John shook his head wearily: this wasn’t good. He had overheard the exchange of words between his Uncle and Tyler. There was a lot of hostility between them, and he wondered what had brought that on.
He looked up just in time to see Cameron barge into the room. She hardly ever knocked and always showed up when it was least convenient. He glared at her, not having forgotten that she had kept him in his room when a gun had been fired last night.
“Mom shot him, didn’t she?” He asked as he put one and one together. “It’s why his left forearm is bandaged.”
“Yes.”
“Why in your expert robot opinion would she shoot him? What do you know that you are not telling me?” He fired those two questions at her.
“The future’s changed, John,” she answered simply. “It’s not the future your father told Sarah about.”
“What is the future then?” He growled. “Why would he come to visit us in the middle of the night only to be shot by mom?”
She kept quiet for a good two minutes and now he wondered what was going on in her chip. Would she lie to him again? Would she stonewall him again by saying it’s not her mission or in her files? Or would she tell him what he wanted, needed to know?
“What’s his connection to us, to her?” He broke the silence.
She tilted her head a little and looked at him: “He was her husband.”
He didn’t know if he had to laugh or cry: “That’s… Ridiculous. Mom’s not the marrying type. She left Charlie at the altar, so to speak.”
“Charlie knew nothing of the world to come. The Lieutenant General was born for that world.”
“So… This TJ Devlin, if he’s destined to be my mother’s husband. Is that another reason why he could be on that list?”
“It’s not in my files.”
This only confused him more as to why the Lieutenant General was here. Was he here to stay, to marry Sarah Connor and start a family? Was that why his mother was targeted once again? Would this Tyler Devlin be his stepfather? Or was it something else?
He felt a slow headache building when trying to figure it out for himself. Should he ask all those unanswerable questions the first chance he would get?
“Are you going to tell Sarah?” It was her turn to ask him a question.
“Not if I don’t have to,” he sighed.

He squinted and tried to focus on the name on the dog tag around his friend’s neck while the latter reached across the table to get a second helping of cat-rat-stew. -1-7-2 was the only part he could really read. G-C-0-0-1-7-2 was on his mother’s tag.
He looked from Tyler to his mother. Despite that he wished all the happiness in the world for her, it had taken him a long time to get accustomed to the idea of his mother and his best friend being lovers, and now it turned out that they might be even more than that.
Unsure what stung him more, that they were more or that they hadn’t told him, he looked from Tyler to his mother again. There was a certain tenderness, uncommon for this world, between them. A stolen glance, a faint smile, an intended unintended touch. If there was one thing obvious, it was that his mother and Tyler weren’t together just to be together. There was something genuine.
Was he envious or jealous? Once he had gone off to his mother for her being jealous that he had found someone who he actually liked to spend time with. He knew what the exchange of the dog tags meant. It sent a sharp, deep pain through his heart: he didn’t have anyone to exchange dog tags with. He didn’t deserve to have someone to exchange his dog tags with.
There were women in his life, after all he was just a man of flesh and blood with natural urges, but it was never anything serious. Never something like what his mother and Tyler seemed to share. Being John Connor was extremely lonely.

