He walked down the corridors of the tunnel complex, sometimes smiling friendly at the civs who would greet him heartily. They treated him like a war hero, but he wasn’t. He had sent thousands to their certain death by now, trying to keep the body count as low as possible. One time more successful than another.
A boy, no older than eight, jumped from a nice and pretended to shoot him. He grinned, made his hand into a gun and fired back. With all the drama an eight year old could muster the little boy played to be dying. War knew no glory, no victors.
Only a month ago he had been promoted to Lieutenant General, but rank held no meaning to him. He treated all who lived on the base equally. Refs and civs, all humans were equal.
Suddenly a young girl came running towards him, threw her arms around his waist and hugged him tightly. He laughed warmly: “Good morning to you too, Petra.”
“G’Morning, Mister Tyler,” the girl grinned sheepishly, resting her head against his chest.
He knew that she had a silly crush on him, if only because last week she had announced to Sarah and him that she would marry him someday. Petra’s story was one out of so many. Born into the ruins of the old world, saved from a destroyed pocket, orphaned by the machines.
Connor had been a good sport about it and had played along, at least until the girl was gone. After that the familiar routine of arguing over the big age gap had been started again. Somehow it amazed him that after ten years she could still find a reason to start an argument about it. Three years of marriage and still she feared that he would find someone better than her.
Surely she had to know by now that her heart would always be safe with him and that he would never ever betray her or her trust. He would lay down his life for her in a heartbeat.
“It’s been a long night, Petra,” he said friendly while he carefully removed her arms from around his middle. “I need to get some rest,” he added.
“Did you kill a lot of those scary robots?” She asked, trying to hide the disappointment from her voice but he had heard it.
“Yeah, I got a few,” he replied while he sent her a warm smile.
Maybe he was encouraging her in her crush on him, but she was just a kid in a dark world looking for someone to care for. Who was he to deny her that childhood fantasy?
“Do I need to worry?” A woman’s voice asked behind him.
He whirled around and took a good look at the woman who always carried herself as if she were a good foot taller than she actually was. The Sarah Connor. She was a remarkable woman and a formidable fighter. And she was his. A grin spread from ear-to-ear when he caught the intense look in her right eye.
He scratched himself behind his left ear, earning a chuckle from her. The dark color of her wavy hair had started to fade into dark gray shades. She had lost her left eye and part of her hearing on the left in an explosion at a servo-drone factory, and yet she was still the most gorgeous woman he had ever known. But his attraction to her wasn’t just a physical one. They connected on so many levels. Their wounded souls finding shelter with each other. Their battered bodies nurturing each other back to health. Their shielded hearts only finding refuge with each other.
The way she stood looking at him, her arms crossed in a casual way, a faint slow smile gracing her lips, it caused him to shift his weight from one leg to another until the impact was barely noticeable. However the curiously raised eyebrow told him she had seen it, just like she had anticipated.
She knew his body, his reactions and used that knowledge to her full advantage. In a few minutes, upon entering their room, she would ambush him, yank his clothes off and have him. In a few minutes she would be kissing his ear, his neck before biting his shoulder while he would move tenderly back and forth between her thighs. In a few minutes this dark world would seize to exist, replaced by an own little world where only the two of them mattered.

She sat up with a start, gasping for breath, bathing in cold sweat. As always she had slipped away in tormented dreams, some worse than others. Even in sleep, her soul knew no rest. The machine was always there, lurking in the darkest shadows.
Unable to remember the last time she had had a good dream. It had been in another lifetime. It had been another Sarah Connor. Even when Kyle would appear to her in her dreams, they were foreboding, like the one she’d had during the day she had wanted to break out of Pescadero. Kyle had told her that their son had been the target then. He had appeared to her only a few hours after she had signed their son away.
It had been the biggest mistake of her life. She had been beaten numb, been shocked into conditioned behaviour, been drugged up so her mind was clouded and her thoughts foggy. It was not a justification. It could never make up for the fact that she had signed that piece of paper and that she had given up every right as his mother. What had she been thinking?
She knew that she had not been thinking, that those few seconds of her life had not been hers. She should have fought back. She should have resisted. She could have swallowed the meds and not taken them.
Orderlies Douglas and Jeffrey. They had been on to her, applying new tactics to get her to really swallow the medication. In the first few months of her stay in Pescadero she had learned ways and tricks to avoid taking her medication and getting away with it. As her resistance against her stay and the way she was treated grew and grew, the orderlies’ resolve to break her increased as well.

