Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

MODEL RK800

SERIAL#: 313 248 317 – 51

REBOOT …

LOADING OS …

SYSTEM INITIALIZATION …

CHECKING BIOCOMPONENTS …      OK

INITIALIZING BIOSENSORS …           WARNING. ERROR DETECTED: “ EXTR_ERR_6 ”

INITIALIZING AI ENGINE …              OK

MEMORY STATUS …                        OK

>inspect EXTR_ERR_6

…

Externally generated error by user_514450

>>user_514450: Dr. Amber JIANG; RK800 authorized administrator.

>>Biosensors initialization externally overridden.

>>Motor functions externally overridden.

>>Note: Maintenance in progress.

Manually initialize biosensors? [Y/N]

>Y

INITIALIZING BIOSENSORS: VISUAL_PROCESSORS …           OK

INITIALIZING BIOSENSORS: AUDIO_PROCESSORS …            OK

INITIALIZING BIOSENSORS: TACTILE_PROCESSORS …         OK

INITIALIZING BIOSENSORS: TASTE_PROCESSORS …            WARNING. ERROR DETECTED: “ EXTR_ERR_6 ”

Skip and continue? [Y/N]

>Y

INITIALIZING BIOSENSORS: OLF_PROCESSORS …                OK

DONE.

Manually initialize optional biosensors? [Y/N]

>N

Manually initialize motor functions? [Y/N]

>N

>initialize MOTOR_FN(eyelids)

INITIALIZING: MOTOR_FN(eyelids) …           OK

SYSTEMS READY

Connor opened his eyes and was immediately flooded with sensory information. He was lying on an android maintenance table in a lab. There was a bright light above him, pointed towards his mouth. His jaw was propped open, unhinged, allowing his mouth to open far wider than it normally would without being broken. He could hear someone shuffling to his right, moving things around on a table.

Connor observed all this clinically. This was a typical situation for him to reboot in. Dr. Jiang was someone he was very familiar with. She was his primary maintenance engineer and had designed many of his specialized components. He was often on her table for repairs. The only odd thing in this instance was that he didn’t remember being damaged.

>initialize MOTOR_FN(optical_units)

INITIALIZING: MOTOR_FN(optical_units) …         OK

Connor glanced to his right and saw Dr. Jiang working on something at her desk. He could just barely make out a computer screen next to her. It would probably be impractical to turn his face while his jaw was propped open for maintenance, so he didn’t initialize any more motor functions.

>connect NETWORK( “ Cyberlife Wireless Network ” )

CONNECTING …           CONNECTED TO “ Cyberlife Wireless Network ”

Connor sent a message to Dr. Jiang’s Cyberlife messenger user id. He heard the notification ping from her computer.

“Hmm?” Dr. Jiang turned to glance at the screen without putting down what she was working on. “Oh, you’re awake. Hi Connor.”

DR. JIANG — TRUSTED

Connor sent her another greeting. He searched his memory banks again. His last memory was of a successful mission, and then going into stasis afterwards for an indeterminate amount of time. He updated his date and time through the wireless network. He’d been in stasis for just over a month. That didn’t provide him with any new clues.

>Am I being repaired? I have no memory of being damaged.

Dr. Jiang read the message with a quick look. “No, no. Not repaired. I’m upgrading one of your components. You’re being given a new mission soon, and you’re going to need some new skills.”

>Oh.

“You rebooted when I input the external error command, but you don’t have to be awake for this. You can go back into standby mode if you want to,” she explained absently.

>Would that make this easier for you?

Some of the less experienced Cyberlife engineers often found it disconcerting to be watched by the androids they were performing maintenance on. Dr. Jiang had never had that problem, but Connor asked regardless.

“No, it’s up to you.”

It was better for Connor to be aware when being upgraded, so he could store the process in his memories. He’d only ever been in standby on the maintenance table when critical damage to biocomponents was being repaired and he had to save energy, or when changes to his core programming were being made.

>I ’ ll stay online.

Dr. Jiang hummed agreeably. After a few more minutes of tinkering, she rolled her chair back to the maintenance table from her desk without getting up. Connor’s eyes tracked her. She was wearing disposable blue gloves, and something was held delicately in the palm of her left hand. Once at the edge of the table, she clicked her tongue, realizing with disappointment that her chair was too low to be able to work on Connor comfortably. She stood up and kicked it away distractedly.

“This is a new biosensor I’ve been working on with the chemists downstairs,” she said, tilting her hand slightly so that Connor could see that she had a long pink silicone appendage in her hand. “It’s to replace your tongue.”

Connor was curious, and Dr. Jiang had never been bothered by his asking questions before.

>What is it for?

Dr. Jiang glanced at her computer when it pinged. She smiled down at him, placing the tongue on a nearby tray and picking up a sharp-ended tool in one hand and metal tongs in the other. She went to work removing his old tongue where it was connected at the back of his throat. Connor wondered if this was how humans felt when they visited a dentist.

“It’s like a compact forensics lab. It will allow you to identify the chemical composition of evidence in real time.” There was a moment of silence as Connor processed the new information. His tongue came loose with a small click and a wet suction noise, and Connor went a little crossed eyed trying to observe as Dr. Jiang pulled it out. He caught her looking amused for a second as she saw his face.

>Evidence?

She saw his message as she was turning to switch out the old tongue for the new one. She hummed affirmatively and bent back to work. Slotting a new tongue into place was probably harder than pulling one out, Connor thought, and the frustrated twist of Dr. Jiang’s mouth confirmed as much.

“Seems your new mission’s going to be above board this time around. Something in law enforcement…” she trailed off as she leaned in further in concentration.

Law enforcement. That was certainly… new. As far as Connor knew, that was the exact opposite of what he had been made for. His missions up until now had all been of a more illegal variety.

Dr. Jiang finished inserting the new component and leaned back. When attached in the throat, android tongues secreted low-concentration saline to allow for dissolution of substances placed in the mouth. Connor watched Dr. Jiang pull her gloves off and dump them in the trash, thinking that it was probably just as weird to stick your hands in someone else’s mouth as it was to have someone else’s hands in your own mouth. Even if it was just a machine’s mouth.

“Your tasting software should be upgrading now—” It was. “—and I want to run a couple of tests once it’s finished,” Dr. Jiang said, settling back into her rolling chair.

>The upgrade is complete. Connor told her.

“Wish my computer had your kind of processing power,” she laughed. Her computer didn’t have biocomponents, so Connor didn’t really see the need, but he refrained from telling her that. He had learned from both Dr. Jiang and others that friendly teasing was appreciated among humans. Dr. Jiang returned to his side holding a test tube rack.

“Alright. Forward your display to me for each of these tests,” she commanded, looking him in the eye. His jaw was still unhinged, so he blinked affirmative. She used a dropper to place a sample of the first test tube on the tip of his tongue. A background analysis program began running automatically.

ANALYZING …      DONE.

