"... That every moment of your life will be spent keeping him alive. Would he understand why you were so hard? Why you held on so tight? Will he still reach for you if the only dream you ever shared with him was a nightmare? Would he know my love runs through him like blood?"
He pressed the stop-button of the cassette player and heaved a deep sigh. All were gone, died or sent back to times where they would matter the most. All he had left were his mother’s tapes. Her voice, her thoughts preserved on magnetically coated plastic strips.
He looked through the audio cassettes and picked out one of the earlier ones. He knew all her tapes by heart, and sometimes he would say the lines along with her, like he was actually talking with her.
The tapes with her recorded thoughts had always been a source of comfort to him, but he had never told her that, or anyone else. Not even Tyler.

Los Angeles
August 22nd, 1999, 7:41 pm
“Now go to sleep, TJ,” Robin smiled as she tucked her son in and gave him a kiss on the forehead.
“But I want another story,” her eight-year-old son protested.
Her smile broadened, then became sad when she looked him in the eye. He would have to endure so much, suffer more than any human should ever suffer, but he would be a hero. She ran a hand through his thick, tousled hair and played with an unwilling lock while she continued to look at him. Blinking the tears back that welled in her eyes.
“You’re my little brave soldier but it’s time to go to sleep,” she said with a lump in her throat.
“Why are you so sad, mom?” He asked with great concern.
“I’m not sad,” she answered quickly.
“But… You’re crying.”
“Sometimes people cry not because they are sad, TJ, but because they are happy or relieved,” she tried to explain, knowing he would not buy it.
She took a deep breath and smiled at him again: “I’m crying because I’m happy,” she lied.
It could not be further from the truth; she was close to crying because of what lay ahead of him. If only she could stop it. If only she could keep him safe from his destiny.
The look of utter concern and compassion in his eyes told her that he wasn’t buying into her lie. Only eight years old, and he was already showing signs of the man she had known in her past: the Tyler of the future, only understood by those closest to him.

Milford, Nebraska
August 22nd, 1999, 11:57 pm
Douglas Rackham lit up another cigarette. He still wasn’t used to being back here but it had an advantage over where he had come from; cigarettes had been scarce and here he could lit up cigarette after cigarette without having to worry of running out.
He inhaled the bittersweet smoke, held it for a few seconds and then let it escape very slowly. However he wasn’t there to have a smoke or two. He was there on a mission.
Where he had come from he had been a Spotter for the Iron Guard, a small covert ops unit that had specialized in the demolition of tanks, in his time know as ground assault units. Every pedestrian, every person in every car; he looked for the traits of metal. He had not belonged to the elite of the Spotters, but he was a very good Spotter.
The streets of Milford had become deserted. Only a few people were heading home or to friends or relatives. A quick glance on the watch he had stolen shortly after his arrival here told him that it was a little past midnight.
Suddenly his attention was drawn by a sandy-colored SUV with a dented front bumper driving past at a leisurely speed. He looked closely at the driver and felt a chill run down his spine. Metal.
The General had been right when he had debriefed him on his mission. Metal was coming for young John Connor, now living in Nebraska under the alias of John Reese. As casual as possible he turned away and went to look for a phone.

Los Angeles
August 23rd, 1999, 0:19 am
She sat up with a start, confused as to where she was. Nightmares had come to haunt her once again but before it had turned really bad, an incessant ringing had woken her up. She looked to her right side and saw that her husband still hadn’t come to bed. That is if he had come home at all.
She had been part of this world for ten years now and she still wasn’t used to it. Taking nothing for granted, always on her guard, knowing that the final battle would not be fought in the future but in the present.
They still had not come for her or her son. Nevertheless she knew that it was only a matter of time before they would try to kill him. She finally picked up the receiver, pressed a button and brought it to her ear.”
“Devlin,” she grumbled, inwardly cursing the person who was calling them in the middle of the night.
“Bonefields, twenty, twenty, five,” a voice on the other end of the line said. “Metal. Milford, Nebraska.”
It felt like her heart stopped beating and she dropped the receiver in her lap. Milford wasn’t too far away from Omaha. And tomorrow her mother would give birth to her. She picked up the receiver and brought it to her ear again. The caller had hung up.
“We’re pinned down! S8q4!” A voice crackled over the line. “Metal everywhere!”
The Battle of Bonefields on December 24th, 2025. It had been one of the biggest battles in the future. A retaliation from the Human Resistance for the Siege of IntelliTech Base earlier that month. The General had not been thinking with his head but with his heart, something extremely uncommon for him. As the night turned into day, and day turned into night again, the fights continued, becoming more brutal by the hour. Despite the loss of human lives, it had become a victory for the Human Resistance.
“I repeat: we’re pinned down! S8q4! Metal ever-” An explosion. Silence.
The infirmaries of the bases and MedCom had become swamped with soldiers fighting for their lives. She had seen it all. Blown or torn off limbs, intestines hanging out, massive trauma. Hardened by years of battle, years of experience, she had gone through the motions, but the Battle of Bonefields had left deep emotional scars.
She had understood the General’s reasoning: revenge for the death of a loved one, revenge for the fall of a core base of the Resistance, revenge out of complete helplessness. Night after night she had sat watching over Lieutenant General Devlin while he had fought to stay alive. It had killed her to see her son like that, and yet all that pain had been pushed aside when she had held her baby boy in her arms the first time and she had sworn that she would always be there for him. Whatever he would need in this world, she would give it to him.
She knew that her husband disagreed with that decision but she didn’t care. She had loved Thomas just enough to have his child, but he didn’t matter in the rest of the greater scheme. That little boy sleeping in the next room was all that mattered.
Nevertheless before she made the time jump, the General had asked to talk to her in private, telling her that one day she would receive a call and that she would have to respond, that her own life would depend on it.
Slowly she rose to her feet, walked to the closet and pulled a trunk out. She took the chain from her neck and looked at the key that was on it. The General had told her to prepare for this moment, making her memorize what she would need.

