Derek's safe house was a nondescript apartment in Los Angeles which housed four Resistance agents. The agents were sent back twenty years to 2007 by John Connor to set up the safe house, gather intel, and wait for further instructions. Unknown to John, Derek had been told that Billy Wisher was partly responsible for the creation of Skynet, and decided to preempt the mission on his own crusade to prevent the Artificial intelligence from ever being created by assassinating members of the scientific community directly responsible, starting with Billy/Andy.