Sunday April 19th, 2015, 2.47 am
The air was burning in his lungs. Dodging bullets and plasma charges while he ran and jumped over the debris and the rubble. A little over four years ago this had been Downtown Los Angeles, the bustling center of the city of angels. Now only the destruction of it was left. Ruins, collapsed buildings, skeletons of countless burnt out cars, skeletons of the less fortunate on Judgment Day. It was a landscape of nightmares but to him it was a cold and hard reality.
An a.r.u.[1] shot by, its search lights flashing across the ground. Quickly he hid into the shadows, leaning back against the wall when one of the lights almost caught him. He was on his own tonight. His recon partner, Ghost, had been injured two nights ago and she had been ‘grounded’. She was lucky.
He leaned out of the shadows again and took in his surroundings; to his right, the ruins of the Los Angeles County Municipal Court, a little further down the street what used to be the Dorothy Chandler Pavillion. Despite that he had known the old world it was hard to imagine that once the street had been filled with people going on with their business, with their little lives.
Judgment Day, the day Skynet had launched its attack against humanity, had put a sudden end to the human’s rule and the machines had emerged from the post-apocalyptic flames. In a micro-second the fate of mankind had been decided because they had put too much trusty in faulty technology. The supercomputer, designed to protect and defend the United States, had turned against its makers and had employed almost every weapon of mass destruction in its arsenal in an attempt to wipe out the human race.
April 21st, 2011: in two days it would be the four-year anniversary of Judgment Day. Almost four years since their fight against the machines had begun. Four years since Skynet went online and had gained sentience. The humans love of ease had done them in. There had been no end to all things invented to make life easier and comfortable, embedded technology in ordinary daily-life things had made all unaware of the enemy within. Skynet, the answer to the ever-growing threat of another terroristic strike against the United States, had been a Trojan horse. Welcomed with joy and misplaced trust, only to turn out to be the biggest enemy of the people.
Now everything lay in ruins. The landscape had been turned into a mass grave with skeletons everywhere. People unaware of this coming day had gone to do their shopping or to meet up with friends and family. They had gone to the cinema or out to lunch. Just ordinary life, as if there would be another tomorrow, a day that would never come.
He looked to see if the coast was clear before looking at the night sky, shrouded in battlefield mists. For a split second he wondered when it had been the last time he had seen a dark night filled with stars and the moon bathing the world in its bleak reflective light. Another a.r.u. shot by. Immediately he leaned back into the darkness again, the search lights barely missing him.
He was on the run from the machines. Near Banning Street he had come across a group of h.c.c.u.[2]’s and they had spotted him. He was outnumbered greatly and his only choice had been to run. He would have like the odds better if there had been a g.a.u.[3] around because he had learned how to use that big tank-like machine in his favour. It was a stupid machine that reacted to any form of heat. One well-placed incendiary grenade would have been enough to wipe out the h.c.c.u.’s.
Opposite to John Connor’s orders to operate in teams he liked to work alone if his recon partner was sidelined. She was the only one he could trust to have his back out on the battlefield. Friendly fire, enemy fire, there was a fine line between who was a friend and who was an enemy. However she would never betray him. Maybe he should have stayed in for this night, but the war against the machines did not wait for her to recover from her injuries and as long as lives were at stake, he would go out and fight the machines.
The sickening sweet smell of fire and smoke crept up his nose and he gagged, barely able to keep his food down. The scent never bode well.
He smiled sardonically when he realized that maybe getting caught by the machine would not be so bad after all. Once he would get back to his latest base, Ghost would demand a full explanation about his defiant and reckless behaviour and she never went easy on him, especially not since John had been caught seventy-one days ago. He remembered her two-day rant, blaming him for not protecting John any better. John had requested him and a few others for the mission of that night. They were to case out a new Skynet prisoner camp, just south of the crossing of West 6th Street and South Broadway, and things had gotten hectic when they had tried to ‘raid’ a prisoner transport.
The sudden explosion a little to the left of him, followed by the blast wave, threw him to the right, into something hard. The air whistled from his lungs on impact and his ears were ringing. Wincing with pain, he rolled onto his back. Despite his slowly blurring vision he managed to make out two h.c.c.u.’s standing over him, their guns aimed at him.
