“You know, John Doe, I can make all this go away,” James Ellison said friendly.
“Ah, we’ve come to the bargaining part of this conversation,” Tyler grinned amused. “What is the offer, Agent Ellison?”
“You tell me where Sarah Connor is and I’ll put in a good word for you with the D.A. so she’ll bring down the charges from first degree murder to involuntarily manslaughter. It was an accident: he panicked, you panicked.”
Tyler laughed haughtily: “I never panic, Agent Ellison. And I did not kill him.”
“The evidence states otherwise, John Doe,” James Ellison said firmly before he cocked his head a little to the side. “Finger prints, eye witness reports.”
“They place me on the scene of the crime, but that does not place the smoking gun in my hands, does it? Tell me have you found the weapon that killed Devlin? Did it have my finger prints on it?”
“No, I have not,” James Ellison answered.
“So you’re offering me a deal for a crime I did not commit in exchange for information on someone I do not know and have only read about a few years back?”
“Stop jerking me around!” James Ellison said angrily. “I don’t buy the crap you’ve been selling me. An entire HRT got wiped out and a metal man is responsible for it. You are a Resistance fighter, sent back here on some mission involving the Connors.”
“Watched one sci-fi movie too many, Agent Ellison? You should sell your ideas to Hollywood. Metal man, a computer system ruling the world in the future, time travel? Come on, even you have to agree that’s ludricous.”
“Now you are just trying to piss me off. Take the deal.”
“What deal?” Tyler asked, not hiding that this interview amused him. “You mean the deal where I have to betray someone I’ve never met to have the charges downgraded.”
“I have this crazy theory,” James Ellison said suddenly.
Tyler folded his arms across his chest and looked at the man sitting across the table from him with great interest: “Enlighten me.”
“You’re the missing link. You’re the boy you tried to choke. You were sent here from the future to stop the development of the Skynet Defence System.”
“From the future… Are you sure that a stay at a psychiatric hospital isn’t advisable in your case?” Tyler asked with a crooked grin.
“I can help you, Devlin. I know about the robots from the future. I’ve spoken to doctor Silberman before he completely lost it… Sarah Connor saved my life after Silberman set fire to his cabin with me tied up in it.”
“And now you need to find her to thank her?” Tyler offered.

James Ellison looked at the scruffy-looking man sitting across the table from him. Covered in scars, the inevitable consequence of war. Two distinct ones in his face. It had been an amazing feat to break the cuffs like that, and he wondered if ‘Devlin’ had done this before. The scarred man had not denied the name ‘Devlin’, nor had he acknowledged it.
It amazed him how calm and collected this man was after mentioning Skynet whereas Andrew Goode’s presumed murderer had started to fidget. ‘Devlin’ did not even blink, his attitude causing his conviction that he had to do with the murder of Thomas Devlin, the Connors, the metal man and Skynet to crumble.
Nevertheless his instincts told him differently; ‘Devlin’ knew much, much more than he lead on. The scars, the barcode tattoo. Too much coincidence to be a real coincidence.
“Do you have an answer for everything?” He asked as he started to lose his patience.
‘Devlin’ shrugged, leaned over the table and said: “Depends on what you want to know.”
He found himself leaning over the table as well: “The future?”
“The future?” ‘Devlin’ echoed.
“What’s it like? Let’s assume that Sarah Connor is right and that it’s ruled by Skynet and machines. What will it be like?”

“Jezus fucking Christ. It’s a goddamn Skynet City,” Private Barker exclaimed while he took cover in the shadows of the ruins.
“Did you expect it to be something different?” Tyler asked wryly.
“Please, sir, keep your head down,” Private Barker mumbled insecurely.
“And what’s the fun in that?” He asked with a smirk.
The other squad members laughed merrily at their team leader’s counter-question. It was the first time out for Private Barker, only just promoted from Rook to Private, and it was obvious he did not know about The Devil.
Tyler turned a little and looked at Private Barker. Of all the men and women on his squad this young man was most likely to die tonight. After reading the status reports he had concluded that Barker was too cautious and too unwilling to take risks. He played it safe, and that was not a good strategy.
“Afraid that one of those metal bastards will try and shoot me?”
“Sir,” Private Barker muttered with embarrassment. “Sorry, sir.”

