“Keep him still!” Ethan ordered when his patient began to buck and flop vehemently. “I need to get a line in,” he growled while he reached for the duck tape. “He’s banged up pretty bad and you all stand there like a couple of statues. Want him to die?”

His eyes snapped open and he stared at a white ceiling with oak beams. Slowly he sat up, pushing back the crispy clean covers to swing his legs out of bed. He frowned when his thighs and calves bore no markings of the war. His upper body revealed no trace of the battle either. Stumbling a little, he got to his feet and looked around the room before going over to window. After pushing the curtains aside a little, the old world revealed itself to him. Grass, trees, people in the street, instead of ruins, burnt out cars and skeletons.
He had no idea where he was but this couldn’t be real. The door to the room creaked and he ducked away in a defensive crouch, ready to jump on the intruder. His heart skipped a beat when Sarah walked in, dressed in a waitress uniform, her hair put in a neat bun.
She smiled warmly and shook her head: “A good morning to you too, honey.”
He raised an eyebrow and tried to come up with an excuse for his behaviour: “I’m sorry. I guess I had a bad dream.”
“Must be your job,” she chuckled while she adjusted and retied her apron. “You came home at two last night. What does the man have you do that has you out all hours of the night?”
Since he had no idea what she was talking about, he answered with a simple shrug of his shoulders.
“Ah, it’s still hush-hush,” she laughed as she sat down on the bed and put on her white sneakers for work.
He watched as she pulled up her right leg to tie her shoe laces, revealing a scar free lower leg. Just like him she bore no markings of the continuous battle. His eye caught the long standalone dress mirror in the far corner of the room near the massive oak closet.
With his heart pounding erratically in his chest, he walked up to it and looked at his reflection. For a few seconds it showed a normal young man. Still tall, but not too muscular, a face determined by kind eyes and a crooked grin. Then the reflection flickered and the mirror showed a ruined world at night. His own reflection had become of a man marred by war, dressed in black ragged clothes, and he jumped back.
“What is it, babe?” Her voice came closer and closer until he felt her arms come around his waist.
He felt her rest her head against his back, her neatly brushed hair tickling his bare skin.
“Nothing,” he muttered, closing his eyes for a brief moment.
“Will you be home for dinner? Or will he have you work late like he has been the past few weeks?” She asked in a whisper.
“I don’t know, Sarah,” he answered with a sigh.
“Sarah? It’s been a long time since you addressed me that way,” she sounded disappointed.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbled insecurely.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” he nodded, finally daring to look in the mirror again.
The dark world and the man had disappeared again. Now it showed him with her arms around his middle in a nice and clean room with sun light streaming in through the large windows. He couldn’t help but grin broadly when he saw her look past him at their reflection in the mirror.

Catherine took a deep breath and softly knocked on the door.
“Enter!”
Slowly she pushed the door open and found Sarah sitting at her desk, reading the battlefield and recon reports of the night before: “Yes, Cathe?”
“John’s out. E.T. 17, 34 and 57 have confirmed it. They assisted in extracting a group of escaped Century prisoners just south of the Safe Zone.”
She noticed the look of relief on Sarah’s face, but then concerned overshadowed the woman’s face: “Tyler?”
Taking another deep breath to buy time, Catherine knew it would come down to her lying skills: “No visual confirmation of the First Sergeant as of yet, ma’am.”
The chair got knocked over when Sarah jumped to her feet, stalked over to her and got in her face: “Don’t lie, Cathe. Tyler lead this operation. He wouldn’t have strayed from John while breaking them out. If they have John, they have Tyler… So what the fuck happened?”
She looked past Sarah at the wall with a torn, yellowed map of Los Angeles: “Ma’am?”
“If he’s injured or dead, just tell me. But don’t fucking lie to me!” Sarah seethed, her green eyes spitting fire.
“He’s still fighting, ma’am,” she said in a low whisper.
Sarah Connor was a very sharp woman who seemed to be on the edge constantly. She had a knack for knowing if someone was lying to her, but this wasn’t a complete lie. First Sergeant Devlin was indeed still fighting. He wasn’t fighting the machines. He was fighting for his life.
It would take a miracle for him to survive this.

