The doors of T-1 No. 3's robot vault swung open, and Sergeant William Candy stepped into the hallway just as Captain Russell, the head of security at CRS, was stepping out of the elevator. At the sight of Candy, he breathed a sigh of relief and resolutely walked towards the sergeant.
"Sergeant Candy, please explain what you're doing here! I've been told from the guard post that you've returned to the airbase, ostensibly summoned by someone in the leadership of CRS, but—" Russell paused, "I've found out that no one in the Center knows anything about it!"
Candy looked at him indifferently and said nothing.
"I would also like to remind you that you do not have the right to be on the territory of CRS without special permission, and even more so in this compartment!" He looked at the sign on the door. "I ask again, what the hell are you doing here?"
Candy was much larger than Russell, but since capital was armed, and Candy was not, Russell allowed himself such a confident and even defiant tone.
"How did you know I was here?" Candy asked calmly.
"Hayes will see you—"
"Who else knows?" The big sergeant interrupted.
Something came to Russell's mind, and he moved closer, his hand at the same time approaching the handle of the service pistol that hung on his waist holster.
Candy grabbed him by the throat and lifted him up. Opening the door to T-1's vault, he smashed it around like a rag doll, breaking his spine. Then he took the gun from him and threw the body into a corner. For a moment he stared at the dying captain, whose left leg was still twitching.
Now T-X was getting ready to act: the last robot had been reprogrammed, and she was about to launch Skynet. Somewhere in here is General Brewster, and with him John Connor and Catherine Brewster. She knew that, and as soon as Skynet was activated, they would surely rush to the computer center to try to do something, to stop him somehow. That's exactly what she wanted.
T-X had been at Edwards Air Force Base for almost two hours, having arrived before John and Kate. On the way, she came up with the idea of using the image of T-850 to easily overcome the guard post. Terminatrix knew that the human likeness of some T-800/T-850 models was copied from Sergeant William Candy, and this information was stored in the Skynet database. T-X even watched a demo clip of Candy posing in front of one of the early models.
The same guards in camouflage uniforms whom the robot had once easily tricked into pretending to call and then quickly killing them, watched in bewilderment as a luxury silver Lexus convertible, one of the latest models, driven by none other than Marine Corps Staff Sergeant William Candy, drove up to the gates of the checkpoint. He had served elsewhere, but he was a frequent visitor to Edwards Air Force Base, so the guards recognized him immediately.
However, to date, Candy was not on the list of visitors, which immediately alerted the experienced guards. In addition, it was very strange to see such a brutal, athletic-looking man sitting in an excellent, but still, rather a woman's car. One of the sentries approached the driver's door of the convertible.
"Greetings, guys!" The Sergeant said in a friendly tone, stretching out the words in Texan. T-X knew that's how Candy spoke.
"Hello, Master Sergeant," the guard said, trying to be friendly as well. "Please tell us the purpose of your visit."
"I don't really know! It's just that this morning I got a call from the guys from CRS and they told me to come here urgently. I tried to ask what was wrong, but I was quickly besieged that it was not a telephone conversation. You know, secrecy and all that!" Candy shrugged.
"Hmm... It's just that you're not on the visitor list," the guard said bluntly.
"Oh!" Candy made a surprised face. "I don't even know, maybe they just forgot…?"
"Anything is possible," the guard said calmly. "But we've got to make sure, you know... I'm going to call— It only takes a minute!"
The guard returned to the checkpoint and began to dial someone's number, while T-X, while still outwardly remaining as calm as ever, calculated alternative options for infiltrating the base if the trick with Candy still failed. She didn't want to start killing people prematurely, as it would attract unnecessary attention and complicate her mission.
But T-X was lucky: for some reason, the guard could not get through to anyone in CRS, so, exchanging glances with his partner, he shouted to the sergeant, "Unfortunately, I can't get in touch with anyone in CRS' leadership, so you'll have to wait a little longer, Sergeant."
"Come on, guys, you know me! They would have missed it already, but I'm not going anywhere. After all, there are a lot of security cameras here, and what could I, unarmed, smell here, even if I wanted to!"
The sentries looked at each other once more, and one of them nodded slightly to the other.
"All right, Sergeant, we'll open the gates now, but according to the rules, we'll still have to search you and your car."
"Of course, of course!" Candy nodded, smiling good-naturedly.
Since T-X did not have any other weapons with him, and nothing suspicious was found in the car either, after a few minutes the search was over, and one of the guards went to open the gate. At the same time, the second one, standing next to Candy, nevertheless noticed, looking at the Lexus, "You've got a good car!"
"Yes, and I think so," said the Master Sergeant.
"Only, it's— for women."
The big man's face abruptly changed to serious, even gloomy, which, combined with his size, looked threatening. The guard was a little taken aback. But the next moment, Candy was smiling again. He said, "It's my girlfriend's car. Took it for a ride!"
Brewster, along with John and Kate, rushed to the computer center, which was located on the same floor, but was separated from his office by several corridors and rooms. They ran down the empty corridor for a while, but soon it quickly began to fill up with people. They fled in the opposite direction in a panic, so the trio had to rush into the wall to avoid being swept away by the distraught CRS officers.