“He’s me, isn’t he?” TJ asked after he found Sarah sitting at the kitchen table with a mug of coffee, her cell phone and her Glock in front of her.
Sarah looked up with a start, snatching up the gun and aiming it at whoever had entered the kitchen while she had been lost in thoughts.
“Who’s you?” She asked while she placed the gun back on the table.
“The man who tried to strangle me,” he answered slowly.
She let out a deep breath and looked him in the eye before nodding in agreement.
“He’s from the future, right?”
She eyed the young man closely: “How do you know?”
He sat down at the kitchen table as well: “Everything just fell into place. The stories my mom used to tell me, what happened tonight. It all makes sense now.”
“Stories?” She asked curiously.
“Tales about a future world where the machine rules and the humans fight to survive.”
“She told you about the future?”
Now it was his turn to nod in agreement: “Fantastic tales about heroes, champions of mankind… Until tonight I thought they were just figments of a wonderful imagination. But now I realize that she was warning me about the world and the future to come.”
She just smiled sadly and kept quiet. What was there left to say? Minutes of silence went by.
“She never told me that I, er, he would be sent back here,” he sighed. “She had to have been from the future too.”
“Maybe she didn’t know? If she was from the future, maybe she had been sent back before him? I don’t know, TJ.”
She noticed the sad look on his face, the pain in his eyes. This kid had a long way to go before he would be the man in some holding cell right now, but the expressiveness in their eyes was the same.
“She was from the future,” he said sullenly. “It’s why I couldn’t find anything on her.”
A deep frown creased her forehead. She had been sitting here to think about their next move, to contemplate their options, not to have a conversation like this but somehow it was starting to get her interest.
“What do you mean?” She asked hesitantly, knowing very well that this boy’s mother had been from the future.
“I wanted to know more about her, so I,” he paused. “She died eight years ago in a car crash near Lincoln in Nebraska-”
“Nebraska?” She interrupted him while she remembered what Cameron had told her about Robin Baxter.
They had been living with Charley in Nebraska around that time.
He nodded slowly: “The phone went in the middle of the night and she went out, never to come home again… The police told us that she had been in a severe car accident near Lincoln… She died fifteen hundred miles from home, alone. We could ask for details all we wanted but we never got an official police report on the accident.”
She tried to swallow the lump in her throat as most pieces of the puzzle began to fall into place. However new questions arose in her mind: Cromartie had been hot on their tail and Baxter had been called to help them? Had it really been a car accident or had Baxter bought them precious time? Or maybe it had nothing to do with them and everything with baby Robin?

“Head down!” Tyler growled while he pushed Private Barker to the floor.
The searchlights of the ground assault unit slid past them, only missing them by an inch.
“Damn, kid,” he hissed through gritted teeth. “What are you trying to prove? This is a recon mission, not a suicide mission. Objective is to map out what’s here and come up with a plan to destroy it. This is a lion’s den. One false move and we’re all dead, you get it, kid?”
Contrary to the status reports, Barker was turning out to be a liability. He was reckless and did not pay attention to his environment much, making himself and his team members easy marks. If Barker kept being so stupid, he would be left no choice but to shoot the kid himself. Human life was important but jeopardizing the mission like Barker was doing. One life for the lives of an entire squad.
“Sorry, sir,” Private Barker muttered apologetic, hugging his plasma gun to his chest. “It won’t happen again, sir.”
Tyler grabbed him by the collar of his flak jacket and pulled him close: “Listen, kid, and understand,” he growled furiously. “Fuck up again and you don’t have to worry about the cans trying to blow your head off, because I will rip it off before they get a chance. Is that understood?”

Sarah looked at the young man and felt her heart ache for him. His entire world had just been turned upside down because of the future. His father murdered by a machine, meeting his future self, discovering all the things his mother had told him as just a story would become reality in a few years. It reminded her of the night the future had revealed itself to her.
The two Sarah Connors enlisted in the phone book before her, Ginger, Matt, the people who had died when the machine had zeroed in on her at Tech Noir, the seventeen police officers of the West Highland Police, her own mother, the ones who had died in those crazy two days at the hand of the machine. The first casualties of a war that would never end.
She knew the message that John had sent to her by heart, Kyle’s voice repeating it in her mind in moments of doubt: Thank you, Sarah, for your courage through the dark years. I can’t help you with what you must soon face except to say that the future is not set. You must be stronger than you imagine you can be. You must survive or I will never exist.
It had shaped her, made her into the person she was today. The woman Kyle had told her about, who had taught John everything he had needed to know and more, the mother of the future. She leaned her chin on her right fist and looked at the young man who was sitting across the table from her again.
Before he disappeared, as they had sat down for coffee after dinner, she and Tyler had talked some more and Tyler had quoted William Jennings Bryan “Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice; it is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.” To which he had added that the past was not written in stone nor was the future predetermined.
What did it mean? She smiled at TJ who sat studying her with a curious expression on his face. He knew how Tyler thought but he had not seen the things Tyler had seen. She sincerely doubted that he could shed some light on what Tyler had meant with that.
She squinted and could already see the bruise pattern starting to form on his throat. The older one had wanted to kill the younger one, had tried to kill himself in a weird way. Why would he do such a thing? Had he switched sides, become one of Skynet’s? Or was it an act of kindness so the younger him would not see and suffer the same things all over again?

