking was heard again.
T-X carefully examined the newly formed opening with jagged edges: the program told the machine that she should go and check how badly Terminator was damaged and, if necessary, finish him off, but the police were already very close: the cars had no more than five hundred feet to go. So T-X, after a moment's hesitation, turned around and walked swiftly away, disappearing among the nearby buildings. She did not take a silver Lexus, since the car had already been "exposed" in the places of several murders.
It was the car, not the shooting, as John Connor thought as he saw the police motorcade rushing by, that caused the police to pay attention to the Emery Animal Hospital. The death of Officer Thompson, as well as the murder of several other people in different parts of Los Angeles, despite the fact that this Lexus was seen nearby every time, caused a real information storm. The cops were determined to find and punish their colleague's killer, and journalists who had access to the Police Department's insider information sensed the sensational smell and, like hungry wolves, pounced on the subject like prey.