”She’s going to let me have it now,” he muttered before total darkness enfolded him.

Sunday April 19th, 2015, 10.17 am
”Welcome to Century,” a familiar voice echoed through the mists of his mind.
“Wait a goddamn minute… I know that voice… C?” Tyler asked while he opened his eyes slowly.
“Who else?” John countered. “Guess the tin cans caught you too.”
“Doubt this is a nightmare and I will wake up any minute now,” Tyler quipped, grimacing when he discovered that he had a terrible headache.
“Awake for less than a minute and you’re already joking,” John smiled faintly. “So what happened?”
“Ran into some trouble near Banning. The cans finally caught up with me on Bradley. They cheated an used a grenade to catch me. I guess they never heard of fair play.”
He sat up slowly, wincing when it reminded him of his headache, and took in his surroundings. It was a darkened room with only one small window with bars.
“You sure took your time to come and look me up here,” John chuckled.
Tyler tried to smile: “Ghost wouldn’t let me.”
“Of course not. How is she?” John asked genuinely interested.
“She’s fine. She ryno-ed me for a few days after you decided to move to this place,” Tyler answered.
“That’s my mom,” John smirked.
“Tell me about it! She blamed me as if I had personally escorted you to this place,” Tyler shook his head, wincing again. “Like I had wrapped a bow around your head and dropped you off like a goddamn present for Skynet.”
“She knows that you’re not to blame, Ty, but she has to take it out on someone,” John said in palliation.
“Preferably me since you took refuge for Hurricane Connor at Century,” Tyler joked.
John placed a hand on Tyler’s shoulder: “It’s good to see you, man. I was really in need of a good laugh… In case you were wondering where you are. This is the D-section. We clear up the debris and rubble. Heavy work, sixteen hour shifts but no deebies.”
“Deebees?”
“Dead bodies. That’s the U-section.”
Tyler grumbled underneath his breath: “Guess Skynet has really organised this place. You can count on it to be thorough.”

Tuesday April 21st, 2015, 4.33 am
Tyler yanked at the chains, beside himself with rage. If only he had not been bound by chains to the floor, the machines would have been in for one hell of a surprise. This morning he had tried to escape and this was his reward.
“Calm down, Tom,” John told him in a whisper. “You are only making things worse for yourself.”
Tyler glared at John: “Since when are you so being cooperative? I want to shred those metalheads!” He seethed.
“You’re drawing unnecessary attention to yourself,” John whispered.
“I don’t give a fuck!” Tyler growled, renewing his attempts to break the chains.
“The future is ours, Tom. But sometimes we have to wait it out, for the perfect opportunity to arrive and use it to our fullest advantage.”
Tyler snorted: “And they say that I talk in riddles, but I catch your drift, Jim.”
“Patience overcomes all things, Tom,” John smiled faintly.
Suddenly Tyler’s attention was drawn to soft sobbing that was coming from the far corner of the room. His eyes used to the shadowy surroundings could make out the form of a little girl. Darkbrown hair gulfed down the shoulders and back of the hunched up child.
“Who’s that?” He asked curiously.
“That’s Alley,” John answered.
“I didn’t know that Skynet took interest in kids,” Tyler remarked while confusion seeped into his mind.
“Apparently it does,” John sighed sadly.
“And why is she crying her goddamn eyes out? It won’t help her. Those tinheads feel nothing,” Tyler grumbled when the little girl went from sobbing to wailing at the top of her lungs.
The dark look John sent him did not go unnoticed and Tyler shrugged.
“Tactfulness must be at the bottom of your list of charms. She’s alone, afraid and upset.”
“Good ol’ Jim. Still a bleeding heart,” Tyler countered.
John shook his head warily, knowing that his friend was just annoyed and didn’t mean it as it had sounded.

Allison Young looked over her shoulder at the two men. She just knew that they were talking about her. She liked the man with the piercing, green eyes because he had comforted her when those robots had brought her to this room. The other man who was in chains, she was scared of him. The robots would not have tied him up if he was not dangerous.
She wiped the tears from her eyes with the back of her dirty right sleeve and turned a little more. The man with the piercing, green eyes smiled friendly and gestured that she should come over, but she was hesitant. What if the chained man was as scary and dangerous as she thought? What if he wanted to hurt her?