“Jackpot,” Tyler chuckled upon entering a building and seeing what it housed.
“What is this place, sir?” Private Barker asked hesitantly.
“Mechanical procreation at its highest point. Machines building machines,” Tyler answered wryly. “An infiltrator assembly plant, where the tin cans are made by the dozen.”
“With all due respect, this place gives me the creeps, sir,” Private Barker mumbled.
Tyler walked past the half-assembled infiltration units and inspected them.
“It doesn’t scare you that they’re building these as we speak, sir? Sir?”
Tyler took a deep breath, held it and let it out: “No, it does not scare me, Barker.”
“But they’ll be right of the assembly line. We won’t stand a chance. Sir… This is a recon mission, not a suicide mission. You said it yourself, sir.”
“I know what I said, Barker. And you might find it hard to believe, but I know what I am doing.”
“You’re gonna get us all killed, that’s what you are doing,” Private Barker exclaimed.
“I need to know how far along they are with the development, Barker. I don’t expect you to understand, but it is crucial to know what the latest series is… We need to know where we stand,” Tyler growled annoyed.
“Not if it’s gonna get us killed,” Private Barker protested vehemently.
Slowly Tyler made his way to the processor bank and looked at the screens: “Damnit,” he seethed upon reading the information scrolling over the screens. “With each new series the bank gets smarter and faster.”
“You’re kidding me, right?”
Tyler turned to face Private Barker: “I like a good joke from time to time, but I never kid about these things.”

Power supply reactivated. Primary systems restored. Primary objective: updating. 7% … 21% … 28%... 42% … 56% … 70% … 84% … 100% ... Primary objective: updated.
Catherine Weaver looked at the still frame while the reactivation took effect. She had caught it after it had terminated its intended target: Troy King. He would come in use one day, as a diversion.
After scrubbing his original programming, she had entering a new one that would not stop him from attacking Tyler Jess Devlin, subject T7840/7. Now all she had to do was tell immediate replacement Troy King were to go and all hell would break loose.
She walked back to the window and looked outside. His arrest had made it so very easy to find him. Lieutenant General Devlin was held at the West Highland Police Station. A police station with a bad history of which people had hoped it would better its name after completing the rebuilding in 1985. Seventeen police officers had died there in an assault on it in 1984.
“Mission orders?” Troy King asked monotonically.
“You know what to do,” Catherine said with her thick Scottish brogue. “West Highland Police Station.”

“You tell me,” Tyler said with a smirk.
“I don’t know. That’s why I am asking you. I’ve seen things. Things I can’t explain,” James Ellison said tiredly.
“And you want me to shed some light on the matter?”
“You’re one of them-”
“One of them?” Tyler interrupted him, suppressing the urge to hit James Ellison for thinking he was one of ‘them’.
“From the future. One of the good guys, here to save the day.”
“You’re guessing, Agent Ellison. You are hoping for a reaction that would give me away. A flinch, a gesture, a slip of the tongue? What is it?”
He watched as James Ellison crossed his arms and looked at him intently: “So it’s no use for me to sit around and wait for your lawyer?”
A faint smile spread across his face; finally the suggestion of a lawyer. The suggestion he had been waiting for.
“Wait a minute,” he pretended to be offended. “Aren’t I entitled to one phone call? You sit here, fishing for answers I do not have, and you don’t even remind me that I am entitled to a lawyer present or the phone call.”
As he had expected, James Ellison reached into the pocket of his suit jacket and pulled out his cell phone: ”Here, make your call,” he said as he held out the cell phone to him.
He took the cell phone and punched in a few digits while smiling at James Ellison with fake gratitude. Just like the machines, humans could be so easily fooled.

