“Ghost!” Tyler exclaimed while he watched the servo-drone factory collapse after the explosion.
He hadn’t seen her come out of the building. His heart sank into his shoes. She had insisted on placing the explosives along with Jenkins. He should’ve done it.
“Connor!” He yelled, jumping over the wall of rubble and debris, not caring for his own safety.
He started running, the dusty hot air from the explosions burning in his lungs, deaf to the calls of his team members.
“Major General Devlin!” Second Lieutenant Ryan called after him, laying cover fire as he sprinted towards the entrance of the collapsed building. “Incoming birds!”
He didn’t notice the drove of a.r.u.’s approaching and descending to start their attack.
“Connor!” He boomed when he reached where the main entrance of the servo-drone factory had been.
His heart was pounding erratically in his chest, feeling close to exploding: “Connor!” He repeated.
She could be anywhere, buried under the debris, wounded or maybe even dead. He immediately pushed the thought of her being dead from his mind. She was alive, she had to be alive.
“Connor!” He kept repeating as he started to dig through the rubble.
In the vague distance he could hear Second Lieutenant Ryan call her orders: “Take those damn birds down!”
It rained metal on him when the first rpg hit the a.r.u. closest by and caused it to explode mid-air. Hot pieces of shrapnel scorched his skin but he didn’t feel it. The need to find her blocked out all his thoughts, all his senses. His hands were raw and cut from the pieces of debris he tossed aside while digging through the rubble.
Another explosion over his head, another shower of metal. It didn’t hurt him. It drove him to dig faster and faster. Finding her. He had to find her.

Robin Baxter looked at the tormented man who sat on a chair by the door. He sat bent over forwards, his bloody right hand pressed against his forehead, his wounded fingers buried in locks of dusty, wavy hair. Her heart ached for him. Invincible, legendary for his wild escapes and daring stunts, reduced to a pile of despair and heartache.
She cleared her throat in the hopes he would look up. He didn’t.
“Tyler,” she said softly, slowly walking up to him.
“Just give it to me straight,” he said firmly. “She didn’t make it, did she?”
She heard the tremor of restrained emotion in his voice and a stab of sadness shot through her heart and soul.
“She did, Tyler. Barely but she did.”
He finally looked up at her and the sad look in his eyes almost caused her to dissolve into tears. She knew that he really loved Sarah Connor, and by now she had come to realize that Sarah Connor loved him back. He was not a boy toy. Maybe the change of heart had come when Derek Reese had started to show interest in her? And had all her grudges against Sarah been indeed based on jealousy?
“Come on,” she said in a soft voice after placing her hand on his shoulder in a motherly fashion. “Let me take a look at those hands of yours.”
He looked at his hands, at the back and at the palms: “They’re fine,” he grumbled annoyed.
“Let me have a look,” she said sternly, taking his hands in hers.
He pulled them back: “I said, they’re fine.”
“I’ll let you sit with her?” She offered in return.

She watched him as he sat on his side of the bed pulling his right feet up to tie the laces of his boots. There was still so much she wanted to tell him, so much she needed to say to him. It was the early evening of December 3rd, 2025 and time was running out for them. By this time tomorrow IntelliTech Base would have perished in the flames, Tyler would be fighting for his life once again and she would be dead.
It didn’t matter that he had killed who would be the traitor of IT Base. She had learned the hard way that despite the change in the course of events certain things would still happen. They had never been able to stop Skynet and Judgment Day, only delay it. Tyler, back then TJ, had called it the inevitability of the future. They could change it all they wanted it would still come.
Lazily she reached out to him, touching him softly on the small of his back. He looked over his shoulder and smiled at her. It was a sad smile and she knew it was because he knew that this had been their last afternoon together.
For seventeen years he had been her friend. For twelve years he had been her protector. For ten years he had been her lover and for three years he had been her ‘husband’. She had always worn his dog tags with pride but now she took them off and held them out to him.
His answer was a single nod, after which he took her dog tags off and held them out to her. She could see the tears glisten in the corners of his eyes, as to where her tears were running freely down her cheeks. It was a necessary ‘divorce’. He needed to be free to fulfil the rest of his destiny, she needed to be free to fulfil the last part of her destiny.
“No fate but what we make,” she whispered tearfully while she took her dog tags back and put them on.
“No fate but what we make,” he repeated, showing a faint smile before looking around for a T- shirt.

He tried to memorize everything. How her sharp outlets of breath caressed his ear. How her fingers dug deep into the flesh of his back. The softness of her lips as they pressed against his in a passionate kiss. The silkiness of her skin as she pressed her body firmly against his in their lover’s play.
Not wanting to miss anything, he opened his eyes a little and looked at her face. Without giving it a second thought, he reached for her eye patch and removed it.
“Ty,” she murmured, turning her head away immediately. “Don’t.”
He knew she did it so he would not see the scars the explosion at the servo-drone factory had left.
“I wanna see you,” he whispered while he brought his hand up to her chin and turned her face back to him. “I wanna see you and remember,” he whispered, cupping her face in his hands before kissing her softly again. “I love you, Connor. I always will,” he breathed.
She opened her right eye and looked at him: “Promise me, Ty,” she said softly.
“Anything,” he said sincerely.
“Promise me that you will tell me,” she sighed. “Don’t become him in that sense too.”
He rested his forehead against hers and took a deep breath before saying: “I will.”
It was a promise he could never keep, he already knew. It was not his destiny to tell her in the past. If he were to tell her, it would unnecessarily complicate matters. He would not be sent back to love her, but to ensure the future. He would die while protecting her, TJ and John from Skynet and its toys.
Her hands slid from his upper back to his behind, gently urging him to continue their lover’s play. More words wasted would be superfluous. He kissed her again, long and hard, unspoken findings of despair and love. Reaching for her hands, their fingers lacing together, he loved her.

