“Get away from me, you fucking psycho!” She shrieked at the top of her lungs.
Tyler took a step back and looked at her intently before nodding slowly. She didn’t know what she was more upset about: that it could be a lie or that it could be the truth.
“You’re sick!” She continued.
“Just listen and understand, Robin,” he began again.
“Oh, I understand alright,” she seethed. “I understand that you’re fucking insane!”
“Maybe I am. But a lotta shit happened, and I thought you should know-”
“Know what? That you should be thrown into the loony bin? Yeah, I know.”
She looked at him again and shivered. This was just too crazy. How could she have a son who was eight years older than her? She had no idea what had happened to him in Century but he had completely lost it.
The look in his eyes hardened and she could see his jaw twitch: “A loony bin would be heaven compared to Century,” he said gruffly. “I’m not telling you this because I want you to freak out and call me bad names. I’m telling you this because I thought that you should know.”
“How very decent of you,” she remarked with contempt.
“I know that you’re still a kid, but I don’t want you to have the same regrets as the woman I knew as my mom had… You will do stuff to me, bad stuff, and it will consume you,” he grumbled.
“There’s loadsa bad stuff I want to do to you right now,” she hissed. “You’re a fucking psycho!”
He rolled his eyes and sighed: “Fine, don’t listen to me then. Find out the hard way when you’re screwing up my mind in ten years.”
She sat back down on her bed and looked up at him. This was insane but he looked so serious, so convinced.
“Like you’re screwing up my mind right now?” She countered, her voice dripping with sarcasm.
She had always thought that he was one of the good and sane guys, but now it turned out that he was just as insane as everybody else. She couldn’t be his mother. Even if he were telling the telling the truth, technically she wasn’t his mother. Yet.
“Maybe I am,” he said while shrugging his shoulders.
“Did Sarah put you up to this? Because she doesn’t want the competition?” She asked sarcastically.
He turned pale and looked close to throwing up: “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he mumbled.
“I know you’re the twohundred-and-seventh bone in her body,” she stated while she looked at her pillow before taking it and fidgeting with it.
“You know shit about Connor and me,” he growled angrily.
“I know enough to know that she’s just using you,” she countered with a wry smirk.
“Motherly instincts kicking in?” Now it was his turn to be sarcastic and she felt her temper reach boiling point.
Why couldn’t he have stayed the nice man who had pulled over on Judgment Day to rescue her? The war had changed everyone but she had been convinced that he would never crack. And now it appeared that he had cracked.

Sarah leaned her head against the wall and listened while Tyler told Robin about the future, about her destiny. A wry smile formed on her lips when she heard Robin call Tyler insane. Thirty-one years ago she had called Kyle Reese insane for telling her about the future, about her destiny.
She still loved and missed Kyle but there was another man in her heart now. It would be so easy to break the rules and look up Kyle but he wouldn’t know her. And the future would become even more screwed up than it already was.
Kyle’s future world, Tyler’s future world, they no longer existed because in the past they had strayed from the set path by making their own fate, by trying to stop Judgment Day. It was confusing to realize that this Tyler and the other Tyler were the same person because this Tyler was so very different from the other one.
Her temper rose when she heard Robin exclaim again that she was using Tyler to make herself feel better about herself. She wasn’t using Tyler, was she? Doubts seeped into her mind. Whenever she was alone with Tyler, she did feel better about herself, like there was no evil outside world. She liked being around him, because he made her feel safe and loved. Stolen moments replaced the horrors of a world torn apart by the war against the machines.
Everybody had secrets. John didn’t want Tyler to know about his daughter. She didn’t want John to know about some of the things that had happened to her in the old world. Tyler was the first to break the silence by telling Robin that she was going to be his mother in a distant future past.
Maybe, if John didn’t want his best friend to know, she should tell Tyler about Robin O’Conlin? Her son would used that secret to trigger a nano-attack, because Tyler would kill his own flesh and blood without knowing. She shivered when it reminded her of behaviorial conditioning, a treatment she was very familiar with since her stay in Pescadero.

She had always known that after the helicopter accident something had not be right with her mother. In spite of her mother’s half-hearted efforts to close the gap widening between them, nothing had ever been the same again. Her mother had gone from a warm and caring woman, who in business could be ruthless, to a cold and distant bitch.
Savannah looked at the small window with bars in front of it and heaved a deep sigh. She had been stupid and she certainly hadn’t thought her plan through but she had wanted to prove once and for all that she wasn’t some kind of spy for Skynet.
Only John Connor, Tyler Devlin and Sarah Baum were on her side after she had told them about that liquid metal bitch who had tried to kill her on Judgment Day. The others thought she was crazy and only used it to infiltrate the Resistance.
Her real mother would never have built the computer that would blow up the world, of that she was most certain. Her real mother had been involved in numerous charity causes that would better the world if only just a little bit.
“Are you okay?” John Connor asked while he came up behind her.
She replied with a simple shrug of her shoulders.
“What is this place?” She asked while she checked her cuts and bruises.
“Century. Skynet’s worst camp,” John answered with a sad smile. “But I’m sure they’ll send you to Forrester soon. They’ve send Alley there as well.”
“Alley?”
“A sweet and naive girl the machines caught while she was wandering through back alleys in search of food for her family.”
”And is being sent to Forrester a good thing?”
“I don’t know. Whispers in the tunnels say that it’s a testing facility, but that life isn’t as brutal as here in Century,” John replied.
“Goddamn tin heads,” Savannah hissed through gritted teeth when she looked at the big cut across her left shin. “They cheat when they want to catch you.”
“That they do,” John smiled faintly. “So if you’re sent to Forrester, you’ll be lucky. Escaping from this place is next to impossible.”
“But First Sergeant Devlin did. Whispers in the tunnels celebrate him for escaping from this place,” Savannah stated with reverend admiration.
“First Sergeant Devlin is a ghost, Savannah, a myth to keep the people’s spirits up. They need a champion like him to keep the faith in victory.”

