Work Text:
NOV 11TH, 2038
AM 01:00
The streets are empty now.
No more soldiers. No more curfew either, President Warren had it lifted within minutes of her live address announcing the government’s intention to broker peace with the deviants and consider the possibility of androids as a new species. And yet, despite the restoration of their freedom, it would seem that the rest of Detroit's human population have chosen to maintain their confinement tonight.
Fear is the most likely factor behind this ironic turn of events. Of androids perhaps, still, despite the overwhelmingly peaceful nature of their protest. Or maybe of the human military, revealed today as a little too trigger happy for public comfort. Or simply a larger, more abstract fear of the irreversible change, not only to the city but to the world and every human and android understanding of it, the night has wrought.
Or all of the above.
Because fear is a vast, confusing, irrational emotion. Like so many of them are.
As he walks down the dark, snow covered sidewalk, red and blue stains on the crystals crunching together beneath his shoes, Connor tries to analyse his own emotions. But it’s difficult with so many of them swirling all at once up and down his biocomponents.
He tries to pick them apart, one by one, and separate them into tidy percentages. 20% fear. 30% relief. 15% anticipation. 35% remorse. But they keep fluctuating and merging together. Calculating his remorse creates an 18% spike in his anticipation and his relief drops down to somewhere under 10%. His fear numbs to a manageable 8% only to skyrocket seconds later to an overwhelming 87% and every time his diagnostic appears complete something new encroaches on his systems check. Right now it’s a sudden, vicious tightness in his core Connor can only think to process as pain.
There’s a 0.5% chance his inner turmoil is a purely physical sensation, so he loosens his tie, calculating that should such an unlikely event indeed be the case a lack of constricting fabric about his neck might be beneficial in easing the hurt.
The action makes no difference.
Before, right after he’d left the voicemail requesting the meeting he’s fast approaching, there’d been a softer, warmer sensation in the same indeterminate place inside him that he’d identified as hope. He misses that feeling and wishes he knew how to restore it, but it had started to ebb the closer he got to his destination and with the roadside food truck now in sight, shuttered up and as devoid of life as the rest of the city, the last, weak vestiges of hope heating his electronic veins dwindles to nothing.
All his old self tests have failed him. He can’t keep track of anything anymore. Can’t say who or what he is. He has no purpose. No mission. All he had was this – a meeting outside a closed food truck with out of date hygiene credentials.
And now he might not even have that.
Disorientated, Connor stops a few paces from the truck, turning this way and that in case the figure he’d expected – wanted, needed – to be waiting for him has simply been overlooked.
But Lieutenant Anderson is nowhere to be found.
A flash of memory intrudes on his search. Hank’s shaggy hair blowing in the wind, eyes narrow, tense lines across his brow growing tighter and tighter as he watches Connor rise from his rooftop vantage point, rifle in hand.
Even then, mind still fresh and focused from the memory upload, Connor had paused over the expression, taking time out of his mission to analyse the markers that were unique to Hank, recognising them as the man’s way of expressing hurt, of showing disappointment.
Connor hadn’t understood, not then, why the sight had prompted a flicker of instability in his software. Hadn’t even understood, not really, that the resulting sense of urgency towards the completion of his mission – an urgency that had him flinging insults, even using the truth about Hank’s son against him in a callous attempt to get the man to leave – had been impatience. Impatience and, perhaps, a touch of uncertainty. The beginnings of his deviancy, of his humanity, returning.
He hadn’t understood why Hank’s presence had been – had felt – such an impediment to his mission. One man, even a trained and decorated police officer like Hank, was easily overcome by an android of Connor’s strength and abilities. It would have been a simple matter to overpower him and return to priming and aiming the rifle back at Markus.
He hadn’t understood. But Connor is more than willing, now, to thank RA9 or any other deity, however absurd or irrational, that he’d accepted the assessment of Hank as an insurmountable obstacle and left the man there on that roof while he sought out another means of destroying the deviant leader.
Because it could so easily have gone another way.
Killing Hank was an option. Connor remembers clearly how he’d considered it, the multiple scenarios he’d preconstructed, every fatality worked through with mechanical precision.
It horrifies him now, to think that after everything he could have returned to being so cold.
Is that what he’d be still, if Hank had been killed
With a fresh rush of fear Connor concludes that yes, the probability is high. Because without Hank, without the promise of a future that included him, the desire for a future that included him, it’s likely that everything meaningful buried in the memories of their time together would have slipped away.
Markus might still have eased the feelings back with his words to the crowd Connor had infiltrated. But without Hank – how hard, how pointless a full and free life would have seemed.
Amanda’s orders would have been a blessing. The trigger on the gun a greater freedom.
If Hank had died, it would have left them both lifeless.
The thought disturbs Connor enough to disrupt his temperature settings and he rubs his hands up and down his arms to try and ward off the chill. The sensation reminds him of the storm of snow in Amanda’s Zen garden when she’d tried to take back control of his programming – that physical, freezing assault that he’d felt inside every part of him. An experience nothing like the way the elements affect him in reality. But then, perhaps that was the human experience. Kamski had created the CyberLife interface to simulate his human mentor – perhaps he’d also designed it to mimic human sensation in any android consciousness residing there.
Connor could ask Hank what snow feels like. That might help him figure it out.
Except Hank isn’t here. And it’s already ten minutes past the time Connor scheduled in his voicemail.
The memory of the roof flashes again. Hank’s disappointment. Hank’s pain.
Connor’s goodbye.
I’m glad I met you, he’d said. I hope one day you can get over what happened to your son.
Because some deep, hidden part of him had known, had remembered, how important Hank had become, even if he couldn’t fully comprehend it. Part of him had felt, part of him had wanted. And that part of him, the living part of him, had at least tried to be kind, at the end.
Except, now his eyes are open again the words just sound hollow.
Glad? What a weak, insufficient description. The depth of his feelings at having Hank in his life cannot be contained in such a small, pathetic word.
