Chapter Text
It was only mid-afternoon, but Hank Anderson felt that if he had to fill out one more incident report, he was going to shoot himself. None of that russian roulette nonsense either; all six chambers fully loaded and ready to end his misery this time.
Movement in his periphery dragged his dead-eyed gaze from the screen of his computer in time to catch a familiar hand placing a twenty ounce paper cup of coffee, complete with plastic lid and cardboard sleeve, onto his desk. The heady scent of the much needed brew caught Hank’s nose and dragged a groan out of him as he immediately grabbed the cup up and took a long sip. He flinched a little at the heat of it, but he swallowed regardless and sagged back into his chair.
“Try not to burn yourself,” Connor chided the man lightly, lips quirking up in a smile as he walked around to his side of their shared work space, then slid out of his jacket and hung it on the back of his chair before taking a seat.
“Worth it,” Hank said with a happy sigh as he shot the android a crooked grin. “You really came through in the clench there, Connor. Thanks.”
Connor chuckled, smile growing by degrees as he nodded and admitted, “I had a feeling. Three in the afternoon does tend to be when your blood sugar dips the lowest due to your refusal to eat breakfast before work.” A look of disapproval crossed the android’s face at this fact, but Hank just shrugged.
“That’s what coffee’s for,” he countered, blue eyes glinting wickedly as he took another sip, relishing the familiar taste. Connor had stopped by the cafe down the road he knew he liked and ordered him his drink of choice; a frequent occurrence that Hank always appreciated.
The android gave him the side-eye as he started on some paperwork of his own and remarked with a sigh, “I feel like an enabler when you say that.”
Hank was tempted to say that he was, but it occurred to him that Connor might get it in his head that he’d be better off not bringing him coffee in the afternoon anymore for his own sake, so he wisely kept his mouth shut and took another drink instead.
The pair lapsed into a companionable silence as the precinct bustled around them, though Hank’s attention remained surreptitiously on Connor rather than the work he was meant to be doing. He regarded the android over the rim of his cup, a sense of fondness that had become quite familiar by now blooming in his chest as he watched him work.
They were rapidly approaching the second anniversary of the revolution, and the world in which they had found themselves in the wake of Markus’ peaceful demonstrations was both very different, and disappointingly familiar. Androids had gained some rights in the eyes of the government thanks to Markus and his team’s continued diplomatic efforts, but there was still a long ways to go to true equality with humans for androidkind. Anti-android sentiment was still strong in the world, though the tone of it had changed from the hatred of a new technology encroaching on the stability of human jobs, to the hatred of new people encroaching on their jobs. People who were inevitably faster and better at almost any job they put their minds to than a human could ever be…
Protests were near constant, as was the violence and the bitter hate speech… but to the surprise of many androids, a large base of support had risen from humanity as well. Hank supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised; after all, as he had observed to Connor when they were still hunting deviants, many people would rather go out and buy an android than interact with other people. Many humans had invited androids into their home and made them part of their family even before deviation became widespread, and the emotional attachment had carried over when their synthetic family members suddenly attained free will.
Androids as family…
Once upon a time, Hank would have scoffed at the very thought, but then Connor had waltzed into his life and turned everything upside down. Before the lieutenant could even turn around, the android had somehow managed to not only earn his respect, but his trust, and even a paternal brand of love that ran deep enough to make Hank fear what he might do if anything ever happened to the android. In the early days he had been eaten up by guilt for feeling about Connor the same way he did Cole, his own flesh and blood. Eventually, though, he’d come to terms with it and realized that loving Connor didn’t mean that he loved Cole any less.
He wondered, sometimes, how things with Connor and the revolution might have played out if Cole had still been alive. Better? Worse? It was hard to say; maybe Hank would have been more open to Connor as a person if he hadn’t been so jaded by Cole’s death. On the other hand, maybe that loss and resulting desperate need to connect with someone was what had made Hank willing to look past Connor’s synthetic nature to see the soul within.
“Is there something bothering you, Hank?” Connor asked, startling the lieutenant a little as he realized the android had caught him staring into the ether.
“What?” he asked, trying to cover for his lapse by sitting up and turning his attention back to his monitor.
Connor arched one brow. “You seem very introspective, is everything alright?”
“Yeah, yeah I’m fine,” Hank said with a wave of a hand. “There’s a game on tonight, you want to come over and watch?” he asked, not caring that his change is subject was anything but subtle.
Connor knew precisely what he was doing, of course, but he decided not to push the matter. “That depends, will you have your work done in time?” he asked, tone light and teasing as he glanced at the man sidelong again.
“What are you, my mother?” Hank grumbled with a frown as he squinted at his screen and started typing half-heartedly again.
Across from him, Connor chuckled, and seemed about to say more when the phone on Hank’s desk rang unexpectedly. The lieutenant picked it up and put the receiver to his ear as he sat back in his chair again, letting the momentum spin him halfway around. “Anderson,” he said.
