His eyes snapped open, but he could not see. Total darkness enfolded him. Complete and utter silence. Where was he? Had he died like he thought he would?
Suddenly reddish-white mists rolled in, swirling erratically, rising and falling like waves at a shore. They cast their ghostly light into the darkness and covered his feet and lower legs with their swirls, crackling like a fire in a hearth. It began to rain small sparks of electricity. The sparks falling on his skin but they didn’t burn him. He held out a hand to catch some of the sparks as they fell from the black sky. They melted away instantly.
A sudden increase of pressure on his mind had him fall on his knees while he pressed his hands to his temples. A beastly howl escaped from him. Where was he? Why was he tortured like this? The pain increased to excruciating and he felt like passing out but the sweet relief of unconsciousness did not come. It felt like his brain was on fire, searing headaches cutting through his head.
The mist thickened, rolling in and out like reddish tidal waves. Suddenly he was bathing in bright red lights. Two hovering spotlights, looking eerily like a pair of eyes, stared down on him from out of nowhere. He blinked a few times and looked at the lights again. It was eyes. Bright red glaring eyes, void from any expression or emotion.
What the hell was going on? He steadied himself by placing one hand on the floor. The mist subsided and revealed a red-greenish floor with tiny silvery sparkles underneath his hand. Suddenly his hand sank away . The strange floor had started to turn into liquid and he was sinking away fast.
He tried to scream for help but his voice refused duty. He tried to pull his hand out, only to find himself pulled faster into the swirling mass of red-green with silvery sparkles. It had not been enough that he had been shot twice, now he had to drown in limbo as well?
The deeper he sank into the liquefied floor, the more excruciating the pain in his mind became. Unable to fight any longer, he gave up and decided to see where it all would end. The eyes came closer, as if to make sure that he was really disappearing into the trap they had set for him.
A loud metallic clatter somewhere in the background, like a huge metal door being bolted, had him jerk and close his eyes for a second or two. He opened his eyes again and found himself back in complete darkness. No more mist, no more eyes, but most importantly no more pain.

“Is he going to make it?” John asked concerned when Charley washed the blood off of his hands at the kitchen sink.
“I’m not gonna lie, Johnny. He lost a lot of blood, but with the blood transfusion, he might have a chance. So what happened?”
“Along story ending in TJ taking bullets for me,” he answered.
“Another one of those things?”
He nodded.
“And him?” Charley asked, nodding towards the big man sitting next to the young man lying on the kitchen table. “He. He’s. He’s from the future, right?”
“Yeah,” he agreed while he looked at Tyler watching over TJ.
“He’s. He’s that kid? That’s why you said that their blood would be a perfect match when I said that the boy needed a blood transfusion.”
“Yeah.”
He had not given the suggestion of Tyler giving blood to TJ a second thought until now. Tyler had protested, covertly hinting at what was in his blood, telling them that the fates should decide whether TJ should live or die, but he hadn’t been in a state of mind to take no for an answer, leaving Tyler grumbling something about dying anyway.
Now that the hectic of the first few minutes had died down, he had more time to reflect upon his idea of the blood transfusion. Tyler would have been the perfect match, if not for his cyborg arm and nanoattrioids. Deep panic threatened to overpower him suddenly. What had he done?
“The price of survival was my… humanity,” Tyler’s voice echoed in his mind. Ominous words, that left him shivering. Had he sacrificed TJ’s humanity in an attempt to save his life?
He walked up to Tyler and smiled sadly when the man glared at him: “This should not have happened,” Tyler growled darkly. “Not for many years to come. You fucked up his life already, kid.”
“At least I did not try to kill him,” he bit back at Tyler.
“No, you only blew his mind. He’s only sixteen, kid. Way too young to handle the nano’s. They’ll take over because he lacks the strength to deal with them, and he will kill you.”
He gulped nervously: “It’s a chance I will have to take.”
He remembered what Cameron had told him about the nanoattrioids, about part of it being reconstructive nanites that would repair their host. In the case of humans they would heal their host, increasing the chance of survival.
“I see that you’ve grown a pair. Gonna try and keep ‘em this time?” Tyler asked sarcastically. “Or are you gonna go back to that whiny brat I knew in my teens, who lets everyone else do his dirty work for him?”
Harsh words that left him taken aback: “I thought you and I were friends?” He stammered.
“No. I was friends with the John I knew from my teens, but even in the end he betrayed me,” Tyler answered embittered. “It was a necessary betrayal, but a betrayal still… He’s not even your friend and you have already betrayed him.”
Even harsher words that caused him to tear up.
“But I’m John Connor,” he mumbled, hoping it would mean something to Tyler.
“I don’t care, kid. People worship you, obey your every wish and command, but I’m not one of them. I know who you are and who you will be. The fate of humanity, of the world weighing heavy on your shoulders now, but it’s nothing compared to what you will face in the future. Charmed by little miss tin, you risk everything now,” Tyler said, shaking his head wearily, “Don’t put your faith in the machine, kid. They’re expendable. Use ‘em, then junk ‘em.”