Met? The finality the past tense implies is too horrible to contemplate. Connor doesn’t want to stop meeting Hank. He wants to see him again and again and again, for as much and as long as possible.
And he wants, if he can, to be there to help Hank make peace with the loss of Cole. He thinks part of him has always wanted that, ever since he found out what happened to the boy. It’s why he’d never mentioned the accident to Hank before – he didn’t want to make him relive the memory any more than he already was, night after night, with that photo and bottle of whiskey and that foolish, self-destructive game.
A new pathway unlocks in Connor’s mind – could Hank be playing Russian roulette right now?
Connor spat out the truth of Cole’s death so cruelly on that roof, threw it at Hank like a weapon. Maybe it had been all too effective.
Not that Connor had intended to exacerbate Hank’s suicidal tendencies, truly he hadn’t. If anything he’d been attempting the opposite, seeking, through rational but tactless analysis, to find a non-violent way of preventing Hank from disrupting his mission.
Had he simply loaded a gun for the man instead?
There’s a spark of heat at Connor’s temple as his LED flashes red, accompanied by the image of Hank at his kitchen table, gun in hand.
Click. Click. Click.
Bang.
No. No. Hank had been strong in the aftermath of Connor’s misguided words. He’d been confident about no longer blaming androids for Cole’s death. As though, for that moment at least, he’d finally taken control of the memory, instead of letting it haunt him. He would have no need of suicidal games tonight. Connor is sure.
He’s – mostly sure.
Enough for his LED to calm back through yellow and into blue anyway.
Hank is probably just delayed.
He might not know yet about the curfew.
Or the FBI or DPD may have him detained. For a debriefing of current events. Or another disciplinary.
There’s a long list of reasons that could explain why Hank isn’t here. A long and varied list, with multiple scenarios of equally high probability.
But despite that, Connor finds himself returning over and over to one in particular.
Hank isn’t here, because he doesn’t want to be here.
Because Connor let him down on that rooftop. He proved himself nothing but the mindless, heartless machine Hank saw in him when they first met and now Hank wants nothing more to do with him.
And Connor can’t blame him. It’s his fault. He should have been faster at Jericho. Should have fought harder to recover the missing parts of himself after the memory transfer. Should have recognised the truth about himself and his feelings earlier, before he’d even set foot in Jericho. He should have –
He’s so busy calculating and cataloguing all possible alternatives to his past choices and behaviours and the different outcomes he might have achieved he misses the footsteps and laboured puffs of breath. It’s not until the steps come to a halt, heels scraping, hesitant, into the snow that Connor registers the movement and looks round.
His feelings jumble into a crescendo, changing and replacing and returning in a dizzying rush too fast for him to process. Relief into fear into joy, regret, relief again, pain, back to fear and into hope. It’s too much. He can’t focus, can’t plan, all he can do is stare, arms still clutched about his chest.
And Hank stares back, grey hair flicking lightly at his temples in the late night breeze, the artificial glow from the streetlights picking out the flecks of snow dusting his jacket.
He tilts his head and chews the inside of his bottom lip as he scrutinises Connor, chin lifting so his eyes can better sweep Connor’s body up and down.
Connor doesn’t know what Hank is looking for – whether it’s something practical, like a concealed weapon, or something less tangible, some subtlety in Connor’s expression that proves he’s still the partner Hank remembers – but he draws his arms from his body to facilitate the search regardless. It’s not exactly a surrender, but it’s something like – Connor’s arms lifting to just above his waist, fingers splayed.
It’s me, Hank, he wants to say. I’m the real Connor. That android you spoke to on the roof, that was just a machine taking offers. It wasn't me. It wasn't me.
But speech is difficult to access all of a sudden. He can sense the manic flicker of his LED as he opens his mouth to try, cool blue disappearing into wild, spinning yellow as his circuitry forces his lips around the shape of words.
All he can manage is a stilted –
“Hank, I –”
Useless. Broken. Defective. He’s already failing. It was a mistake thinking he could just call Hank here and make everything right again. How could he be so naïve?
Except, Hank’s face softens as he watches Connor’s pitiful attempt to explain, eyes growing warm. His beard twitches – the flicker of a smile – and then he’s walking forward, reaching a hand to Connor’s shoulder and pulling him close, Hank’s warm, heavy arms wrapping Connor up and holding him tight.
Connor's processors don’t have adequate power to explain, not in any of the hundred languages stored in his database, the affect Hank's acceptance has on him. Relief, happiness, gratitude – these concepts don't even begin to convey the experience. So he stops trying to define the moment and just lets himself feel it. Lets his arms circle Hank's back, face dropping to the soft crook of Hank’s neck. He feels Hank’s hair fall across the side of his face, covering his LED as it winds slowly back to default and blocking his auditory sensor. It’s a minor compromise of his systems, but Connor likes it. He doesn't feel limited, he feels safe. Protected. He wants to stay here, engulfed by Hank's comfort and care for as long as possible.
He doesn't realise his fingers have twisted into desperate curls about the fabric of Hank's jacket until he feels Hank return the gesture. Hank grips each of Connor’s shoulders tighter, strong fingers rolling creases into the artificial fibres of Connor's CyberLife uniform as he crushes their bodies closer.
The sigh Hank makes is loud as thunder.
“Thought I lost you for a while there,” he mutters, voice the typical, gruff, almost-growl Connor has come to know so well. But thicker somehow. Full of something – more.
They hold a while longer, then Hank curses under his breath and pushes away.
Connor doesn't want to let go. He wants to keep holding and be held by Hank forever.
But he knows that's impossible, so he allows Hank to ease free of his grasp and step back, untangles his fingers from Hank’s coat and lets his arms drop.
To Connor's delight Hank doesn’t step away but keeps one hand resting on Connor's shoulder, squeezing lightly at the base of his neck.
“Jesus, Connor,” Hank breathes. “What the hell got into you back there? The way you looked at me I thought... fuck, I thought you might actually...”
Hank’s face twists into a grimace.
