Kayden drove the truck onwards towards the part of the road where the three Resistance soldiers were taking cover, leaving the scattered remnants of the blown-up HK-Aerials behind them.

“Whoop! Ha-ha! Phew, we finally got rid of that pesky oversized metal fly!” Kayden said, his heart still racing from adrenaline rush from the high-octane chase.

Still smiling, Kayden turned to look at Serena. She was still staring at the wreckage of the HK-Aerial through the camera feeds, a shocked expression on her face. It was almost like she still could not believe that they had all managed to live through all of Kayden’s crazy driving stunts.

“Did you see that? So, how was it? I told you I had a plan, didn’t I?” Kayden said.

“Yeah, you did a good job — a great job even. Especially your driving skills. Simply amazing. Mm… almost miraculous, you can say.” Serena said, patting Kayden on the shoulder and the breath she had held in during the most intense part of the chase.

But before Kayden could bask in his feeling of satisfaction some more, Serena added, “But that was still an insane plan to rely on the resulting explosion from HK-Aerial’s plasma cannon shot to jump over the obstruction on the road. We could have all died if your judgement of the timing had been even a little bit off.”

Kayden knew that Serena must be slightly annoyed by his ‘risky’ actions, but he was not too bothered by it. He did not think his plan was too risky. His newly discovered ability — ‘Trajectory Prediction’ — was amazing. It had greatly boosted his confidence in his ability to carry out his plan successfully. Besides, the abilities he had gotten from his enhancements had been mostly reliable, and they had helped him survive till now, so, he had begun to develop some trust in them and rely on them more and more.

Kayden had to admit that Skynet had really done a good job at enhancing him. Skynet must have made a real effort and used a lot of resources to give Kayden his enhancements. Skynet should have needed Kayden to fulfill some kind of purpose that must have been very important for it.

But unfortunately for Skynet, its plans for Kayden had failed, and Kayden would now be using his enhancements for only his own benefit instead of Skynet’s.

Still, there was no way for Kayden to explain all that to Serena.

“It worked though, right?” Kayden said.

“Yeah. I will admit it did.” Serena said, sighing.

As the truck reached where the three Resistance soldiers were hiding, Kayden braked the truck, slowing it down and finally stopping it on the road. The soldiers were hiding among some wrecked vehicles lying by the roadside, at a distance of about five meters from the road.

Kayden had already noticed that all three of the soldiers were wounded. And although the 3 soldiers had been left behind here because of their wounds, they had still decided to keep fighting in their own way, and they even got some admirable results to show for their efforts.

 Kayden had to admit that he admired their determination. After having judged from checking the camera feeds that they no longer had any other HK pursuers, and due to the fact that the soldiers had just saved their lives, Kayden decided to stop the truck and ask the soldiers if they needed any help.

But when Kayden tried to wave towards the soldiers, he realized that his hand was loosely sticking to the steering wheel. With an eyebrow raised in puzzlement, he tried removing his other hand from the steering wheel. The same thing happened. On raising his hands slightly away from the steering wheel, what he saw almost gave him a fright.

“What the fu—?!” Kayden almost shouted, stopping himself abruptly when Serena turned towards in puzzlement due to his sudden outburst.

“Is there a problem?” Serena asked.

“No. No. I was just a little surprised is all. Look at the size of that plasma cannon! So big, right?”

Serena gave him a strange look before turning away from him.

Kayden gave a silent sigh a relief before turning back to examining his hands. He saw many extremely thin black metallic threads extending out of his hand and piercing into the steering wheel.

When Kayden focused his sight on the threads, his HUD showed him an enlarged view of the threads and he saw tiny pulses of light running down from his hand, along the threads and then into the steering wheel. And that was when Kayden realized that the black threads were much versions of the ones he seen earlier when he had activated the 2 T-X Terminators in the Cold Storage area.

Kayden tried to pull his hands away from the steering wheel even harder. Suddenly, all of the black metallic threads retracted from where they had inserted into the steering wheel, and immediately they did, Kayden lost the feeling of being connected to the truck and being ‘one with the truck’. The threads then reentered into his hands.

“Hey!” Kayden called out to the soldiers who were now sitting down and resting. The work of operating the plasma cannon and attacking HK-Aerials must have been very stressful for their already wounded bodies. 