“It’s okay, Alley,” the man, who had introduced himself to her as Jim, said with a gentle voice.
“Why is he in chains?” Allison squeaked, close to crying again.
“Those scary robots don’t like him. He is a scary human to them,” Jim answered.
She could see the chained man shake his head and turn his attention to the chains again. He didn’t like the chains and she cringed when he uttered the foulest curses to emphasize his dislike after trying to break free again.
“Daddy says people who say such things should wash their mouths with soap,” Allison muttered with tears trickling down her cheeks again.
“Tom’s just being… Tom,” Jim smiled kindly. “It’s okay, Alley. His bark is worse than his bite.”

Friday April 24th, 2015, 6.17 am
The door to the darkened room was unlocked and opened. A beam of light cast its bright glow into the room. Tyler looked up when two h.c.c.u.’s entered the room. They were followed by a man with a rubber skin.
A T-600? A Ken? Tyler asked himself in thoughts. Already?
It worried him that it was only the year 2015 and Skynet had already developed the T-600 series. The technological development by Skynet was ahead of its time. How much of the timeline had been screwed up with the changes they had caused in the past?
The h.c.c.u.’s walked up to him and grabbed him firmly by the upper arms so the T-600 could unlock and remove his chains. He looked to his side and saw John looking at him sleepily.
“Take out any cans lately?” John mumbled.
“Always,” Tyler answered wryly.
“You’re going to get yourself killed one of these days,” John stated, sounding a little more awake now.
“Not for a long time to come,” Tyler growled while he tried to wrestle his right arm from the vice grip of the h.c.c.u. to his right.
The T-600 looked long at him after the h.c.c.u.’s had forced him down on his knees again. Tyler looked back without blinking, openly challenging the machine. However unlike humans the machine was not intimidate by his stare.
“Are you the one they call the Devil?” The T-600 asked in a mechanical voice.
He shook his head: “I have no idea who that is?” He countered with a question of his own while he tried to stay as calm as possible.
“Do not play games with us,” the T-600 said. “Are you the one they call the Devil?” It repeated its initial question.
“No, I am not,” he lied. “I am Tom.”
The T-600 leaned in closer and studied his face. It tilted its head and Tyler knew that it was comparing his face to the ones known in Skynet’s database. Or was it trying to establish if he was lying or not.
“No signs of deception cues or micro-expression… You are not the one they call the Devil. You are a strong species of the human race, therefore Skynet wants you to be send to the U-section of Century,” it said monotonically.
Tyler heard John gasp in shock and he turned his head to see the look of horror on his friend’s face. It did not bode well for him: “U-section?”
John had mentioned it before but he hadn’t bothered to ask what it exactly was. The only thing he knew was that he would be around dead bodies, deebies as John had referred to them.
“Undergound. You’ll be an Undertaker,” John whispered with reverend fear in his voice when the T-600 did not answer.
“And what the fuck’s that supposed to mean?” He asked impatiently.
“Your task will be simple,” the T-600 answered slowly. “You will dispose of all human remains.”
Now it was his turn to gasp in shock. It felt like someone had knocked the air from his lungs and he couldn’t breathe. The first real thought to enter his mind after a few seconds of incoherent thoughts was: had the other Tyler been an Undertaker too?
The T-600 secured and checked the chains around Tyler’s wrists: “You will be transported to the U-section in one hour.”
The h.c.c.u.’s let go of his upper arms and he fell flat on his face by the loss of counter-strength. He watched as the h.c.c.u.’s and the T-600 scanned all in the room for who they thought was the Devil. The T-600 looked at him one last time and said: “If you lied, there will be severe consequences.”
He had to bite his tongue to stop himself from saying something that would undoubtedly have given away his identity. Just like he had to keep himself from yanking at the chains. Skynet, its machines, they were smarter than in the timeline the other Tyler had come from.
The T-600 turned a slow circle at the center of the room, as if it was scanning all the humans present, before it left and locked the door. Everybody in the room heaved deep sighs of relief, now that their enemy was gone. Except for Tyler, who wanted answers, not more questions.
“What the hell is an Undertaker?” He growled annoyed.