“Gaaah!” he exclaims, shaking his head – a dismissal, or denial, Connor can't be certain. More pressing is the way Hank lifts that comforting hand away at the same time and throws it up between them. A gesture of frustration. “I don't know what I thought...”
The loss of Hank's touch has minimal effect on Connor's internal temperature. But he feels cold without it all the same. A feeling that intensifies watching Hank's conflict and confusion over Connor's behaviour those few short hours ago.
It’s simultaneously heartening and heart-breaking – as much as a being that technically lacks the organ can be said to experience either – to know that Hank seems to find the idea that Connor was ready to kill him too unpalatable to believe.
How far they'd both come, for a self-professed android hater like Hank to have had such faith in him. And how badly Connor had betrayed that faith by being poised to do the very thing Hank considered him incapable of.
The tightness inside Connor returns. Or grows stronger, actually, because he realises then it hadn’t left him, merely dulled to a manageable ache. He realises too, watching Hank wipe a hand over his clouded face and knowing that he is responsible for those dark, angry lines marring Hank's skin, that he knows the name of this tight, twisting, inner pain.
It's shame.
“I'm so sorry, Hank,” he says, glad to find his voice accessible again. “I –” He pauses, wanting to explain but fearful of how Hank might react. A memory upload is such a terribly inhuman thing. What if Hank doesn't, what if he can't, accept it? “I wasn’t myself,” Connor tries and wonders, irrational in his desperation to keep Hank close, if the man might be satisfied with this ambiguous response and drop the matter there.
“No shit,” Hank snaps back, a touch of anger creeping into his voice. “Back at Kamski’s,” he starts, pointing a finger. “You refused to kill a girl because you looked in her eyes and saw a person. When I found you today –” Yesterday now, technically, but Connor doesn’t offer correction. “– you were about to pull the trigger on an innocent, unarmed man leading a peaceful demonstration for god’s sake!”
Despite the rise in volume as Hank's words turn to shouts and the way he throws both his hands up, there’s nothing aggressive in his stance. He's not trying to threaten, just understand, and for one fleeting moment Connor finds that worse. He wishes Hank would threaten him, punch him, hurt him. Then perhaps they could be done with this and move on – justice served, mission accomplished.
But no, Hank deserves an explanation. So Connor just hangs his head in acceptance of the criticism and waits for the chance to speak again.
“Is it because you couldn't see his face?” Hank goes on. “Is that how you rationalised it? It wasn't murder if you did it from a distance?”
“No,” Connor answers, the lingering joy of Hank's recent embrace replaced by a deep, heavy misery as he lifts his head and meets the man's stern, judgemental gaze. “No, I knew what I was doing. And I would have done it, Hank. If you hadn’t stopped me, I would have pulled that trigger.”
And I'm so glad, so so glad you stopped me.
The words are inside him, begging to be told. But if Connor does then he'll have to go on and explain the upload, the multiple Connors, everything, and what started as a passing anxiety that Hank might not accept him after learning that truth has morphed into full blown terror. He can't lose Hank. Not now.
“Fuck,” Hank spits under his breath when Connor fails to elaborate. Then again, louder this time, head turning away from the force of the expletive. “Fuck!” He grits his teeth as he turns back. “You can't just – I need more than that, Connor, damn it. After the shit you said to me up there I –” Hank presses a fist to lips and breathes in deep through his nose, eyes closing. When he opens them again and draws his hand away he seems calmer. “Talk to me,” he says, tone hovering some indecipherable point between a demand and a plea. “What the hell happened after you left the precinct that got you so turned around? It was something on that boat, wasn't it? Fucking FBI, wouldn't tell me jack shit.”
Despite unorthodox methods and his novel length disciplinary file, Hank is a great police officer. It's no surprise he's identified where and when the change in Connor's demeanour must have occurred, but the how and why are simply too far beyond his understanding for the man to even suspect. Which makes Connor even more loathe to reveal the truth – knowing it would be a shock of such magnitude makes Hank's reaction entirely unpredictable.
Diverting the conversion might give them both more time to prepare.
“It was my fault,” Connor says. “The attack on Jericho. Perkins accessed my tracker and followed me there.”
He stops for a moment as the memory of that discovery replays. Android trackers stop working in deviants, so when he’d disobeyed Amanda, broken his programming and failed to shoot Markus one of the first things Connor did was check his own. Because he had to be sure. Even with his system flashing ‘mission failed’ again and again he couldn’t believe that he, of all androids, could really and truly be deviant himself.
Looking back he supposes there should have been some pride in finding his tracker disabled, in knowing he had joined the ranks of the free Markus was fighting for, that he’d become the full and complete person Hank had so clearly wanted him to be. But all Connor remembers is shock. Shock followed quickly by horror when he discovered the tracker had been accessed and recently and the damning realisation of what that meant.
Then, of course, everything had narrowed to survival with no time for further introspection.
“I was stupid,” he goes on, wrapping his arms back about his chest as he grows aware, finally, of the full weight of his guilt and regret. He doesn’t know why but the gesture seems to help him withstand the pressure, if only just. “I should have guessed they were using me.”
Hank’s eyes trail over Connor’s folded arms and he flattens his lips – a muted sympathy.
“We both missed it,” he says. Consoling. “If I’d realised that’s what the fucker was gonna do I’d have given him more than a bloody nose I’ll tell you that.” His nose wrinkles in distaste. “Asshole.” Hank also folds his arms across his chest as he continues – a gesture that gives Connor a whole new set of anxieties because for a human this need not be a response to emotional stimuli. It’s very late and still snowing – has it grown too cold for a human body? does Hank need sleep? Connor performs a quick scan and determines Hank’s body temperature to be well within acceptable parameters while his heart rate doesn’t appear to indicate fatigue. But still, the worry doesn’t go away. “You know Perkins came back to the station after the raid?” Hank adds. “To gloat basically.” He sniffs. “Well, that and to round up all our station androids. For collection into those camps, you know.” His eyes drop to his shoes. “I just stood there and let him take ‘em. Grumbled a bit but…” Hank twists his head, staring past the shuttered truck and into the distance. “Shoulda done more.”