He swim upwards, to where it was light, and broke the surface, gasping for air.
“Welcome back, kid,” he heard a raw, deep man’s voice say gently and he turned his head a little to see Tyler sitting next to him.
“Am I dead?” He asked, barely able from coughing.
Tyler shrugged his massive shoulders: “I don’t think so,” was his answer.
“John?”
“Calling his mom.”
“Is he okay?”
“What were you thinking, kid? Putting yourself in harm’s way like that,” Tyler chided. “You coulda died.”
His mind was still swirling, like the mists in the total darkness that had enfolded him. Pressured pain in his head made it impossible to clear his thoughts. He had not wanted to die, but shielding the John Connor had seemed the right thing to do when the infiltrator came for them.
“How’s our patient doing?” A man’s voice he did not know asked.
“Awake,” Tyler answered before he could.
He turned his head in the direction from where the unknown voice had come from: “Who are you?” He asked gruffly.
The man smiled warmly: “I’m Charley. You’ve been through a lot, Teej. Lost a great deal of blood, but you pulled through.”
Only now he noticed the strangest sensations in the areas where bullets had penetrated his body. It was a weird feeling that came closest to tickling combined with being burned by searing flames. Another excruciating pain and he felt like throwing up.
“It hurts, doesn’t it?” Charley asked with great concern while he rummaged through the medication kit. “I’ll give you a painkiller, so-”
“No meds,” Tyler interrupted Charley.
“What?” Charley stammered. “But the pain must be killing him,” he protested.
“He’ll live,” Tyler growled.
“That’s sadistic,” Charley remarked angrily. “He’s in pain, and I can’t refuse to give him any meds if he wants them.”
TJ watched as Tyler rose to his feet, walked up to the man named Charley and grabbed him by the throat with his left hand before slamming him into the wall.
“No meds,” Tyler repeated. “What’s in his blood now will help him.”
“And what is it exactly that is in his blood?” Charley asked in shallow breaths.
“Nanoattrioids,” John answered from the door opening.
“Nano-what?”
“Attrioids,” John replied while he entered the kitchen. “Skynet technology.”

Sarah looked out the window and heaved a deeply sad sigh. Her son had called her, told her about the events earlier and had promised that they would be home soon. She closed her eyes and rubbed her eyebrows.
TJ was a good kid and it tore her heart apart that he had gotten hurt already. He was nothing like the gruff brute who was the future him. Kind, eloquent and compassionate. Three traits she had already established after talking to him this past night before they went out to get Tyler from the police station.
She liked him and trusted him. Two things she was not likely to do so soon, but there was a strength about him that had her put her trust in him. It had been a strange but welcome surprise that when they had sat talking at the kitchen table, he had asked her to teach him. He knew that he needed a mentor and wanted it to be her.
In less than twenty-four hours after joining their battle for the human future, he had gotten severely wounded already and it made her decision whether to teach him everything she knew that would help him so much easier. She had already assessed that he had a hunger for learning, eager to understand and implement new skills, new knowledge.
She would help him where she could. And maybe it would inspire John to train as well? It had not gone unnoticed that, even though she had wanted somewhat of a normal life for him, he had become rather lax, more like John Baum than John Connor. Had she made a mistake to give him that opportunity to live a little before the great war?
Parental skills weren’t her thing. On the run for most of her life, her purpose to keep her son alive and well for him to lead the humans into battle against Skynet and its machines after Judgment Day. She had been so young, too young and absolutely not ready in her opinion, when she became a mother. She did love her son but not in the traditional motherly way. Just like all who knew about the future to come, she was prepared to lay down her life for him if the situation asked for it.
TJ, knowing them less than twenty-four hours, had displayed a similar plight when he had shielded her son from the bullets. A crazy son of a bitch, just like Tyler, very aware of what was at stake and ready to make sacrifices if necessary. In that sense he was more alike his future self than anyone could have anticipated.
She thought about Charley, a gentle man who had only been confronted with the future after it had become inevitable. He had been kind and understanding, and she had seen hope glimmer in his eyes, but to her it was a closed chapter.
A black jeep pulled up to the house and she watched closely as John, Tyler and TJ got out of the car. For a young man who had come so close to dying, TJ looked remarkably healthy and she worried what it meant. Her son had told her that a blood transfusion had been necessary but he had not told her whose blood it had been. Looking at TJ, she understood it had been Tyler’s blood. Why hadn’t she thought of that before? Or had she unknowingly but willingly pushed it from her mind?
A single tear slid down her right cheek, and she quickly wiped it away with the palm of her right hand. TJ had been forever changed. She worried about the impact it would have on everything. Only sixteen years old and already exposed to the forces of Skynet technology.
In their absence she had grilled Cameron about the nanoattrioids and what effect they had on humans. Cameron had only given her scarce answers for as far as her programming would allow, but most of the time she had said that it was not in her files. Sarah knew that to be a lie. Cameron knew everything from the past to the future. If she really didn’t know the answer, it had be because the answer lay in an alternative future.
When TJ said something to Tyler and the latter began to laugh, she noticed a change in understanding between them. No longer ‘strangers’, but kindred spirits. Joined in modified blood. It gave her a headache. They were each other, already sharing the same DNA, but Tyler had not granted his younger version the time of day yet. Until now.

