Robin leaned with her back against the wall. Her knees buckled and she let herself slide to the floor. Tears were streaming freely down her cheeks. What had she done?
If what Tyler had told a few years ago was true, and since this morning she did not doubt it, she had just become part in his insanity.
“Find out the hard way when you’re screwing up my mind in ten years.” It hadn’t been ten years, only six. “You will do stuff to me, bad stuff, and it will consume you.” Words of warning that were about to come true. He had told her that she would make him mad. She could have stopped it, resulting in his death. She could have stepped back, letting someone else take the blame. There were so many things she could have done, done differently.
She pulled her legs up, wrapped her arms around them and rocked herself back and forth. She couldn’t deny that things had always been a little strange between Tyler and her, like an odd familiarity she had not quite been able to place. It had been there the moment he had saved her life for the very first time, on the day the world had gone to hell.
She glanced at the door across the hallway from her. Behind that door, a man was fighting to stay alive. Behind that door, a man was slowly losing his mind while the nanoattrioids embedded into his brain and nerve system. What had she done?

John walked up to the young Private who was standing watch at the door of the operation room and gently placed a hand on the young man’s shoulder: “You did one hell of a job out there.”
“Thank you, sir, but it was only my job,” Private Reese mumbled shyly. “How is he, sir?” He asked hesitantly, looking past John at the still figure on the makeshift operating table.
“Barely hanging on,” John sighed while he looked over his shoulder.
“I sure hope he will make it, sir,” Private Reese said sincerely.
“So do I,” John agreed. “So do I.”
There was going be hell to pay if Tyler would still die. He had talked to Corporal Lucy Owens for a couple of minutes, only to be interrupted when Tyler suffered his first severe seizure. Owens had told him about the future without the Devil in it. Without the Devil the war had already last two years longer than he had come to believe. Instead of celebrating the victory over the machines in the summer of 2027, they had still be fighting in the spring of 2029. The loss of the Devil had set the Resistance back two years, back to the original timeline, if one really existed.
“He’s important, isn’t he?” Private Reese asked slowly after an awkward moment of silence in which they had both looked at the topic of this conversation.
“He is my brother,” John answered in a whisper.
“He’s your brother, sir?” Private Reese frowned confused.
John chuckled: “Not by birth, but we’ve been through enough together for me to call him my brother.
He looked at the young man who was destined to become his father in a future distant past. A broad smile split his face in half when he suddenly remembered the little boy in the park playing ball with his brother Derek. Out for ice cream with his uncle on his sixteenth birthday.
“We met when we were both sixteen. His parents were dead and he came to live with us… My mom taught him everything in four years what she’d been teaching me my entire life… She was an extraordinary woman.”
“She sure sounds like it, sir,” Private Reese remarked.
John reached into the back pocket of his pants and pulled out an old somewhat yellowed Polaroid photo. He could feel the eyes of Private Reese rest on him for a brief moment when he held the picture out to him..
“She looks really nice, sir,” Private Reese muttered a little embarrassed after only glancing at the photo for a second or two. “I can’t really remember mine,” he added sadly.
“You can keep it if you want,” John tried to sound as casual as possible.
“Sir? She’s your mother… I couldn’t,” Private Reese protested.
“I don’t need photos to remember her by… Reese, I don’t have many things to give, and I would like you to have it… As a thank you for all you did out there.”
“I’m honored, sir, but-”
“No buts, Private. It’s just a small token of my appreciation. Nothing more, nothing less,” John interrupted him.

He felt like he was drowning, his lungs slowly filling with the silvery white liquid he had sunk away in just seconds before. The increasing sensation of his brain on fire kept him from thinking straight. Acting on instinct alone he began to swim upwards, to the surface.

John knew that he was in trouble. His mother wasn’t the kind of person you could say ‘no’ to without severe consequences to be faced. Nevertheless he had to chose the future, and not personal sentiment, in this case fear that Sarah Connor would rip him a new one.
She had become a legend on her own, by making a stand against the future. She had given up her own life to give him one. It was something he could see now. For a while he had been allowed to be John Baum, instead of John Connor. She had made it possible by trying to stop the future, by keeping him out of harm’s way. Until Judgment Day he had known every origin of every scar she had gotten in her fight for the future.
She was indeed an extraordinary woman, given a life and destiny she had never asked for but had lived it the best she could. So she was prone to violent acting out and temper shifts. But who wouldn’t if they had lived the life she had lead.
It had been one of the reason why Tyler had to live. He had not seen them together yet. He had no idea how they were like as a couple. But it was a shred of happiness in her dark existence. If not for the future, for her.