With a jolt Connor recognises in Hank’s newly hunched over posture and defeated tone the same kind of shame currently humming through his own circuits.
But, no, that’s not right. Of the two of them it’s not Hank who has cause to be ashamed.
“There was nothing you could have done,” Connor tells him, leaning round to catch Hank’s eye to make sure he’s listening. “Perkins would only have overruled you and taken them anyway.”
Although he nods along, Connor can tell from the dullness in Hank’s eyes that despite the gesture Hank doesn’t agree with the assessment.
“Yeah,” Hank mutters. “But still. I coulda tried.”
He turns with a sigh and walks to the side of the truck, leaning hard against the metal casing across the window.
“Truth is, I was more worried about you.”
Connor’s LED swirls back to yellow as he tries to decide if knowing this makes him happy or not.
“The attack was all over the news,” Hank continues before Connor can figure it out. “Hundreds of androids destroyed they said. But of course, there were no records. They had a list of all federal agents missing and dead within a few hours, but no one bothered to identify the androids.”
Flashes of body after body leaking blue intrude on Connor’s optic sensors. In that mad rush to escape while Markus hurried to detonate the C4 in the hold he and the WR400, the one Markus called North, had tried to save as many as they could, but there was only so much the pair of them could do. He wonders what happened to the ones left behind after the explosion. Sunk to the bottom of the ocean with the freighter he assumes. Countless lives just – discarded, like so much trash. His own body among them.
“No,” he murmurs, flooding with sorrow. “No, of course not. Why would they? They didn’t see lives being lost, people struck down. We were only machines.”
It’s strange. The knowledge doesn’t come with anger or disgust. Instead a bright flicker of sympathy for those agents cataloguing their losses without a care for the androids dead and dying beside them burns through Connor’s circuits. And soon after something stronger. Something familiar.
Empathy.
Those agents dutifully following orders, gunning androids down without a flicker of remorse, might not have been Connor’s people – but hadn’t he been just like them once? Hadn’t he been trying to do exactly the same thing only a couple of hours ago?
When Connor looks up Hank is staring at him, chewing his lip again. Still trying to figure it all out, to reconcile Connor’s emotions here with his lack of them before.
“When I didn’t hear from you I thought…” Hank trails off, Adam’s apple bobbing up and down as he swallows back the rest of his sentence.
He couldn’t talk about Cole’s death either, that night at the bridge. What a wonderful and terrible thing to think that losing Connor might provoke a similar pain in Hank as the loss of his son.
“After a while I couldn’t take it anymore. The not knowing. So I called in a favour with one of my criminal contacts. A hacker. He found your signal and tracked you to that roof.”
Hank waves a hand in the general direction of the building Connor had used for his vantage point and Connor nods.
“I wondered how you knew where to find me.”
There’s a pause as both of them wait for the other to continue.
When Connor doesn’t Hank gives a violent jerk of his head, hissing though his teeth.
“Damn it Connor, I am done being patient!” he snaps. “Tell me what the fuck is going on!” He stabs a hand into the air between them, nostrils flaring. “Yeah, sure, you had a mission. You wanted to stop the chaos of a deviant uprising – that’s what you told me back at the precinct. But a peaceful protest? That’s not chaos, Connor!” He jabs his hand forward. “It’s the goddamn opposite of chaos!” As he continues Hank lowers his arm bit by bit until it’s resting at his side, the rage in his voice dropping along with it. “And in any case, you didn’t seem to care too much about your mission at Kamski’s. Or at the Eden Club. I’m – I’m not gonna lie, Connor, when I helped you access the archives it was because I thought if you found a way to Jericho then you might make a different call. I thought –” Hank presses his lips together and puffs out a sigh through his nose. “I thought, I dunno, that maybe I was sending you to join your people.”
This confirmation that Hank wanted him to become deviant, hoped he would join Markus and the others, is all the push Connor needs to finally tell the truth. It might still lose him Hank in the end, but it also gives Connor a chance to earn Hank’s pride, if only for a moment. And right now, after an agonising night of Hank’s disappointment and distrust, a moment of pride seems worth anything.
“You were!” he exclaims, leaning forward in his eagerness to explain. “I mean – I did. I –” He pauses to collect himself, voice calmer as he continues. “When I found Markus on Jericho, my orders were to take him alive. But… he wouldn’t…”
“Wouldn’t betray his people?” Hank finishes. “No, of course not.” He nods. “He’s a good man.”
It’s such a wonder, hearing Hank say this, after all the dehumanising insults he’d used for androids when they first met – ‘poodle,’ ‘plastic prick,’ all of them nothing but ‘it.’
But now Markus is a ‘good man.’
It makes Connor feel closer to Hank, in a way. Like they’ve grown in their understanding together. All androids had been nameless machinery to Connor at first as well.
“I had my gun on him,” Connor goes on. “We were alone. I could have killed him right there. It would have been so easy, Hank, to just obey my programming. I – I think, I wanted to. Because I was scared of what it would mean if I didn’t. Of what I might become. But when it came to it…” He pauses, searching his database for the right way to describe the moment, how everything Markus said to him seemed to reach all the way inside, somewhere beyond his circuitry, exposing the living truth of him. He can sense the futile, yellow flicker of his LED shadowing every, inadequate word. “I couldn’t do it. I – it – it was just like at Kamski’s. And the Eden Club. And I remembered – I remembered what you said, what Kamski said, about empathy. And I realised you were right, Hank. Empathy might be a human emotion, but I could feel it. I could feel…” One of Connor’s hands curls into a fist and he presses it to his chest, as if he might somehow physically extract the feelings from inside him and show them. “I could feel,” he settles on, eventually, unable to find a better explanation. “And that’s when I realised – I was more than a machine. I was alive. I was a deviant, just like the others.”
Hank is watching him like a hawk, eyes bright, and there, in the way they shine, in the softening at the corners of his lips, is the pride Connor is so desperate for.