There was a loud knock on the backdoor, and she grabbed her Beretta from under her pillow. Always a light sleeper, always aware of the things happening around her. Slowly she got up and silently made her way to the backdoor.
She could see a large form dressed in dark, ragged clothes through the small windows. After removing the safety she pressed herself against the wall to hide somewhat in the shadows. Her hand closed around the door knob, her other hand firmly gripped the Beretta.
It was that Devlin character, but she didn’t know if he had good intentions or not. Derek had told her earlier that he was one of them, a cyborg. An arm of coltan, some experimental drug that could make him turn on the people he was fighting this war for. Nevertheless just before he attacked the machine zeroing in on her, she had seen something in his eyes. Not just kindness but something else too: a deep hurt, similar to what she had seen in Kyle’s eyes. There had been a hint of recognition on his part, so he must have known her at one point in his life.
Slowly she turned the doorknob and opened the door on a crack. Before she could ask him what he wanted, he pushed the door open with his right hand and she stumbled back at the force. Had she made a mistake? She aimed for his head and he brought his left arm up.
“What do you want?” She barked, gently squeezing the trigger.
He kept quiet and looked at her, at the gun she was holding. One step towards her. She squeezed the trigger a little more: “Stay back!”
Another step towards her. Her heart became lodged in her throat when she realized that he was just as intimidating as the infiltrators she had encountered in her life. Only he was human. By now she was squeezing the trigger so much that the gun went off. Metal against metal, a loud howl that chilled her blood. She hadn’t meant to pull the trigger and it came as a relief that she had only shot him in the forearm.
He did another step closer, and another until her gun was pressing against his chest. Yet he had to say one word. Her eyes trailed up until they met his.
“Don’t!” She growled through gritted teeth, stopping back to stretch her arm as to widen the distance between them again.
The gun went flying from her hand when he pushed it away with his left hand. It startled her for a moment but then she regained her senses and pulled back for a right hook on the jaw. He shook his head a little after her right fist connected with the left side of his jaw, as if he only had to shake it off. A crooked smile formed on his face and he bridged the three feet left between them, burying his fingers in her hair, pulling her close.
She pressed her hands firmly against his chest and tried to push him away but he leaned down and took her breath away with a searing kiss. She tried to resist but soon found herself responding to his urgent kisses. Her hands slid from the back of his head where she had instinctively placed them to his chest again, ripping his shirt open so she could slide her hands over his skin. The tips of her fingers met ridge after ridge of scar after scar.
Lower her hands slid until they reached the prominent bulge in his slacks. His breath hitched in his chest when she softly ran a hand over it and she smiled faintly before pushing him with his back against the wall.
She looked at him again: there was something feral about him that drew more than her attention. The scars across his face, the pained look in his eyes, he was a soldier, just like her. This was the point of no return: either she backed away or gave into raw animal lust. It had been many months since her last lover. Actually counting the time jump it was well over eight years since she had been with anyone.
His kisses had been so full of promise but the cold hard reality in the form of Derek’s voice had started to push its way back into her thoughts again: “He has an arm of coltan which he tested on my little brother! ... Yeah, the Devil choke slammed him and then tried to crush his windpipe.” This man was a danger to anyone and he had tried to kill John’s father, the man she had loved.
She shook her head and tried to clear her thoughts, but he didn’t make it easy on her when he moved towards her again. Hesitantly she backed away, managing to get into the kitchen. He wasn’t going to back up. Were those nano’s driving him? Or was there more to this surprise attack?
Finally she reached the counters, opened up a drawer and pulled out another Beretta. He sighed when she pointed it at him: ”Don’t come any closer!” She muttered, feeling the tears sting in her eyes.
“I won’t,” he whispered with a hint of defeat in his voice.
The look of pain in his eyes practically floored her. The only other time she had seen so much pain in a man’s eyes had been when she had talked to Kyle near the window, when Kyle had confessed his love for her.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbled before he turned away and left the house in a hurry.
Now she turned and placed the gun on the counter, while she tried to grasp what had just happened. Was that why he was here? Because he loved her? Why did John keep sending back those poor souls? Her heart began to pound erratically; he wasn’t here because she was targeted as the mother of another determining leader in the future, was he? He wasn’t here to father another child with her, was he? In that case he could really forget ever getting close to her.
She rubbed her forehead with her left hand. A headache was building slowly, one that could not be cured with aspirin.

“What’s up with your mom?” Derek asked while he nudged his nephew in the ribs.
John looked at his mother and saw a most familiar sight: a sad and distant look accompanied by misted over eyes: “She misses my dad.”
“She does?”
“I don’t think a day has gone by that she hasn’t thought about him,” John grumbled annoyed. “Charley came closest to making her forget about dad for a while.”
“Did he now?”
“But not very successful. As soon as he’d left for work, she’d change back to the brooding woman I know as my mom.”
“Did she… I mean,” Derek paused.
“She shacked up with any man who could teach me something useful, mostly about weaponry and warfare, at least if that’s what you wanted to ask,” John said with a mouth full of pancake.
“How did you know I wanted to ask about that?” Derek asked utterly confused.
“A gut feeling.” John heaved a deep sigh before taking a sip of his orange juice.
“And no one ever came close to my little brother?” Derek asked with some amusement in his voice.
“Nah,” John shook his head. “I doubt someone ever will. Sometimes I think she stayed with Charley for those six months because she wanted a father figure for me. After Uncle Bob it became obvious to her that I missed a man’s influence on my life and she tried to settle down. Charley’s a good guy but in the end I think she would’ve destroyed him.”
“She would kill him?” Cameron asked, tilting her head a little.
“Figuratively speaking yes,” John answered, annoyed with her listening in on the conversation between him and his uncle. “She needs a man who is willing to fight her. Charley would never have done that.”
“Fight her?” Cameron paused. “You mean?”
“Yes, fight her,” John repeated.
“So Derek?”
“Hey, she’s definitely not my type,” Derek protested fiercely. “More my brother’s.”
“And Devlin?” Cameron inquired.
“You would know more about it than I do,” Derek glared at Cameron while he rose to his feet to leave the breakfast table.

Chapter 2: The Man With The Coltan Arm

Chapter 4: Sir Isaac Newton's Apple Tree?