“He is changed,” Cameron stated matter-of-factly upon entering John’s bedroom.
John rolled his eyes; like he needed reminding of his last option to save TJ’s life: “So?”
“He can’t be trusted anymore, John. He’s a threat.”
“Teej? Com’on,” John faked a laugh. “How dangerous can he be?”
“The nanoattrioids will completely destabilize him. Physically he will have advantages, but mentally he’ll be threat. Unpredictable. Sane one minute, violently insane the next,” she remarked.
“Mom will look after him,” he sighed. “Didn’t you say that Tyler was her husband once? Maybe that’s the key. His love for her?”
She tilted her head and gave him a look that could be considered contemplating if she had been human, but he knew that she was running an analysis of the situation and assessing the possible outcomes. For once he saw what she really was: a walking and talking computer, designed to infiltrate and kill her target.
“He has been conditioned,” she said monotonically. “Baxter successfully executed that part of her mission, like future you asked her to.”
“Future me knew that love might be the key in containing the monster that slumbers inside of TJ?” He asked in disbelief.
“Future you knows a lot of things you don’t know yet,” she answered slowly. “Future you, you both could be wrong and TJ will become a danger to all.”

The burning headaches came like avalanches, all consuming and driving him closer and closer to insanity. He buried his head under his pillow, hoping it would relief him from some of the pain. Footsteps coming closer slowly, a weight shift on the right side of the bed. Not Tyler, he concluded. A gentle touch on his shoulder.
“You okay?” A muffled voice he recognized as Sarah’s asked worriedly.
He shook his head, the pain intensified, and he almost passed out again. He was far from okay. Alive but nowhere near okay.
“You need anything?”
Other footsteps, heavier this time. Someone pulled the pillow away and pressed an icepack against his forehead. The contradiction between his brains on fire and the ice cold left him screaming in agony.
“It’s the nano’s from my blood embedding in his brain and nerve system.”
The way Tyler had spoken, it was with an unfamiliar warmth in his voice. Concern maybe? Was the toughest and roughest man from the future actually capable of caring? He held no illusions about who and what Tyler was, but this had him wondering. It immediately became a source of comfort and hope.
“I was already afraid this would happen, but the kid lost too much blood to chance a survival on his own,” Tyler added. “There was no time to-”
A long, awkward silence followed until Sarah shattered it: “I know. You take what you can get. John and Derek. TJ and you.”
By now the icepack was doing its work and relieved him some of the burning sensation in his mind. Just the lessening of the pain was already a welcome break.
“The kid would’ve been safe from it if it had only been a couple of drops,” Tyler mumbled uncharacteristically emotional.
“So what benefits does TJ have now?” Sarah asked haughtily. “Cameron told me that he could survive injuries that would kill any other man.”
“It’s possible. But he isn’t pumped full with that nano-shit. Only a small portion of what I have in body. So the kid got off lucky.”
A faint smile curled his mouth upwards; it sure sounded like the gruff and uncaring Tyler had returned. For some reason the antagonist act suited Tyler better than the caring act; he was a hellion, the Devil incarnate.
“Lucky?” Sarah asked, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “TJ nearly died. He got these things in his body and you dare to call him lucky?”
“I’ll call him anything I like,” Tyler countered with disdain. “And the kid was lucky.”
TJ opened his eyes hesitantly. Would the light blind him and increase the pain in his head again? Like it had done numerous times before? The evening was falling, setting the room in welcome shadows. Slowly he turned his head a little, careful as not to cause the headaches to grow more vehement again.
Tyler and Sarah looked like they were ready to go for each other’s throat at the next wrong word. Tyler, with his arms folded across his chest, daring and taunting Sarah with his body language. Sarah, her hands on her hips, set to jump at Tyler any second now.
“Get a room already,” he mumbled.
“What?” Sarah cried embarrassed, whirling around to look at him.
Tyler burst into laughter: “Good one, kid, but no. I’m not here to end Miss Connor’s dry spell.”
The headaches did not keep him from thinking or observing situation and he had concluded that there was more between Sarah and Tyler than would meet the eye.
He watched as Sarah now turned back to face Tyler: “Like you are so popular with the ladies… We know that every girl loves insensitive brutes like yourself… Not.”
At that Tyler started to laugh louder: “That’s childish, Sarah. Even for you.”
“And what is that supposed to mean?” Sarah hissed through gritted teeth.
“Oh nothing,” Tyler smirked before he looked innocently at the ceiling.
“It’s never nothing with you future idiots,” Sarah growled annoyed.
“Not very ladylike, Sarah, to start calling names. Then again you are no lady.”