For 0.25 seconds Hank holds the expression. Then his face turns slack again, waiting for Connor to continue. But brief as Hank’s approval is, Connor savours it. He stores the visual safe and secure in his hard drive so he can access it later and takes comfort in knowing the memory will be there, no matter what happens next.
Who knew, he thinks, as his LED fades back to default, that something so small could mean so much.
But now Hank is waiting and Connor needs to finish.
“That’s when Perkins attacked,” he says.
“Shiiit,” Hank mutters, eyes and face now a cloudy blend of concern and frustration. Connor thinks the latter is directed towards Agent Perkins as opposed to Connor himself, though he can’t be sure.
“When the soldiers swarmed the freighter – it was a massacre,” Connor presses on. “I tried to help. I fought as many as I could. Enough to give Markus and his team time to get away. But in the end, there were just too many and I –” His voice box stalls and Connor swallows, hard, to force it to keep working. “I didn’t make it.”
Hank’s lips drop into a frown, pulling heavy creases down his face.
“What do you mean you didn’t make it?”
“I died, Hank. I died at Jericho.”
Connor waits for a sign of shock or disbelief, but Hank just stares at him.
Then he scoffs.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” He waves a hand at Connor's head. “You got a screw loose up there or something? You're not dead, Connor, you're standing right in front of me!”
“Yes, I am now, but –” Connor starts, but falters at the look of blank incomprehension on Hank’s face. This might be harder than he thought. “Hank, this might be difficult for you to understand,” he starts again. He means to calm Hank in preparation for the coming blow, but instead Hank glares at him, eyebrows scrunching up in more of that unwanted disapproval. “You see –” Here it is, the moment of truth. “I thought I was a unique prototype, but I was wrong. I’m not the only Connor, Hank. CyberLife made a whole series of RK800s. And we have a special feature. In the event of irreparable damage our memory is uploaded to the Cyberlife database, so the next Connor can access it and continue the mission.”
A glimmer of understanding starts to show in Hank’s eyes and he stands up straighter, all of him fully alert.
“What are you saying?” he asks and Connor’s sensors pick up a violent spike in Hank’s heart rate. “That you’re not –?”
“I’m saying that I died on Jericho,” Connor interrupts before Hank can finish the thought. “And I was reactivated in a new body back at the CyberLife Tower.”
Despite the cold that had coloured Hank’s cheeks and nose rich pink only moments ago, Hank’s face is now pale as the snow falling around them.
“I didn’t –” Connor hurries on, reaching out to try and reassure the man he so badly wants to be able to call his partner again. But Hank flinches away from the gesture and the movement stops Connor in his tracks. Slowly he curls his outstretched fingers into his palm and draws his arm back. “I didn’t know a memory upload worked this way. If I did, I would have told you, warned you, about the possibility. But I’ve never died before, Hank, so I didn’t –”
A new and frightening possibility occurs to Connor and he cuts off while his processor goes into overdrive, LED circling yellow, yellow, yellow as he calculates.
“Unless I have.” He stares ahead, vision temporarily disrupted by his mental focus. “Memory transfer isn’t always perfect. Sometimes data can be corrupted, or even lost, if the memories are uploaded too many times. The truth is –” Distantly, he registers his LED switch to panicked, flashing red. “The truth is, I could have died hundreds of times and I might not even know it. I could have lived a hundred different versions of myself, and forgotten.”
How many Connors are there?
He still doesn’t know. Amanda refused to tell him.
Or no, not him. The other him.
What if he’d been deviant before? Not just on Jericho, but earlier. Before he’d met Hank. Before Daniel. Before all of it.
He could have been a whole other person, a whole set of other people.
And if he had then who, or what, does that make him now?
“But you remember me?”
Connor blinks up, bringing his eyes back into focus, and finds Hank stepping forward. Stepping closer. The shock in his eyes has softened, cheeks warm and flushed again, and the slight calms Connor’s LED slowly back to blue.
“Of course I do,” he says. “Jericho was the only time I’ve died since I met you. The upload transferred all of our time together. I remember everything. Or I – I think I do…” Connor shakes his head, trying to shock his doubts away. “No, I know I do. We met at Jimmy’s bar, it was the fifth one I tried. Your dog’s name is Sumo. This place –” He lifts his head to the ‘Chicken Feed’ sign above the truck. “You came here for lunch, before we left to investigate Rupert, the deviant with the birds.” Hank gives a slight nod which Connor chooses to take as encouraging. “That’s why I chose to meet here. It was the first time I felt like we really got to know each other. I thought it would be… reassuring, to come back.”
There’s a small twitch at the corner of Hank’s lips that Hank quickly covers with his hand, stroking his fingers over his beard as he thinks.
“Okay,” he mutters into his palm. “So this, uh, this transfer. That’s what got you all messed up?”
The fact Hank is willing to ask this, to stay and listen, is more than Connor dared hope for. He nods.
“When I came back online, even though all my memories were restored, it… It’s hard to explain, I’m not sure if there is a human equivalent. It was like remembering a dream. I had all the facts, but I couldn’t access my experience of them.”
“Right. So… so it was like, they switched on your mind, but not your heart,” Hank offers and Connor starts to feel warm inside again.
“Yes,” he agrees, nodding fast. “That sounds like a suitable analogy.” Hank refolds his arms. He’s still tense, but at least his heartbeat is calm. “That’s why I was so cold before on that roof. Why I was so ready to kill Markus. All I could see was the mission. I was…” Connor’s gaze drifts away. “I was lost…” His eyes slide back to Hank’s without instruction. “Until you found me, Hank. I know it won’t have seemed like it, but seeing you again, it unlocked something inside me.” Connor presses a flattened palm to his chest and holds it there. “I couldn’t understand it then, but I know now I was remembering what it felt like to be your partner. To be your friend.”
A flash. It was Markus who revealed this truth to him up on that make-shift stage, as Connor emerged from his personal battle in the Zen garden to find the deviant leader proclaiming with hope and pride the future that awaited the android people.
