Sarah looked at her kinetic watch and felt like punching someone or something. It had been exactly four days, seven hours and fifty-two minutes since Tyler had left the Base. It wasn’t uncommon to stay out for days with the constant fights against the machines but now she was worried. He had been upset and confused when he had left.
Had he indeed gone to find this Suzy Miller? Or had he gotten himself into trouble again? Skynet had intensified its hunt on the humans after Tyler’s daring escape from Century. She heaved a deep sigh: something was awry. She had been stupid to break the silence so soon after Tyler had told Robin Baxter of her destiny. The Baxter girl had screwed up his mind by telling him lies about her.
Slowly her blood began to boil with anger when “I know enough to know that she’s just using you” echoed through her mind again. How had that little witch dared to say that she was only using Tyler! If there had been one thing that had become painfully clear the past few days, it was that she loved Tyler more than she had ever realized. She missed him more than she would ever be willing to admit. Now Tyler was out, without any possibility for her to get in touch with him.
If only that Baxter bitch hadn’t contributed to his confusion, he would never have stormed off like that. She remembered the shy, even-tempered young man who had come to live with them and compared him to the man he had become over the years. A faint smile formed on her face when she thought about how sweet and gentle he could still be. Immediately she wondered how the previous Sarah’s could have missed this.
Had they known and had never acted on it? Or maybe she was the most stubborn Sarah as of yet? Refusing to accept her destiny, changing the future where she had been able to. “No fate but what we make for ourselves” echoed through her mind now.
A long time ago she had given up on trying to figure out parallel and altered timelines, time loops and the inevitability of the future. It had driven her crazy, never leading to answers, only leading to more questions.
Nevertheless she knew that Tyler understood the intricacies of timelines and time loops, and if only because of that he was already of extreme importance of the unfolding future.

The door opened slowly and all in the room looked up in fear except for one man. Two h.c.c.u.’s appeared in the door opening. Between them a dishevelled man whose face was covered in blood and who was chained by his hands and feet.
John heaved a deeply annoyed sigh when he recognized his best friend. If Tyler kept this up, he would undoubtedly get himself killed one of these days. The h.c.c.u.’s pushed their prisoner into the room with force. John watched helplessly while Tyler stumbled and fell flat on his face.
“Tom?” John asked while he crawled over to Tyler after the h.c.c.u.’s had left.
Tyler lay flat on his stomach, unmoving, and John took a moment to examine him. Eyes closed, breathing heavily. Careful not to hurt him more, John turned him over and took a deep breath when he saw the cuts on Tyler’s face and the big gash on Tyler’s left side. If John didn’t know any better, he would have thought that it would only be a matter of time before Tyler would kick the bucket. But Tyler was stronger than anyone could imagine and he would live to see another day. By the looks of it, Tyler had really gone to town on the machines.
“Tom?” John asked again while he softly shook Tyler by the shoulder.
Tyler stirred, then groaned. The sharp intake of breath told John that he was coming to.
“Where the hell am I?” Tyler mumbled while he shook his head and tried to sit up.
“Century, my friend,” John answered wryly.
“Of course,” Tyler agreed while he surveyed the room. “Where else? Damn metal!”
John chuckled and checked the chains that bound Tyler: “Guess Skynet doesn’t want you to leave any time soon.”
He watched as Tyler studied the chains: ”I’ll be outta here in no time,” Tyler grumbled annoyed while he tried to break the chains.
“I bet you will,” John laughed, patting Tyler firmly on the shoulder. “I bet you will.”

Subject T7840/7, Tyler Jess Devlin, acquired flashed underneath the pale bluish face on the big wall screen.
“So the prodigal son has returned,” Catherine Weaver stated monotonically.
I do not understand.
“Your orders?”
None at present time. We need him. He will make an excellent test subject.
”He’s a human. They all make excellent test subjects,” Catherine said haughtily.
Affirmative. Nonetheless subject T7840/7 is different. Analyses indicate that this specimen is of superior quality.
“If he doesn’t escape first. He has done it before. He will do it again.”
New order: take precautionary measures and prevent subject T7840/7’s escape.