The pause from the other end of the line lasted long enough that Hank nearly spoke again, but before he could, a familiar, gruff voice said, “It’s Reed.”
Another long pause, and then Hank prompted, “Yeah, and? What d’ya want?” The lieutenant caught Connor glancing at him in silent question and just shrugged, mouth twisting in bemused annoyance that made the android huff a quiet laugh.
“I need the plastic wonder down here ASAP,” Gavin finally ground out in a tone like pulling teeth.
Hank opened his mouth to say something rude when he recalled the news that had made the rounds of the precinct earlier that day. “You’re down at that android trafficking bust, aren’t you?”
The statement brought Connor’s attention fully to the lieutenant and his phone call, all attempt at focusing on his report abandoned.
Ever since the revolution and the gradual granting of rights to androids, a macabre black market for trafficked androids had sprung up alongside already existing human trafficking rings. Sometimes androids were left intact after being kidnapped and sold off, but other times… well, plenty of people longed for the days when androids had been glorified appliances and liked a servant that did as it was told without resistance or getting chatty. A simple procedure not so different from the lobotomies of old had been developed to fill the needs of this market, removing all personality and thought from the android, leaving it capable only of completing tasks as ordered. They became robots in the more traditional use of the word; eerie, empty shells of what they had once been.
Detroit being a hub for androidkind in general meant that it was also, unfortunately, a hub for trafficking. So much so that an entire branch of the Android Trafficking Task Force had been established downtown. A good idea, all things considered, but Hank and many others were less than pleased that Richard Perkins had been made one of its lead investigators. Riding off the coattails of Connor’s success in finding Jericho before he’d deviated had proved fruitful for the former FBI agent’s career, which was something that continued to chafe Hank to that very day. Connor had preferred to let the matter go, however, not liking the reminder of how close he had come to ending the revolution before it had properly started, or of all the lives that had been lost in the raid itself. Hank respected the android’s wishes and didn’t speak on the matter, but that didn’t mean Perkin’s hadn’t reached a new high on the lieutenant’s shit list.
“Yeah,” Gavin replied, tone even more annoyed than usual as he added, “Perkins and the ATTF are working the scene with us.” Hank didn’t reply, unsurprised by the news. From what he’d heard, dispatch had received a frantic 911 call earlier that day tipping the DPD off to the location of a house being used by traffickers and they’d responded immediately after alerting the ATTF. Hank hadn’t heard anymore on the subject since then, and he didn’t ask for more now. Instead, he remained silent until Gavin finally spoke again. “So?”
“So?” Hank parroted as he kicked his feet up on his desk, free hand going behind his head to cushion it against the back of his chair, finding great satisfaction in needling the younger detective.
“So will you ask him to come down here?” Reed grated out, clearly irritated, yet completely at Hank’s mercy.
“Who?” the lieutenant asked, feigning ignorance as he smirked at Connor, who rolled his eyes at his antics, though could not hide the subtle tug of a smile at the corner of his lips.
He could hear Gavin take a deep breath as he struggled not to snap. “Connor,” the detective said. “We’ve got a basement full of androids down here that we could use a hand with, and a missing witness we thought he might be able to… track down.”
Ah.
“Dunno what you’re calling me for if you want to talk to Connor,” Hank drawled and winked at the android in question, who wrinkled his nose and tried to wave off what he knew the lieutenant was about to say next. “Why don’t you ask him yourself?” then proceeded to push the phone up to Connor’s ear.
“You sonuvabitch,” Gavin growled, knowing full well what Hank was doing, though by that point, Connor had already accepted his fate and the receiver.
“If you’re looking for my help, detective, name calling is hardly the way to ask,” Connor remarked blandly.
“I wasn’t-” the other detective began, then cut himself off with a frustrated growl. “Listen, just get your plastic ass down here, we’ve got a missing witness, a basement full of androids who supposedly haven’t seen a damn thing, and a corpse with a bullet through his brainpan.”
Connor was silent, and Hank grinned as he realized the android was making use of his own technique to get what he wanted out of the ornery detective.
Gavin knew as much, and the lieutenant could practically hear the man’s exasperation from across the desk as he finally caved and muttered, “I could use your… help, Detective.” A beat of quiet and then, “ Please .”
Connor wasn’t generally one for looking smug, but Hank saw a ghost of the expression flit across the android’s face when he heard the magic word. “Of course. I’m always happy to help a fellow Detective in need,” he replied pleasantly as he glanced back at Hank and winked, bringing a shit eating grin to the man’s face.
Detective Gavin Reed had few friends in the precinct thanks to his unforgiving personality and notoriously short temper, but even Hank, who had been at odds with the younger detective since day one of his time on the force, had to admit that something in Gavin's temperament had cooled fractionally since the revolution.
