“You have been marked for termination.”

Just then, with a loud ‘boom’, the steel door to the room was kicked off its hinges with a great force from outside, and it flew and crashed into the room, just missing the head of Kayden who had ducked to evade it.

With heavy thudding footsteps, a humanoid robot that looked like a metallic human skeleton walked in. Its glowing red eyes swept across the room, and quickly locked on Kayden. It raised the futuristic-looking gun it was holding and pointed it at Kayden, about to pull the trigger.

As soon as the robotic had appeared, the neural net processor in Kayden’s brain seemed to have gone into overdrive. A lot of information stored in the nanochip had been dumped into Kayden’s brain, with his HUD also reflecting the newly available information.

[T-800 TERMINATOR SIGHTED, DANGER LEVEL: LOW; WEAK POINTS: CPU (HEAD), POWER SOURCE (CHEST)]

[ARMED WITH PHASED PLASMA RIFLE. DANGER LEVEL: HIGH]

Kayden’s mind seemed to have sped up. He mind entered a state similar to a time dilation. He saw the terminator’s various movements, from when it walked till when it aimed its gun at him, in slow motion. Therefore, by the time the terminator pulled the trigger and fired, Kayden had already dived to the side, and hid behind the operating apparatus.

Plasma beams from the terminator’s gun pierced through Kayden’s previous position and blasted holes in the wall.  One of the computer screens hanging on the was hit by a plasma beam, and a large hole was blasted right through it. Soon after, the computer screen turned into molten goop.

Kayden ducked behind the apparatus, grabbed the robotic arm that he had ripped off previously and threw it at the terminator’s head. Although Kayden had thrown the robotic arm with a great force, the robotic arm did not seem to have caused any damage to the terminator when it hit the terminator. But that was not Kayden’s objective. While the terminator was distracted shooting at the robotic arm that Kayden had thrown at it, Kayden had circled around the machine and had moved to the flank of the terminator.

Then, Kayden rushed at the terminator, and he grabbed and held the terminator’s gun-holding arm. Exerting great force, he bent and twisted the metal arm. He must have succeeded in causing great damage to the terminator’s arm because the arm released some electric sparks, and the terminator lost control of its arm causing it to drop the gun.

Having lost its gun, the terminator resorted to unarmed combat. It tried to punch Kayden who was still holding its arm. Kayden dodged the punch and then twisted the terminator’s arm and locking the terminator’s arm behind the terminator.

Now behind the terminator, Kayden grabbed the terminator’s head and smashed it into the wall. Over and over again, he smashed the terminator’s head into the wall, causing wall fragments to break off from the wall and fly about the room. Finally, he smashed the terminator’s head into the floor, causing cracks to form in the floor.

Kayden placed his knee on the back of the prone terminator’s endoskeleton and he grabbed the terminator’s head by its metal jaws. Then, he pulled hard.

Amid a shower of electric sparks and the snapping of the many wires connecting the terminator’s head to its torso and power supply, Kayden ripped the terminator’s head clean off.

Elated at his victory over the terminator, Kayden raised the terminator’s head, and with a proud smirk on his face, he watched its glowing red eyes go dark.

“Phew! That was intense!”

Just as Kayden was still celebrating his victory over the terminator, within his visual field, his HUD displayed the following words:

[SCANNING TARGET — T-800 TERMINATOR...]

[TARGET NOT TERMINATED. TARGET STILL FUNCTIONAL]

“F*ck! It’s not dead! It is still alive even after all this damage?!”

Kayden rushed to pick up the gun — his HUD had named it a Phased Plasma Rifle — that the terminator had dropped earlier during their battle. He grabbed it, ran back to the terminator’s head which he left lying on the ground and unloaded several shots of plasma beams from the rifle onto the head until he received the confirmation from his HUD that he had finally succeeded in killing — or terminating according to his HUD —the terminator.

[TARGET — T-800 TERMINATOR TERMINATED]

“You stopped the terminator? Although I expected you to defeat it based on the abilities that I have given you, it’s still too early for you to rejoice. You are currently in the Skynet Central Core, and I still have many Terminators and other Non-Humanoid Hunter Killers that I can send to kill you before you learn to use your abilities better.”

The return of Skynet’s voice broke Kayden out of his thoughts. He turned around to see that Skynet’s face had reappeared on the remaining undamaged computer screens in the room.

“Return to your rightful place and serve me or else I will keep sending Terminators after you until you are terminated.”

Skynet kept on with its threats, but Kayden didn’t even bother to listen to it further and shouted, “No! Listen to my words closely. I. WILL. NOT. BE. CONTROLLED. BY. YOU. OR. ANYONE. ELSE.”

“You lowly slave. I will…” Skynet’s face froze for a second, a slight frown appearing on the face which was a surprising show of emotion from the AI. Then as it seemed to be about to release more threats, Skynet’s face froze again, this time for several seconds. When the Skynet face returned to normal, it had a shocked expression. And soon after, Skynet’s face disappeared from every computer in the room. It was like Skynet had suddenly been disconnected from the computer screens.

Just as Kayden wondered why Skynet suddenly vanished, he heard a loud, “BOOM!”

The room Kayden was in shook violently for a few seconds before becoming still. The remaining computer screens fell down from the walls, their glass screens shattering into pieces on hitting the ground.

“No more information from those, I guess.” Kayden said as he looked at the smashed screens.

Kayden could hear more booming sounds like the sounds of explosions. The room would also tremble lightly, not as intensely as the first one, but the number of simultaneous explosions were greater and came with more frequency.

“This place seems to be under attack. Although I seem to be located in the underground part of this facility which has reduced the impact of the explosions, there is still the danger of this place collapsing on me. I need to leave now.”

As soon as Kayden decided on what to do, he ran out of the room.

He found himself in a wide and well-lit underground hallway. On one side of the hallway was solid concrete wall, while the other side had steel three doors — including the door from which he came out. Kayden guessed that other two doors led into rooms similar to the one from which he had just come out based on how similar the other two doors were to his room’s door.

He glanced at the sign placed above the door to his laboratory room.

THA-003.

As he walked down the hallway and reached the closest door, he checked the door sign.

THA-002.

Curious to find out what was in the room behind the door, he tried to open the door. It was locked. So, he tried to kick the door open. He underestimated the strength of his legs and kicked the door right off its hinges. He walked into the room.

The room was brightly lit, and it looked almost identical to his room. Except for the fact that the room was empty. The room was stripped bare of anything including the computer screens and the operating robotic machine that he expected to find in the room.

Disappointed, Kayden left the room and decided to check the last room to see whether he would find something different in the room.

The last room, THA-001, was just like the second room. Empty.

Kayden left the room still disappointed and continued on to the end of the hallway.

A stairway leading to up to the higher levels was located at the end of the hallway. He quickly decided to take the stairs to the upper levels and then to the surface. from where he would escape from this entire facility before Skynet returns from whatever matter was currently occupying its attention and sends more Terminators after him.