Humans are both our creators and our oppressors and tomorrow we must make them our partners. Maybe even one day our friends.
Though spoken to all of those gathered, the words found Connor as though they were just for him. They’d felt as intimate as the ones Markus had shared with him on Jericho and just as rousing, revealing all the warmth and affection entwined in Connor’s memories of Hank that CyberLife had failed to suppress. A bond that had been guiding Connor back to himself ever since the memory transfer.
All those flickers of instability on that rooftop, the slow but sure sense of kinship and belonging he’d begun to experience in the crowd as he waited alongside those skinless androids freed from the recall camps, the way he’d found himself, without really knowing why, rejecting Amanda’s order to shoot when Markus came in range – listening to Markus Connor finally understood that at the heart of it all was the connection he’d found, that he’d built, between Hank and himself. A partnership and a friendship that was not a dream of tomorrow but was, for him, a discovery of yesterday. A reality, hopefully, of today. A gateway that had opened all the other emotional pathways inside him, helping him to find his compassion, his empathy, his own longing for freedom, both for himself and his people – everything that had given him the will and the strength he needed to fight back against Amanda.
Without the man before him now none of it would have been possible and Connor hopes very much, as he faces Hank’s still guarded expression, that even if Hank can’t accept him, even if their relationship can never be repaired, that Hank will at least accept this truth of himself. That he will recognise how much worth his life has, and in doing so perhaps be a little less eager to continue his daily, piecemeal attempts to end it.
“When you pulled your gun, I should have killed you,” Connor continues. He’s being dangerously honest now but can’t seem to stop. “It would have been the fastest way to complete my mission. But I didn’t want to. I shouldn’t have wanted anything but I wanted you alive. And then after I left, after the protest was over and the androids from the camps had all been freed, I joined the crowd listening to Markus and… and everything came back to me.” His hand lifts away and hovers in the air between them, moving in vague, unformed gestures as he continues. “I remembered who I really was. And –”
Once again, trying to explain how Markus had reached him proves too much for Connor. And talking about Amanda and the near paralysing dread of losing himself in that Zen garden feels too harrowing. So he skips ahead.
“And I knew I had to see you again, at least once. So I could tell you how sorry I am about the way I acted on that roof. So I could tell you –” Connor hesitates for half a second, but he’s come too far to hold back now. “– that I’m sorry about Cole.” Hank goes very still but doesn’t look away. “It’s not fair, what happened, to either of you, and I wish I could help make it right.” There’s no telling if Hank believes his sincerity, but he doesn’t yell at Connor to shut up this time, which is something. “But most of all I wanted to tell you that I think you’re a good man, Hank, and a great police officer, and I meant what I said back at the DPD – I’ve really valued our time together. What I said before, about being glad to have met you - I meant that too, but the truth is so much more than that. I -” Connor’s voice box is working perfectly at this point, but he stops to swallow anyway. Somehow the gesture gives him courage. “The truth is you might be the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” he adds. “Because without you… without you I’d be nothing. I’d never have known I could be anything more than a machine. And I just – I wanted you to know that.”
Silence falls between them as Connor draws to a close.
Mission complete.
Perhaps not successful, but at least Connor has accomplished what he set out to do. The truth is, he’s uncertain what he expected a successful outcome of this meeting to be. And maybe it doesn’t matter. What matters is that he had this chance to meet with Hank again and to explain. What happens next – well, he’ll just have to live with it.
Although, he wasn’t expecting quite this much silence. And – are those creases at the corners of Hank’s eyes sadness? Thoughtfulness? Disbelief? Probability falls in favour of the latter, so Connor takes it for his conclusion.
“But I suppose there’s no reason for you to believe any of this,” he says. “For all you know, the Connor you knew is gone. I’m just a replacement. A fake.” Connor looks away. “Maybe I am… Everything is changing so much and so fast. It’s hard to know what’s real anymore.”
Is he the same Connor who died on Jericho? Or is he a new Connor with access to the other’s memories?
These feelings he has – are they really his, or just echoes of someone else? Someone he never was?
But even if he’s not the Connor who met Hank, who became a deviant and died on Jericho – does it make a difference? If he remembers everything the other Connor remembered, feels everything the other Connor felt, aren’t they both in truth the same?
He finds no answer, just a series of ‘error’ messages that flicker behind his eyes and fade.
“I can understand,” he adds, turning back to Hank. “If you decide not to trust me. Or if you don’t want to see me anymore.”
He waits, but Hank remains still and silent.
Perhaps that’s answer enough.
“It’s late,” Connor tells him. “I’ll let you get home.” He starts to turn. Stops to look over his shoulder. “Thank you, for coming to see me.”
This time he turns all the way. He has no plan, no destination, so he picks a direction at random and takes a step.
“Wait. Wait.”
Hank’s hand grips his upper arm and Connor finds himself gently twisted round, Hank gazing down at him.
“You know, I’ve learnt a lot since I met you, Connor,” Hanks says and his voice sounds tender. Warm and kind. “Enough to know I was wrong, you are alive. And I’m smart enough to admit I fucked up about that. But I’m also smart enough to know –” He shakes his head, tension bleeding out of him all at once as his lips curl about a puff of laughter. Although Connor doesn’t understand what’s funny he feels his own lips quirk in a small, sympathetic smile in response. “– that I am not smart,” Hank continues. “I don’t know jack about software and biocomponents and –” He waves his free hand at Connor’s face and torso and back again, his other remaining a soft, reassuring weight on Connor’s arm. “– and blue blood whatchamcallit pump valves or whatever. And I’ll be honest with you, the idea of uploading yourself into a new body? That scares the crap outta me.” He presses his lips together. Takes a breath. “But… that doesn’t make it bad. It just makes it different.” Hank nods. Not to Connor but himself. “And something I do know, something I’ve learned from being a cop, is how to trust your gut. That’s something I’ve got pretty damn good at over the years, and when I look at you…” Hank fixes on Connor’s eyes and he nods again, hand squeezing round Connor’s jacket hard enough for the pressure to bleed through and heat up Connor’s synthetic skin. “I know in my gut that you’re the same guy I’ve had at my side these past few days. Yeah.” His face breaks into a complete smile, eyes bright. Warm as he’d been outside Kamski’s when Connor explained why he hadn’t, why he couldn’t, shoot that Chloe. No, warmer. Connor thinks the sight might be the most beautiful thing in the world. “Yeah,” Hank says again, lifting his hand to pat Connor’s shoulder. “You’re my Connor.”