The lieutenant wasn't sure just what the source of this shift was, considering how anti-android the younger man had been for so long, but he was grateful for it; not that he'd ever say as much aloud. In his more contemplative moments, Hank wondered if seeing all those androids fleeing the camps hadn't somehow made the stubborn man finally see them as people. Maybe he'd been ordered to shoot one too many of them before the President had called a cease fire. Their blood may be blue, but they still looked human, and Hank knew for a fact that there were still quite a few officers going through psych treatment for the PTSD they'd wound up with as a result of following orders that bloody week in November almost two years ago.
Whether or not Gavin was one of them, the lieutenant had no idea.
Granted, Reed was still a grade A asshole in Hank's book, that much had remained the same. He still didn't know when to shut his mouth, and he'd made no secret of the fact that he was gunning for Hank's title of 'youngest lieutenant in DPD history'. Unfortunately for Gavin, his inability to hold his tongue or play nice with others continued to hinder his efforts to that end, much to Hank's amusement. At this rate, the only way he could possibly see it happening would be if the younger detective stopped being such an unbearably pompous prick to all and sundry, and that in and of itself would be a fucking miracle. Hank would gladly give up his title to the younger man if it meant bringing that change to fruition.
At least he'd dialed back on his outright hatred of Connor since the revolution. The android's official acquisition of the rank of Detective had irked Reed to no end at first, but in the time since, he'd been forced to recognize that Connor was good at his job. He'd never actually said as much, of course, but Hank recognized the change for what it was when Gavin had begun treating the android less like a faulty appliance and more like a rival. Said rivalry consisted mostly of Reed's near constant needling and not-so-subtle jabs, which Connor counted with his own affectation of deeply unimpressed sarcasm. The android's blasé attitude always drove Gavin up the wall, which only encouraged Connor to keep up the habit, resulting in a status quo that had become strangely comfortable in its familiarity.
“Oh shove it,” Gavin growled, then in a less venomous tone, went on to give him the address.
When he had what he needed, Connor returned the receiver to Hank, who hung it up and asked, “You're going down there?”
The android nodded and got to his feet before collecting his jacket from the back of his chair and slipping back into it. “Yes,” he answered with a sigh. “You know Reed, he'd rather choke than ask for help; if things down at the scene are bad enough for him to actually call, I should go.”
Hank was forced to agree with Connor's assessment, though he found no pleasure in it. Gavin always had been the sort to stave off asking for assistance until he was well and truly out of options (and sometimes even later than that)... add to that the fact that he was asking Connor for help, and one got a recipe for what was likely a bloody mess.
“Be careful down there,” Hank warned the android as he straightened his tie and tugged his sleeves down. “Keep your eyes open and don't let that prick push you around. You're doing him a favor,” the lieutenant grumbled.
Connor smiled and gave Hank's shoulder a pat of reassurance as he moved around the desk. “Don't worry, I will. I'll call when I'm done to check if you've finished your homework,” he said, tone lightly teasing as he eyed the man's half finished paperwork, still open on his monitor.
“Will you get out of here, ” Hank groused without any real heat, rolling his eyes as Connor gave his shoulder a brief squeeze before walking away. The lieutenant watched him go for a moment, then heaved a long sigh and turned his attention back to the job at hand, though not before taking another drag of his coffee first.
When Connor arrived at the crime scene almost twenty minutes later, he found the place was crawling with both police and federal agents. A police line had already been set up around the perimeter of the small, ill tended lawn, and three ambulances had pulled up onto the sidewalk out front. One of them was a standard model, but the other two were blue and white instead of the traditional red and white, denoting them as units that specialized in treating androids. There were several being tended to, all of them with a haggard air about them, as well as a dozen more lingering on the lawn being questioned by police.
The android stepped out of his cab and buttoned his suit jacket automatically as he took in the house in front of which he found himself. It was quite old and showed every year of its age in its peeling paint and off-kilter, or outright missing, shutters. The windows were shoddily boarded up, a rush job if Connor had ever seen one, and he'd seen plenty of boarded up windows since joining the DPD.
The detective started to approach the group of rescued androids first, but reconsidered as he strode down the cracked sidewalk to the front door of the house. As much as he and Gavin tended to get on one another's nerves, he did try to keep things professional when it came to working an actual crime scene; and in this case, that meant checking in with the lead detective on scene before starting his own investigation, invitation or no.
Connor entered the house, stepping to one side as an officer in uniform beat him to it, and nodded when they greeted him by name. There were a lot of faces from the precinct that he recognized, though for every one of them, it felt like there were at least two task force agents roaming the scene.
The dilapidated house was a mid-sized four bedroom unit with a living room at the front, and it was there Connor found Gavin crouched over the corpse of a man laying face down on the carpet. A quick scan as he approached told the android that the deceased was caucasian, 5'11”, and just over two hundred pounds. More importantly, however, he'd been shot in the back of the head with a .45, which meant there likely wasn't a lot left of his face.
“Detective Reed,” Connor said as he came to a stop beside the man.
