“TJ! Time to get up!”
Slowly he opened his eyes and stared at the white ceiling for a moment or two. Today he didn’t feel like getting up early. Today he didn’t want to focus on his future. Today was the eighth anniversary of his mother’s death. And with each passing year, this day became harder and harder on him.
“TJ!” His father called impatiently.
“I’m up, dad!” He called back while he looked at the photo of his mother on his bedside table.
It didn’t help his state of mind that his father was slavering over his new girlfriend. He had tried to keep an open mind about Catherine, but it was clear from the start that she was a cold and distant woman. Cold in every way.
He missed his mother so much. After stretching himself one more time, he sat up and looked at the computer on his desk. He had built it himself, saving his allowance for parts. Why couldn’t his father understand his interest in computer technology? If there was something boring, it was biochemistry. He could know as the son of the most popular biochemistry professor at UCLA.
Why had his father never made an effort to understand him, to get into his hobbies so they would have something to talk about? Instead his father was always looking down at him, criticizing his interests and hobbies. It hadn’t helped that he had been caught hacking a few times. The police showing up on his father’s doorstep to arrest him was a dent in his father’s public appearance.
He had explained his father the difference between a hacker and a cracker on numerous occasions but it had never stuck. It was a sport to him, to see if he could do it. But he had never destroyed anything. Not that that mattered to his father.
His mother would have understood. He was sure of that. She had been the one to feed his interest in computers. She had been the one to give him his first computer. She had been the one to tell him of a futuristic world in which the computers reigned.
“TJ!” His father sounded even more impatient than the first two times.
He jumped to his feet, searched though his clothes on the floor and picked out the cleanest outfit. It didn’t matter to him that they didn’t match, and it would only give his father more reason to criticize him.
After breakfast he would have to call his father’s girlfriend and tell her that he would accept the internship, albeit under protest. Nevertheless he knew that he could never make enough money to pay for his education if he would turn down her offer. It was a compromise he had to make to secure his future.

“Ms. Weaver, I have a Tyler Devlin on the line for you,” the secretary said over the intercom.
“Put him through,” Catherine said coolly while she switched the speaker on.
“Ms. Weaver, I don’t know if you remember me,” a young man’s voice echoed through her office.
He sounded so hesitant. Humans were strange creatures.
“Of course, I do. I was expecting your call,” she said mimicking reassurance into her voice. “Did you give my offer any consideration?”
“That’s why I am calling,” he paused. “I gave it some more thought.”
Another pause.
“And?” She asked encouragingly.
“I talked it over with my dad,” he sighed. “If it’s still possible, I’d like to take it.”
“Excellent, young Mr. Devlin.”
She listened to his breathing on the other side of the line. He was pausing, trying to collect his thoughts before asking the questions she knew he would ask. This one was different from the last one. If she could make this young Tyler Devlin see that the machines were the future, they would gain a great ally and they would deal a severe blow to the Human Resistance.
Keeping him safe was one of her priority mission directives: without meeting the Connors and with her guidance, he would become the ultimate infiltrator for Skynet.

“Didn’t you sign a piece of paper stating otherwise?” It kept echoing in her mind. He had been very upset when he had said it. Yet it had cut through her heart and soul.
She had made a mistake back then. Drugged up, beaten down, she had signed that piece of paper that had given up her right as a mother to him. If she had been in her right mind, she would never ever have signed it.
Her stay at Pescadero had had its benefits: she had been able to be herself, to be Sarah Connor instead of someone else. She had been given a chance to express the things that had eaten away at her on the outside. Nevertheless directly opposing to it had been the mockery and the conditioning. A punching bag when she didn’t want to cooperate, the punch line of staff jokes when she went on a rant about Judgment Day. Despite her not being taken seriously, she had gotten some rest for her tormented soul.
Everything she had ever done had been for her son. Everything, with the exception of signing him away. Three seconds. Three goddamn seconds had been all it had taken to make the biggest mistake of her life. She swallowed down the lump that was forming in her throat.
Sarah Jeanette Connor would have cried. Sarah Connor would not. She brushed an unruly lock of hair from her eyes and looked up at the rooftop. He was there, watching them. Why was he here? Why wasn’t it enough to have Cameron guard her son? Why did future John deem it necessary to send another one of his best fighters back?
So many questions, so very few answers. She could go and talk to him, demand answers one way or another, but she already knew it would not work like that. He was hardened by years of war. He would rather die than ever give up the truth.