She opened the top drawer of her desk and took out a small box. After placing it on her desk, she opened it and started sifting through the small metal plates until she found what she had been looking for. A small metal plate with the text ‘MG. T.J. Devlin, J-S-4-9-7-2-8’ written on it. She had worn it for a less than a year until he had made Lieutenant General.
Now they were ‘divorced’. They had said goodbye three times. Three times they had ended up making love to each other, like there would be no tomorrow. In her case that would be all too true. There would be no tomorrow for her. There would be no tomorrow for him either. She had known him and she had known the other Tyler. They weren’t the same and yet they could not have been more alike.
“Be safe, Devlin,” she whispered after putting the tag back in the box and closing the lid.
A loud explosion rocked the tunnel complex of IntelliTech Base and she heaved a sigh of defeat. It had begun.

His heart stopped beating when he reached what once had been the hidden entrance of IntelliTech Base. Clouds of black and dark gray smoke rose from the gaping hole. Cries and noise of battle rose to the surface.
It had happened. He had killed the future traitor, and yet it still had happened. For a second he looked at the sky. The morning was already coming, the dawn already setting in. IntelliTech Base had fallen. Seven years it had been their safehouse. Seven years it had been hidden out of sight, untraceable from the ground and the sky. Now it lay exposed, like a dragon’s mouth from which flames and smoke were spewed.
He looked at the metal bar in his left hand before looking at the plasma rifle in his right hand. He could walk away, already knowing the outcome of the battle. She would die. His friends, his troops would die. But it wasn’t the ‘prophecy’. It wasn’t the promise that he had made to John to keep Sarah safe all those years ago.
The nanoattrioids, they made him stronger. He wasn’t anything like the other Tyler, who had been a weakling. The other Tyler, who could be as strong as a tin man, had been weak this morning, only to fight for his life when it had been too late to change a thing.
Without giving it another thought he jumped down the steps. H.c.c.u.’s and infiltrators left and right. He swung the metal bar, knocking back a few enemy units before frying their electronic circuits with well-placed NNEMP rounds from “Metal Ripper”. After John had ordered the destruction of “Peacekeeper” he had gotten himself a new weapon, a SKN-80Watt plasma gun, and had modified it to meet his demands.
It was pandemonium in the hallways and the command center. His troops were fighting the machines, holding them back from the tunnels anyway they could. Thick mists swirled ominously over the floor and he tripped over something while dodging a laser charge. Losing his footing, he let go of the metal bar to break his fall and not lose “Metal Ripper”. The bar clattered on the floor, disappearing in the mists.
“Damnit,” he hissed through gritted teeth while he looked back to see what had caused him to fall.
“Sorry, sir,” Sergeant First Class Lucy Owens panted.
She was breathing hard and irregularly. He examined her quickly. Blood seeped through her fingers where she kept her hands pressed firmly against her abdomen. Carefully he pulled one hand away and saw that she had taken a direct hit in the stomach area and was now keeping her intestines from spilling out with her hands.
“Metal everywhere,” she breathed, her face drawn up in pain. “An explosion… Safe door… They overran us… I’m… so… sorry…, sir.”
“There’s nothing to be sorry about, Owens,” he said in palliation.
“I… took… out two… before… they… got me…, sir,” she mumbled.
“You did good,” he stated while he surveyed the battles going on around him.
He was presented with two options: he could let nature take its course or he could be merciful and end it right here and now for her. It was only a matter of time before she would die. After taking a deep breath, he reached for his sidearm and pulled it out.
He could feel her eyes rest on the hand gun: “Thank… you…, sir,” she started to cough up more and more blood.
“No, thank you, Sergeant First Class, for coming back through time and saving my sorry ass,” he stated sincerely, keeping any other emotion from his voice.
“Be… safe…, sir.”
Slowly bringing the gun up to the side of her head, he closed his eyes and pulled the trigger. The shot rang out and immediately drowned in the noise of the ongoing battles. It had not been his first mercy kill, having been an Undertaker, but each and every mercy kill had gnawed at his soul. He could kill traitors, like Palters, without so much as blinking, but a mercy kill was something entirely different.
“I’m sorry, Owens,” he whispered, his voice catching in his throat. “I’m so sorry.”
He looked at her lifeless body propped up against the desk, reaching over to close her empty eyes forever.
“I’m so sorry,” he whisper again.
Feeling dead calm all of a sudden, he reached for “Metal Ripper”, rose to his feet and began firing NNEMP rounds at the h.c.c.u.’s and the infiltration units. All marksman shots to fry their circuits and keep them from entering the tunnels.
“Fire in the hall!” First Lieutenant Ryan yelled a second before the room bathed in white light and was rocked by a small explosion.
The small blast wave caused him to stumble a little. For a moment he was blinded by the light. A searing pain knocked him back to reality when he felt something hit him in the face. A piece of shrapnel cut deep and long in his left cheek.
His brain began to feel as it were on fire again. Sharp short painful stabs of electricity caused him to fall on one knee and he pressed his left hand against the side of his head. The nanoattrioids were stirring now that he was injured. Normally he would have fought them off, but now he didn’t have the time or the energy to do so.
“Well, fuck, do your damn work then!” he growled when the stabs increased in length and intensity.
Black fog rolled in, covering his thoughts and feelings. He could feel the glaring red eyes pierce right through him, and he allowed it.
“Com’on then,” he yelled to no one in particular while he channelled his energy and that of the nanoattrioids.
His effort disconnected the last bit of humanity he had left. Was this his purpose? To call upon the enemy for the greater good? He let out a grim howl, causing the young Private closest to him to jump three feet in the air from fright.
Acting a strange form of auto-pilot, he started taking out the machines that were between him and the entrance of the tunnel complex. One after another. He felt nothing anymore. No more anger, no more hate, as if he was void of any human emotion. He was one of them now, and his mission objective was to stop them and protect her at all costs.