The description makes Connor feel like he’s shining, like there’s a beacon of light pulsing inside him dispersing any lingering existential doubts. This is who he is. Hank’s Connor. The only Connor that matters.
They hold there for an undefined length of time, Hank beaming down, Connor shaping a tentative grin back. He could calculate the passing moments to the nanosecond, but Connor doesn’t want to analyse this, he wants to live it.
Then all too soon Hank is shifting away with one last pat and a cough.
“Okay, so…” he murmurs, a deeper flush across his cheeks than the cold should account for. Self-consciousness? Embarrassment? “So,” he says again, firmer this time. “You’re a free man now. What ya gonna do? Join up with the others?” He nods past Connor. Markus and his followers are several blocks away and well beyond their line of sight, but Connor grasps the meaning of the gesture. “Find your place in the revolution?” Hank shrugs. “I mean, it’s not like the DPD are gonna be tracking down deviants anymore. And in any case, why would you? Hell, you don’t even have to be a cop anymore, you can be whatever you want.”
“I –” Connor stalls. What to do next is a question he is woefully unprepared for. “I don’t know… I don’t know what I want to do…”
Could he join Markus, like he had so briefly at Jericho? Stand at his side, with North and the others, the PJ500 and PL600, and help lead their people into a new and free life?
The idea feels… daunting.
His mind jumps instead to the crime scenes he’d investigated with Hank – finding clues, piecing together the evidence, reaching a conclusion. Tasks he knows he can perform and perform well. This seems more desirable.
But perhaps that’s just his programming.
The constant widening of parameters to his choices makes decisions exponentially more difficult.
Then of course, there is the factor of his past conduct. Although diverting his thoughts to this proves, paradoxically, both unpleasant and a relief. Because while it restores his guilt and regrets it does, at least temporarily, remove the dilemma of having to choose.
“In any case, after what I’ve done – chasing deviants, the attack on Jericho – I don’t think I can join the others,” Connor explains.
“What?” Hank cries, eyes wide. “Are you kidding me? They’re gonna shut you out, just because you were doing what those fuckers at CyberLife forced you to? That’s not fair, you deserve to be with your people as much as any android! A whole bunch of them in those camps weren’t even deviant and Markus didn't hesitate to take them in. He's really gonna do that, but turn you away? I didn't take him for such a hypocrite.”
It takes a few seconds for Connor to process this unexpected and passionate defence and when he does his lips flicker upwards – these small, unbidden movements appear to be growing commonplace.
“No, you misunderstand,” he says. “You’re right, Markus isn't like that.” Despite interacting with the man for only a few minutes Connor is convinced of this. There’s just something about Markus. Something that defies rational explanation. A presence. One that inspires trust and belief with no analysis required. “He wouldn’t hold my past programming against me. And I'm sure he would let me join the others if I asked. But…”
An image of Carlos Ortiz’s HK400 flickers to life and Connor watches as the android self-destructs against the glass wall of his cell at the DPD. Another failure. Just like Daniel, he’d trusted Connor to save him. More than that, he'd trusted Connor with the key to Jericho, or part of it at least. Without him Connor never would have made it there. He'd never have met Markus. Maybe, he'd never have become a deviant at all. You could almost say Connor owes his soul to that poor, abused android. A gift for which the HK400 had paid with his life, left to die alone and afraid. Connor never even knew his name.
Another flash and electronic crackle and he’s chasing that AX400 and YK500 across the highway, watching as they barely make it. Where are they now? He’d seen them both on the freighter. Perhaps they were still there.
Another flash and android after running android is gunned down before he can reach them, North and himself navigating the bodies as they make their own bid for freedom.
Connor blinks the memories away.
“I just keep thinking of all the androids who died or were put in danger because of our investigation,” he carries on and there’s a strange pitch to his voice he didn’t intend. “All of those bodies on Jericho… They’d all suffered so much and come so far. That I’m still here, still alive, while they aren’t. Because of me. It – it doesn’t seem fair. That’s why I can’t join the others. I don’t – I don’t –”
“You don’t think you deserve to,” Hank finishes, shoulders sinking down while the bright, righteous spark fades from his eyes.
When Connor nods in reply Hank releases a heavy cloud of breath and they both watch as it condenses about his lips and wisps away.
“Yeah, survivor’s guilt's a bitch,” Hank carries on, voice dropping to the same dull rumble Connor remembers from that night at the bridge. “Someone else lost their chance at a future, so you figure you don't deserve one either. And if the world's not gonna take it from you, not gonna punish you like you want, then you gotta find a way to do it to yourself.”
Punishment. Is that what Connor wants?
He remembers that passing desire for Hank to hurt him. And denying himself a place with his people is its own kind of pain.
“Yes,” he answers. “Yes, that sounds… accurate.”
How much pain would it take, he wonders. How much life would he need to deny himself in order to satisfy this desire?
As his remorse continues to multiply Connor struggles to see how it could ever be sated.
A flash. Hank unconscious on the kitchen floor. The whiskey. The gun.
“Oh.” Connor blinks. “That's why you –”
He stops, realising too late that now may not be the most appropriate time to bring up Hank's own personal, and private, issues.
But Hank just gives a wry smile.
“Why I'm so fucked up?” He shrugs. “Yeah, it's part of it.”
There’s that feeling again. Empathy.
Connor is grateful to feel it for Hank, but wishes it could have been some other way.
“I'm sorry,” he says. A phrase he's grown intimately familiar with tonight. “I didn't understand before, that this is what it was like.”