Sarah knocked the mug with cold coffee over when her cell phone suddenly began to ring. TJ and she had been lost in a conversation about the past, the present and the future, and they had lost track of time. She looked at the display: TJD calling. TJD? She looked at TJ and realized who it was.
“Devlin, where are you?” She asked harshly.
“At West Highland, busted on suspicion of robbery and murder in the first degree… Listen, there’s this FBI-agent here, and I don’t think he’s in his right mind,” Tyler said at the other end of the line.
“What the fuck are you talking about, Devlin?” She hissed, annoyed that he wasn’t making sense. “Aside from trying to kill yourself, what did you do?”
“FBI-agent Ellison seems to think that I have ties to this woman Sarah Connor and the future… Oh, you’re writing this down… Yes, if his career as a FBI-agent fails, he can always move to Hollywood. You got that right.”
“Devlin, stop messing around!” She growled, running out of patience fast.
“No, I understand that he is not in right now… When can he be here?... One hour. Sure, I’ll tell Agent Ellison that the interrogation is now over… West Highland Police Station, one hour. Got it.”
Before she ask him again what he meant, he had hung up on her.
“What the hell was that about?” TJ asked.
“That was Devlin,” she answered while she stared at her cell phone.
She frowned before she opened the phone book and searched through the numbers, finding no TJD. Had this confusing conversation actually happened? The curious look on TJ’s face told her that it had not been a figment of her imagination.
“What did he want?” TJ paused. “I mean, you didn’t understand his call. Maybe I can help?”
She smiled at him in a warm, motherly fashion: “You think like him.”
He snorted with contempt: “Apparently I am him. So… What did he say?”
“Well, the charges that got him arrested were clear. That Ellison is around was clear. It’s just. I didn’t get what he meant with one hour.”
“He’s busting out,” he said with a shrug of his shoulders. “And he needs a ride.”
“He really thinks that we will come and get him after he tried to kill you?” She asked in disbelief.

“Thank you,” Tyler said with another fake smile of gratitude while he handed James Ellison his cell phone back. “My lawyer can only be here with an hour. Another client. You know how it goes.”
James Ellison nodded: ”I know how it goes. In the meantime, can I get you something to drink? Coffee, soda, water?”
“A glass of water would be nice. Thank you,” he answered politely.
“Water it is,” James Ellison smiled as he rose to his feet. “I’ll be right back.”
“Don’t take too long… I am dying to hear more of those fascinating back from the future stories,” he taunted.
It was way too predictable. The moment Agent Ellison was out that door, he would open his call-list and redial the last number. Tyler grinned amused; how very surprised Ellison would be to get the answering machine of an actual law firm, and not Sarah Connor like he was most likely expecting. It was so extremely predictable, so very easy to anticipate on: Agent Ellison in the role of good cop, offering his cell phone to him so he could make the call to his lawyer or who else he wanted to call, saving the number so that with one push of a button Agent Ellison would speak to the person he had called. And of course Agent Ellison was hoping to get Sarah Connor on the line.
However he had made a few transfers so that the call would be connected through via the law firm’s long distance carrier. Agent Ellison would never get past the first station, the law firm. Only getting the confirmation that he had indeed called a law firm for legal assistance.
A few minutes later Agent Ellison entered the interrogation room again, carrying in a cup of coffee and a glass of water.
“Disappointed?” He asked in a taunting manner.
“With what?” James Ellison asked.
“Finding out that I actually did call my lawyer and not someone else,” he chuckled.
“Someone else? Like who, ‘Devlin’?”
“Well, that Connor woman for instance. You think I have ties with her… Tell me, Agent Ellison, why are you so interested in her?” He asked calmly.
“Because my boss, the United States of America, thinks that she’s a first class lunatic with a taste for extreme violence.”
“What did she do?” He pretended not to know. “Aside from holding up a bank.”
“She has a rep sheet a mile long with assault and bank heist being the lesser crimes,” James Ellison said slowly. “She has broken just about every rule in the book.”
He nodded: “Well, that explains why your boss, the United States of America, is interested in her. But why are you interested in her?”
“There are a few things I don’t understand and I was hoping that she might be able to explain them to me. But maybe you can shed some light on it? Tell me, how can a person be blown up and then turn up eight years later not looking a day older than the day that person supposedly died?”
“That’s impossible. Or are you implying time travel? Now that’s ridiculous. Everybody knows that time travel is pure fiction. Come on, did the FBI run out of sane people and started hiring the insane?”
“Cut the bull, ‘Devlin’. I know that you’re playing with me. It’s like you know every rule of interrogation in the book. Like you have been here many times before,” James Ellison said impatiently.
“You’re fishing, Agent Ellison,” he said smugly. “But I’ll throw you a bone… Let’s say, hypothetically speaking, that I do know the Connors, what would you want with them?
“Is that an admission?”
“No, hypothetically speaking. I’m curious to hear what you would want with them.”
“Just talk, get answers, help them,” James Ellison summed up.
“Help them how? By arresting them? You so much as called Connor a wanted criminal. Throwing her ass in jail would look very good on your resume, Agent Ellison. But thank you for your answer to my hypothesis. I really wish I could help you though. ”

Chapter 14: Destiny Is A Matter Of Choice

Chapter 16: Twist Of Fate - The Ballad Of Robin Baxter