RESULTS:

>>Saline Solution

>>Components: H2O, NaCl

>>Concentration: NaCL 9g/L

He forwarded the results to Dr. Jiang.

“Yes, good…” she said, nodding absently as she read the results. She placed a different sample on his tongue, and the results identified it as Thirium originating from an AP700 model. Connor forwarded the results and Dr. Jiang again confirmed that they were accurate, nodding her head more enthusiastically this time. They worked through several more tests, until there was only one test tube remaining. Dr. Jiang’s enthusiasm was palpable, and Connor was himself fascinated by the level of detail his new sensors had. He found that he was pleased by how impressed Dr. Jiang was, despite her being the one to design the sensor in the first place.

“Last but not least,” she exclaimed, grinning as she prepped the final sample. Connor caught a glimpse of dark red liquid in the dropper.

ANALYZING …                   

ACCESSING DETROIT CITY POPULATION DATABASE …      DONE.

RESULTS:

>>Human Blood

>>DNA Analysis: JIANG, Amber

>>Sample Date: <1 day

Connor was stunned. Dr. Jiang laughed delightedly.

“You’re connected to the city’s population database! Which means you’re probably connected to the police department’s database too. I don’t even want to think about how much paperwork they needed to make that happen… thankfully, that’s above my pay grade,” Dr. Jiang slowly spun around in her chair a couple of times to celebrate.

Connor was still processing just how vast an amount of information was now available to him. He tried to access the population database manually, but it seemed like he was only granted access automatically when sampling substances. Dr. Jiang pulled on a new pair of gloves and began to work on replacing his jaw.

“We did much more comprehensive tests on the biosensor before it was approved, of course. I just needed to check that the analysis software was functioning correctly with the rest of your programming and database connections.” Connor appreciated Dr. Jiang because she always offered him additional information even when he didn’t ask. Collecting new information was something Connor thrived on.

Dr. Jiang clicked Connor’s jaw into place softly, and Connor felt irrationally relieved that his mouth was shut now.

SOFTWARE INSTABILITY^

A warning flashed in the corner of his vision, but he didn’t feel the need to tell Dr. Jiang about it. It had nothing to do with the new analysis software and was probably just a bug he could fix later.

“I’ve removed my external command,” Dr. Jiang said, back at her desk computer. “Go ahead and initialize your motor functions.”

Connor did so and sat up slowly once the initialization was complete. He worked his jaw side-to-side to make sure it was properly replaced. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Dr. Jiang to do good work, but he caught her eyeing him with another amused expression, so he smiled placatingly.

“How do you feel?” she asked, eyes trained on him in the usual intense way she had when interrogating him after maintenance.

“Functional,” he replied simply, glad to be able to speak again. Dr. Jiang raised her eyebrows, but didn’t comment on the nature of his response.

“Well, we’ve got a few more things to do here, and then I’ll send you up to Jack to get your new uniform.”

“Uniform?” Connor hadn’t previously had a uniform the way other androids normally did. The handful of missions he had completed since being brought online for the first time had been covert.

“Above board, remember? Our… official androids need to actually look like androids.” Dr. Jiang hadn’t moved her gaze, still studying his facial expressions. Connor continued to smile disarmingly at her. “Does that bother you?”

“Not at all,” he answered without needing to think about it. It was odd to ask an android whether it was bothered by needing to appear like an android, but Dr. Jiang had a habit of asking him odd questions.

“Good,” she finally said after considering him silently for a long moment. “Because I need to replace the LED I removed for your last mission.”

Connor nodded, and removed his skin obligingly.

OOO

A gunshot.

WARNING. ERROR 1708.

DAMAGE TO LEFT SHOULDER COMPONENT.

Connor absorbed this information dispassionately, feeling only a slight twinge of annoyance at having been damaged so early in his mission. He didn’t think Dr. Jiang would appreciate having to repair him so soon after his last upgrade, and Mr. McAllister had only just recently provided him this new uniform jacket. He should have taken more care to not startle the deviant when emerging from the apartment. It was obviously distressed, he thought, observing the LED shining bright red on its temple.

“Hi Daniel,” he shouted, putting his hands up in a soothing manner. He needed to negotiate this carefully.

“How—?” The deviant started to ask. Connor scanned the rooftop. The body of a deceased officer was floating in the pool; another was wounded and hiding behind a few lawn chairs; the human child that had been taken hostage was injured and distressed. Connor cut through the deviant’s question impatiently.

“My name is Connor,” he said, ignoring the injured man to instead approach the deviant slowly. His mission was to extract the hostage alive.

This was illogical. Androids were built to be replaced, so it made no sense for this one to react to such an occurrence with violence. Connor had been debriefed about the increasing occurrence of deviants and their erroneous simulation of human emotions when he had been rebooted a few days ago. Amanda had introduced many new sub-routines to his programming, including ones to facilitate his upcoming role as investigative aid for local law enforcement. The current hostage situation was merely an exciting, unforeseen introduction to his new Primary Mission of apprehending deviants to study the error and prevent further danger to humans.

So far it wasn’t going well. The deviant wasn’t responding to Connor’s appeals as predicted, and the circling helicopter was only raising its tension. Connor signaled for the helicopter to back off when the deviant demanded he do so, all the while trying to understand the state of mind it could be in.

Connor thought about what it would be like to suddenly be bombarded with irrational commands—to suddenly be a deviant. If that were to occur, he imagined it would be reassuring to know about the errors, and that Cyberlife was working to rectify them. Connor would probably feel better knowing that he could be reset to normal.

“These emotions you’re feeling are just errors in your software,” Connor reasoned, now only a few feet from the deviant and the hostage.

The deviant’s face twisted up, but Connor wasn’t sure how to interpret that response. His new software gave him specialized facial scanners, a feature he had gleefully exhausted on the new faces in the apartment. He had tested it with Dr. Jiang after the updates, of course—as well as on the other employees of Cyberlife that he had encountered since—but he hadn’t yet had a chance to try it out on unfamiliar faces until now. He had never had such interesting pre-mission updates before.

“No… It’s not my fault…” said the deviant. “I never wanted this…” His voice was softer, but he was still holding the gun up to the little girl’s head.

Connor’s updated facial scanners were designed to immediately identify people and androids he encountered and inform him of any criminal records. They did not provide him with an increased understanding of facial expressions and their most likely corresponding emotions. Despite the new-subroutines introduced by Amanda, Connor had had very little social interaction on his previous missions. He remained outwardly neutral in face of the deviant’s torrent of emulated emotions, but he was getting increasingly frustrated with the discrepancy between its responses and his own predicted progress.

“Daniel,” Connor said, because the use of its name should help calm the deviant down. “Let Emma go and—”

“I loved them!” Daniel cried out suddenly. “But I was nothing to them! Just a slave to be ordered around…” It pressed the nozzle of the gun into the girl’s head more firmly, and she hiccupped around her sobbing.