She glanced sideways at him while she lead him to her room: “There’s a lot of animosity between the two of you. Why?” She asked innocently, thinking she already knew the answer: Kyle.
“Beats me. He’s always been that way towards me,” he answered softly.
“And I’m pretty sure that you haven’t done something to strengthen that feeling of hostility,” she remarked while she shut the curtains. “Like trying to kill his little brother?” She offered.
“Kyle was my friend,” he whispered. “One of the few to talk to me after,” he stopped mid-sentence
“And yet you tried to kill him,” she said grimly.
He shook his head: “It was an accident… I didn’t mean to… He came to visit me after… He knew it wasn’t me.”
“Yeah, Derek told me that you have one hell of an excuse,” she stated sarcastically.
“I wish I hadn’t,” he grumbled. “I wish it was me, but it isn’t,” he added while he tapped against the side of his head with his right index and middle finger.
“The perfect excuse. You could go on a killing spree and just blame it on the, what was it called?”
“Nano’s.”
“Nano’s. You could go on a killing spree and just blame it on the nano’s, all the while you just know that it’s you doing it.”
“Oh, come on, Connor,” he growled. “I’m a half-breed, but I’m not inhuman. Besides Derek’s no angel either.”
“You sure it’s not a testosterone thing?” she suggested while she left her room for a moment to get him a clean T-shirt from the hallway closet. “Here,” she pressed the piece of clothing in his hands.
“I doubt it will fit me,” he mumbled shyly.
She didn’t get him: one moment he was fearless, the next he was shy, just like last night. He stood looking at the clean T-shirt with a deep frown creasing his forehead.
“You are kind of a big guy, aren’t you? I’ll send Cameron out to get you some fitting clothes,” she said with a smile. “It doesn’t suit you to walk around in rags.”
“Do I make you nervous?” He asked suddenly.
She stopped in her tracks, cocked her head to one side and looked at him: “What do you mean?”
He smiled faintly: “When you’re nervous, you tend to change subjects and chatter.”
“How would you know?” She asked, chewing on the inside of her lower lip, feeling the blood rise to her cheeks.
“Trust me, I know,” he smiled cryptically.
“Awesome… Then you probably also know that I will not stop asking you about it until I get some real answers.”
“You’re Connor. I expect no less,” he laughed warmly.
She watched, with her arms folded across her chest, as he started to take off his shirt. He made her jumpy, but was that really a surprise after last night? Her eyes slid over the scars that covered his abdomen and his sides, and she could still feel the ridges underneath her fingertips. Happy that she could tug her hands away under her arms to keep her from fidgeting, she let out a deep breath, earning a curious look from him.
Why did she feel like that naïve college student all of a sudden? She didn’t like it one bit, because it was someone she had not been for a very long time. She averted her eyes and stared at the floor in an attempt to stop the tidal wave of stupid questions and silly thoughts. It wasn’t like her!
“Uhm, a little help here?” She heard him ask and she looked up again to see him struggling with his shirt.
“For God’s sake,” she scolded. “Here, sit down,” she helped him sit on the edge of the bed before helping him out of his shirt.
“Thank you,” he muttered self-consciously.
“Shoes off,” she ordered sternly while she walked into her bathroom to get him some pain killers. “Here, take these,” she said upon her return, placing two pills in his hand and handing him a glass of water.
He shook his head: “I can’t,” he mumbled as he put the pills on the covers.
“Take them. It’s obvious from the grimaces and the fact that you needed help to get your shirt off that your back is killing you,” she said firmly, picking the pills up and placing them in his hand again.
“I can’t,” he repeated before bringing his free hand to the side of his head and tapping against it with his index finger.
“You’re kidding, right?” She asked in wonder.
Slowly he shook his head again: “Alcohol, meds, they don’t go well together with the nano’s.”
At that her heart sank into her shoes. Kyle had told her about disconnecting the pain. She had taught herself to disconnect the pain but later on there had always been the sweet relief of pain killers. His upper body was covered in scars. More scars than she had seen before, in all sizes.
Without realizing that she was doing it she brought her right hand up to her right shoulder where the T-1000 had stabbed her.
If only she hadn’t dropped the slug. If only she had been faster with loading the next slug into the Remington 870. If only she hadn’t wasted precious seconds with being stunned by the impact the slugs had had on the T-1000.
She closed her eyes and relived the entire moment up to the moment she had run out of ammo, and the T-1000 had started to recover from all the holes she had put in him. She should have thrown the 870 at him, taken the chance that the impact would knock it over and into the molten steel. Instead she had fired on empty. It had been a mistake. If the T-800 had not been given a reroute so it could switch to alternative power, surely John and she would have been killed by the T-1000 and it would have been all her fault.
“So much pain,” she mumbled upset.
In her mind she heard Kyle’s voice say “Pain can be controlled. You just disconnect it”. After opening her eyes again she looked at the man sitting on the edge of her bed. He was looking at her curiously with his head cocked a little to the side. There was a faint smile of understanding forming on his face.
She shook her head fiercely to get rid of her confusing thoughts. Looking at his face again, the smile had disappeared. She watched as he drank the water greedily and noticed the trail of water spilling down his chin, throat and chest.
“Can I have another one?” He asked hopeful while he held out the empty glass to her.
Annoyed with the fact that he thought she was a lackey, she snatched the glass from his hand and disappeared into the bathroom again, only to return seconds later with a full glass of water. Again he drank the water with such eagerness that he spilled more than he downed. Again her eyes followed the path the spilled water took.
“Thank you,” he mumbled while he placed the empty glass on the nhanding her the glass back.
“Get some rest,” she said in a soothing voice while helped him lie back on the bed. “I’ll check in on you later.”

Chapter 4: Sir Isaac Newton's Apple Tree?

Chapter 6: Out Of Time, Out Of Place