“Are you okay, mom?” John asked her for the umpteenth time that morning.
“I’m fine, John,” Sarah sighed.
She couldn’t escape the feeling that they were being tailed, and usually she was right when she had that feeling. Whether it was the authorities breathing down their necks or another infiltrator sent back to kill her son. She had been on the run since 1984, living off of the grid as much as possible, like a ghost.
Stopping for a moment, she surveyed the busy street. It didn’t sit well with her that they were so in the open, so exposed. If Skynet were to strike now, the collateral damage would be extensive. She squinted when she noticed a tall, broad man across the street. Dressed in a white dress shirt and black slacks, he still seemed out of place, or better out of time. He had two big scars across his face and the way he leaned back in the shadows reminded her of Kyle.
Was he another one? Was he a Resistance fighter? Or a Skynet infiltrator? Or was it just her mind taking her for a spin? Her right hand searched for the grip of the Beretta tucked in her waistband. Standard “Condition One”, chambered, hammer cocked, with the safety on. Ready to be drawn and fired if the situation called for it.
“Mom?” John nudged her.
She looked at her son and faked a smile: “If you’re gonna ask me if I’m okay again, I’m fine,” she said quickly when he opened his mouth to say something.
If he was from the future, like she thought he was, maybe Derek knew him? She looked back to where the strange man had been hiding so she could point him out to Derek but the man had disappeared from sight. Had she been paranoid?

Damnit, she had seen him! Unable to stop himself from looking at her, he had been careless and she had seen him. Not that it surprised him. She had been the one to teach him to scan the surroundings, know your way around and know the exits.
He ran a hand through his hair in frustration and heaved a deeply annoyed sigh. Had he just jeopardized the mission? However seeing her, alive and well, it had caused his heart to be in great turmoil once again.
When he had caught her looking at him, his heart had started to pound erratically in his chest, and he had wanted nothing more than scoop her up and kiss her. He smiled to himself; he could have done that and gotten himself quite the beating. Sarah Connor was not someone you should surprise like that. She didn’t know him, and if he were to surprise her like that, he would have had to face some severe consequences.
Hugging the wall of the small alley, hidden in the shadows, he kept an eye on the group about to enter Century City Shopping Center. He could not believe how reckless he had been. He might as well be holding up a sign with ‘Kick me’. Suddenly his attention was drawn by a woman who had casually leaned against the wall while talking over her cell phone. The Connors had passed her by and she had looked at them with great interest. Now the woman was walking a few feet behind them.
Metal! After 16 years of war against the machine he had learned himself to spot them. They were almost human but small things gave them away. He looked left, then right, then left again and crossed the busy street. It was a side-mission and a good way to find out how the time travel had affected him. Cameron could dispose of the threat, he was well aware of that, but he needed the practice.
He looked up at the huge sign over the entrance of the mall: Century City Shopping Center. It sent icy cold shivers up and down his spine. He had been held prisoner here more times than he cared to remember. After pulling his sleeves down again, he took a deep breath and walked into the building. Just a few feet ahead of him was the woman tailing the Connor clan. Should he take her out now to limit to damage done now that he had blown it? However he could be mistaken: nine out of ten times he was right about the metal. What if the woman wasn’t metal?
He needed to wait until she would make a move. This place was so familiar to him and another shiver ran down his spine when he remembered his time in the U-section. Being an Undertaker, it had only stressed the lessons Sarah had taught him about the value of life. The needs of the living outweighed the needs of the dying; mercy kills considered humane.
The Connor clan sat down at a table in one of the food courts and he watched as the woman passed them by. Had he really been mistaken when he had pegged her as metal? Now it was his turn to pass the Connors and the woman by, sitting down on a small bench to observe the surroundings and the situation.
The woman stopped just a little past the food court and slowly turned 360 degrees as if she were looking for something or someone. He lowered his head and looked at his hands to keep her from identifying him if she were to be metal. Not that it would matter, because the moment she would make a move for his assignment he would have to take her out.
For a while Skynet had thought that he had died at the Siege of IntelliTech Base, but then it had discovered he was still alive and stronger than ever before. Knowing it could not stop him, it had sent an update to all its infiltration units: unless the mission could be accomplished they were to abort their mission and try at a later time.