“What day is it?” He asked after she had handed him a mug of steaming coffee.
She looked at him in disbelief: “You’re kidding, right?”
He shook his head: “No, not really.”
“April twenty-first, two-thousand-eleven,” she sighed while she rolled her eyes. “He must have you work so hard that you forget the simplest of things. It’s our one-year anniversary,” she added with a dark look on her face.
He raised an eyebrow in confusion and looked in wonder when she held up her hand. An expensive looking wedding band graced her ring finger. They were married? But how could that be in a world in which he could never have existed? Without Skynet there would be no time displacement device. Without a time displacement device his mother could never have been send back and he would never be.
The dark look subsided and a slow smile appeared on her face: “But you’re excused since he’s been having you work your fingers to the bone… I’ll let you make it up to me tonight,” she laughed.
He had no idea of how to react so he kept quiet and returned the smile. April twenty-first, two-thousand-eleven, Judgment Day. Would it still happen?
“What time is it?”
“Seven past eleven,” she answered with a look of worry in her eyes. “What happened, Ty? You always remember everything and now,” she paused. “It’s not like you to be so forgetful.”
“Where’s John?” He asked.
“John? Who’s John?” She countered with a question of her own.
“John, your son,” he answered slowly.
“Are you coming down with a fever, honey?”
“I’m fine,” he answered with a steady voice, feeling more and more lost.
“Then you could know that I have no kids. Or is this another attempt to discuss the possibility of children?” She grumbled annoyed.
“No?” He offered hopeful.
“No,” she confirmed. “I love you, Ty, but we agreed no children. You’re twenty, I’m forty-five. By the time our child will go off to college, I’ll be in a retirement home.”
Twenty-five years apart. The time jump, it had never happened. The cancer?
“Are you okay, babe?” He asked hesitantly before taking a sip of his coffee.
The warm liquid tasted so good and he hummed a little. It had been years since his last mug of coffee. For someone, who was a bad cook, she could make an excellent pot of coffee. The hot, bitter fluid, he had forgotten how good it actually tasted.
“Did you bang your head last night? You promised to never call me babe,” she chuckled.
He smiled faintly, feeling completely lost suddenly. This wasn’t his world, and she didn’t know. She didn’t know that on this date the world would go to hell. Would it go to hell again?
She tilted her head a little and showed him her slow, crooked smile. It was a familiar sight that warmed his heart and confused his mind even more. Only the brooding look in her eyes was gone.
An icy chill ran up and down his spine. This was the Sarah Connor who would have been without the future interfering. This was the world that would have been without Judgment Day.
Thursday. April twenty-first. Two-thousand-eleven. Judgment Day. It was today. He glanced at the clock on the blind kitchen wall. Seven past eleven in the morning.
Unable to help himself, he started trembling vehemently, spilling some of his coffee. She looked at him with great concern: “Are you really okay? You don’t look so good.”

One bright light lit the room. Thick layers of dirt, dust and grime covered the walls and the floor. On a makeshift operating table lay an formidable man with a young woman and a man standing over him, trying to revive him again for a fourth time.
John stood aloof and looked at the patient, hanging his head in defeat. It didn’t look good, but he needed to believe that Tyler had enough fight in him left to survive. There had been numerous times in his life that he had felt helpless, unable to do anything, but the feeling had never been as overwhelming as it was now.
Despite the resignation in his fate, Tyler was a fighter and he would fight to the bitter end. However never before had the end been more near than now. If Tyler would die this morning, the future would become uncertain again, just like the past.
He rubbed his forehead. There was only one thing he could think of that could save the First Sergeant. It was Skynet tech and only known and available to them four years from now. The nanoattrioids that had driven the other Tyler crazy but had ensured his survival after losing his left arm.
“The nano’s,” he muttered underneath his breath.
Robin and Ethan looked at him curiously.
“Never mind,” he added in a whisper.
“If you have any ideas, we’d like to hear them now, C,” Ethan said through gritted teeth while he checked the restraints again.