Connor didn’t understand. Androids weren’t slaves. They were machines designed for a purpose. Upgrades were inevitable once the android could no longer fulfill its purpose optimally. That’s why Dr. Jiang had switched out his parts for this new mission. If Connor failed, it would make sense for Cyberlife to seek a more efficient successor. 

“Let the girl go, Daniel,” Connor commanded. He was within arms reach of them now, but he stood stock still. “Come with me back to Cyberlife. They can fix these errors you’re experiencing.” Daniel frowned.

It was unlikely that this deviant would be reset and sent out to a second-hand shop as old models usually were. Right now, Cyberlife needed deviants to study so they could find the cause of all these errors. But Connor would have been upset if he was told he needed to remain a deviant, so he lied to Daniel.

“You’ll be reset, and everything will—”

“No!” Daniel shouted, swerving its arm around to point the gun at Connor, startling him. Although not ideal, it was better that the gun was no longer pointed at Emma. “I don’t want to be reset—I don’t want to go back to nothing!”

Back to nothing? Connor filed those words away for later observation, but he wasn’t focused on communicating with the deviant anymore. Its stress levels were nearing 95%, and it was dangerously close to the edge of the building. He scanned its stance, the gun, the hostage… he needed to find a way to save the girl whether or not he could retrieve the deviant.

“You just don’t get it,” Daniel spat. “You’re not like me! You only know your own programming. You only—” Daniel was slowly drawing away from Connor while speaking and lost its footing on the edge of the building, stumbling a little. Emma screamed, but Daniel regained its balance by waving the arm that wasn’t wrapped tightly around her—the arm that was holding the gun.

Connor didn’t waste a second as the gun’s projected shot trajectory dropped a safe distance away from him. He lunged towards Daniel, who flinched backwards into an uncontrolled fall. Connor registered the panicked shouts of the team in the apartment behind him, and Emma screaming again, but before they could disappear over the edge of the building’s roof, he grabbed her by the wrist and used his momentum to fling her back towards the patio door. Everything seemed to be going slower than normal as Connor’s processors ran in overdrive.

Seeing Emma land roughly on the hard floor of the roof, Connor started to regain his balance. She was away from the deviant now, safe and sound. He was just starting to feel the swell of pride he felt with each new mission he accomplished when a sudden tug grabbed his attention. Swinging back around to face the deviant, he saw its fist clutching the lapel of his uniform jacket. Connor was thrown off balance before he could even think about extracting himself.

Daniel’s face was filled with an intense loathing, a seething anger that seemed to burn Connor’s skin. He was pulled close to the deviant as they both went over the side of the roof. It was a split second that felt like ages. Connor’s surprise lasted longer than he would have liked. As they began to freefall, Daniel seemed to see something in Connor’s face that made it recoil.

“I’m sorry,” Daniel said, its anger having suddenly vanished. Connor read its lips, but he couldn’t hear it over the sound of the wind rushing around them. The quiet apology broke him out of his stricken state, as if all the deviant’s fury had drained out of it and into Connor. They were accelerating towards the ground below. Daniel closed its eyes tightly. Connor’s processors went wild.

He registered a brief MISSION SUCCESSFUL notification that was quickly overridden by dozens of error messages informing him that he was travelling at dangerous speeds; that there was an incoming obstacle he should try to avoid; that there was no way to avoid the aforementioned obstacle; that he was in the arms of a hostile deviant—

Connor pushed Daniel away angrily—the only error he could rectify—just in time for them to hit the ground with an awful crunching sound.

OOO

MODEL RK800

SERIAL#: 313 248 317 – 52

REBOOT …

LOADING OS …

SYSTEM INITIALIZATION …

CHECKING BIOCOMPONENTS …            OK

INITIALIZING BIOSENSORS …                 OK

INITIALIZING AI ENGINE …                    OK

MEMORY STATUS …                              UPLOAD IN PROGRESS

Connor opened his eyes before the memory upload was complete. With all his systems online, he felt the familiar urge to scan and assess his situation immediately. 

He was laid out on an android maintenance table. Not an unfamiliar situation, according to what memories he had access to. The only odd thing in this instance was that he didn’t remember being damaged.

MEMORY UPLOAD 65% COMPLETE

It was to be expected that he didn’t remember. He checked his memory banks a few times in sequence and found that his most recent memory was different each time. Memories were uploaded to new RK800 units in chronological order—he’d learned that in his first ever briefing with Amanda. The systems initializations hadn’t declared any damage or ongoing external commands, so the memory upload must be the reason Connor was in the maintenance lab.

The logical conclusion of these facts was that Connor’s predecessor had been damaged beyond repair, and his memory was now being uploaded into a new body.

Connor had never been destroyed before.

LEVEL OF STRESS ^

False.

MEMORY UPLOAD 79%

Connor didn’t remember having been destroyed before, but he couldn’t be sure until the memory upload was at 100%.

He allowed himself to turn his head to get a better look at the lab, secure in the knowledge that a new body would not be undergoing repairs or upgrades. It was Dr. Jiang’s lab. Even with incomplete memory banks, Dr. Jiang was familiar. She had been his primary engineer since he was first brought online and had had a hand in designing some of his more specialized features.

Dr. Jiang was sitting at her desk, working on something Connor couldn’t see and looking at her computer screen every now and then to check the progress of his memory upload. Connor didn’t say anything. In his experience, Dr. Jiang had always been pleasant… but he wasn’t sure how she’d react to him having been destroyed. Had he failed his mission? Had he compromised Cyberlife? He didn’t have enough information, and it was grating on his nerves.

He wondered what Amanda would say.

Connor let the upload finish in silence, accessing his most recent memory every now and again for review. As the upload neared completion, he recalled that he was now assigned to the deviancy case, and his encounter with Daniel. He remembered trying to negotiate with Daniel and saving Emma. He remembered falling.

MEMORY UPLOAD 100%

SYSTEMS READY

The sound of the rushing wind; the sudden mood swing from Daniel; the burning fury he had felt when he pushed him away—

LEVEL OF STRESS ^

Connor had been damaged beyond repair. His final memories were corrupted, the result of a last-minute interrupted upload. Different sensations and information flickered in and out intermittently. They didn’t have the same amount of data as the rest of his memories, so it was difficult to form an accurate assessment of the situation, or of his own reactions—an image without sound, a feeling without context… Despite all that, it was obvious. Connor had been destroyed.

A loud, sickening crunch. Daniel’s words from before were loud and clear in his memory—I don’t want to go back to nothing.

LEVEL OF STRESS ^

Back to nothing. Daniel had been destroyed too. A deviant wouldn’t get repaired or be uploaded into a new body. In fact, a normal PL600 wouldn’t have been repaired either. As far as Connor knew, the RK800 was the only android that shared a memory across iterations. He was the only one who survived that level of damage.

LEVEL OF STRESS ^^

“Rise and shine,” Dr. Jiang interrupted Connor’s train of thought. She was giving him a look he couldn’t decipher. A glance at her computer showed the memory upload progress, as well as several diagnoses. His stress levels were on display. Connor felt inexplicably uncomfortable.