Sarah just about had it with Tyler’s smug remarks. He was pushing it and she was running out of patience fast. She wasn’t a very patient woman to begin with. If she wanted answers, she would get answers. If someone pissed her off, he or she would feel her wrath in word or action.
It was true that she did not liked to be called lady, but that depended entirely on the situation. When Tyler had mentioned the Lady of IntelliTech Base, and had later on told her that she had been that person, it had flattered her ego in strange, unforeseen ways, because the way he said it spoke of a great respect and deep care. The manner in which he said it now spoke of mockery and disdain.
TJ had dented her conviction to give Tyler a piece of her mind by telling them to get a room already. There was something there, unmistakably, but it could never be. He tormented her for the fun of it, annoyed her until she saw no other solution but to hit him, and did his damndest best not to be liked by anyone. The last wasn’t a complete success because, despite his irritating behavior, there certainly was something likeable about him.
He wasn’t the monster of war he claimed he was. She agreed that he was formed by battle, death and destruction but he was still human. It showed in his sudden concern about his younger self. He had tried to kill TJ earlier and now he was caring for the young man.

The effect of the icepack was wearing off, and the pain in his head increased significantly again. The nanoattrioids embedding in his brain and nerve system. It should help him but right now it felt like it was killing him slowly on the inside, as if the hell fires of war swept through his mind. He passed out.
Total darkness enveloped him once again. Suddenly a bolt of lightning appeared in front of him, its electric arcs reaching and stretching further and further. One arc grazed his skin but he felt no pain. A strange howling noise accompanied the growth of the bolt. Bright white light blinded him and he shielded his eyes with his hands, making out dark figures in the bath of light. The light intensified and then disappeared completely, taking the bolt of electricity with it.
He found himself in a small room. A cell with barred windows with scarce furnishing. Slowly he turned around and noticed the door to be open on a crack. Where the hell was he now? Two men dressed in crisp white orderly uniforms entered the room, followed by a young woman in a business suit.
“Mom?” He muttered.
The woman looked at him with disgust and disdain: “What have you done now, son?” She asked angrily.
“It wasn’t me,” he answered, heartbroken by the lack of warmth in her voice.
“Of course not,” she said coldly. “It is never you… When are you gonna take responsibility for your own actions and stop putting the blame on others?”
He gulped nervously, trying to swallow the lump in his throat that had formed there upon seeing his mother alive and well, blinking away the tears that were welling in his eyes at her cold and distant behavior towards him. She had always been there for him, until the day she had left for Nebraska, and had always dropped everything she was doing to spend time with him. Now she was giving him the cold shoulder.
“You’re a failure, TJ, and not the hero of my stories,” she continued.
He hung his head like a chastised child and looked at the floor in front of his feet.
“See, you don’t even deny or fight it. You’re hopeless. A loser, not fit to be a champion.”
Her voice had gone from cold to mechanical and he looked up to see three metal skeletons staring at him, their bright red eyes piercing. A failure, a loser, hopeless, not fit to be a champion. The words became echoing whispers in his mind. He pressed his hands against his temples at the sudden increase of pressure on his brain. The hell fires of war set his mind ablaze again.
He opened his mouth to scream in pain but no sound passed his lips. Soundless he underwent wave after wave of excruciating pain, only to fall on his knees when it became too much to tolerate. Panting, bathing in cold sweat, he put his hands to the floor to steady himself. Reddish-white tufts of mist curled over and around his hands and wrists where he had placed them on the floor.
The floor, a swirling mass of red-green and tiny silvery sparkles, began to liquefy, pulling him in like quicksand. Faster and faster he sank away. The room around him exploded, gusts of hot wind and fire rolling over him, revealing a world in ruins with a pair of glaring bright red eyes hovering over it.
Extreme pressure on his chest, his head about to burst open, he disappeared under the surface of the floor. Darkness surrounded him once again, peaceful and quiet.

Chapter 19: The Price Of Survival Was My... Humanity

Chapter 21: In A Minefield Death Is Only One Step Away