Lucy looked at the General who stood conferring to the leader of MedCom. After Robin had mysteriously disappeared, the medical division of the Resistance was now lead by First Sergeant Scottsdale. They were talking in low whispers and she could barely hear what they were talking about. Something about it being the only way.
“Corporal?” Ethan turned towards her.
“Sir?”
She approached them quickly, not wanting to keep them wait.
“We’ve got a delicate mission for you,” the General said in a soft voice that kept its authority despite its lack in volume. “Have you ever heard of the Devil?”
Her eyes grew wide: the Devil was a myth, the stuff of legends. He or she had raised hell until about eight years ago. The survivors were convinced it had been First Sergeant Tyler Devlin. His last name was suited for a nickname like that and his heroic escapes from Skynet death camps were source for many tales about the Devil. She nodded slowly: “I have heard of him or her, sir. He or she went m.i.a. eight years ago.”
“It’s because he died eight years ago,” the General said in a monotone voice. “He gave his life to save mine when busting me out of Century.”
Had she heard it right? Had the General’s voice trembled with restrained emotions? She knew that the General was a loner, keeping to himself as much as possible. He was a ghost in many ways. Nameless he would go out to battle at night and fight along his troops anonymously.
“Was he a friend, sir?”
The General looked away and nodded slowly: “Would you like to meet him, Corporal Owens?”
“Sir?” She mumbled, not understanding. “With all due respect, didn’t you just say that he died?”
She watched as the General turned his back towards her: “Ethan?”
Now she turned her head a little and looked at First Sergeant Scottsdale.
“We could’ve saved him that night,” Ethan began while he reached for a vial with a strange red-greenish fluid in which white shiny sparkles swirled and glistened. “If we would’ve had this.”
“What is it, sir?” She asked curiously.
“It’s one of the latest pieces of Skynet technology called nanoattrioids. Skynet uses it for human mind control. The Devil is the only human known to be able to fight it off.”
“But the Devil is dead,” she stated while her confusion grew and grew.
“Not in my past,” the General said in a soft voice. “In my past he is very much alive.”
She looked from the General to the First Sergeant: “Again with all due respect, sir, he is dead. How can we save him if it is all in the past?”
The General cleared his throat: “Time travel, Corporal Owens.”
The First Sergeant’s face remained blank when she looked at him for help: “Time travel, sir?”
“When the Skynet stronghold at Topanga Canyon fell last month, we discovered a time displacement device,” the General sighed. “Skynet had already sent a T-800 back to 1984 so I sent a soldier after it.”
“Can I ask who, sir?” She dared to ask.
“It’s classified information,” the First Sergeant answered for the General.
She nodded. She hadn’t expected a straight answer anyway: “What’s my mission?”
“You will be send back to the morning of the Devil’s death in twenty-twenty-one,” the First Sergeant said. “And you will take this with you,” he held up the vial. “You will inject it into his blood stream so the nano’s can start doing their work. It’s important that the Devil lives… Not just for the future but for the past as well.”
“This damned war has already lasted two years longer than was told to me,” the General interjected, clutching his fists at his sides. “Losing Tyler set us back two years. Only now we’re beating those metal bastards into shrapnel and is Skynet losing ground fast.”
Her mind was spinning. How did the General know all of this? Until now she had never realized that there could be more than one future. Her head started to ache while she tried to figure it out.
“Why me, sir?” She ventured to ask.
She heard him take a deep breath: “Does it have to have reason?” He countered with a question of his own.
“Is there something else I should know, sir?”
Finally the General turned to face her, the look on his face told her nothing of what he was thinking or feeling. He acted and reacted very much like the machines they had been fighting for the past eighteen years, it startled her.
Slowly he shook his head: “Only that if the Devil lives he will be prone to extremely violent fits of insanity. No one will be safe when he hits Skynet mode, which he undoubtedly will.”