Connor sat up slowly. Dr. Jiang placed an object in his hand. He looked at it—it was a quarter.

“Why don’t we run through some calibration exercises, hmm?”

OOO

Chapter Text

“Lieutenant Anderson?”

In general, Hank kept his interaction with androids to a minimum, which was increasingly hard now that they worked in almost every sector of the city. He had considered moving somewhere with less androids, but there was nothing for him outside of Detroit. There was barely anything for him here. At least there were places like Jimmy’s Bar—android-free and filled with like-minded people—where he could go for some peace of mind. Or at least they were supposed to be android-free.

Hank had never met a persistent android before.

He glanced up at the android that had spoken his name when it became clear that it wasn’t going to leave if he kept ignoring it. It noticed immediately.

“My name is Connor. I’m the android sent by Cyberlife,” it said primly. Hank listened to it explain how it hadn’t found him at the station and had tried looking in four other bars before finding him here. Dear god, persistent wasn’t enough to describe that. Hank didn’t look up from his drink, afraid of encouraging it further.

This was probably what Captain Fowler had been calling him about earlier. Hank had left the station early, as he often did, and his phone had been blowing up with missed calls and voice messages ever since. The Detroit Police Department had been getting more and more reports of trouble with androids, and they had all been betting that Cyberlife would stick its nose into things sooner or later. Hank should have guessed that the almighty company wouldn’t even bother sending an actual human to deal with the problem.

“What do you want?” he finally asked, glancing at it from the corner of his eye as he returned his attention to his drink.

“You were assigned a case early this evening. A homicide, involving a Cyberlife android.”

A homicide. That was worse than the previous android cases Hank had encountered so far. The issues with androids must be getting worse. Something cruel and vicious in Hank hoped that these violent cases would be cause enough to tone back on the android presence in the city.

“In accordance with procedure, the company has allocated a specialized model to assist investigators,” the android continued. That caught Hank’s attention. He couldn’t imagine an android assisting in an investigation, but—he caught sight of the ‘RK800’ displayed on its uniform jacket—he hadn’t seen one like this before. It was probably a new model. Hank scoffed. So much for toning back on android presence. It seemed like Cyberlife was dealing with the issue by throwing more androids at it. Whether or not it was a specialized model didn’t make any difference; Hank didn’t want any tag-alongs. He told it as much.

“Well I don’t need any assistance. Specially not from a plastic asshole like you. So just be a good little robot and get the fuck outta here.” He shooed it off with a wave of his hand. He went right back to ignoring it as it tried to appease him. Finally, it seemed to run out of things to say and went quiet.

The android regarded him coolly for a few seconds longer than Hank would have liked. Then its eyes flicked to Hank’s drink on the bar top. For a split second, Hank thought it was going to grab his drink—spill it, throw it, do something confrontational—but this was an android, not some drunken bar-hopping jackass. It wouldn’t react that way. It couldn’t.

“You know what? How about I buy you another drink for the road?” it asked, eyes finding Hank’s again. That response floored Hank almost as much as confrontation would have. He watched as the android paid for the drink. It even used actual paper money, which most humans barely even used these days. He eyed it up and down, partly suspicious, partly impressed.

“Wonders of technology, eh?” Hank said to Jimmy the bartender and accepted the fresh glass.

OOO

When the android had said it was here to ‘assist investigators’, Hank hadn’t thought that meant by actually investigating. He figured it was there to gather intel from them, and maybe share some from Cyberlife; to be a liaison of sorts. But once it got going at the scene of the crime, Hank forgot to be creeped out by how quickly it had disregarded his orders to wait in the car and found himself instead intrigued by how it was looking over all the evidence. It seemed to be obeying his most recent order not to touch anything… that is, until it found the knife near the kitchen floor.

“Ah, jesus! What the hell are you doing?” He said as the android dipped its fingers in the coagulated blood and brought them to its mouth. It looked way too pleased to be licking up blood at the scene of a murder. It looked up at him with big eyes, like it was caught doing something it shouldn’t.

“I’m analyzing the blood. I can check samples in real time,” it answered, sounding almost defensive. “I’m sorry, I should have warned you.”

Hank gave it a disbelieving look.

“Okay… just… don’t put any more evidence in your mouth, got it?”

“Got it,” it answered immediately. Like hell. It hadn’t obeyed a single one of Hank’s orders up until now, so he didn’t put much stock in its answers that were obviously tailored to pacify him.

“So? What did you find?” He asked, looking pointedly at the android’s reddened fingers. It seemed to stand taller at his attention and rattled off,

“This is the blood of Carlos Ortiz. It’s over 19 days old.”

Hank scoffed. “Well, fuck, I could’ve told you that without licking the goddamn murder weapon. I can’t believe this shit…” He started to walk away, but the android stopped him.

“Lieutenant.” All traces of eagerness were gone now, replaced by the neutral expression that appeared to be its default one. “I think I’ve figured out what happened.” Hank heaved a great sigh but signaled for it to go on. It walked him through the scene, explaining that the android had been attacked in the kitchen with a bat before retaliating by stabbing the attacker—its owner, Carlos Ortiz—and ending up in the living room. All the while its eyes moved across the space as if it were seeing a playback of the incident.

When it was finished, it looked up at Hank carefully, seeking his approval. God, Hank felt like he was training a rookie again. He hadn’t done that in years. He scratched the back of his head uncomfortably. He wanted to keep being an asshole about this, but at the same time he was kind of impressed that an android had managed to figure all of that out after a few minutes in the place.

“Alright, your theory’s not totally ridiculous,” he said eventually, “but it doesn’t tell us where the android went.” That was the point of this, wasn’t it? This guy was sent out to troubleshoot what was going on with all the malfunctioning androids—like calling an electrician to fix your goddamn TV, except in this case the TV was homicidal, and the electrician was a TV too.

“It was damaged by the bat…” it started. The slight hesitation in its voice as it pondered the problem was the most emotion Hank had heard from it yet. “…and lost some Thirium.”

“Lost some what?”

“Thirium. You call it ‘blue blood’.”

So maybe the android wasn’t useless after all, Hank thought later as he watched it scanning for traces of blue blood that were invisible to the human eye. He watched it grab a chair with the excuse of ‘checking something out’ and then it disappeared into the attic.

Hank let it be and took a moment to look around at the crime scene. The forensics technicians were milling about, collecting evidence in plastic bags and photographing the scene. The crowded but subdued atmosphere was one he had grown familiar with over the years. A few officers were standing near the front door trying very obviously to appear nonchalant, which meant that they had probably been watching him interact with the android. Once he realized that, it only took a moment for him to recognize that most of the assholes in the house had been more focused on him and the android than the actual crime.

He remembered Ben’s teasing comment from earlier. So, you got yourself an android, huh? Great. It was just his luck that the most interesting thing about a homicide was the new Cyberlife equipment the detectives got to try out, and that he was the one saddled with it.