Had the room been filled with sighs of relief only seconds before, now it became eerily quiet. Only Alley, who had started to cry at the sight of the machines again, broke the silence with her suppressed sobs every few seconds. Tyler started to feel uncomfortable under the looks of pity that were directed at him. They were looking at him as if he were already dead.
“Jim,” he remembered to address John with Jim. “What the hell is an Undertaker?”
John sighed again: “Whispers in the tunnel say that an Undertaker is someone who throws deebies into the furnaces, but no one knows exactly what the job description is since no one has ever come back from the U-section.”
“There’s a first for everything,” he stated confidently.
He saw the faint smile on John’s face: “I’d laugh at you if I didn’t know any better… However if there’s someone who could return from U-section, it’s gonna be you,” John said in a soft but confident voice.
The sound of the door being unlocked and opened again drew his attention. The T-600 had returned, with the h.c.c.u.’s following it. It had been no more than five minutes and not the promised hour.
“It is time,” the T-600 said while it raised its rifle and hit him hard in the face with the butt of it. For a second he felt nauseous after the cold steel had collided with his left cheekbone and eye socket. Then darkness sunk in.

Friday April 24th, 2015, 10.26 pm
His head was killing him when he finally came to. Sick to his stomach, he felt disorientated and confused. The bright lights in the room hurt his eyes. Mostly his right eye since his left was swollen shut. He found himself back in a chair with his hands tied behind his back with chains. His feet had been tied to the legs of the chair with duct tape.
A loud howl of frustration rose from deep within his chest after his first failed attempt to break free. He opened his right eye slowly so it could get used to the brightness of the lights and discovered he was facing a wall screen.
“What the fuck is going on?” He growled.
“Ah, Mr. Devlin, you have decided to join us,” a woman’s voice with a thick Scottish accent pierced through the veil of his scattered thoughts.
It came from the right and he turned his head just enough to see the T-600 morph into Catherine Weaver, the CEO of ZeiraCorp.
“Metal juice,” he seethed inaudible while he tried to break the chains and duct tape again.
She chuckled: “Very amusing, Mr. Devlin… We had to take precautionary measures… Your battlefield reputation proceeds you.”
“I’m Tom. I don’t know who the fuck this Devlin is.”
She walked around him, letting her hands slide over his shoulders: “Do not lie, Mr. Devlin. You will not like the consequences if you insist on lying to us.”
“What consequences? You’re gonna kill me? Or turn my life into a living hell?” He mocked.
“Your death will be… ineffective, because you are not afraid to die, Mr. Devlin. You are useful to us alive.”
“You have nothing to offer, canned metal juice!” He snorted with contempt.
“But we do, Mr. Devlin,” she grinned while she morphed into Sarah Connor. “I love you, Tyler,” she added using Sarah’s voice. “I always loved you.”
He looked away the moment he saw the seductive outfit Catherine had chosen for her Sarah impersonation. Yet he had to keep reminding himself that this wasn’t real. That it was just a mirage, a tricked played on his mind by that damn shapeshifter.
She smiled crookedly while she eased herself onto his lap, bringing her mouth close to his as if to kiss him: “Love me, Ty,” she whispered
He gulped nervously and leaned back to avoid being kissed. Not only added it to his general feeling of nausea, he felt that he could never take himself seriously again if he were to be so easily lured into this trap.
“Back off, metal bitch,” he growled before he spat her in the face.
“Side with us, and you can have her forever,” she said in a seductive whisper but with the voice and accent of Catherine Weaver.
“Shut up!” He hissed furiously. “You can never be Sarah Connor!”
Sarah morphed back into Catherine Weaver: “But I can. I can be her forever. All we want in return is your full cooperation.”
“Ha! No chance in hell!”
He noticed that the wall screen flickered on. A familiar pale blue face appeared onscreen: Is this him?
With her back still turned towards the screen, she answered: “Yes, this is Tyler Jess Devlin.”
“No, I am not!” He protested, knowing full well that he was contradicting his earlier statements.
The face move to the top left corner and in the center of the screen a movie clip was shown. Tyler watched it breathlessly, his empty stomach churning uncontrollably. The other Tyler, the blank expression on his face, a sea of flames. These were the last few seconds of his life. No longer able to resist it, he threw up. It was one thing to see the house explode and be engulfed in flames. It was another thing to witness the last few seconds of his life and know that that would be his destiny. He threw up again.