“Get me John on the line!” Sarah barked upon entering the command center.
“Ma’am?” Private Peter Marks looked up from his desk.
“You heard me.”
Private Marks picked up the direct line to CD Base and talked to the person on the other end for a minute or two: “Ma’am. C isn’t taking any calls,” he said in a soft and gentle voice.
“He can either come on the line or I am going over there,” Sarah hissed, turning towards a small wall screen.
A few moments later the wall screen flickered and John appeared onscreen.
“John,” Sarah said emotionally. “Thank god you’re okay.”
“I’m fine, mom,” John said with a hint of annoyance.
She had forgotten about her anger for a little while when she saw her son in one piece. He had been in Century for six years and his stay had left its marks. No one survived the war unscathed. She knew, since she had gathered quite the collection of scars over the years and she had never forgotten how she had gotten them.
“So what’s the big emergency?” He asked feigning innocence.
Immediately her anger was back: “Like you don’t know!” She exclaimed furiously. “What’s this bullshit of me not being allowed on CD Base?!”
“It’s not safe, mom,” he sighed.
“No one is ever safe, John,” she countered annoyed.
“I know!” He growled.
She wanted to yell at him, for all the wrong reasons and the good. She wanted to ask him, but feared the answer. She wanted to know and didn’t want to know at the same time. Was it wrong to hope that he would tell her without having to ask him?
“Is that all?” He asked, looking away when someone entered his communication room.
She opened her mouth to ask him the question she had been dreading to ask him and immediately shut it again.
“Is that all?” He asked impatiently, now reading a note that had been passed to him.
Finally she found her voice back: “That’s all,” she managed to say.
She had been bent on ryno-ing him if he wouldn’t give her any straight answers. However for one of the very few times in her life her emotions worked against her, made it impossible for her to go off on a rant.
“Be safe, mom,” he said before closing the line.
The screen flickered and went blank.
“Be safe, John,” she said to the blank screen.
“Ma’am, are you okay?” Private Marks asked concerned.
“Never been better,” she replied sarcastically while she turned her back to the screen. “Get me Ethan Scottsdale on the line.”

“Damn, he’s strong,” Ethan panted while he tried to keep Tyler pinned down.
“Sarah?” Tyler exclaimed, trying to struggle free. “Sarah?!”
Robin sighed. Why didn’t it surprise her that he was calling for that woman? She had tried liking her but as time went by, she had started to harbor a huge dislike for her. Tyler, her son, he could be blinded by whatever the Connor woman had shown him, but she knew how the minds of women worked. The age gap of 18 yeas only strengthened her conviction that Sarah was using him to feel better about herself. He was nothing more than a boy toy.
At first it had been some misguided jealousy. When she hadn’t known about their family bond. A handsome stranger reaching through dusty sand clouds and saving her life: who wouldn’t fall in love with a hero like that? Later on it turned into something best described as motherly protectiveness: a woman like Sarah Connor was no good for her son.
The door behind her was opened and closed and John brushed past her: “Hey, buddy,” he greeted Tyler warmly.
“Sarah? Where’s Sarah?” Tyler’s voice was weak, almost frail.
“She’s on her way over,” John answered.
At that Tyler let himself fall back on the table and closed his eyes, a smile forming on his lips, allowing John and Ethan to put him back in the restraints.
“Robin, it’s time,” John said to her.
She turned to Lucy who had prepared the second injection. This time it was going to be 12.5 cc. Tyler might be conscious but he wasn’t out of the danger zone yet. The first injection had been to given to stop the worst. Now it was time to start healing. She picked it up and inspected it.
“What’s that?” Tyler asked, raising his head a little to see what was going on.
“It’s gonna help you heal, Tyler,” John said in a reassuring voice.
“But what is it?” Tyler wanted to know.
Robin looked at John who was looking at the syringe she was holding: “Just some meds to help you recover from your injuries. You had us thinking you were a goner,” John answered with a faint smile.
“What is it?” Tyler asked for a third time, his voice fading.
“Nanoattrioids,” Robin said aloud.
She hadn’t meant to say it, but now she regretted it. Tyler began to fight against the restraints even before she had finished the word. John and Ethan each grabbed an arm and pushed Tyler back on the table, trying to keep him down. Now Tyler began to wriggle and kick.
“Robin, now!” John barked while he leaned his full weight on Tyler’s left arm.
“Please, don’t,” Tyler pleaded with her, struggling, fighting. “You don’t know what you’re doing!”
“Robin!”
She jumped a little and quickly went over to the table, grabbing Tyler by the right wrist. His struggle had caused his veins to be prominently seen and she pushed the needle directly into the artery.
“You don’t know what you’re doing,” Tyler breathed heavily before passing out.

Chapter 17: Something Dark Is Coming

Chapter 19: The Phoenix