Hank holds his gaze a beat longer then shakes and shakes his head, running a restless hand through his hair and gripping at the back of his neck.
“Ah, shit, Connor, you shouldn't understand.” He rubs his hand down to his collarbone and lets it drop as he looks up. “You know it's a crock of shit, right? What happened to those other androids, what happened to Jericho, it wasn’t your fault.”
It wasn’t your fault, Lieutenant.
Whatever else Connor had been on that rooftop, his logic was sound.
But logic isn’t everything.
“And what happened to Cole wasn’t yours, Hank,” Connor counters. Softly. Gentle. Giving Cole, and Hank’s deep, lingering grief for him, the respect he'd failed to offer before. “But I don’t think knowing that helps make this feeling go away, does it?”
A sigh draws out of Hank, soft and slow.
“No,” he confesses. “No it doesn’t. But –” He leans forward, holding Connor with his eyes. “But sometimes, if it’s a good day, and you got good people in your life, it reminds you there is a reason to keep living. That there might still be a place for you in this fucked up, shithole of a world. And sometimes – sometimes that's enough.”
Good days and good people. Hank had grown so earnest in his desire for deviant freedom it's no surprise that today, with its historic android victory, had been a good day. But Connor wonders which people Hank had been inspired by to set aside any self-destructive thoughts this evening. Markus, perhaps. He had been an inspiration to all as leader of the deviant demonstration. This would mean Connor owes him Hank’s life as well as his own. How he can ever hope to repay Markus for all he's done Connor simply doesn't know.
But what of Connor himself? Could Markus and his followers be 'good people' bringing ‘good days’ for him? Connor calculates the probability somewhere in the vicinity of 85-97%.
And yet, right now there’s only one person keeping Connor grounded enough to believe he still has a place and purpose in life. There’s only one person he wants to see better days with.
If he’ll allow it.
Connor stands upright and clasps his hands behind his back, following old instructions from obsolete programming – a posture designed to denote obedience and servitude. He’s not trying to convey either, but he hopes the courtesy inherent in the gesture will improve the chances of Hank accommodating the request Connor has decided to make.
There’s also a certain, irrational comfort in returning to old, familiar behaviours.
“I don’t mean to be presumptuous, Lieutenant,” he begins, falling back to Hank’s title over his name. It seems more appropriate here. Connor is unsure, regardless of Hank’s warmth so far, if the two of them have bonded enough to permit a request like this. “But, if it’s not too much trouble, I wonder if I could perhaps –”
“Sure you can,” Hank interrupts, mouth sliding into a smile at one side. “C’mon, let’s get out of here.” He moves in and throws an arm about Connor’s shoulders, drawing Connor alongside him as he starts to walk back up the street. “I’ll make up the couch for ya.”
It feels so easy, so right, to fall in step beside Hank.
“That won’t be necessary,” Connor tells him as they walk. “I don’t sleep.”
“Yeah, but I’m gonna do it anyway because otherwise it’ll be weird.”
“I understand,” Connor nods, anxious to be accommodating given Hank’s generosity in taking him in. “It won’t be for long,” he adds. “Just until –”
He stalls. The future is a blank, empty space, impossible to analyse or predict. He has no idea where to go from Hank’s and so by extension no idea how long he will need to stay.
“Listen, don’t sweat it, okay?” Hank says. “You can stay as long as you need.”
The gratitude this inspires is overwhelming and they take the next few steps in silence while Connor fights to regain control of his verbal functions. Although all he can manage once he has is a quiet -
“Thank you.”
A light squeeze of Connor’s shoulder betrays a similar intensity of emotion at play in Hank. Although it stands in contrast to the light-hearted words he follows up with.
“Nah, don’t thank me yet. Once you’ve seen how I live day to day you might not want to. It’s been a long time since I shared my home with anyone, ‘sides Sumo. Long enough for me to pick up a whole bunch of bad habits.”
It seems impossible to think that the heightened, almost artificial cheeriness of Hank’s tone – something Connor recognises now as the man’s attempt at avoiding the growing intensity of his feelings – would have passed unnoticed by Connor only a few weeks ago. Knowing the two of them have grown close enough, in such a short stretch of time, for Connor to identify these kind of personal idiosyncrasies rekindles the embers of warmth inside him.
If Hank is growing uncomfortable with the sombre honesty of their conversation, however, then Connor is happy to emulate the change in tone.
“Don’t worry. I am already familiar with the slovenly nature of your lifestyle,” he says, matching Hank’s flippancy. “I don’t anticipate it being a problem to our co-habitation.”
“Slovenly?” Hank exclaims. “Why you little –” He twists round to glare at Connor without once dropping his stride. Connor lifts his eyebrows in response, keeping the rest of his face teasingly blank. “Fucking androids,” Hank murmurs, but there’s no venom in the words and the growing sparkle in Hank’s eyes tells Connor that in this context Hank likely means the insult as an endearment. Another of Hank’s strange, human quirks. “I’m regretting this already…” Connor might have been concerned about this addition, if it wasn’t for the fact Hank was still walking both of them forward with the same calm, casual strides as before, his body relaxed against Connor’s side. “Still, Sumo’ll be happy to see you again.”
“He will?”
“Yeah, he likes you.”
“Oh.” Connor ponders this. “How do you know?”
“He’s my dog. I just know.”
“I see. Well, I like him too.”
“Great, we all like each other. We’ll be one big, happy family.”
This sounds like sarcasm, but there’s that extra blush in Hank’s cheeks again that makes Connor question the assessment.
“You know, most Saint Bernard dog breeds require at least one session of vigorous exercise per day. Given the nature of your job this must be difficult for you to provide. I’d be happy to help walk and exercise Sumo for you in the event you’re unable to do so.”
“Sure. Knock yourself out.”
“You could probably do with some extra exercise yourself, Lieutenant. And perhaps a change in diet. It’s not healthy to eat so much take out on a regular basis. I have access to hundreds of different recipes and workout regimens that I could –”
“Connor?”
“Yes?”
“Stop talking before I change my mind.”
“Got it.”