The videoplayer was closed and a new program was started. A screen capture of the other Tyler’s face appeared with next to it a picture of his face, only taken a few minutes before. An icy shiver went down his spine when the computer ran a comparison.
Match. Identity confirmed: 100%. Target: Tyler Jess Devlin, blinked underneath the pictures.
The comparison application was closed and the face resumed its position at center screen.
Untie him.
“It is tactically inadvisable to untie him,” Catherine Weaver said matter-of-factly. “He will try to destroy you.”
He will not. He will want to know about me. Therefore he will not destroy me. Yet.
Catherine turned to face the wall screen: “He is human. Humans do stupid, illogical things,” she countered.
He will want to know how I came to be sentient. He is like me, only he is human. John Connor created him for that purpose. He can help me understand humans.
His anger was fed by the fact that Catherine Weaver and Skynet discussed him as if he wasn’t there, and he would have torn the place apart if he hadn’t been tied up: “GO TO HELL, YOU OVERGROWN TYPEWRITER!!!” He seethed enraged.
Not even in exchange for knowledge and freedom? appeared onscreen.
“NEVER!” He howled before fighting against the restraints again in vain.
So be it. Transport him back to Century.

Monday June 1st, 2015, 8.02 am
For weeks he had tried to figure out what Skynet had exactly wanted and expected from him. Once every week Catherine Weaver, in the form of the T-600, came to check up on him, trying to persuade him to side with the machines, but each time he sent her back to Skynet without the promise of his cooperation. There was nothing in the world that could make him side with enemy. Not even the repeated promise of Catherine Weaver to fulfil his deepest desires in the shape of Sarah Connor. It had to be a trap.
He let his mind wander for a few seconds and wonder how the real Sarah was doing. It was a nice diversion of his darkening thoughts. Life in U-section was brutal and nothing short of hell. He wiped the sweat of his brow with his right wrist and stared into the flames of the furnace appointed to him. Underground, extremely hot with bellowing flames, was a real hell.
He looked over his shoulder at the ever-growing pile of corpses. It was a new day, a new eighteen-hour-shift, after a night filled with battle and death. Load after load was dumped into the Pits and it was his job, together with five other strong men, to get rid of the pile before the new night would break.
Disposing of the deebies wasn’t the worst. The dying survivors, injured fighters and civs, without a new chance at life, were. Shortly after his arrival at U-section he had had his first live one; an elderly man with his intestines exposed. A civ.
He hadn’t known what to do, but Page, the man working the furnace on his right, had told him to be merciful and humane by putting an end to the suffering of the old man. Without wanting to give it a second thought, he had hoisted the man over his shoulder and had thrown him into the greedy flames. The elderly man had screamed in agony, the sudden creepy silence that had followed, the sickening scent of human flesh burning.
It had haunted him for a few days, until he had gotten his second live one. This time it had been a little boy, no older than four, scared out of his wits without a chance at a life. Having learned from his past mistake he had killed the boy first by snapping his neck before throwing him into the hungry fire.
He took a deep breath before he walked up to the pile and picked up his first deebie of this shift. A deep frown creased his forehead when he recognized the person. A ref[4], and one he had not expected to be throwing into the furnace. Private McNab was a Doorman and not linked to one of the Resistance Fighters Division.
“First Sergeant Devlin, sir,” McNab’s voice was no more than a soft whisper.
He almost jumped a feet in the air: “Private, what the hell happened?” He asked.
“That bitch… She… She s-s-stabbed me,” Private McNab stammered while coughing up blood. “Tossed me on the street like a scurvy cat.”
“What bitch?”
“That Baum bitch… Fucking tease,” Private McNab coughed.
Tyler felt his temper ignite and he stalked over to the furnace with Private McNab over his shoulder: “Did you hurt her? Talk fast!”
“She’d been… Moping… Around for weeks… I thought… She could do… With… Some distraction… She wasn’t… Playing. Punched me… Then stabbed… Me… What are… You doing, sir?”
Without giving Private McNab an answer, he tossed the man in the fire: “See you in hell!” For the first time, he felt no remorse, no pity. The screams of agony falling on deaf ears.