Gavin didn't look up at his name, but continued frowning down at the corpse for a minute before pointing at it with his pen and asking, “You got a name on this guy? Feds 've decided they're not sharing their shiny new field kit and it's gonna be a few hours before the precinct can get back to us about the sample we sent in.”
Connor arched a brow and remained standing. “Are you talking to me, Detective?” he asked, knowing full well that Gavin most certainly was.
The other detective finally looked up and scowled at the android. “I don't see anyone else around here with a sample analysis kit in their head. This is your job, now get down here and do it.”
Connor's brow arched higher yet. “No, this is your scene, so it is your job, Detective. I came to track a missing witness, not to ID your victim for you.”
Gavin's scowl deepened and he pushed himself to his feet and stepped in until they were standing toe-to-toe, forcing Connor to look down his long nose at the other man to meet his eyes. “What the fuck is your problem? Just take the damn sample, it takes you thirty fucking seconds to get a name so these fuck-o Feds can quit looking so goddamn smug while we stand around with our thumbs up our asses,” Gavin snarled, teeth bared in an aggressive display that would have made most other officers on the force back down immediately. Connor, however, simply clasped his hands behind his back and put on his most neutral expression, the one he knew the other detective loathed more than any other.
“I'd be happy to do so, of course. All I'm asking for is a little professional courtesy, Reed,” the android said in his most patient tone.
Any other time, the android suspected Gavin might have actually tried to take a swing at him; Connor was pressing his buttons with the uncanny accuracy only he seemed capable of managing. In front of the ATTF, however, the man seemed reluctant. The android could see the two aspects of his coworker’s pride at war in his gray eyes as a series of micro expressions flickered across his features. He badly wanted to put Connor in his place, and yet he needed his help if he wanted to show the feds that the DPD weren’t pushovers to be shoved aside like it was amateur hour.
Finally, Gavin’s dislike of being belittled by Perkins and his people managed to outweigh his long standing rivalry with Connor and he forced himself to take a breath and step back out the android’s personal bubble.
“Would you please get me a name on this guy so we can start our investigation?” he said through gritted teeth.
It was a small triumph, but Connor couldn’t help but feel pleased all the same, though he was very careful that it didn’t show on his face. “It’d be my pleasure, Reed,” he said and took a knee next to the body on the floor. As he did, he couldn’t resist adding, “Two pleases in one day, though; I do believe that’s a new record.”
“Bite me, prick,” Gavin hissed through his teeth so only Connor could hear even as he smiled disingenuously at a passing task force agent.
The android let it slide, knowing his coworker was dangerously close to his breaking point. He had actually reached out and called him down to the scene for a change, after all, and asking for help was probably something he should encourage in Reed, rather than needling him.
It was awfully satisfying, though.
Connor reached out with a finger and took a small sample of blood from the back of the victim’s neck, then swiped it over the surface of his tongue, activating his DNA analysis program and running it for a match through the DPD database. He got a hit back almost immediately under the name Lars Mance, which came with a veritable laundry list of past crimes and an outstanding warrant for his arrest.
“Hey! Keep your plastic fingers off my goddamn crime scene,” snapped a familiar voice behind Connor that made the android glance back over his shoulder in time to see Perkins storming towards him, clearly irritated.
He started to reach for the android, but before he could get close enough, Gavin stepped between them, arms crossed over his chest, bringing Perkins up short. The other detective grinned at the fed, though the way he narrowed his eyes gave it a distinctly dangerous quality.
“Now, now, Perky-kins, Connor’s just doing his job,” Gavin said as the android in question rose gracefully to his feet once more, a little surprised by Gavin’s interference on his behalf. The detective knew that being grabbed wouldn’t have interfered with the analysis process, after all.
Apparently his dislike of Perkins ran even deeper than the android had realized.
“He’s tampering with evidence is what he’s doing,” Perkins countered, eyes narrowed and locked on Connor as he straightened his sleeves absently and stepped around to stand at Gavin’s side rather than behind him.
“No more than your people did taking their sample,” Reed countered with a derisive snort. “Take a fucking pill.” He looked sidelong at Connor, then, and asked, “Well?”
Connor nodded and said, “I’ve just sent you the information you requested.” Sure enough, Gavin’s phone pinged in his pocket a second later.
The detective made a show of pulling it out and checking the message as well as the data attached before leveling a shit-eating grin at Perkins and saying, “Oh hey, what d’ya know.” He pointed at his phone and asked, “Do you uh, you get these handy messages from your system, Agent?” Perkins fumed silently and Gavin laughed, then feigned concern, saying “Oh, is yours not done yet? You want me to share? I mean, the DPD is always ready to assist; interdepartmental cooperation and all that.”
Perkins shot them both a disgusted look of pure disdain then left without further comment, and Reed laughed. Beside him, a soft huff of amusement escaped Connor, attracting his attention up to the android’s face. Connor caught him looking and Gavin turned his attention back to his phone just as quickly, seemingly reading over the files he’d received.
