He too had stepped out from behind cover when he saw that they were currently not being attacked, and like John Connor, he too was now relaxedly standing beside the armored vehicle.

John Connor gestured towards the building and what was happening inside the building. The battle inside had proceeded on to the corner of the building where the stairs to the ground—first—floor was located. The fighting—between all the participants involved—had continued down the stairs and then into the first floor.

“As you can see, a fight has already broken out inside the main building which means the high-value target has already awakened from his long cryo-sleep. He must be a little confused about his current circumstances, so, we might cause some misunderstanding between us if we rush in too hastily, and I wouldn’t want to get into a battle with him due to some misunderstanding that had made him consider us to be his enemies.” John said to Barnes before continuing cryptically, “Besides, we’ll only get in his way if we go in right now.”

“What do you mean by that? Common man, you still haven’t explained to me clearly what we are really doing here. You just rushed all of us along on the way out here with your brief explanation that we need to go and rescue a presumably very important high-priority target in a small, remote Skynet base that you had suddenly obtained intel about. I mean, I trust you brother, and I have always trusted your judgment, but you still haven’t told me who this person—our target—is, and why he is so important to us and is a priority target for the Resistance.” Barnes complained.

Although Barnes seemed like he was complaining about the mission, John knew that the reason he had asked these questions was really for the benefit of the rest of the soldiers. He understood his friend wanted to provide him the opportunity to explain his objective in this operation to the soldiers who had been dragged out of their beds so early in the morning to travel a long distance in the cold in order to get to this small, remote Skynet base hidden in the woods.

A slight smile, hidden from the view of the soldiers arranged some distance beside and behind him, briefly appeared on John’s face.

He gave a subtle nod to Barnes and began to explain the circumstance of the operation to the soldiers. “Just yesterday, I received an intel from the Intelligence Division that they had discovered some clues from some recovered Skynet database about a hidden, semi-abandoned Skynet base where a human man who had special talents had been stored in cryostasis since the Pre-Judgement era until now. When I read the intel document containing information about some of the man’s former feats and saw the name of the man, I immediately recognized the man’s name. I knew who the man was because the man had been famous—or infamous if you ask some people—back in the day, and due to that, I had heard about some of his legendary feats on the news back in the day. That’s why I made all of us immediately rush here to rescue and wake him up as soon as possible.”

John Connor then turned to look at his soldiers and said, “I assure you all, he will be very useful in our war against the machines. And you will soon witness it for yourselves. So, let’s just wait here. Since he’s already awake, this small group of machines won’t be able to stop him.”

“Isn’t he just one man? And I guess he shouldn’t have undergone any enhancements, modifications or augmentations, right? So how will he survive under the attacks of the machines in this base?” Barnes asked doubtfully.

John looked around and he saw Barnes’ doubtful expression mirrored on the faces of the rest of the soldiers. He could understand why they could not easily accept the truth of his words. There were only extremely few humans that could go up against a Terminator or Hunter-Killer squad on their own and survive the encounter. And most of these exceptional humans had also undergone enhancements and modifications of some kind.

“Just wait a little bit longer, and you will understand. This man isn’t some ordinary human. He is John Wick. Back in the day, some people called him the Boogeyman, but those who knew him better knew him as ‘The Man Who You Sent to Kill the Fucking Boogeyman’.” John explained.

“Damn! That’s some serious reputation.” Barnes chimed in.

John Connor continued, “John Wick is a man of focus, commitment and sheer will; something I greatly admired about him when I heard about his legends back then. And hear this. He once killed three men in a bar…with a pencil.”

While John Connor was still speaking, the battle happening inside the building had carried on down the stairs and into the ground floor. Plasma gunfire had shot several holes through a couple of windows on the ground floor, and through these holes, brief glimpses of the fighting could be seen from time to time. Through these brief glimpses, John Connor could see a single man move with quick, efficient movements from place to place inside the building while also taking out HKs and Terminators one after the other with extremely accurate and well-placed gunshots—many of which were instant-kill headshots—from a plasma weapon he had acquired either from somewhere in inside the building or from one of the Terminators he had destroyed.

John watched as the number of silhouettes moving inside were decreasing rapidly as they were being destroyed by the man they were fighting. Barely one minute after the fighting entered the ground floor, only the last one among the group of Terminators remained and was still fighting the man. The man and the machine moved behind the large metal bay door, and because of that, the final part of the man’s gunfight with the last Terminator.

Suddenly, the bay door began to rise up from the ground. The bay door seemed to have been activated and being opened from the inside. And just when the bay door had risen only a little distance, the decapitated head of a T-800 Terminator rolled out through the space that had been created under the rising bay door.

The decapitated Terminator head, which was still releasing some electric sparks, drew the attention of all the Resistance soldiers waiting outside as it came to a stop about three meters in front of the building.

The bay door opened fully with a light clatter, and a man strode out of the building. He was a tall man with long neck-length hair and he was wearing a black suit. He wiped off the dirt staining his suit and was readjusting it on his body with his left hand, and he also held a phased plasma rifle in his right hand as he walked out of the building.

He wiped away the blood staining his mouth with his left hand as he scanned his surroundings and quickly noticed the soldiers arrayed outside.

“Where is this place? Who the hell are you people? Are you working for the High Table?” John Wick called out to Resistance soldiers.

Through the open door behind the man, John—and the rest of his men, judging from the gasps he heard coming from Barnes and the other soldiers standing around him—could see the totally wrecked interior of the main building and the bodies of several destroyed Terminators that were lying down motionless and inactive on the floor inside the building.

“Everybody relax. Don’t say or do anything without my command.” John told his soldiers. And then, he turned to the man in the black suit and said calmly, “No, Mr. Wick. We are not working for the High Table.”

“The legends are true! Barnes, bring out the puppy sleeping on the back seat of the vehicle! I brought it here as my gift to him!” John Connor hurriedly said to Barnes. Then he whispered to himself slightly in awe, “Baba…Yaga!”

*****

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