Private McNab had played dead so the machines wouldn’t kill him upon finding him and would leave him as a corpse on the street. It was a tactic many survivors tried but were never successful at. However with medical treatment he could have survived.
Tyler looked at the flames again. He was the Devil, this was his home for now. Nevertheless hearing about Sarah instilled a need to escape in him again. But it would have to be in-between shifts. During the shifts there were two h.c.c.u.’s per human present and the chances at a successful escape were zero to none.

Wednesday June 3rd, 2015, 3.16 am
The sirens of Century prison camp wailed incessantly. Search lights flashed over the rubble and debris that marked the outer limits of the camp.
On only ten minutes ago he had decided to break out of this place. It could be considered a whim, but he needed to get out of there. He needed to see her, to tell her that John was okay.
He dove behind a pile of rubble to escape a search light fast approaching. In the cover of the rubble he tried to calm his frantically beating heart. The other Tyler had been an escape artist. Would he be one too? Would he be willing to let himself get caught in order to help others escape? Right now he could not imagine himself ever doing that. He was already having a most difficult time escaping now and he was alone.
Slowly and carefully he took in his surroundings, making sure that the search lights could not spot him. He considered his options for the best escape route. The high chain link fence was no more than three hundred feet away, but there was still the small problem of climbing over it before the machines in pursuit would have the chance to kill him.
His attention was drawn to the watch tower at twice the distance of the chain link fence. The sound of nearing jet engines. A drove of a.r.u.’s had been dispatched to aid in the search for the fugitive. Just my luck, he thought while a wry smile spread across his face. It’s time to go a.r.u.-surfing.
Keeping his head low, his eyes up, hiding behind debris and rubble from time to time to let the search lights pass, he slowly made his way to the watch tower. At the bottom of the stairs stood an h.c.c.u., holding a rifle he had not seen yet but had heard about. If he was not mistaken it was a 20 Watt Phased Plasma Rifle.
“Now that would make an excellent gift for Connor when I get home,” he grinned wickedly.
If he were to time his charge at the machine perfectly, taking the rifle from the machine would be as easy as taking candy from a baby.
Two minutes later he stood gnashing his teeth to keep himself from howling the foulest curses. The damn machine was history but not before it had managed to fire one plasma charge at him. It had scorched his lower back which felt like it was literally on fire.
“Junkyard filler,” he growled through gritted teeth while he kicked the disconnected machine for good measure.
Searing pain shot through his lower back when he leaned down and picked up the rifle. The pain was almost unbearable but he had to press on. He ran up the stairs, only to find another h.c.c.u. waiting at the top platform. Two well aimed plasma shots took care of that. The machine lay quaking on the floor as its system shut down indefinitely. He quickly picked up the rifle. It was a different make than the 20 Watt rifle he had stolen from the machine at the bottom of the stairs of the watch tower.
Search lights bathed the tower in hellish bright light and he ducked back in the shadows. The drove of a.r.u.’s circled almost impatiently over the camp, their search lights frantically tracing the ground to spot the escapee.
Cautiously he leaned over the edge on the shadow side of the tower. Only a few feet below him an a.r.u. banked past the tower. After taking a final deep breath he made a jump for it, knowing it was stupid. The rifles almost slipped from his hands when he landed on the back of it. It didn’t have sensors and would not register its passenger. Now all he had to do was remain unnoticed until he was in the Safe Zone.
Ten minutes later, after he had made sure that it was flying over the Safe Zone, he crawled to the hatch, broke it open and ripped out the a.r.u.’s electronics. The small jet engines sputtered, then stalled and it started on its freefall to the ruined streets of Downtown Los Angeles. Calmly counting back from ten, he prepared himself for departure. At zero he jumped off and rolled with the fall, hoping to create enough distance between him and the crashing flying machine. He turned on his stomach and watched as the a.r.u. ploughed into the street nose first before flipping over and landing on its back. A big ball of fire rose to the sky when the remaining jet fuel ignited on impact.
He rolled onto his back and started laughing, soft and tentative at first, strong and loud later. He had escaped from Century. He had left U-section far behind him. The best thing yet was that he had gotten a few souvenirs to remember it by. He looked at the 20 Watt Phased Plasma rifle.
“Connor’s gonna love this one,” he burst into laughter again.