“What do you mean? John doesn’t want me there?” Sarah seethed through gritted teeth.
Catherine did two steps back. Sarah Connor was known to emphasize her point by throwing a mean right hook and she didn’t feel like being a punching bag.
“I’m sorry, Sarah,” she said in a gentle voice, consciously calling her Sarah to close the rank gap between them and stress their friendship.
Whispers in the tunnel had told that the Devil had fallen in battle and that he was fighting for his life. Whispers of which Catherine had hoped they would never reach Sarah’s ears but they had and now Sarah insisted on going to CD Base.
“It’s not safe–” She began.
“It’s never safe,” Sarah interrupted her.
“I know you love him, Sarah, but going to CD Base, it’s madness.”
“He’s dying, Cathe,” Sarah suddenly broke down in tears. “He’s actually dying, and I’m not allowed to say goodbye because it’s not safe… Well, screw that,” she growled, regaining her composure quickly and reaching for her plasma rifle. “I don’t want him to die alone.”
“He won’t be alone. C’s with him, just as Baxter, Scottsdale and the Reese brothers,” she said, only realizing that she should not have mentioned the name Reese until it was too late.
“That’s it, isn’t it? I can’t go because of Kyle and Derek? You’re kidding, right?”
“Sarah, be reasonable. C didn’t sent you with Tyler for nothing. He knows you’re not safe on his base. Do you really want him to lose another great fighter this morning by going over there and get your ass blown off out of revenge for one of C’s more unpopular strategic decisions?”
Sarah walked up to her desk and slammed her right fist on it before she let herself fall into the chair: “Damnit!” She hissed.