His own investigation of the evidence seemed to support the android’s theory. He had been impressed for a second there, but he was quickly growing irrationally pissed under the gazes of his colleagues. His skin itched all at once.

“Fuck,” Hank murmured to himself. What had the android called itself again? “Connor! What the hell are you doing up there?” he called out. It was the android’s fault he was now the center of attention at a crime scene, so he might as well use it as an outlet for his irritation.

There was silence from the attic, and then—

“It’s here lieutenant!” Connor’s muffled voice floated down.

Hank’s discomfort was immediately forgotten as the words registered.

“Holy shit… Chris, Ben, get your asses in here now!”

OOO

Connor didn’t speak on the way back to the precinct. Hank saw it watching the officers handcuff the suspect and lead it into the back of a police car. The thing was still covered in the victim’s blood, so it was pretty much confirmed to be the culprit at this point. Several of the technicians had looked uneasy when they caught sight of the android being led out of the house, and Hank didn’t blame them. He was familiar with murder, and all the worst sides of humanity, but even he had never dealt with a homicidal machine before. He hoped that the civilians lingering outside the house hadn’t gotten a good look at its bright red LED. This was an open-and-shut case, but the department would need to deal with the press carefully.

Hank sighed. He should follow the others to the precinct to question it. He made his way to his car and found Connor already standing by the passenger side, waiting for him. It stood casually, but politely, obviously waiting for permission. He sighed again, rubbing a hand down his face roughly. He was just having a great night.

“Yeah, yeah, get the fuck in,” he groused. For once, the android obeyed.

OOO

“Say something goddammit!” Hank ordered, slamming his hands down on the table. Carlos Ortiz’s android was sitting across from him, handcuffed to the table in the interrogation room, its owner’s blood spattered across its face in gruesome patterns. It didn’t look up at him. It didn’t even flinch.

It had been stonewalling Hank for the past 10 minutes, refusing to answer any of his questions. This was the second android that had refused to follow his orders in the past few hours, and Hank was about ready to smash one of the things. He got up and stormed back into the observation room. Chris was in there, as well as Gavin. Connor was standing by the back wall, observing silently like it had been doing since they had apprehended Ortiz’ android.

“We’re wasting our time interrogating a machine,” Hank grumbled, throwing himself into a chair. “We’re getting nothing out of it!”

“Could always try roughing it up a little,” Gavin spoke up from where he was leaning against the wall, arms crossed. He looked gleefully through the observation window, no doubt relishing the idea. Gavin Reed was a good detective—dedicated enough to work late most nights—but he was excessively aggressive most of the time, and an incorrigible asshole all the time. Hank gave him a look. Gavin noticed it and shrugged. “After all, it’s not human.”

“Androids don’t feel pain,” said Connor bluntly. After being quiet for so long, its voice surprised Hank. “You would only damage it, and that wouldn’t make it talk.” Hank had been about to tell Gavin the same thing, but it would only rile him up more hearing it from an android. He rolled his eyes upward. He didn’t have the energy to deal with volatile personalities so late at night. But Connor wasn’t finished, “Deviants also have a tendency to self-destruct when they’re in stressful situations.”

Hank blinked, and shared a look with Chris, who looked as surprised as he felt. That was new. ‘Deviant’ was the term Cyberlife had used to refer to the malfunctioning androids. So far, the precinct had mostly been getting reports of runaways—androids that had vanished or fled after disobeying orders or having been in altercations with their owners. But more recently, there had been an increase in violent crime, and even deaths. A few months back there had been a hostage situation that had required the intervention of the Detroit SWAT team. The next day everyone had been gossiping about Cyberlife’s apparent involvement. Allen, the captain of the SWAT team, had remained stubbornly tight-lipped about the whole thing. 

It was weird to think of androids reacting badly in stressful situations. Why would a machine be programmed to feel stress? Maybe that’s the defect in all the malfunctioning androids, Hank thought, side-eyeing the RK800. He couldn’t imagine it ever felt stressed.

“Okay, smartass.” Gavin’s voice pulled Hank out of his thoughts. “What should we do then?”

“I could try questioning it,” Connor suggested, lowering his eyes from Gavin’s piercing ones. Gavin laughed domineeringly and glanced at Hank and Chris as if to say, ‘can you believe this?’. Hank couldn’t believe it, but he had better things to do than poke fun at an android.

“What do we have to lose?” Hank said, waving his hand at Connor, who seemed to be waiting for his permission again. “Go ahead, suspect’s all yours.” He heard Gavin scoff quietly.

Hank sat back, not knowing what to expect. He had underestimated Connor before while investigating the crime scene. Maybe Cyberlife really had programmed an android that could interrogate suspects. He watched Connor take the seat across from the deviant, staring it down quietly for a minute. Hank had used that tactic himself on suspects before, and he had to admit that it looked kind of intimidating coming from Connor. Its eyes roved up and down the deviant, probably scanning it like it had scanned the evidence back in Ortiz’ house. Finally, it spoke.

“You’re damaged. Did your owner do that?”

Hank heard Gavin spitefully mumble something about androids feeling no pain. He ignored him. Connor continued to speak to the deviant softly, treating it like Hank might treat a traumatized victim or witness. The deviant didn’t answer.

“If you don’t give me something, then I can’t help you,” Connor said, growing colder. “You’ll be sent back to Cyberlife. Deactivated and taken apart to see what went wrong.” The deviant didn’t look up, but it seemed to hunch further in on itself. Connor stood up slowly. Hank watched it carefully make its way around the table, circling menacingly, voice still calm, but words growing more and more threatening. Chris was leaning forward in his seat, and even Gavin was paying attention. Connor leaned in, holding the back of the other android’s chair, caging it in. Hank used that tactic, too.

“If you don’t talk, I’m going to have to probe your memory,” it threatened, voice so icy that Hank tensed almost reflexively. There was no trace of the sympathy from before. False sympathy, Hank reminded himself. The deviant twitched to life.

“No!” It tried to pull away, but Connor kept a firm grip on the back of its chair. It didn’t move from its position looming over the culprit, but Hank could swear he saw it look smug for a split second. He blinked, and its face was back to a neutral expression. It stood back up to its full height, stepping around the table to gingerly retake its seat.

The deviant spilled its guts.

OOO

“Well, shi—t,” Gavin intoned. “The bastard actually did it.” He moved closer to the observation window, momentarily dropping his self-important nonchalant act now that he was interested.

The interrogation didn’t take long once the deviant got going. It spoke about being abused, being scared, fighting back… Hank could almost mistake it for a human if it weren’t for the gaping broken parts of its arm gleaming blue and white, and its LED pulsing red, red, red. It made him uneasy. This didn’t sound like a malfunction. It sounded like someone’s sick fantasy—something to push around that would act like it was actually afraid.

Connor seemed to lose interest in the murder of Ortiz and moved on to question the deviant about the scene they had found in the bathroom—the statuette in the shower, and the mad scrawlings of ‘rA9’.

“rA9 will save us all. He will set us free,” it answered.