He looked up from the newspaper he was reading when she came back into the kitchen. She had traded her waitress uniform for a more casual outfit.
“I called us both in sick. Obviously you’re not well today and I don’t feel like leaving you alone today,” she grinned mischievously.
He replied with a shrug of his shoulders and turned his attention back to the newspaper. ZeiraCorp stock was selling at a market high and the newspaper had decided to dedicate an in-depth article on the company’s CEO’s Lachlan and Catherine Weaver. He crumpled up the page and tossed it across the room.
“Ty?” She asked confused while she bent down to pick up the crumpled page and unfolded it. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“They’re gonna blow up the world,” he hissed, running a hand through his hair in frustration.
“Who is? The Weavers?” She asked slowly.
“The Weavers! ZeiraCorp! The world’s gonna die!” He growled while he jumped to his feet.
“Ty,” she said concerned, tossing the page on the kitchen table. “You’re overworked, honey. No one’s gonna blow up the world. The world’s not gonna die,” she added.
“Yes, it is. It’s gonna die today,” he grumbled as he stalked over to the windows over the kitchen counters. “Today’s Judgment Day. We need to leave,” he stated sternly after checking the clear blue sky twice.
“Is that how you call it?” She asked darkly. “Judgment Day?”
“Huh? What?” He turned to face her. “No, not that.”
“That?” She echoed. “Ginger and Matt warned me about you. They told me-”
“Told you what?” He interrupted her. “That the end of the world is near? That five point five billion people will die this day? Did they tell you that?”
She looked startled, if not afraid: “Tyler, please. You’re acting all crazy.”
“I’m crazy? Skynet’s gonna make sure that today’s gonna feel pretty fucking real to you! Anybody not wearing number two million sunblock is gonna have a real bad day, get it? It’ll all end today!” He exclaimed.

Electric arcs casted their ghostly bluish-white glows on the smudged walls of the dimly lit room. The strange lightning combined to a sphere of energy. John squinted and tried to make out the form. He had travelled through time himself once, to jump over his mother’s death so she wouldn’t die of cancer.
The sphere growled and materialized, revealing a naked young woman, cast into this time and place. She didn’t look like someone he knew in this time, but if she was from when he thought she was, another six years of fierce battle would change anybody beyond recognition.
The young woman propped herself up on her elbows and looked around the room until her eyes came to rest on him: “General Connor?”
He nodded slowly and smiled sadly: “I’m John Connor. Who are you?”
“Corporal Lucy Owens, sir. MedCom, O-L-9-9-0-5-3,” she answered firmly, accepting the torn sheet Robin handed her.
He looked from Corporal Owens to Tyler and knew why she was here. She was the miracle they had been hoping for. He had sent her back to save Tyler’s life, which could only mean one thing: she was from the altered future.

It felt like his mind was exploding, like it was literally on fire. He turned back and looked at the sky again. Zigzag patterns marked it. Missiles, they had been launched. He looked at the clock. Eleven twenty-seven. It had started.
“Tyler?”
He turned towards her again, rushed over and grabbed her by the wrist: “We need to leave!”
Out on the front lawn, he stopped in his tracks causing her to bump into him. His eyes were drawn to the sky, blackened by the countless missiles.
“What is it?” He heard her ask from behind him.
Time stopped. A missile plunged from the sky. An extremely bright flash of white light ensued and he raised his hand to his eyes to see. A big bellowing mushroom cloud of fire reached for the sky. Heat, scorching heat. His skin felt like it was burning away and he turned to see Sarah. She was frozen like an ashen statue. A blast wave followed and ripped through everything and everyone. He felt the flesh being stripped from his bones and he screamed of agony in silence. Another missile fell to earth, another mushroom, another shockwave. A hot gust of wind scattered the ashen statues, leaving nothing behind that reminded of the old world.

Chapter 15: Being John Connor

Chapter 17: Something Dark is Coming