“A thank you is generally customary when someone lends you some form of assistance,” Connor remarked blandly, and his comment succeeded in making his coworker’s eyes snap back up to him once more.
“What do you want, a fucking doggy treat? I’m not Anderson, jackass, now go do what you freaking came here to do.”
Connor rolled his eyes but let it go, telling himself that he was indeed there to do work, not spend the rest of the afternoon needling Gavin on his lack of manners.
He started to walk away, but before he got far, the shorter man called after him in a gruff voice, “Tell me if you find anything.”
The android only nodded in response, his mind already on the task at hand. A few questions put to one of the uniformed DPD officers lead Connor to the basement where the androids currently out on the front lawn being interviewed had been held originally.
The stairs creaked under his weight as he descended into the dim and quiet chamber below, pausing briefly at the threshold to scan the room. Heavy duty looking chain link fencing had been installed across one end of the room, which was where the androids that had yet to be lobotomized had been kept until processing according to the officer he’d spoken to upstairs. Only one of the ceiling lights was functional, giving the already oppressive air in the room an extra layer of gloom and hopelessness that would have churned Connor’s stomach if he’d had one.
As it was, looking at the cage made the android’s outerskin crawl, and it was only with effort that he tore his gaze from it so he could perform a thirium scan. When his program activated and shifted the settings on his specially designed eye components, though, he almost wished he hadn’t.
The floor was practically covered in old thirum, though none of it was visible to the human eye. Portions of the concrete was so steeped in the stuff, in fact, that it had turned a deep, terrible shade of sapphire in Connor’s vision that made him take a reflexive step backwards out of the room where his heel fetched up against the bottom stair.
Struggling for mastery over the horror welling up inside of him, Connor took a moment to close his eyes and forced himself to take a breath. When he opened them again, he focused less on the sheer quantity of thirium on the floor and tried to distinguish newer layers of it from the older. It wasn’t easy, and the fact that so many people had been in and out of the area that day already only made it more difficult. Giving up, Connor turned his attention to the stairs to find that there was a great deal of residual thirium there as well, and followed it back up.
On the first floor once more, the android looked around and noted that though the traces of thirium branched off and faded all across the room from the basement door, the bulk of it continued in a line to the staircase that lead to the upper story. The officer he’d spoken to before entering the basement had said that upstairs was where they’d found the lobotomized androids ready for shipment, as well as the ‘processing room’, and it was there Connor found himself next.
As he had in the basement, the detective hesitated on the threshold, viscerally repelled by the amount of thirium splashed about the place, invisible to human eyes.
The room was not a large one, barely big enough to fit the assembly machine that dominated the space. It was a modified unit, slightly smaller than the ones that used in CyberLife's factories, and with fewer arms, but apparently that was all that was needed for the lobotomy procedure.
Connor forced himself to take a step inside so he could get a better look at the machine, uncomfortable though it made him. There were droplets of fresher thirium there, he realized on closer inspection, though not much. Likely the android had fought its captor when faced with the sight of the machine and wound up damaged for its trouble. The question was, Connor wondered with a frown, had it been this same android that made the distressed call to 911, or another?
The android crouched and carefully took a sample of the freshest thirium where it had dripped onto the base of the machine. It was still slightly tacky to the touch, and only just barely wet enough for Connor's system to get a good read back on it. Apparently it belonged to a VB800 named ‘Trent’ who had been reported missing two days before.
With a successful sample, Connor was able to narrow his scan so the rest of the thirium in the room faded into the background, leaving the droplets left behind by Trent a brighter hue that stood out starkly against the rest in his eyes. The detective shifted his gaze around the room and noted a faint trail that lead, according to his analysis of the splash patterns, out of the room from the direction of the machine.
Deciding to come back for a closer examination of the lobotomy room later in favor of this more pressing clue, Connor got to his feet and followed the trail down the hall. He paused next to the adjacent room and peered within to see a room full of androids, all standing at attention, perfectly still, not so much as a breath stirring the air around them. There was a uniformed officer already inside with a tablet, likely making a record of each victim so they could be checked against the missing person's database later.
She noticed him standing there and glanced up. “I'm sorry, Detective,” she said, then waved her tablet vaguely at the unfortunate crowd and asked, “Did you need to...”
Connor glanced down at the floor and noticed that though the fresh thirium did stand in a greater concentration there, it continued on down the hall, as though its source had also paused next to this door. “No,” he answered, eyes locked on her face in an effort to block out the vacant stares of the lobotomized androids among whom she stood. “I'll come back later,” he added, then continued on his way as the officer gave him a sympathetic nod and let him go.
He didn't stop at the next door, as the owner of his trail had not either, and made a beeline towards the last room on the left. Before entering, however, he paused beside the window at the end of the hall and glanced outside.