Robin looked at the syringe Lucy was holding out to her. The red-greenish liquid with swirling white sparkles in it, it would save him.
“Check it,” Lucy said sternly. “Is it ten cc?”
Robin took it and looked at it more closely: “Yes, it is. How is so little gonna save him?”
“We need to increase it,” Lucy explained. “If we give him too much at once, he’ll go out of his mind.”
Robin heard John’s snort of contempt: “As if it’s gonna make any difference.”
“What is it exactly?”
“Nanoattrioids,” Lucy answered gruffly. “Nano’s.”
Robin frowned: hadn’t John mentioned nano’s earlier? She sighed and checked the amount again: “What does it do?”
“It embeds in the brains and the nerve system. It will make him stronger and less susceptible to injury.”
“And violently insane,” John grumbled.
“It’s a parasite?” She asked, ignoring John’s comment.
“That’s one way to put it. Micro machines designed to overtake their host at a given moment,” Lucy said honestly while she took back the syringe.
Robin couldn’t escape the feeling that they were stalling the inevitable. Without it, Tyler would surely die. With it, his chance at surviving this considerably increased, or so she was lead to believe. It felt like they were at a crossroads: one road would lead them to a certain known point, the other road would lead into darkness. If it did what Lucy said it did, Tyler would live but he would become a danger. She hung her head and closed her eyes for a long. It wasn’t just somebody they were going to administer it on, it was her son.
For a long time she had pushed back that little piece of knowledge but now that she had seen someone come through time herself, it had come back prominently. Tyler had told her the truth, and she had hated him for it because she had thought it had been a lie.
Before she realized it she had taken his hand and held it gently in hers, softly rubbing her thumb over the back of it. This was her son and he was dying. Tears welled in her eyes and she quickly wiped them away with the back of her other hand.
She opened her mouth and tried to speak but no sound came over her lips. Lucy sent her a curious look.
“Can I… Can I give it to him?” She stammered when she finally found her voice back.
Lucy shook her head: “That would be against orders. The First Sergeant said that I should inject it into his blood stream.”
“Tyler told you that?”
Again Lucy shook her head: “No, the First Sergeant of MedCom,” she answered while looking at Ethan for a few seconds.
“Well, I’m John Connor and I’m telling you to let her do it,” John barked, sounding slightly annoyed.
“With all due respect, sir, may I ask why?” Lucy asked with a frown on her face.
“No, you may not,” John growled.
“Sir, we don’t know exactly what will happen. We haven’t tried it on another human before,” Lucy nodded towards the still form on the table. “Him, I guess.”
Robin saw the muscles in John’s jaw twitch. He was trying to keep his cool: “He will suffer, like none of us has ever suffered before. It will throw him into the deepest fits of violent insanity.”
“Sir? How can you know, sir?”
“I know, because I know him… I knew him. I met the future him in the past,” John said cryptically.
“I’m sorry, sir, but that’s impossible,” Lucy protested. “First Sergeant Tyler Jess Devlin died in the late afternoon hours on the day you escaped from Century, sir… He died or dies.”
Robin noticed that John’s face had gone completely pale: “IntelliTech?” He stammered.
“It perished early in the morning of December fourth, twenty-twenty-five. The base got overrun by tin cans. They never stood a chance, sir.”
“Did you?” John began. “Did you see it?”
Lucy nodded slowly: “I was a member of the E.T. that was sent to IT Base. No survivors, sir.”
John picked up a modded out 40 Watt Plasma rifle and held it up for all to see: “Did you find this weapon?” He asked.
“But… But, sir, that’s ‘Peacemaker’,” Lucy exclaimed surprised. “We found it near a woman’s body, deep within the tunnels of the base.”
“She kept it,” John mumbled barely audible. “It was jammed, right?” He asked in a firm voice.
Lucy nodded slowly: “Yes, it showed signs of being jammed.”
Now it was John’s turn to nod before he gestured a Private to come over.
“Sir?” The young Private asked.
Robin watched as John pressed the weapon in the Private’s hands: “Destroy it!”
The Private looked confused, then in awe that he was holding such a powerful rifle: “It’s a perfectly good weapon, sir.”
“If that,” John growled angrily before nodding towards Tyler. “Means it’s a perfectly good weapon… Destroy it!”
“But it’s the First Sergeant’s rifle. He will need it,” the Private objected.
“It refused duty once, and it will again. It has to go… If I so much as suspect that you’ve kept it or traded it, I will shoot you myself,” John barked bitterly. “Are you sure that you want to do this, Baxter?” He asked in a much friendlier fashion, turning towards her suddenly.
Again Robin felt tears well in her eyes: “I know who he is, C. I know now who I will be… I don’t want to do this, but it’s only right that I do it.”
She took the syringe from Lucy and leaned over the man who would be her son. Her eyes slid over his face, over the scars. She let go of his hand and gently caressed his face in a fashion only a mother could: “I’m sorry, Tyler,” she mumbled while she looked for the best vein and stuck the needle in, pushing the re-greenish fluid into his blood.

The last thing he remembered was the intense pressure on his mind when the gusts of hot wind blew the world apart. Now everything was pitch black. Suddenly purplish and bluish-white mists rolled in, swirling erratically, rising and falling like waves at a shore. It started to rain small sparks of electricity.
Slowly he turned three hundred-sixty degrees to see where he was. The pressure on his mind was back. His brain ignited and he fell to his knees. He pressed his hands to his temples and tried to fight off the increasing pain.
“Ty?” A familiar woman’s voice called from behind him. “I love you.”
Sarah. He looked over his shoulder but saw no one.
“TJ?” Another familiar woman’s voice called somewhere to his left side. “Don’t you think it’s about time that you put daddy’s computer back together?”
Mom. He looked to his left and saw no one.
“Tyler?” A man’s voice said sternly just to the right of him. “You haven’t listened to a word I said.”
Dad. He looked to his right and saw no one.
“Tyler Jess Devlin,” a strange mechanical voice said. “Help me understand humans.”
He turned into the direction of the voice and stared into two bright red glaring eyes.
The mist thickened, swirling more erratically than before. Suddenly he began to sank away. He looked at the ground and saw a silvery metallic liquid into which he was disappearing fast.
Complete darkness set in again.

Chapter 16: Tyler's Inferno

Chapter 18: Picture Perfect