West Fork, Nebraska
August 23rd, 1999, 0:24 am
Sarah propped herself up on her left elbow and looked at the man sleeping soundly next to her. He had worn himself out. She smiled sadly; he had been so excited about proposing to her that she could not find it in her heart to turn him down. However her life, her purpose did not entail the white picket fence, the whole nine yards. She was a fugitive, a wanted terrorist and they had already stayed here longer than she had actually wanted.
No one is ever safe. It were words she lived by: the moment she got too comfortable, too accustomed to her environment and so-called life, she turned their lives upside down again by leaving, by changing their identity and history to disappear like a thief in the night.
John was convinced that things were different now, that they had stopped it, that they were safe. She wasn’t convinced. Paranoid from years of looking over her shoulders, she could never let go and believe that everything was different now. That they had actually stopped the development of Skynet by blowing up CyberDyne Systems.
The strange but all too familiar feeling crept up from the pits of her stomach. They had gotten way too comfortable. An ordinary life was not for them, no matter how much she would want that for John.
She leaned her chin on the palm of her left hand and looked at Charley again. He was a good guy and she loved him, but by now she had already realized that no matter what they were a threat to him. The longer they would stay, the more dangerous it would become for him.
“Babe?” He asked drunk from sleep.
“Go back to sleep,” she answered in a whisper while she lay down again and made herself comfortable against him.

Los Angeles
August 23rd, 1999, 0:39 am
Robin leaned her head against the door post and smiled lovingly while she watched her son sleep the sleep of innocents. He did not know that the stories she had told him would one day become a bitter, cold reality. They had been meant as words of warning.
In a few years he would meet the legendary Sarah Connor and she would teach him everything she knew. For years Robin had held a grudge towards Sarah, based on the misplaced idea of her stealing Tyler from her. Even when Tyler had told her that he would be her son in a future past, she had not been able to shed the romantic idea of him being her knight in shining armor.
Only when Tyler had come so very close to dying in 2021, she had realized that the words he had said to her, when she had been sixteen, had been the truth. He had been in extremely bad shape and his heart had stopped beating on more than one occasion, they had brought him back from the brink again and again, postponing the inevitable.
Deep in heart she knew that he had died that day and she had killed him. When she had injected the nanoattrioids into his bloodstream. It had saved his life but he had never ever been the same again. She had examined the nanoattrioids sent back from the future on the General’s orders and had discovered that part of it consisted of reconstructive nanites, miniature robots that would mend flesh and steel at a molecular level. It had made him stronger, more resilient. Injuries that would fell any human were made to look a small cut or graze if and when they happened to him.
“Fine, don’t listen to me then. Find out the hard way when you’re screwing up my mind in ten years.”
It had not even been ten years, only six. By some twist of fate it happening had sped up. He had taken risks out on the battlefield that no one would take, and often she had wondered if he did not have some death wish, or had he deemed himself invincible by the stories she had told him in his youth?
The sleep of innocents. The metal monsters would come to haunt him soon enough. Her smile broadened and turned sad again. She had to leave, but she was stalling. Looking at her son like this, it gave her a sense of rest for her tormented soul. She had to leave, knowing that she would never come home again.

Milford, Nebraska
August 23rd, 1999, 1:08 am
Douglas ran like he had never run before. He wasn’t on the run for the machine, but he was chasing after it. The air burned in his lungs as he pressed on, pushing himself past all physical limits. He did not dare to lose sight of the metal.