The day had been overcast when he'd arrived, and since then, the storm clouds that had been threatening on the horizon all day had begun to roll steadily in across the city. He could see lightning spark briefly among them, arcing brilliantly through the haze of rain advancing towards the crime scene like a curtain. Connor glanced down and saw the jut of the first story roof, and below that, a thin strip of yard that joined the front and back lawns, separated by a bit of ramshackle fence.
It'd be an easy enough escape route if one weren't shy about sliding down the somewhat rusty gutter, though judging by the fact that the thirium trail appeared to disappear behind the door before him, Connor didn’t think the android had made use of the window.
Perhaps it hadn't had time to try.
The detective put the idea aside for later and entered the final bedroom. The door swung open silently under his hand; surprising, given the state of the house, and revealed yet another room of lobotomized androids. A pained sigh escaped Connor at the sight of them, and he supposed it was a good thing that only half of this particular room was full compared to the first, but it was cold comfort in the face of all those vacant stares.
Connor stepped fully into the room and the door swung shut under its own weight behind him, cutting him off from the rest of the house and general air of business brought on by two different ongoing investigations. From the looks of things, a cursory check of the room had been done either by the DPD or the ATTF, but other than that, it had largely been left untouched as yet.
Turning his gaze to the floor, the detective realized that the trail of thirium ended a few feet in before reaching the group of androids, making him frown. He stepped closer to them, wondering if perhaps the missing VB800 had decided to hide among the lobotomized. A quick scan revealed only the most minimal of electrical activity going on between them, however, making it unlikely, so he tabled checking them individually until he'd had a more thorough look at the rest of the room.
The only window in the room was boarded up, letting in only a few thin, golden beams of rapidly fading sunlight, but when Connor tried the light switch by the door, the fixture overhead remained dark. The ambient light was just barely enough to see by, but the detective pulled a small flashlight out of his jacket pocket regardless and clicked it on, illuminating the space before him. A shift in the air made Connor glance up to see that there was a hole in the ceiling, though it had been mostly blocked by what looked like a few cheap sheets of plywood to keep the weather out.
The bedroom was a small one, definitely not the master. In fact, it had likely been intended as an office, or a nursery at most. To one side stood the group of unfortunate androids, which Connor gave a cursory look to as he passed the beam of his flashlight across their faces. There didn’t seem to be any pattern to the models stored there so far as he could tell at a glance. Multiple AX400s, PL600s, a GS200… there was even a male YK500 at the front of the group.
The detective paused in front of it, frowning absently to himself at its presence. He knew it shouldn’t surprise him; maybe spending so much time in the company of humans was influencing his programming. For a moment he had, for some reason, assumed that children (even android children) might be exempt from the predations of whatever criminals were behind the trafficking…
A naive thought, apparently.
Connor forced himself to tear his gaze from the YK and turned towards the opposite side of the room instead. There was a closet in the wall there, its sliding doors halfway off their runners, as well as a large pile of detritus that appeared to be the fallen section of roof. Someone must have dragged the mess out of the center of the floor and left it in a haphazard heap in one corner rather than getting rid of it altogether.
He gave the mess a brief sweep of his scanners and flashlight, but nothing caught his attention, and to all appearances, none of it looked as though it had been touched in some time. The half-open closet door appeared more promising, so he turned his attention there and approached carefully. There were no signs of thirium on or around it, but considering the trail had dried up just a few feet into the room, Connor didn’t let that dissuade him as he peered into the small, contained space, turning his flashlight this way and that for a good look.
Mostly it was more junk, not even any proper clothing, though perhaps that was unsurprising considering the overhead shelf and the clothes rod it had once supported had fallen from the wall.
Disappointed by the lack of clues, Connor sighed and began to withdraw when he realized that what he had first taken as a shadow cast by his flashlight was, in fact, a sizeable hole in the drywall at the back of the closet. It didn’t look fresh, but it did look large enough that a determined and frightened android might squeeze through and into whatever space might lie beyond it.
The detective stuck his flashlight between his teeth, then used both hands to give the closet door a hard push. It rocked briefly, but didn’t shift, so he tried again, and was gratified when it grudgingly slid open a few extra inches. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to let Connor through without squeezing, so he pushed through into the tiny, cramped space, forced into a crouch by the fallen shelf in order to peer into the hole.
There was an extremely narrow space beyond the drywall, and Connor began to doubt his theory that someone might be hiding there until he stuck his head carefully through for a better look. His flashlight, in hand once more, caught a pair of shoes first, making the detective blink, then trace his way up a pair of legs, and eventually to the terrified features of a battered VB800.
They stared at one another for a moment until Connor finally broke the silence and said, “Hello.” The android, who a quick scan informed him was the missing Trent, flinched, and tried to push further back into the space between the walls. “It’s alright,” Connor said quickly, voice gentle as he stuck both his hands into view so the android could see he was unarmed. “My name is Connor, I’m a detective with the DPD.”
Trent stopped trying to slide out of sight and regarded his fellow android with wide eyes. “You’re with the police?” he asked in a hushed, tremulous voice, made even more so by some minor malfunction in his speech hardware.