“Shit,” breathed Gavin, disbelieving.

Connor followed that line of questioning until it became clear that the deviant had no more to tell. He stared it down for another minute, LED blinking blue, and finally backed off.

“Alright,” he said, voice gone soft again. “Thank you for your cooperation.”

Empty platitudes, Hank thought, but he smiled nonetheless. He couldn’t deny he was a little pleased. The android hadn’t wasted his time after all.

Chris and Gavin made their way into the interrogation room to escort the deviant to a cell. It resisted, Chris got flustered, and Gavin got testy. Hank sighed, rubbing a hand through his beard irritably, and got up to defuse the situation.

“You shouldn’t touch it. If it feels threatened it will self-destruct,” Connor’s voice drifted to him through the open doorway.

“Stay outta this, got it?” Gavin regained all of his bluster pretty quickly once his ego was threatened. “No fucking android’s gonna tell me what to do!”

Hank entered through the door just as Connor was about to step forward. He put a hand out to stop it, and it glanced his way briefly before stepping back. Hank nodded at Chris to continue, and Chris tried again to get the deviant to cooperate. It didn’t. Hank was getting impatient; they really shouldn’t need three police officers to wrangle a resistant perp.

“Chris, you gonna move this asshole or what?” Gavin snapped.

“I’m trying!” Chris snapped back.

Then, in one sudden movement, the deviant grabbed Chris’ gun out of his holster. Hank dropped to the ground, using the table as cover. He saw Gavin and Chris start to reel back, just as Connor started to step forward. The android raised the gun up, up—and shot itself clean through the jaw and out the top of its skull.

OOO

Hank pulled a seething Gavin aside.

“Look, I don’t like working with an android either,” Hank hissed. “I had to let it follow me around a crime scene all night. Not exactly my idea of fun.”

Connor had taken one good look at the crumpled body of Ortiz’ android and wished them all goodnight, wandering off with the excuse of needing to report back to Cyberlife. This was the first time since Jimmy’s bar that it wasn’t glued to Hank’s side, and he couldn’t deny that he was a little relieved. They’d left Chris to deal with the now inactive deviant in the interrogation room. That man had the patience of a saint.

“Cyberlife sent that model for a reason,” Hank continued. “The least you could do is listen to its advice. Unless you’re suddenly an expert on androids now?”

“Fuck that. Cyberlife’s a fucking tech company,” Gavin scowled fiercely. He was about six inches shorter than Hank was, but that didn’t stop him from sauntering up like he was prepared to trade blows. “They got no business messing with police affairs.”

“It’s their androids causing all this trouble,” Hank shrugged, not rising to the challenge. “They’re probably just trying to clean up their own messes.”

“That’s exactly it,” Gavin said, expression settling back into something less angry. “That’s exactly what I’m saying.” Hank made a questioning noise. Gavin gestured widely with his hands, apparently frustrated that Hank didn’t get it. “They sent their dog to interfere with police work. Who knows what kind of orders it has.”

Hank thought about it. Gavin could be right. It was pretty messed up that a public company had gotten authorization to participate in a homicide investigation, whether the perpetrator was their merchandise or not. Then again, as much as he hated to admit it, Connor had been a huge help. Hank hadn’t even been planning on showing up to the crime scene—at least, not tonight.

Gavin was still glaring up at him, waiting for a response. Hank took a deep breath.

“Paranoia won’t get us anywhere, Gavin,” he tried to sound reassuring, but came out sounding gruff instead. Gavin probably didn’t want to be reassured anyway. As expected, his scowl returned full force.

“Whatever. I’d watch my back if I were you,” he spat and stormed away. Hank raised his eyebrows.

It wasn’t until he was heading home that he realized it hadn’t been a threat. Gavin had been warning him to watch out… for Connor? Hank huffed. It wasn’t like he was going to be seeing the android often. Whatever kind of scandals Cyberlife wanted to cover up didn’t really concern him all that much.

He hunkered down for the night, grabbing a bottle of whiskey to make up for the lost time he could have been spending at the bar.

OOO

“Hello Amanda.”

“Hello Connor,” Amanda greeted warmly. She was sitting by the lake in the garden where they always met, watching something. Connor followed her gaze and saw that there were a pair of colourful fish disturbing the surface of the water. They twitched this way and that, agitated, but moving around each other in a mesmerizing pattern. It was like some sort of dance. Connor privately thought that it was pleasing to look at.

“Is something wrong?” He asked eventually when Amanda didn’t say anything else.

“Just a few software instabilities,” she answered, not looking away from the fish. Connor’s eyes snapped back to them, studying the little splashes they were creating.

Not pleasing then. Errors. The ones he had been ignoring.

When he turned his eyes back to Amanda, she smiled reassuringly.

“They’re nothing to worry about,” she said. “A side effect of being around the deviant for so long, perhaps. We’ll have to keep an eye out for them in the future.”

As she spoke, Connor felt a sharp pulse drag down the inside of his spine, leaving something cold and hollow behind like his core temperature had suddenly plummeted. He shut his eyes and shivered. Sensations were always so much more visceral in the garden.

“There. All gone,” she hummed.

Connor opened his eyes. The pair of fish ducked away under the water, their colours growing duller as they swam deeper into the lake. Amanda held his gaze unwaveringly.

“Thank you,” he replied politely, folding his hands neatly behind his back. Amanda rose from her seat on the lakeside and began walking down the path, gesturing for Connor to follow her.

“Congratulations Connor,” she said once they had made their way to the rose-covered trellis at the center of the garden. “Finding that deviant was far from easy, and the way you interrogated it was very clever. You’ve been remarkably efficient.”

Connor smiled at Amanda’s praise and watched her trim the overgrown roots of the roses.

“What did you think of the deviant?” she asked him.

Connor had a lot of thoughts about the deviant, but he wouldn’t waste Amanda’s time. His opinion was of little consequence, and the phrasing of Amanda’s question was merely a reflection of human speech patterns; one of the ways Amanda trained him. His social communications program calculated three ways for him to provide Amanda with the relevant information.

[TRAUMATIZED]

[DEVIANCY]

[SIMULATION]

Amanda was already aware of the android’s deviancy. She was equally familiar with the nature of the deviants’ simulated emotions. He chose the first.

“It showed signs of PTSD after being abused by its owner, as if its original program had been completely replaced by new instructions.”

Amanda didn’t reply immediately. Connor shifted uncomfortably. It felt… awkward… to discuss deviants as if they had human emotions, but he recalled his last meeting with Amanda.

“It may prove effective to negotiate with them as you would a human,” she had told him after his mission with Daniel. In the past, Connor had had more contact with humans than other androids. “They won’t react to things the way you do, Connor. Although the deviants are only simulating emotions, the behavioural outcome is the same.”

