This time, General Brewster's secretary, Mary McNeil, intercepted her boss before he even entered the office, where a video of the latest weapons and Sergeant Candy was being shown. The general had only twenty steps to go.
"Sir, I'm sorry, but your daughter is here, and there are two other people with her. They need to talk to you urgently."
His daughter? But her appearance here at the moment is absolutely out of place! He suddenly remembered how he had asked her to bring her fiancé here today. He practically begged and told the secretary to take care of her escort if or when she appeared.
But not now. And why did Mary say there were two people with her? Well, one of them, apparently, is Scott, that's understandable. But who's the second? Maybe they also brought a mutual friend or girlfriend with them? Oh, Katie! It's not the right time!
"Mary, please ask them to wait! If you want, organize a tour of the base, but not to those places, of course, where access is restricted. And I've got to see Mr. Shelby and the others—" Brewster nodded toward the door of the showroom, where he knew the CFO and his assistants were already waiting for him. "I expect it won't take more than half an hour—"
"Sir, you see—" Mary looked very guilty, — "your daughter is very insistent. She says it's literally a matter of life and death!"
"Oh, my God! What else could have happened?!" Brewster began to get irritated, but remembering his daughter, whom he loved very, very much, and whom he had not seen for so long, he relented a little.
"Well, well... Where are they?"
"In your waiting room. I took the liberty of taking them there right away..."
"Yes, that's right. Come along!"
Brewster was going to give his daughter a quick greeting, to get to know Scott and the other man. Shake hands, ask a couple of routine questions, maybe even make a joke to defuse the situation. And then he's going to put the whole group in charge of Mary, and he's going to come back here and watch this demo and talk to Shelby with a serious look about how to sell more expensive and deadly "toys" to the U.S. Army. And then, if nothing new and urgent distracts the general's attention, he will finally be able to devote more time to Katie and her companions. Maybe they'll even have lunch together.
When he arrived at the reception room with Mary, he saw the following picture. His daughter, unusually serious, walked up and down the room with her arms folded; there was a young man sitting on the couch who stared at him when the general appeared, so it must be Scott (Brewster mechanically noted that he was shabby). At the window stood a man with short dark hair, broad cheekbones, a large nose, and deep-set, tense eyes. Even through the stranger's attire — a leather jacket and pants complemented by biker boots — the musculature of a world-class athlete, perhaps even an Iron Man gold medalist, was clearly visible: strong tendons, massive but well-built hips and biceps.
If Brewster had managed to get into the room where the video for the government was being shown and watched it up to a certain point, he would have immediately recognized the man as Sergeant Candy. But since the general didn't see it, to him Terminator was just a stranger who had something to do with Scott and Kate, although Brewster couldn't think where his daughter could have met such a person.
When Kate saw her father, of course, she threw herself on his neck with an embrace. And no matter how strict and disciplined General Brewster was within the walls of CRS, he could not help but smile and hug his daughter in return. John moved a little closer, and Terminator also took a break from observing the area of the airbase where he was looking for T-X and took a few steps towards the general. Mary McNeil, smiling indulgently, delicately decided to withdraw from the room for a while, as she had done once.
"Katie, I'm so glad you and Scott got there!" Brewster said quite sincerely. "I'm very busy as usual, but I'll try to join you in a while, and we can have lunch."
As soon as Kate let go of her father, he held out his hand to John.
"Well... Scott, it's nice to finally meet you! Kate told me a lot of good things about you!"
Quickly shaking Connor's hand, the general immediately handed it to T-850.
"Hello! And you—" He paused, as if to give the stranger a chance to identify himself.
But Terminator stared at the outstretched palm in bewilderment. He knew, of course, that there was such a ritual as shaking hands among human males, but he could not seem to have imagined that anyone would ever want to do it to him.
There was an awkward pause for a moment, but then Kate said, "Father, it's not Scott, it's—" She hesitated, trying to figure out what to call Terminator. Unable to find the right words, the girl said, "Let's go to your office. We can discuss everything there."