Brewster tried to shout to the people, wanting to find out what had happened, but it was useless: no one was responding to the general. And in a few seconds Kate, John, and Brewster himself saw what all these unfortunates were fleeing from. Around the bend, one of the T-1 tank robots was waiting for them. He crawled slowly on his tracks through the room, all around him in ruins, blown away by the hurricane fire of his twenty-millimeter cannons. The mutilated corpses of the unfortunates, who were not lucky enough to escape, littered the floor in large quantities, and some remained sitting at their workplaces. Their bodies, riddled with powerful bullets, were a bloody mess. The picture resembled a scene from a horror movie, but it happened in reality.
Even General Brewster, a cold-blooded and courageous man who had been in the war and had seen quite a few deaths on the field in his lifetime, was shocked and taken aback at the sight of these men who had only recently been alive, many of whom he knew quite well. For a few moments, he literally stood up, unable to move.
The T-1 had already pointed its terrible guns at Brewster, John, and Kate, but the latter two, being somewhat accustomed to what was happening, did not lose the ability to think decisively, so they managed to escape the fire by diving through one of the open doors of the office and literally dragging the general into it by force.
They were fortunate that the T-1s had extremely low levels of artificial intelligence and were designed to hit objects only in their immediate field of vision. So when the three targets that appeared in front of his electronic vision disappeared almost immediately, the robot did nothing, but calmly rolled on in the opposite direction.
"Phew, I think it's gone!" John breathed a sigh of relief.
"Daddy, how are you?" Kate asked first.
"I'm okay" Brewster regained his ability to think clearly. "Hurry, we need to get to the computer center! I hope these machines haven't gotten there yet!"
"I don't think we're going to get through like that!" John said reasonably. "Is there a workaround?"
"I'm afraid not!" Brewster shook his head.
So they had to continue their journey by the same route. Very slowly, almost crawling, hiding behind tables, cabinets, and anything else so that the T-1s scurrying around would not notice them, the general, his daughter, and Connor finally managed to reach the entrance to the computer room in about ten minutes.
At the door, Brewster spotted Skynet's chief engineer, Tony Flickinger. The man, who graduated summa laude from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the early 1990s, began his career at Microsoft and then moved to Cyberdyne Systems to work under Miles Dyson. After Dyson's death and the bankruptcy of the old company, Flickinger joined Cyber Research Systems, becoming the chief engineer of Project Skynet four years earlier. Very good worker. As Brewster believed, Flickinger himself was like Skynet. He knew more about the system and its potential than anyone else.
If anyone could stop Skynet, it was him. But now Tony was hardly in a position to do so: wounded, covered in blood, he was half-sitting, half-lying on the jamb of the front door to the computer center. Flickinger's eyes were closed, and he was breathing rapidly. The sight of his subordinate drove Brewster to despair. But at least he's still alive, which means there's a chance!
"Tony!" The general rushed to Flickinger and knelt beside him. John and Kate arrived at the same time.
The man opened his eyes and stared at him with a look that was fading by the minute. At last, realizing who was in front of him, Flickinger, coughing up the blood that filled his mouth, said in a haphazard way, "general... virus... he seems to have infiltrated Skynet."
"No, Tony,—" Brewster glanced at John, — "Skynet is a virus! Everything that happened is his business! How to stop it? Please, tell me!"
Flickinger coughed; bloody debris flew out of his mouth, landing on the general himself and on Kate and John. But now they didn't pay the slightest attention to it. It was all focused on what Tony would have to say before he died. And it was already obvious that he could not be saved: although Kate had treated animals, she knew something about human anatomy, enough to know that the wounds he had received were too serious. A few more minutes at most, and it'll be over.
"Tony, please tell us! I know you're in a lot of pain! But please, try to concentrate! There must be some kind of command, some code for an emergency shutdown." Brewster continued to urge.
At last his words seemed to have an effect, for Flickinger seemed to have come out of the semi-comatose state in which he was, and looked quite clearly at Brewster.
"Yes, there is... Here's what you've got to do, sir—" He didn't have time to finish as a heavy nine-millimeter bullet entered his head, shattering his skull. Flickinger collapsed on his right side.
Brewster, John, and Kate turned sharply to the right, to where the computer center itself was located. There, too, were corpses, hanging limply from their work chairs, staring with unseeing eyes into the still-functioning monitors. Between the two tables, closer to the door, stood a man, looking at them gloomily. In his right hand he held the pistol with which he had killed Tony a second before.
John and Kate recognized him as their acquaintance, T-850 Terminator. And Brewster immediately thought of the demo that he, along with CFO Shelby and the others, had watched only about an hour earlier. That is why a surprise burst from the general's lips, "Sergeant Candy?!"
A slight smile appeared on his face, as it remained during the transformation, which took no more than ten seconds. And now, in front of the stunned people, stood T-X herself. She was still wearing an imitation of a rust-colored leather pantsuit by Gucci.