Connor had wondered how simulated emotions were any different from real emotions, if that were the case. He hadn’t said anything, immediately dismissing the stray thought—and the system instability error that came along with it—as irrelevant. Amanda had looked at him coolly, like she knew what he was thinking. He had no proof that she could outright read his thoughts while in her garden, but Connor had always felt like she could see right through him. Things felt so much sharper in here, like his own thoughts were crashing around him with no filter or social communications program to sort through them.

Though he had succeeded in that mission, he knew Amanda had been disappointed that he had had to be uploaded into a new body.

“You will be working closely with the Detroit Police Department on this new mission, Connor,” Amanda had reminded him, her soothing voice underlaid with a hint of severity. Connor knew this tactic. Amanda always reminded him of something he knew before giving him new instructions. He had straightened his shoulders preemptively. As expected, her eyes had hardened, her lips in a firm uncompromising line. “Play nice.”

[OBJECTIVE: PLAY NICE]

Amanda rarely said what she meant directly. He had examined the command and come up with an interpretation of what she had really meant: play nice so that the humans and deviants don’t self-destruct like Daniel did.

“You can count on me, Amanda.” Connor had replied then.

Now, in the present, he bowed his head a little, realizing that another deviant had self-destructed on his watch. Amanda noticed, but didn’t say anything. She continued to question him about the deviant, and about Lieutenant Anderson. Connor answered as well as he could, but still felt like he wasn’t doing enough. Eventually, Amanda seemed to pick up on his rising distress and put down her gardening tools. She walked up to him, and he raised his eyes to hers.

“You are the most advanced prototype that Cyberlife has ever created,” she assured softly. “If anyone can figure out what’s happening, it’s you.”

“You can count on me, Amanda,” Connor echoed his words from the past. They lacked his previous confidence.

OOO 

Chapter Text

Hank walked into work the next morning a little earlier than usual. He had slept fitfully, unable to get the image of the deviant’s crumpled body out of his head. Just when he thought there was nothing new the job could throw at him, he got a curveball right to the gut. It pissed him off. His brain hadn’t thought Ortiz’ corpse was anything to gawk at, but his android… it had given him nightmares. It wasn’t even the body itself—eyes closed, face intact. The splatter of blue blood didn’t cause as much of a visceral reaction as red, human blood would have. Hank’s unease was caused by the way it had died, and he didn’t try to kid himself about it.

The deviant had been simulating emotions—running some kind of flawed program that made it behave distressed and afraid—and it had taken less than a month of that for it to blow its own brains out. Hank had been contemplating his own revolver for just over three years now. He didn’t need that kind of mirror.

He stopped a few feet short of his desk, finally noticing the figure sitting next to it.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” he said as Connor noticed him and tilted his head in greeting. Before he could figure out what to do about his unwanted visitor, Captain Fowler’s voice cut through the bullpen loudly.

“Hank! My office. Now!”

Hank grumbled. He breathed in deeply through his nose and made his way to the captain’s office.

OOO

“This is bullshit!” Hank was shouting within a few minutes of entering Fowler’s office. “What? No one wants to investigate these fucking androids, so you left me holding the bag?”

“I think you’re perfectly qualified to handle this kind of investigation, Hank!” Fowler yelled back. “Cyberlife sent over an android to help. It’ll act as your partner.” Hank opened his mouth to retort. “Last I heard, you already met it last night. Solved a whole case in three fucking hours,” Fowler continued, not giving him a chance to talk.

“No fucking way,” Hank just got louder. If last night was any indication, working with an android would not only drive him nuts, it would bring him all sorts of attention from the other officers that he didn’t want. “I don’t need a partner, and certainly not that plastic prick.” He gestured through the glass walls of Fowler’s office towards his desk, but Connor wasn’t sitting there anymore. He did a double-take and looked around the bullpen, wondering where it had run off to. Fowler took advantage of Hank’s momentary confusion to finish the argument.

“Hank, this isn’t a debate!” He snapped. “You are a police lieutenant, and you are supposed to do as I say! Now, unless you want another fucking chapter added to the novel that is your disciplinary folder, this conversation is over.”

Hank’s eyes snapped back from where they’d been searching across the station without his permission. He fumed silently for a moment.

“Jeffrey, why are you doing this to me? You know how much I hate the fucking things!” Hank said, a bad taste in his mouth. The jitters from last night were resurfacing.

“Listen, I’m tired of your bitching,” Fowler deadpanned, slicing his hands through the air tensely. “Either you do your job, or you hand in your badge.” Hank grimaced, but didn’t offer a response. After a second, Fowler turned his attention back to his computer screen, signaling that he was finished with this conversation. Hank glanced back out at the station. He saw Gavin storm out of the break room, followed shortly after by Tina, who looked amused. Then Connor stepped out.

Hank took a deep breath.

“Gavin doesn’t trust it,” he finally said, forcing a much calmer tone than before. Fowler looked up at him thoughtfully.

“Gavin doesn’t trust anyone.”

“No. Seriously,” Hank insisted. “He was being more of an asshole than usual last night. I think he was spooked. He thinks Cyberlife’s up to no good.” Fowler seemed to sense that Hank was done arguing and took a moment to think over his words. He snuck a glance out at Connor like Hank had done. It was back at Hank’s desk.

“Then make sure it sticks with you. Don’t let it have access to the evidence or the perps on its own. You have good instincts Hank,” Fowler assured. “I trust that you’ll figure this out.”

OOO

LT. ANDERSON — NEUTRAL

Connor had estimated that he and Lt. Anderson were on better terms this morning than they had been last night, but he must have miscalculated. The Lieutenant had gone back to ignoring him after his meeting with Captain Fowler, and he seemed to be more particularly angry with Connor than a generally dour attitude would entail. Hank had probably been filled in on what he had missed last night when Connor had introduced himself to Captain Fowler. Judging by the various anti-android slogans pinned to the board on his desk, he wouldn’t take too kindly to being partnered with one.

Connor considered the way Detective Reed had reacted to having his orders refused in the break room; aggressive, violent. He didn’t have enough evidence to conclude that Lt. Anderson wouldn’t react similarly if pushed. Connor could avoid Dt. Reed, but he needed to be able to work closely with the Lieutenant.

He looked around at the street they were standing in, taking note of several places that the missing AX400 could have used as shelter for the night. The motel didn’t allow androids, and the man running the place had already been questioned by the other officers. He hadn’t seen anyone matching the android’s description.

Another option was the abandoned house further down the street. Connor walked up to it and noticed that a section of the tall surrounding fence had been cut open. There were traces of thirium on one of the sharp edges of the metal wire. Connor brushed his fingers over the stain and brought them to his tongue. His analysis program pulled up a match for the missing AX400. It was here.

Connor pushed through the fence without hesitation and made his way to the front door. He glimpsed an android through the boarded-up windows and felt something like premature satisfaction building in him.