His gut instinct was that something was amiss, but he agreed: it was his daughter, and he was used to trusting Katie. The general nodded and motioned for the whole company to come through the next door. Surprisingly, Shelby and the others somehow jumped out of his mind.
In Brewster's office, the men were seated as they had been the last time, and Terminator crossed the room and stood again at the window at the general's desk. The cyborg continued to monitor the part of the base that could be seen from this point. Although the likelihood of this happening was extremely small, T-X could still come into his field of vision.
"Dad, please listen to us to the end! It will sound like the ravings of a madman, but I swear it's true!" Kate now took the introduction. She could see from her father's face that he was clearly interested: "I wonder what he was thinking just now? I'll bet you anything but what we're going to tell him!"
"Well, well, I'm listening," Brewster said without a trace of irony. He looked from Kate to John and back again.
"My name is John Connor, General Brewster! Your daughter and I used to study together, but it doesn't matter... The important thing is that today, July 25, 2004, she and I met by a twist of fate to try to avert a nuclear apocalypse…"
The general's eyebrows crept up. "No doubt the thought has flashed through his mind that I'm a madman!" thought John, and he went on confidently. He and Kate were relieved that Terminator was here with them: if anything happened, he would be able to put up real resistance to T-X, and although he would probably lose, they would have a better chance of escaping and preventing Skynet from being launched. In addition, with the help of the cyborg, it will be easier to prove the truth of their words to the general.
"This virus that has been attacking targets around the world for days, and that you've been trying to fight without success, is Skynet. Sir, you should never run it in order to destroy the virus! It will simply seize control of all electronic systems, including the nuclear arsenal! His target is people, all of us. He considers humans to be his enemies! A nuclear attack will start right today at 6:18 p.m., if nothing changes—"
"Why 6:18 p.m.? Where do such details come from?" Brewster's voice was unusually serious. He stared at John.
"Because—" Connor exchanged glances with Kate, — "your daughter and I have lived through this several times before. We're stuck in today, and events are repeating themselves over and over again... Like something... I don't know what to call it: Fate, God... gives us a chance to make things right — to prevent the end of the world!"
Over many years of service, the general had learned to understand people quite well and could easily distinguish when a person was lying and when he was speaking sincerely. Now his intuition told him that this guy was telling the truth. An incredible, simply fantastic truth that is extremely difficult to believe without going crazy! This frightened Brewster all the more because he himself had always instinctively assumed that Skynet was not as safe and harmless to humans as it had been intended. No wonder he did his best not to use Skynet, despite pressure from the Pentagon. The military was understandable: they were worried about the defense of the United States, but Brewster feared for the fate of all mankind.
That's why he was ready to believe this fantastic story of a guy named John Connor. And again: if Kate also confirms his words, which she has already done several times with monosyllabic remarks and nods of the head, then isn't this an additional reason to believe! After all, Katie wouldn't have made such cruel jokes on her poor father! She's not like that!
Brewster's hands trembled with excitement, and he changed their position every now and then, now involuntarily clenching his fists, now locking them, and so on. He saw that Kate had noticed, and he hurried to remove his hands from the table. Then, out of the corner of his eye, Brewster caught sight of Terminator still staring down the window, and realized that he hadn't clarified about the guy yet.
"So, who's that?"
At these words, T-850 turned his head and calmly stared at the general.
"You're here at CRS developing humanoid cyborgs, terminators—" John's voice made it impossible to tell if it was a question or a statement. "If I understand correctly, these developments are somehow related to Cyberdyne Systems."
"They went bankrupt nine years ago after some terrorists blew up their whole office to hell!" The general decided that there was no point in withholding anything. "And in order to somehow pay off the employees, we sold all the developments they had to the Cyber Research Systems Company—"
"Damn it!" John swore. He thought that all his and his mother's efforts had gone to waste.
"What's the matter?" The general asked. Catherine also stared at John in bewilderment.
"Nothing," the guy sighed. He gestured to T-850.
"It's just that that's one of the terminators. He came from the future, from... What year are you come from?"
