Terminator Salvation_ The Official Movie Novelization - Alan Dean Foster [72]
Dry round.
Instinctively, he brought one arm up in a desperate attempt to ward off the attack as he struggled to eject the bad round and chamber another shell. The Hydrobot plunged toward him—but metal never met flesh. Hands snatched the writhing machine out of the air and as easily as they would break open a chicken leg, snapped it in half. Spasming independently, both sections were thrown back into the river. Connor did not linger on their sinking shapes. Instead, he straight away trained the muzzle of his weapon on the man who had saved him.
Correction, he told himself. On the thing that had saved him.
His clothing and skin largely gone, not even breathing hard from his flight from the base, Marcus Wright stared back at Connor. In the shallows, a mass of Hydrobots had gathered. But none attempted a repeat of the aerial assault on the human. A gasping Connor used his free hand to gesture in their direction.
“Look at them. They’re not attacking. Not attacking me because you just indicated how you want them to behave. Not attacking you because they know what you are. Even if you don’t.”
Wright replied without rancor, indicating the pistol gripped tightly in Connor’s fist.
“Guess that means that gun isn’t going to do you much good, even if it’s still functional. No gun’s going to stop me.”
Connor studied the powerful figure confronting him, letting his gaze rove over the remarkable amalgamation of the metallic and the organic. Napalm having burned away much of the carefully nurtured epidermal layer, the details of the unparalleled fusion were more visible than ever.
“Nobody’s shot you in the heart,” he wheezed. “I see that thing’s beating a mile a minute. I’d bet that it’s been modified, adapted, and juiced just like the rest of your ‘human’ components, but it still looks like there’s enough of the original left to respond badly to a heavy slug.”
The observation gave Wright pause. Then he nodded.
“That seems pretty close to the mark.” He straightened. “Do it then. Kill me.”
Still shaky from the crash and the frantic flight from the Hydrobots, a panting Connor struggled to fix his aim. His finger began to contract on the trigger.
Wright did not look away, showed not the slightest sign of fear. That was hardly surprising, Connor told himself. Fear was something the creature’s adaptive programming could doubtless cope with easily.
“Kyle Reese is alive.”
Connor tried not to react to the claim, but exhausted and exposed as he was, this time he could not keep his expression from giving his feelings away. His finger eased off the trigger.
“How can you be sure?” Connor spoke guardedly. Though his finger had eased off the trigger, he did not lower the pistol.
“I told you before, but you wouldn’t listen. He and a little girl who befriended me were part of a group taken captive by the machines. Along with the others, they’re probably both inside Skynet Central by now. I want to get them out. That’s the reason I came with Blair Williams to your base, even though you refuse to believe me. I still want to get them out.” Eyes that were at least part human burned into Connor’s. “I think you’d like to get them out, too.”
Here was something upon which they could agree.
“Of course I want to get them out,” Connor said.
Wright nodded. “In order to get them out, you first have to get in. And I’m the only one who can get you in.”
Connor shook his head doubtfully.
“Get into Skynet Central? How?”
Wright approached with deliberation. Connor raised his gun. He could see the beating, modified, augmented heart clearly now. The new, improved model, he thought wildly to himself. If he shot Wright and the—man—went down, and they tried to fix him up, would he more properly be a candidate for surgery—or a tune-up? And what, really, was the difference between the two, anyway? Flesh