Chapter Text
Connor leapt over the rooftop, rolling as he landed on the one below. He barely hesitated as he was back up and running, yelling for the person to stop. He’d never met a human with so much stamina before; while Connor was nowhere near tired this human should have been slowing down at least but they showed no signs of stopping. They currently had rooftops to jump across, but they would run out eventually and Connor knew they’d then be cornered. Exactly as planned.
Hank was somewhere on the ground, sending younger and faster officers to follow them on foot while he stood at a distance to see where they went. He could still barely see them, occasionally seeing their heads pop up as they jumped to the next building. Even in his prime Hank didn’t know if he would have lead such a long chase, he probably would’ve lost him at the two meter drop to one of the buildings. What kind of human got no damage without some kind of training or enhancement?
They reached the end of the buildings and the human came to a sudden halt at the edge, looking over with slight worry on his face. He looked back at Connor who was now barely a few steps away, gun drawn and aiming it at them. They knew Connor’s precision was going to be accurate, one wrong move and he’d be shot, possibly dead. Not on his watch.. nobody would cause his death except for himself.
He stood on the ledge. “Stop!” Connor warned, taking a few steps closer. “Just step down, and nobody has to get hurt.”
They turned so that they faced Connor, dropping their gun and opening their arms out wide. “You don’t kill me. I do!” Connor stayed where he was. “You’ll never get the information.”
As soon as Connor’s scanner picked up movement of their feet he too dropped his gun and ran forward. His actions were faster than his own thoughts, grabbing onto the human’s arm.. but his probability scanner had been against him. There had been a 76% chance he’d be able to pull the human back up and he would detain him, but the other 24% had been the outcome.
Like when he scanned his surroundings it felt like time slowed down. Connor used the human to rotate himself underneath and grip him by the arms. He didn’t even have time to register he might die doing this, this is something he would’ve done as a machine, like with Daniel on the roof.. “Connor, no!”
Hank sprinted towards the building they had been on, only seeing Connor run for the human and then they’d both fallen out of view, but Hank knew it was over. Why would Connor do that!? They didn’t have bodies of his model anymore, if he was dead he was dead for good! “Connor!”
Other officers were stood at the alleyway where they would’ve landed, four of them stood in a line but Hank pushed through only to stop in his tracks like the others. They.. weren’t on the ground.
There was a scuffle from one of the open skips, a human arm covered in blood slinging over the edge. Then a head popped up, blood down their cheek. They took one look at the officers and tried to scramble out, but without even running the officers held the man and tried to be kind as they handcuffed him and pulled him out the skip. The man looked awful, he definitely had some broken bones but the sheer amount of blood on him was nauseating.
Hank ignored it though, he went straight to the skip and peered inside, and poking out from between bin bags that had fallen on top, was Connor’s arms. “Connor!” Hank cried, desperately pulling all the bags out.
“Th-there’s broken glass everywhere.” The injured man sputtered, struggling to keep conscious while the officers tried to stop his bleeding.
Hank didn’t care. He felt some cut into his hands as he clawed away to get at Connor’s head, but once he was uncovered he had to take a step back. “H-Hank...” He wheezed, looking directly at the older man. “Hank, help...”
A couple other officers helped to try and lift Connor’s body. He was also covered in the man’s blood, but also thirium; it trickled down his chin, a few deep cuts on his arms and- “Jesus fucking Christ!” Hank exclaimed when they’d got him sat up.
-And a metal pole stuck in Connor’s lower back, acting almost as a tube for his thirium to flow out of. Someone tried to pull it out but Connor yelled at them to stop. “B-biocomponents damaged, the pole- mmph- has pierced one of them.. if you pull it out I will bleed out and shutdown.”
His LED was a dangerous red, his body now slouched against the edge of the skip, unable to move his legs. “What do you need? How can we help?”
“My station.. at Cyberlife. They.. they might not have it, b-but it’s what I used to recharge and heal any obtained injuries. Unless I was actually dead, that pod can fix anything.”
“What if they don’t have it?”
“Then I die.”
~*~
To have Connor unconscious, upright and technically naked inside a glowing box, was unnerving to say the very least. Cyberlife had it, but Hank didn’t trust them enough to leave Connor alone, so they lugged it all the way to Hank’s house. He’d suggested the DPD, but nobody wanted to look at Connor’s unconscious body and Hank now understood why. They’d put him in the living room, just because the light it sometimes emitted when it did work on his physical body was blinding so if that had been in his bedroom he’d be even more grouchy than normal from not sleeping properly.
Also, why did it take so damn long? They could make androids by the truck load in a day before the revolution, but Connor’s box even had a progress bar that showed how far along maintenance was, and on day eight it was only 40% done, averaging only 5% a day. Why? If Connor had been in standby then he woke whenever he wanted to, but no matter how much Hank drunkenly banged on the door and yelled for Connor to wake up, he remained motionless. Cyberlife said maintenance was different, but even so, if Connor died then Hank would always see his next body the next day in perfect condition, droning on about his ‘predecessor’s unfortunate end’ or whatever. Until Connor pulled his act together and started becoming deviant Hank barely listened to a word he said.
Past the tenth day people stopped harassing Hank on Connor’s progress and left the grumpy lieutenant to himself. Gavin joked about him never coming back, but Fowler reprimanded him on it. Hank didn’t know he could care so much about a pile of nuts and bolts, but even with a whiskey in hand and the game on, he’d find himself glancing over at the glowing box and counting down the days to when he should feel better. They’d been given a new monster of a case, and Hank wished his partner could be by his side to help, even if that meant watching Connor put blood in his mouth, but that was becoming more of a… quirk, than anything. Plus, the case was taking a horrible toll on his mental health, which is why on his ‘no drink Tuesday’ he’d had half a bottle of vodka already. His picture of Cole was in his right hand, bottle in the left. Connor would know what to say to try and cheer him up, whether that was in his social programming or whether he was just a really good friend didn’t really matter as long as Hank didn’t think about it too long. Connor was Connor.
A ping from his tablet made Hank jostle, coming out of his daze. Couldn’t he just pass out in peace? He blindly reached for it off the table and had to squint to focus properly, stopping his eyes from going cross eyed. Seeing it was from Fowler, he already knew that meant another kidnapping had happened.
Their case was serial child kidnapping which too often ended in death. More specifically, android children. There was a new toddler model out, and they seemed to be the most popular victims. The kidnapper would grab the child, slit their wrist to find out their race, and if thirium came out then they would take them away before their parents even knew they out of sight. Older android children were easier options since hiding their LED wasn’t a function built into the current models unless you removed it yourself, but because children had the ‘ability’ to feel pain nobody had the heart to do it.
The alcohol in Hank’s system told him there was no point in getting up, it wasn’t worth the trouble. He’d just do it in the morning…