"I was sent back to your time on July 9, 2032," the cyborg said impassively.
"That's true, Father!" Kate hastened to confirm John's words.
"No, we'd better show him something, or your father won't believe us," John said, still angry that the Cyberdyne Systems bombing they had done nothing to prevent further research.
"Okay, but how?" Catherine asked absently.
John looked around. He'd been in the office twice before, but both times he hadn't had a chance to get a good look at it. The walls were paneled with cherry wood, and the wall to the left of the general's desk contained a full bar built into the sideboard. The American flag and the flag of the unit were adjacent to photographs of fighters and bombers from World War II. Large windows behind the general's desk overlooked the runways and hangars.
Connor's eye fell on the painting, behind which was a safe built into the wall, from where they had first retrieved a folder of classified documents, including access codes to Crystal Peak. Terminator then easily ripped out the massive door along with the thick hinges. A better demonstration of his capabilities could not have been imagined.
Following John's gaze, the general looked at all three of them anxiously: the safe contained top-secret data, for which he was responsible, as they say, with his head.
"What are you going to do?"
"I'm sure you have other places to put the papers," Connor said, and then, turning to T-850, he said.
"Come on, rip out that door with all the guts!"
"I don't obey your commands. I've only programmed them to do Catherine Brewster's bidding."
John's and the general's eyes immediately turned to Kate. She hesitating to do what John suggested. After all, her father has a lot of things in this safe, but on the other hand, is now the time to worry about secrecy?
"Come on! Do as he says!" The girl ordered.
Terminator, in front of the astonished general, went to the safe, pushed the painting away, and easily, as if it were made of cardboard, yanked the door open and threw it on the carpet with a dull thud. Brewster knew that the door weighed several dozen pounds, and no one could easily open it like that. No, this guy really isn't human!
"Oh my God!" Brewster gasped.
"Do you believe us now?" Kate asked.
The general just nodded his head.
"But that's not all, general!" Connor continued. "There's another terminator who has been sent to kill us, and you, too. This machine looks like a young woman, blonde and soon she... will be here!"
"T-X can change her appearance," Terminator immediately reminded.
"And one more thing: she can control other robots!" Catherine added. "Therefore, under no circumstances should she be allowed to get to the machines that you have stored here: these... on tracks with two machine guns!"
"The T-1," General Brewster said mechanically. "But, what... can we do?"
"That's what he's going to do!" Connor nodded his head in the direction of T-850. "And you need to order that all movements around CRS be tracked on video, and as soon as she appears in the room where these robots are stored, they will be informed here.
"But most importantly, it's Skynet!" Catherine reminded. "Under no circumstances should it be launched."
"That's not so easy to do, Katie!" Brewster sighed. "We're under a lot of pressure from the Pentagon, and if it's not me, then someone else might push the button!"
"But you're in charge here!" The girl couldn't stop herself.
Brewster didn't have time to reply. There was a knock on the door, and almost immediately Brewster's chief engineer, Tony Flickinger, literally flew into the office. At the sight of Kate, John, and T-850, the man was somewhat embarrassed, and when he noticed the broken door of the safe, he fell into a stupor for a while. But the general quickly snapped Flickinger out of his stupor, "What's wrong, Tony?"
"A widespread system failure," he replied to Brewster, careful not to blurt out anything unnecessary in front of strangers. "I don't know if we can do it."
At the same time, Kate was looking at Tony a little more intently than she should have. A rather attractive face for a man, short-cropped dark hair, a neat beard and mustache. Dressed in formal brown trousers, a gray shirt, a blue-gray tie, and a headset dangling around his neck, he looked more like a sales manager or a Wall Street broker than a computer genius. The girl was uncomfortable, because the last time she had seen Flickinger barely alive, covered in blood.
And Brewster was already figuring out where to start his conversation with Tony. He dared to tell him everything that John, Kate, and Terminator had told him. After all, Tony knew Skynet better than anyone else, and if something happened, he was the only one who could stop it. Flickinger must know the truth!