Tyler yawned and stretched himself, immediately earning a firm poke in the back with a plasma rifle. He looked over his shoulder and stared into the glaring red eyes of the h.c.c.u. watching over him.
“Just cooperate, Tom,” John whispered while he continued to load rubble and debris onto the truck bed.
“Spoilsport,” Tyler whispered back, picking up a metal bar and studying it.
“You’re gonna get us all killed if you don’t adjust a little,” John sighed.
“I know, Jim,” Tyler grinned as he took a few practice swings with the metal bar. “But I’m not planning on staying in this hellhole much longer.”
He threw the metal bar with the rest of the iron and bent down to pick up a large piece of concrete. His fingers found firm grip on the rough surfaces and he wondered if this didn’t make a better weapon than the metal bar.
John shook his head wearily: “Why do you insist on being so defiant while all I ask is that you stop drawing attention to yourself? Don’t you know that good things come to those who wait?”
“Right,” Tyler said patronizingly while he hurled the piece of concrete onto the top of the pile of debris. “Didn’t we see that with Uncle Ty. He was so fucking patient that he ended up with zip. This time things sure are gonna be different, Jim.”
“Meaning?” John asked while he continued to work.
“Meaning that Baxter knows that she’ll be my mother. Meaning that I know I have a daughter. Meaning that Sarah and I are,” Tyler paused when he caught the dark look on John’s face. “More than just best friends.”
He stumbled a little when he got another rough poke in the back.
“Work!” A mechanical voice behind him ordered.

John was at a loss of words. He turned and looked at Tyler’s back. So his so-called best friend was putting it up his mother? Hate rose from the deepest pits of his stomach.
Somehow he had always hoped that they would hook up but now that it had happened he felt sick to his stomach. The other Tyler would have deserved it but this one? He was still earning his stripes.
The smug “Meaning that Sarah and I are… More than just best friends” swirled through his mind and consumed his thoughts. He wanted to beat Tyler to death. All of a sudden the voice of reason kicked back in. Why should he deny his mother a little happiness? Tyler was young enough to be her son but if she wanted him for a little more than a good conversation, who was he to tell her no and deny her that little spark of happiness in this godforsaken world?