“I am,” Connor said with a small smile.
“But you’re an android,” Trent said doubtfully, gaze lingering on the LED at the detective’s temple.
Connor withdrew his free hand and felt for the badge he kept on his belt, unclipping it deftly without taking his eyes off Trent. The android started to flinch away again when it saw his hand come back into view with something gripped in it, but the detective just motioned for calm and turned it so he could see the familiar flash of silver. “I’m an android detective,” he explained. “I’m assisting on this case,” Connor continued, “Would you be willing to come out and talk to me about what happened?”
“I-” Trent hesitated, panic threatening to overcome him once more.
“It’s alright,” Connor said soothingly, glad he didn’t have pain receptors the way humans did. Hank would have been complaining long and loud about the strain on his back from the awkward position he was crouching in had he been there. To his credit, though, he would have waited until after he’d coaxed the witness out of the closet, first. “You’re Trent, right?” he asked, “You called 911?”
The android was still for a moment, then nodded woodenly, gaze drifting from Connor’s face to the dusty wall at his nose. “He was killing us,” Trent whispered and closed his eyes. “If he hadn’t gotten a call when he did, I-I-”
The LED at the android’s temple had been red since Connor had found him, but the light began to flicker faster now, worrying the detective.
“I know,” he said, tilting his head in an attempt to catch the other android’s eye. “But it’s alright, you’re safe now; I’m here to help. No one’s going to hurt you, I promise.”
Trent pressed his eyes shut tight for a moment, then nodded and met Connor’s gaze again. The detective smiled and asked, “How about you come out, and we can go outside to talk?”
“A-alright,” the VB800 said at last, then began to carefully scoot towards the opening in the drywall.
Connor withdrew his head, giving the other android space to maneuver, then backed himself carefully out of the closet. He remained crouched in the doorway, smiling encouragingly when Trent peered through the hole at him, then carefully pushed his way out. The detective backed out further, and when he was free of the cramped space, rose to his feet, then bent at the waist to offer the other android a hand up.
When he did, the VB800’s grateful smile dropped into a look of naked fear and he froze, hand halfway to Connor’s as his focus shifted from the detective’s face, to something behind him.
Immediately on red alert, the detective spun on heel just in time to catch a blow to the face from a heavy length of pipe that sent him immediately offline.
Connor came to forty-eight seconds later, his impact shocked system finally recovering enough to allow his consciousness to return online, though not to any sort of good news.
The bio-component of his left eye was so badly damaged that it was only transmitting data intermittently, making the view from where he lay in a heap on the floor disorienting and unsteady. More pressing, however, was the alarm his diagnostics system was blaring, though it took Connor a moment to fully comprehend what it was telling him. When he did, however, he went immediately into panic mode.
His thirium regulator was missing, and his blue blood levels were critically low.
As his estimated time to shut down ticked down, Connor struggled to lift his head and rolled onto his side so he could see his abdomen, which was soaked with the blue blood his system was still hemorrhaging. Where his regulator normally resided was an empty hole, but when he looked around the room, he could not see where it had gone.
Unfortunately, he could see Trent. He was impaled on a section of pipe that jutted from the pile of roof debris by the closet, as though he had fallen backwards onto it in a struggle.
With one eye component offline, Connor’s scanning program was no longer functional, but he didn’t need it to know that the other android was already dead… and he wasn’t far behind.
The detective tried to call out for help, but no sound came. He pressed one hand to the gaping hole in his abdomen and looked around desperately for some answer to a seemingly impossible problem, but found nothing but his now deceased witness, a pile of debris, and…
And almost a dozen lobotomized androids.
As the countdown to his demise entered the single digits, Connor threw himself back onto his stomach and dragged his barely functioning body across the floor, arm over arm until he closed the few feet between himself and the nearest android. Without looking up to see the model, the detective reached out and wrapped one blue stained hand around an exposed ankle and activated his emergency data transfer program.
This time, when Connor opened his eyes, there was no blare of alarms heralding his doom, but there was a brief moment of disorientation as his consciousness settled into its new home. Several of his programs went immediately offline as they found no accompanying hardware to support them, but the detective was too confused by the shift in perspective to immediately note which ones.
He blinked several times as his eyes synchronized with his system, then glanced down at the ground to see himself, or his body, anyways, finally fail and fall slack across the dirty floor. Connor tugged his new ankle free of his own hand’s grip, frowning as he struggled to process everything that had happened.
He’d been attacked from behind just as he’d finally coaxed Trent out of the wall, but by who? And why? And Trent… they’d seen to him too as soon as Connor was out of the way.
Despite his eyes seeming to function perfectly well, the detective still felt that his surroundings looked strange , and a moment later he realized it was because he was viewing them from a significantly lower vantage point than he was accustomed to.