“CONNOR?!” She heard him call for her.
“TYLER?!” She shouted back when she heard his voice.
Thick smoke from an explosion on the higher level drifted down the stairs to the deeper tunnels with the private quarters of the refs and civs on IntelliTech Base. A huge form rose up from the smoke and she aimed for its head. She knew that it could copy voices and she had to be sure that it was him and not an infiltrator.
Some kind of relief sank in when she could see it was him. He was still alive, and she lowered her weapon after he smugly said: “Stand down, Connor.”
“Ty,” she exclaimed when she saw the gash across his left cheek. “You’re hurt!”
She reached for his cheek to check the wound but he backed away. Only then she noticed. He was different.
“Ty,” she tried to breathe but the shock of his decision made it nearly impossible. “What did you do?”
“What I had to do,” he said monotonically. “We don’t have time for this!”
“How the fuck did those metal bastards know, Ty?” She asked furiously.
“Don’t know,” he shook his head. “But we gotta get outta here! Blew up the place. Don’t know how long.”
She followed his gaze as he looked over his shoulder into the clouds of smoke that still came drifting down the stairs.
“Com’on, that way,” he pointed at the end of the hallway with “Metal Ripper” before grabbing her by the arm. “We’ll take thirteen.”
They ran straight out, turning left at the fourth hallway, then turning left again at the second, right at the seventh, straight until the end, knowing that exit thirteen was only two corners away.
“Hurry, almost there,” he panted, pushing her ahead of him.
“Ty!”
Around the corner came a huge man, carrying two plasma guns, almost identical to the one Tyler was carrying. She immediately raised her own rifle to take aim and take the infiltrator out. However by her sudden halt, Tyler ran into her and she missed the infiltrator’s head by an inch. The shot took a large chunk out of the wall and the infiltrator looked at her with some curiosity. It looked like the twin brother of the two infiltrators that had been sent back to her past and her heart began to beat erratically. Maybe it was one of the two?
Tyler came up beside her, with "Metal Ripper" ready to fire. The laser pointer of "Metal Ripper" was pointing just above the glaring red eyes of the machine. The NNEMP round that would set them free never came and she looked to her side to see Tyler toss it aside.
He grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her to him, stepping between her and the machine to act like a human shield. Her side began to burn a second after she had heard the familiar sound of a plasma gun being fired. The pain was excruciating and she let herself fall to her knees, dropping her plasma rifle, pressing her hands to her side. She could feel the warmth of her blood as it oozed through her fingers.
“Connor,” he exclaimed, his voice coming closer quickly. “Connor… No.”
She felt his arms come around her and she winced. He meant it so well, but the everlasting darkness was luring her, tempting her to come and feel nothing anymore.
“No… No…,” he repeated again and she could hear the emotions back in his voice.
He had given in into the machine to try to save her and her nearing death would give him back his humanity. He could not save her, not now, but she could save him.
“Ty?” She was startled by how far away she sounded.
“Stay!” He ordered her sternly, his voice now brimming over with emotions.
She opened her right eye and looked at him for one last time. The look on his face broke her heart but she couldn’t stay. Her fight, her war was over. War’s wounds had bled her dry. There would be no more words of comfort or forgiveness. She would see the end of the war that had started for her forty-one years ago.
Even smiling hurt because it was a goodbye they both had known would come, and now that it was here it was crueller than she had ever imagined it could be.
“I… love… you, Devlin,” she coughed, tasting the vile taste of blood at the back of her throat.
She saw him open his mouth, his lips were moving but death drowned out all sound. She clutched at his upper arms, trying to stay but the world was fading fast. Finally eternal darkness sank in.

Chapter 21: The Mists Of Battle

Chapter 23: Lucifer Fallen