Catherine Ryan knocked softly on Sarah’s door. The gruff spoken “Enter” told her everything she needed to know about Sarah’s mood. It had deteriorated since the last time she stopped by. She considered Sarah to be a friend and it worried her that Sarah’s mood went from bad to worse in the absence of First Sergeant Devlin.
So she had taken the liberty of dispatching a few recon units to try and locate the source of Sarah’s darkening mood.
After taking one last deep breath, she slowly opened the door and enter Sarah’s room.
“What the fuck do you want” Sarah asked after glancing at her before returning to reading the status reports of last night’s battles.
“R75 reported back. A visual confirmation of the First Sergeant. He’s been spotted at Century, clearing away the rubble and debris,” Catherine said in a formal voice.
“So?” Sarah shrugged, not looking up from the reports.
“Now that we know his whereabouts, we can help him escape?” Catherine offered hopeful.
“Doubt he needs our help,” Sarah grumbled underneath her breath. “He has gotten himself in. He can get himself out. The needs of the living outweigh the needs of the dying. The needs of the free outweigh the needs of those held prison.”
“Sarah?” Catherine exclaimed, unsure if she was more upset or surprised at the harshness of Sarah’s words. “You can’t possibly mean that?”
“Yeah, I am… I had… I had though that he,” Sarah stopped mid-sentence suddenly.
“That he would calm down and be a lot more careful now that he is with you,” Catherine finished the sentence. “It’s not that he had himself get caught on purpose.”
For a split second Sarah showed a faint, wry smile.
“No, but he will… It’s just,” Sarah paused, obviously looking for words she needed. “It’s just… I did something stupid and he couldn’t hack it. It feels like he went looking for trouble and got himself sent to Century out of spite.”
Catherine kept quiet for a moment before asking: “What did you do?”
“I told him something he shouldn’t have known until it was too late. I made him meet someone who he shouldn’t have met for the next few years,” Sarah answered slowly.
“You mean the O’Conlin kid? It’s obvious they’re related. She’s his daughter, right?”
“Yeah,” Sarah nodded. “She is.”
An awkward silence followed in which Catherine started to feel more and more uncomfortable with each passing second. It was Sarah who broke the silence when she said sadly: “It’s all my fault… I had to fuck up the future once again.”
“It’s not your fault that he couldn’t keep his pants on when he was a teen. It’s not even his fault,” Catherine laughed, hoping it would chase away the chill in the room.
Sarah smiled faintly again, this time a little longer, and shook her head tiredly: “That’s not it… That’s kinda his own fault, but all this,” she emphasized her words by a gesture of her hands. “All this, it’s my fault… I made Skynet faster, smarter, stronger by trying to stop it from ever existing. Never stopping to realize that I had only made it worse and that it would always exist.”
Catherine shivered and hung her head in shame: “If there’s someone to blame for Skynet’s existence, it’s me. Mia and I, we should’ve stopped it but we thought it was just the hiccups of a new system adjusting to the older systems.”
Sarah shrugged her shoulders: “If you or this Mia hadn’t put it online, someone else would have… Without Skynet there’s no John. Without John there’s no Tyler. Without Tyler there’s no Kyle and Derek. Without Kyle there’s no me.”
Catherine felt confused. She had no idea what Sarah meant to say: “John’s Tyler’s dad and Tyler’s Kyle and Derek’s dad?” She asked, hoping she had it right.
“Not really. It’s complicated.”
“Then uncomplicate it?” Catherine pleaded with her.
“In a few years John will sent people back in time. Kyle to 1984 to protect me. A woman who will be Tyler’s mother will be sent back to 1989 to find a man and have his son. Tyler will be sent back to 2007 to protect John, his younger self and me.”
“Time travel? But that’s impossible!” Catherine exclaimed incredulously.
Sarah snorted: “For now it is. But a few years from now John and his troops will come across a time machine when they will seize a Skynet stronghold at Topanga Canyon.”
“That’s crazy talk! You can’t possibly know the future!”
“But I do, Cathe,” Sarah sighed. “Well, I know the general direction it will take… But I changed it. We changed it.”

Tyler yanked furiously at the chains that bound him to the dirty floor. The machines had confined him to a few feet of space to move around in and he felt like a caged animal. Escaping would prove to be extremely difficult.
Each time his shift was over, four h.c.c.u.’s would show up to hold him at gunpoint and put him back in chains before they would escort him back to Prisoner Hall, a section of the old mall that had still been standing after the missiles had stopped falling.
He heard a click and looked at the door. Slowly it swung open and the T-600 he had seen during his first stay at Century entered, followed by four h.c.c.u.’s. They were coming for him, just like the last time. Would he wake up facing Skynet again? Or would he be sent back to the U-section again?
“Take him,” the T-600 said monotonically while it pointed at him. “Transport him to Forrester.”
As always he was forced down on his knees while two h.c.c.u.’s held their rifles aimed at his head and the other two removed his chains. The T-600 looked at him with great interest and he smiled wryly: “Miss me, Miss tin juice?”
The T-600 did not even flinch. It was one of the more important differences between human machine. When caught in a lie, humans would get nervous and act like it, something a machine would never be capable of. It were small details like that that would prove to be the difference between life and death when dealing with the newer and more improved infiltration units.

Skynet was fascinated by subject T7840/7 as much as it was fascinated by the honourable game of chess. Chess required a higher level of thinking. It wondered if it could persuade subject T7840/7 to a friendly game of chess. Just to match their strength.
Subject T7840/7 was very interesting because he could turn out to be the missing link between humans and machines.
From “Mother’s” files, it knew that in a few years subject T7840/7 would balance on the brink of life and death. He would survive because of its technology. Subject T7840/7 would live because he would accept the machine.
And it wanted to know why.

Chapter 11: In An Insane World It Was The Sanest Choice

Chapter 13: There Is No Great Genius Without Some Touch Of Madness