Los Angeles
August 23rd, 1999, 7:45 am
“That deceitful bitch!” Thomas Devlin seethed.
TJ cowered and made himself as small as possible while his father paced back and forth angrily.
“That goddamn whore!”
“Where’s mommy?” He asked in a tiny voice.
“That bitch left us. She left us and she’s never coming back,” his father hissed. “She doesn’t love me, and she doesn’t love you. Why else would that bitch leave?”

Milford, Nebraska
August 23rd, 1999, 11:07 pm
Robin climbed out of the car and looked around. It had a long and tiring drive but she had only stopped underway for gas. Twenty-two hours and fifteen-hundred miles from home. Even though she had been back in this world for a very long time, she had never forgotten the lessons the future had taught her.
“Bax?” A man’s voice asked with surprise behind her.
She drew her Beretta while she whirled around to see who had spoken to her: “Rackham?”
“I thought you’d died. The General told me that you had gone m.i.a.,” Douglas stated as he stepped out of the shadows.
“He sent me back,” she said. “On a mission.”
She watched as he smiled wryly: “Some people went m.i.a. around the time Skynet was stopped. Most of us figured they had fallen in the last hours of the war.”
“Lieutenant General Devlin?” She asked hesitantly, unsure if she wanted to know the answer.
“He was there when we killed Skynet, but he disappeared that night. Whispers in the tunnel said that the General shot him after he went berserker mode again. Wouldn’t blame the man. That goddamn half-breed was a threat to anyone,” he said through gritted teeth before he took out a pack of cigarettes and lit up another cigarette. “Especially after you went m.i.a..”
“That goddamn half-breed,” she began angrily. “He… He was my son.”
He looked at her and burst into laughter: “And I am the King of Siam.”
“I guess you are, because he is my son. That was my mission. To find a certain someone and have his son.”
“But… But… But,” he stammered. “That’s impossible.”
She looked him in the eye and said wryly: “Time travel makes everything possible. My son was born eight years ago and this is the day I was born at the Hillside Hospital in Omaha… But I’m not here for idle chit-chat about time travel… Where’s the metal?”
“An old barn, just a little south of the crossing of Old Cheney and Sixth. Metal gave me a run for my money,” he answered.
“Maybe you should cut down on the smoking?” She suggested, tugging the Beretta back in the waistband of her jeans before getting into her car again.
“Like it’s gonna matter. In twelve years the world will go to hell anyway. I might as well kick the bucket before that,” he replied while he jogged to the passenger’s side of the car and got in.

Milford, Nebraska
August 23rd, 1999, 11.33 pm
It heard the car coming a mile away and it knew it was headed for it.
Approaching 4-wheeled vehicle at high velocity flashed across its HUD
It picked up a rifle, opened the door of the barn and take aim at the corner of the road. A car came speeding around the corner and it identified the driver and the passenger as member of the Human Resistance.
Targeting protocols to primary target designate ‘Baxter, Robin’. Terminate.
It fired at the driver of the car. Sleeping birds, awakened by the shot, flew up under protest.
Rerouting targeting protocols to secondary target ‘Rackham, Douglas’. Terminate.
A second shot rang out in the night.
It zoomed in on the targets and analysed that both showed no signs of life: Deceased_
The car raced past it and crashed into the old barn. Beams, wood, debris came raining down and it tilted its head.
They had not been its primary mission. Its initial target was John Connor, but in its submissions was the termination of members of the Human Resistance if it came across them. The engine of the car caught fire. It calculated that in 59.874 seconds the car would explode.

West Fork, Nebraska
August 24th, 1999, 6:49 am
“And it begins now.”
A bright flash hurt her eyes and mushroom clouds rose up to the sky behind the library. The concrete melted and cracked. The building exploded, a storm of stone and debris set in. She tried to shield him, her boy who she had failed to protect from the hulking man who stood a few away from them. His frame ignited, the storm and the fire eating away his human cover at horrific speed, to reveal a metal skeleton. Judgment Day had arrived.
She watched in horror while the man of steel walked towards her and grabbed her by the throat. Cold steel taking away her breath. Bright red eyes glared at her from a metal skull.
She sat up with a start and gasped for air, the remains of the nightmare still very present in her thoughts.
“Hey… Did you scream or something?” Charley asked
The nightmare, as always, had shaken her to the core. Her mind immediately trying to give it a place. She brushed the locks hanging in her face back with her left hand: “Scream? No. Go back to sleep.”

Chapter 15: The Devil's Advocate

Chapter 17: 400 Rounds And Counting