She smiled at the seven-year-old girl who looked hesitantly around in the room: “Why are we here?” The girl asked in a whisper.
“Because there’s someone I’d like you to meet,” she answered.
She had called in a favor from her friend Ethan Scottsdale and he had gotten a message through to her that the blood work indeed confirmed that this little girl was indeed the daughter of First Sergeant Tyler Jess Devlin. Just like she had thought the first time she had met the girl.
A shaky breath escaped her lips and she earned a concerned look from the girl.
“Are you scared?” The girl asked insecurely.
She smiled again: “No, just a little nervous.”
“Is it an important someone? Like a prince or king?”
Now she burst into laughter and the girl looked embarrassed, so she stopped laughing quickly: “No, not a king or a prince. But he is important. For you, and for all of us,” she answered.
The door to the room opened and Tyler came walking in, his black shirt open and untucked. An appreciative sigh rose from her chest.
“Fucking metal,” he growled, taking off his shirt and tossing it on the chair. “They wiped out the C-squad near the Ruins. It was a mess.”
She cleared her throat to draw his attention so she could point out that they weren’t alone. But he paid no attention to it and continued with his rant about the machines and the ambush while he sat down on the chair and took off his combat boots.
“Tyler,” she said in a soft but stern voice when he used a little too many bad words to emphasize his displeasure with this past night.
Finally he looked up and noticed the girl: “Cute kid. Who’s she? Or have I been gone for eight years instead of eight hours?”
She rolled her eyes at his poor attempt to be funny. It was all too clear that it had been a bad night for the Resistance and his joke wasn’t funny at all. Besides the last thing she would want to do was raise a child in this world.
“Just eight hours, Ty,” she answered.
He stopped with taking off his socks and looked at her: “Then who is she?”
Her heart began to race in her chest. Was she doing the right thing? It had been such a good plan, and the right thing to do, when she had thought about it earlier. But now Tyler was home, and all courage had left her. In the past they had changed so much by trying to stop Skynet from ever existing but what would the impact on the future be if she were to change it again?
“She’s leverage. My son will tell you something about her in the future after your surgeries and it will invoke an attack,” she answered while she remembered that particular conversation with the other Tyler.
“An attack? Like in nanoattrioid?” He asked slowly.
She nodded: “Yes.”
“I don’t understand why though,” he remarked, returning to taking off his socks.
”Because she’s your family.”
“My family? Did my father knock up one of his girlfriends just before JD? Is she my half-sister?”
She looked at him and felt her through go dry as the Nevada desert. After swallowing down the lump, she cleared her throat and said in a shaky voice: “She’s your daughter, Ty.”

She looked at the tall and broad man who had jumped to his feet in shock, and she cringed with fear. The look on his face, his attitude, she wanted to crawl under the bed and hide from him.
“She can’t be my kid!” The man exclaimed surprised and angrily.
“Ethan ran a test. She is,” Sarah said in a soft voice.
“My dad screwed everything with a skirt without thinking about the consequences twice. I was always safe!” The man barked furiously. “She cannot be my kid!”
She cringed even more while tears of fear spilled freely down her cheeks.
“Tyler, calm down. You’re scaring Robin!” Now Sarah raised her voice to counter Tyler’s volume.
“Suzy Miller,” Tyler said calmly all of a sudden. “We did it in the backseat. She… She never returned my calls and just disappeared one day.”
“My mommy’s name is Angela O’Conlin,” she added in a trembling whisper.
“That bitch! She never told me… I got her pregnant and that whore never told me,” Tyler seethed.
She just wanted to disappear. Her parents were Mark and Angela O’Conlin. Not this man and Suzy Miller. This man was scary and had a crazy look in his eyes.
“Tyler!” Sarah exclaimed while sending him a chastising look.
“What?!” He growled. “If the kid’s mine, she’s gotta be the mom.”
”What if she is? Do you want to go and find her? Ask her to tell you the truth? How big of a chance do you think there is that she survived JD?” Sarah asked calmly, her voice dripping with something Robin couldn’t place.
“If she didn’t, she better pray that the machines will find her before I do,” Tyler growled as he yanked on his shirt and combats boots before leaving the room.
She watched as Sarah sat down on the bed. The poor woman looked exhausted and disappointed. Slowly she walked over to her and sat down next to Sarah, putting her arm around the woman’s back to comfort her.
“Is he a bad man?” She asked, her voice still shaking from fright.
Sarah snorted, then turned to look at her and smiled: “Believe it or not, but he is actually one of the good guys.”
“But he is scary,” she objected.
Sarah shook her head: “No, he isn’t. At least not to me.”
“Are you his mother?” She asked.
Again Sarah shook her head: “No. We’re… We’re very good friends.”

It stung her that Robin had thought that she was Tyler's mother. But she had pointed out something that had been in the back of her mind for a few weeks now: What were they? She knew that they were lovers, but what were they to the outside world? Very good friends, who had sex with each other?
There was no doubt in her heart and soul that she loved him and that he loved her back. Still, it was a given fact that this was not the place or the time for romance. The world lays in ruins, the fights were all around, death was just around the corner.
She had willfully changed the future again by introducing father and daughter. What would this mean for the rest of the future? The only thing she was sure of now was that Tyler could spend some time with his little girl instead of having the regrets the other Tyler had had.

Chapter 10: For The Love Of The Future

Chapter 12: Century - Part II