“That’s odd,” Derek frowned.
“What’s odd?” Sarah asked absently, smiling friendly at the waitress when she came to take their orders.
“It’s probably nothing,” Derek answered slowly.
“It’s never nothing with you people,” she grumbled annoyed. “You can be shot and still say it’s nothing. So I’ll ask again. What’s odd?”
She was jumpy enough already and didn’t need Derek to add to it. If he said something was odd, she wanted to know what was odd. Had it been a mistake to go and celebrate the start of the summer holiday and the fact that John was now in his Junior year? She was beginning to think it was, but she had wanted her son to know what it meant to have some normalcy in his life, even if it meant that he was John Baum instead of John Connor
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” John quipped after he had given the waitress his order.
“It’s nothing,” Derek said annoyed, looking at the people again. “Nothing for me, miss,” he smiled friendly when the waitress asked him for his order.
She noticed the look Derek sent at Cameron and it didn’t bode well. What the hell was going on and why didn’t anyone tell her what was going on?
“We need to leave,” Derek said firmly, rising to his feet all of a sudden. “It’s not safe here.”
“We only just got here,” John protested fiercely.
Only then she noticed the broad, tall man she had seen across the street earlier approaching the entrance of the food court. But was it a man? He could easily pass for an infiltrator. Was he targeting the young woman? Or was he zeroing in on her son?
“Cromartie?” She asked Derek.
Derek shook his head: “No, worse.”
“We need to leave,” Cameron repeated after Derek while she yanked John to his feet and shoved him in the opposite direction from where the young woman and her stalker were coming from.

Tyler followed the infiltrator silently as she zeroed in on her primary target. He watched as her hand reached back for the concealed weapon tucked in the waistband of her jeans. This was the prove he had been waiting for. The young woman was metal.
His right hand locked firmly around her right forearm at which the woman whirled around quickly, taking a firm swing at him which he blocked with his left arm. He noticed the hesitation in her action when she scanned his face. Skynet’s programming should keep her from attacking him. She tilted her head a little. She must have gotten her new mission order, he thought.
“Hello,” he chuckled amused while he pushed her away from him roughly.
All the customers at the food court screamed upset and afraid as they tried to leave the scene of the fight as quickly as possible. The woman slammed into the counter, breaking everything on her path. Tables, chairs, nothing was safe. Quickly she got to her feet agin and reached for her handgun, never losing sight of her initial target.
“Looking for this?” He asked smugly while he held up the gun before throwing it into the fountain next to the food court.
It didn’t surprise him that she ignored him and focused on her target again. Tunnel vision, something all infiltrators suffered from. Tables toppled, chairs were tossed aside as she cleared a path towards Sarah. A few big steps and he cut her off in the middle, sending her sliding over the floor after a rough push.
Only now, he noticed, did Sarah wake up from her daze. From the corner of his eye he saw her turn on her heels and leave the food court. He hadn’t expected her to help him, just like she would probably not have expected to be a target again.
Without General Sarah Connor in the future, the Human Resistance would be weakened considerably, and he would have no reason to survive after the fall of IntelliTech Base. He needed to focus to keep his mind from wandering back to the time they had been more than just best friends. Seeing her like this, alive and well, it uncovered feelings he thought he had buried deep enough.
The machine rose to its feet again and settled for its secondary target: the interfering factor of its mission. It sized him up, her eyes flashing red as new mission data entered her program again.
“Lieutenant General Tyler Jess Devlin?” She asked mechanically.
“The one and only,” he grinned. “But you already identified me, darlin’.”
She remained silent and tilted her head a little. He knew that she was running an analysis to determine the outcome if she were to fight him.
“I know you have had a mission priority change already, darlin’,” He laughed while he kept a close eye on her. “So what option have you chosen? Kill me or retreat?”
Again she remained quiet.
“C’mon, darlin’, don’t keep me in suspense.”
Her eyes flashed red again and she began to back away.
“Where are you going?” He asked darkly. “Ah, it’s retreat. Too bad, ‘cause it ain’t gonna happen.”
He knew that the machines knew no fear and that what could be described as fear was called survival mode. Programmed to complete their mission any way possible, a survival mode was essential, just like reroute. Sometimes they go bad and nobody knows why. Well, almost nobody.
He hated reroutes. It made the machine unpredictable. As long as it ran on its original power cell, reprogramming could be very successful but if the original power cell was removed or shut down and the tiny back-up power cell with the integrated chip was overlooked, things could get very ugly in a matter of seconds.

Prologue: Prelude To War

Chapter 2: The Man With The Coltan Arm