A faint noise just a few feet behind him: “How’s the kid?” He asked with sincere curiosity, not taking his eyes off of the house.
He knew that she had tried to sneak up on him but he had grown accustomed to hearing every sound, no matter how insignificant, he had heard her.
“How did you know it was me? And not Derek coming to throw you off the roof?” Sarah asked, unable to hide her surprise.
“Derek won’t come near me. He knows that the odds are against him. Besides I know your walk so it was easy,” he answered, smiling faintly.
“I wish you’d stop doing that,” she heaved a deeply annoyed sigh.
“Doing what?”
“Say things like that... Pretending to know me when you don’t,” she answered.
“How’s the kid?” He repeated his initial question.
“In a rare mood. One moment he’s joking and teasing me, the next he’s defying me. Instable.”
He looked at her from the corners of his eyes now that she had come to stand next to him: “The kid’s just in shock.”
“No, it’s about more than that. I made a huge mistake a few years ago. The mistake of a lifetime… He found out a while ago and just now he threw it back in my face.”
“So? People are flawed. They make mistakes. We’re human, we make mistakes… I know I’ve made a few in my life.”
An not all too unpleasant silence ensued, only to broken when she asked: “Have you ever made a mistake so bad of which you know you will regret it the rest of your life?”
“Yes, I did,” he whispered. “A couple of times.
“What did you do?”
“Why would you want to know?” He grumbled while he squinted a little when he saw a car approach.
He missed his gear, his little gadgets that had made life out on the battlefield so much easier.
“I don’t know. Maybe yours is worse than mine and I’d feel a little better,” she grinned for a second or two.
“I know it looks grim now but John will forgive you, Sarah. It’ll take him a while to realize it but he will understand why you signed that those papers. That you hadn’t given up on him. That you only did it with his best interest at heart.”
From the corners of his eyes he could see that she had been caught off guard by what he had just said, but he wasn’t here to play nice or consider others. He could see the anger flare to life in her green eyes, turning into a full blown inferno in a few seconds; she was going to let him have it now.

John wiped the tears from his eyes with the palms of his hands. It had just slipped him, because he was hurting and needed to lash out. His uncle had gone completely crazy after he had only asked him about Devlin, Baxter and MedCom. His mother had been the easiest victim to share in his hurt. That was why he had said: he wanted someone else to suffer in the way he was suffering.
For the first time in his life, he began to understand how lonely he actually was. A loneliness not uncommon to his mother, who had chosen for a life on the run while trying to stop Skynet and Judgement Day. The first Judgment Day, to happen on August 29th, 1997, had come and gone, and he had started to believe that they had averted the terrible future that lay in waiting for the world. She had tried to settle down, tried to live a normal life, but she had been too restless, too suspicious of anything out of the ordinary.
He had truly believed that with Charley she would have had a chance at a normal life. He wanted a normal life, not a life ruled by machines and the future. He had never asked for the honor of becoming General John Connor, warrior-prophet. Just like his mother had never asked for the honor becoming the mother of the future. It would just happen. It had just happened.
Lashing out had only made him feel better for about three seconds. Three seconds. “Because about three seconds after I signed that paper, I knew I couldn't live with it.” Maybe the law said that she was no longer his mother, but his heart told him otherwise.
She could be a cold and distant woman, unable to reveal her real emotions. Or should that be unwilling? She was tougher than nuclear nails, teaching herself, teaching him.
Nevertheless his life was nothing like the life of an ordinary teenage boy. Prepared for the world and the future to come from the moment he was old enough to learn and understand. He couldn’t help but feel the pangs of jealousy when watching his classmates, knowing they did not know what was coming, knowing they lead insignificant lives filled with teenage melodrama.
He rose to his feet and sauntered over to the window, his eyes drawn up to the two figures out on the rooftop of the house across the street. It looked like his mother had decided to use Devlin as the one to take the blame for his screw-up.
Knowing his mother’s short-temperedness, it would be minutes before she would switch to using Devlin as a punching bag. From what he could see, the man was bracing himself for the storm to come. It was if his mother’s growing rage did not phase him, instead his posture only added fuel to the fire. Was Devlin not only dangerous but absolutely crazy as well?

Tyler remained silent, letting the storm of words pass. Hurricane Connor, nothing he had not experienced before. Even as lovers, she had been perfectly capable of ripping him a new one almost every day. He knew that she needed to get this out of her system. If she didn’t let out, it would bottle up and eat away at her until she would completely snap. John had been so very stupid by making that one remark out of spiteful rebellion, but he would come to his senses and see that his mother had not done it to hurt him, but that she was made to believe that she was protecting him instead.
“Can you at least look at me when I’m yelling at you?!” Sarah seethed furiously.
Slowly he turned towards her but he looked over her head, at something in the distance. Hurricane Connor had far from passed and only intensified when she noticed that he was still not looking at her. It could very well prove to be the last straw. He closed his eyes for a moment and braced himself for the things to come. She hated the idea of being ignored and would resort to violence to get her point across, to make him listen.
He was listening. He always listened when she spoke or yelled. And he had never forgotten. He wasn’t ignoring. He could never ignore her. However he needed to guard himself against her. They had a long history of which she knew nothing yet, and that was always so present in his mind. They had been mentor and student, friends, best friends, lovers, wife and husband. It was not her, not yet. And it would never be him again.
He couldn’t let his guard down, needing to shield his heart from her, and yet a strange current ran through his veins and reached his heart when he looked at her for a split second. Unable to place it, he dismissed it. Whatever happened he could not afford to make the same mistakes all over again.

Chapter 9: Monster, Unleashed (The Lost City - Part II)

Chapter 11: Conversations On A Rooftop