Having suddenly remembered something, Kayden turned towards Serena.

“Do you want to talk to them? They are your colleagues, right?” Kayden asked.

“No. Go ahead. It’s all the same if you do the talking. The Resistance is so large that I don’t think they would even recognize me. It’d only complicate things if I reveal my status as a Resistance to them without it having been verified by HQ.” Serena said.

Kayden nodded. Anyways, he did not really know how the Resistance operated.

“Hey guys!” Kayden shouted, waving towards the three men, “Thanks for the assist. That was an amazing shot there!”

“Yeah. You’re welcome. You’ve got nice driving skills.” One of the soldiers replied.

The Resistance soldier sounded tired, and he was most energetic and the only one among the three soldiers who even bothered to say something. The other two only waved at Kayden while sharing a water can among themselves.

“Everybody in this truck was a former Skynet prisoner and we’re trying to escape. I can see that you guys are wounded and exhausted, and I wanted to ask whether you want to come with us. You guys just saved us and we’d like to return the favor.” Kayden said.

The first soldier shook his head.

“Thanks, but we’d have to reject your help. Before the battle started, we were told that this would be an important mission which could decide the future of all humans. So, we won’t leave. We are soldiers of the Human Resistance serving under John Connor! We will remain here until the battle is over and won or until when we are KIA!” The soldier said with conviction and his 2 colleagues nodded in agreement. He then added, “Thanks anyways for trying to help.”

“Alright. I understand. We will be continuing on our way. Good luck.” Kayden said.

Kayden was about to step on the gas when the soldier seemed to have just then suddenly remembered something.

The soldier said, “Oh, I just remembered! If you continuing going forwards, you will see a—”

The soldier was suddenly interrupted by a heart-wrenching scream.

“NO!”

Shocked, Kayden immediately turned towards Serena who suddenly screamed. Kayden could see that she had a totally horrified expression on her face. She looked like she had just seen or heard something that had completely terrified her.

But before Kayden could ask Serena why she had screamed, he heard the loud sound of an explosion come from the direction of the battlefield and Skynet’s Core facility.

BOOOOM!

Rumble!

This was the loudest explosion sound that Kayden had heard since when he had first awakened inside Skynet’s underground laboratory/surgical-operating room. The ground was tremoring. He could feel the tremors through the body of his truck.

On the rearview camera feeds, Kayden saw a small mushroom cloud of dust and debris rising from the mountaintop. A section of the mountain summit also seemed to have collapsed into the hollowed-out interior of the mountain where Skynet had built its facility.

And that was when it happened.

Suddenly, everything froze.

Time slowed down to a crawl.

Everything and everybody around Kayden was moving veeerrry slowly, he himself included.

[TEMPORAL STAGNATION DETECTED]

[ACTIVATING NEURAL OVERDRIVE MODE…]

[NEURAL OVERDRIVE MODE ACTIVATED]

Just like everyone else, Kayden’s mind and body had also slowed down — even his thoughts. But his Neural Net Processor aka his brain chip had detected time slowing down, and so following the appearance of several new words on his HUD, Kayden body and mind returned to just below their normal speeds. But as a result of this, Kayden now had to endure very painful throbbing headaches.

“Ughh….” Kayden moaned in pain.

The headaches seemed to worsen as time went on. It was beginning to feel to him like his brain was being cooked slowly in a pot of boiling water. Kayden was not sure how long he could withstand the pain.

[WARNING! WARNING! TEMPORAL ANOMALIES DETECTED]

[WARNING! WARNING! TIMELINE IN CHAOS]

[WARNING! WARNING! MASSIVE DAMAGE TO THE PAST TIMELINE PREDICTED — SOURCE: ENCRYPTED DATA FILES IN MEMORY ARCHIVE]

The ‘time stagnation’ lasted for about 10 seconds before it ended, and everything returned to normal. Kayden’s mind’s special mode also ended, and his headaches stopped worsening, though some pain still remained. Kayden massaged his head, trying to reduce the pain.

The tactical radio communication device on the Resistance soldier suddenly crackled awake, and a male voice came out from it.

“This is John Connor. To all Resistance soldiers within Comms range. Skynet has been destroyed! I repeat, Skynet has been destroyed! We won!”

 

*****

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