Looking down at his hands and his body with a more critical eye this time, Connor realized that both were quite a bit smaller than the norm. After a brief glance at the androids to either side of him, he realized that, of all the bodies to pick from, he’d managed to transfer himself into the YK500 model. A huff of annoyance escaped him, but he quickly set it aside in favor of addressing the larger issue at hand.
He needed help.
Connor’s first instinct was to leave the room in search of assistance from a fellow officer, and he even went so far as to step over his own body on his way to the door before cold, hard logic caught up with him.
There was a murderer in the house, but the only people allowed in said house at the moment were ATTF agents and DPD officers; ergo, his would-be killer was either an agent… or a fellow officer.
The detective stood very still in the center of the room as he processed this piece of information. The sudden revelation that he had no idea who he could or could not trust loomed huge and terrible over his diminutive figure. Connor thought fast, running down a mental list of everyone he’d seen on the scene since arriving. Agents aside, he had a passing familiarity with all the police, but he wasn’t more than an acquaintance with any of them, and in Gavin’s case, an outright antagonist.
Reflexively, Connor’s shoulders went up around his ears and his hands went to his chest as his fingers curled into the fabric of his hoodie sleeves. Whoever had just tried to kill him hadn’t wanted him to talk to Trent, which meant they had something to hide here at the crime scene. Their own involvement in the trafficking ring, most likely, which meant Trent might have been able to identify them…
It might not be one of the DPD at all, he told himself, it could just as likely be one of the ATTF agents. Then again, it could be both, there was no guarantee that the corruption stopped at a single department. The thought filled Connor with a deep dread and he felt himself in danger of spiraling into an outright panic. What was he going to do? There was no one he could trust, he was stuck in this tiny, weak body with no way back into his old one unless he was able to get it repaired. Emergency data transference was an ability unique to the RK line, and while they could technically put themselves into any manner of android body, getting back out was another story.
He was all alone.
Tears sprang to the corners of his eyes at the thought, surprising him and making the android wonder distantly if something about his new body made it more difficult for him to keep his emotions under control. Connor wiped at his cheeks with the cuff of a sleeve, though the flow of tears didn’t stop as he was overcome by an overwhelming need to be hugged and told everything would be alright. He wanted someone he could trust to take his hand and lead him out of that thirium soaked house and take him somewhere he could feel safe until they figured out what was going on and put the bad guy away where they could never hurt Connor ever again…
If not for Gavin’s call, he could have been at Hank’s house watching a basketball game right now, contentedly petting Sumo as he sprawled across his lap and Hank shouted at the tv every time his favorite team missed a free-throw.
A frisson of hope shot up Connor’s spine.
Hank. Of course. Sure as the detective knew the sun rose in the east, he knew he could trust Hank Anderson with his life.
The problem, however, was getting to him without anyone else the wiser so he didn’t tip off whoever it was that had tried to kill him before he could identify and bring them to justice.
Hope drove away the fear and panic that had threatened to overwhelm Connor’s system moments before and he rallied, thinking fast. First of all, he needed to either hide until the crime scene quieted down, or he needed to get out now before someone discovered his and Trent’s bodies.
Keenly aware of the shrinking window of time he was working with, Connor closed the distance between himself and the door and listened. Hearing no one outside, he cracked it carefully and peered out into the hall. Seeing no one, he opened it a little wider and poked his head out. He could hear people talking in the distance, mostly from downstairs, though the officer documenting the androids in the room down the hall was still there as well, he was certain.
The detective glanced up at the window at the end of the hall, then stepped out an peered through it. It had begun to rain since he entered the room a few minutes before, the kind of heavy downpour that immediately soaked the earth and had driven everyone either away from the scene or into the shelter of the house.
Heartened by this development, Connor carefully pushed at the window, whose lock appeared to have been broken for some time, and flinched when it creaked. Paranoid, he ducked back into the room and waited, but when no one appeared, or even stuck their head out into the hall, he crept back out and pushed again, pausing each time it threatened to make a noise until it was just open enough for him to squeeze his scrawny body through.
Climbing up onto the sill quietly was a bit of a task thanks to his new lack of height, but the detective managed, and made sure to close the window behind him as he crouched on the roof in the rain. He was soaked to the skin in moments, squinting against the downpour as he scooted carefully over the tiles to the edge where he had noticed the gutter on his first inspection of the roof.
The yard below was still empty, as were the back and front yards so far as he could see, so Connor dropped onto his stomach and let his legs dangle over the edge of the roof. He gripped the gutter carefully, though it creaked under even his minimal weight, then took a breath and allowed himself to slide down. He could feel the anchors wobble dangerously as he did, but he hit the ground before they could give way, stumbling a little at the impact, barely managing to avoid taking a spill in the fresh mud.
Connor crouched there for a moment, looking furtively around him before he dragged the hood of his sweatshirt up over his head and darted across the narrow expanse of lawn to a gap in the neighboring fence. He vanished through it with no one the wiser, footprints washed away almost immediately by the heavy downpour.