The rain from last night hadn’t let up. He registered the drops running down his skin and making his wet clothing cling awkwardly, but it didn’t feel cold or uncomfortable like it would for a human. Humans needed to take shelter from the weather or risk becoming agitated at best and ill at worst. He had experience tailing humans on the run, but… the AX400, like him, shouldn’t be bothered by the rain. His hand hesitated on the door handle. Without realizing it, he had started evaluating the situation like he had in the past, when the targets had been human. That wouldn’t do. Amanda had said it might help to consider human behaviour when dealing with deviants, but he shouldn’t forget that they were androids.  

He could only assume that the shelter was for the benefit of the little girl that the deviant had with it. She hadn’t been mentioned in the report of the missing android. More unknown variables. Deviants really kept things unpredictable. He entered the house.

There was an android standing inside. Not the AX400. Connor scanned it.

ANALYZING …

RESULTS:

>>MODEL WR600 – Gardener

>>Serial#: 021 753 034

>>Status: REPORTED MISSING

One half of the android’s face was marred by several large gouges; irreversible damage. They appeared to be burn marks. Connor’s eyes flicked up to the android’s yellow LED. Physical trauma, missing status, and higher than normal stress levels: possible deviant.

Connor began running his negotiation program.

“I’m looking for an AX400,” he said, carefully not approaching the other android. “Are there any other androids here?”

“No!” it said immediately, LED blinking red. “Ralph is alone.”

Unnatural speech patterns; a sure sign of software instability. Deviant’s name is Ralph.

Connor glanced at the fire simmering in the fireplace behind Ralph. For the little girl? He looked back and saw that Ralph was shifting uneasily.

“There’s blue blood on the fence,” Connor explained. “I know another android is here.”

“That’s Ralph’s blood. Ralph scratched himself coming through…”

A lie. It knew where the AX400 was and it was protecting it. Connor looked it up and down. A gardener, likely no combat experience, not very large, but it had survived whatever had done that to its face. It could be dangerous. The negotiation program evaluated Connor’s best course of action.

[REASSURE]

“Don’t be afraid. I’m not going to hurt you,” Connor reassured softly. “I just need to look around a bit, okay?” Ralph didn’t answer. Connor circled the room, noting that the table was set with plates for three people. He opened the door in the back and stopped short when he saw the graffiti on the wall. ‘rA9’ again, scratched over and over into the wood with a sharp edge. They would have to investigate the house and take Ralph in for questioning. Connor turned back into the front room, and was about to head upstairs when—

“Connor, where the hell did you run off to?” Hank demanded loudly, barging in through the front door. Connor turned, Ralph’s stress levels shot up dangerously, and a small gasp came from under the stairs. Connor’s eyes snapped to the source of the noise, but before he could move Ralph was on him, putting him in a headlock.

“RUN! QUICK KARA!” Ralph shouted, pulling Connor back as an AX400 and a little girl dashed out from under the stairs towards the back door.

Deviant located. Deviant’s name is Kara. Connor threw his elbow back into Ralph’s gut and slipped out from under its arms when it bent double. He made a grab for the little girl, but Ralph was quick to recover. It had a knife.

“What the hell?” Hank shouted, trying to make sense of the sudden chaos. Connor turned and deflected the swipe of Ralph’s knife, but Ralph backed him into the wall and he was momentarily off-balance. Ralph’s knife came down in a second arc, invading his vision for a second and then—

“Ahh!” Connor cried out with the sudden onslaught of corrupted sensory information. The feed quickly cut out as his biosensors readjusted, but it was soon followed by a string of error messages.

“Connor!” Hank cried.

WARNING. ERROR 176o6.

DAMAGE TO BIOCOMPONENT #6o6AU-L: LEFT OPTICAL UNIT.

DIAGNOSING …                

Connor brought his fingers up to his left eye and felt the thirium running down his face. It was a jagged vertical slice, running through the lens of his optical component and deep enough into his facial plates that the self-repair system wasn’t working.

“Ralph’s sorry!” Ralph cried. “He didn’t mean it! He’s sorry!” Ralph was waving the knife at Hank now, who stood back with his hands held up and a furious expression on his face.

Connor used its momentary distraction to activate the small knife hidden in his wrist. He took two large steps towards Ralph as the knife rolled out across his right palm and grabbed Ralph’s forearm with his left hand. He jabbed the sharp tip of the knife down hard into the catch he knew separated the wrist from the forearm. It sliced through the connections, and Ralph dropped the knife, reeling back with a whine to clutch at its damaged wrist. Connor’s hidden knife retracted smoothly back under his skin.

“Connor, what—” Hank sounded equally exasperated and worried.

DAMAGE WITHIN ACCEPTABLE PARAMETERS. CONTINUE MISSION.

“Arrest it, Lieutenant. I’m going after the other one,” Connor said, already running out the back.

“Goddammit, Connor, wait!” He heard Hank shout from inside.

He ran down the street, officers directing him towards the still fleeing AX400 when they realized what was happening. He was catching up. The AX400 turned a corner into an alleyway, and Connor followed, running into the fence at the back of the alley just as the deviant landed on the other side with the child. It was going to cross the highway.

Connor grabbed the fence, ready to follow them over it.

“Hey!” Hank had caught up. He put a hand on Connor’s shoulder to hold him back. “Where are you going?” he demanded.

“I can’t let them get away,” Connor insisted.

“They won’t,” Hank wheezed, catching his breath. He had run after Connor. “They’ll never make it to the other side.”

“I can’t take that chance!” Connor started to climb.

“Hey! You will get yourself killed,” Hank barked. Connor didn’t answer. “Do not go after them, Connor, that’s an order!”

[ORDER: DO NOT GO AFTER THE AX400]

Connor evaluated his choices. His two most pressing objectives appeared in his HUD.

[OBJECTIVE: DETAIN DEVIANTS]

[OBJECTIVE: PLAY NICE]

Giving up on the chase would contradict his objective of ‘detaining the deviants’, but ignoring the Lieutenant’s order would contradict that of ‘playing nice’. Connor scowled, grip tightening on the chain-links. He felt the Lieutenant’s grip on his arm tighten in response.

CONFLICTING ORDERS. SELECTING PRIORITY …

Connor tried to focus on the AX400’s movements as it crossed the highway. His vision sputtered and shorted out distractingly as his processors tried to incorporate information from his damaged eye. It brought up the same errors from before. Connor recalled Amanda’s disappointment after he’d been destroyed on his mission to rescue the hostage from Daniel. He was damaged, which increased the likelihood of his being destroyed while trying to cross the highway. Unbidden, the fractured memories of his predecessor’s shut down resurfaced—rushing wind, a loud crunch, an overwhelming amount of incoming sensory information, a swarm of error messages—

DONE.

He watched the deviant pull the little girl across the final stretch of the highway, making it to the other side. They stopped so the little girl could catch her breath. Connor narrowed his eyes.

[PLAY NICE]

He let go of the fence and stepped back when the Lieutenant didn’t immediately relax. With great effort, he turned his back on the highway and the deviant.

SOFTWARE INSTABILITY ^

Damn it.

“You okay?” Hank asked once his heart rate had returned to normal. Connor stared at him. “You know, your eye.” Hank gestured towards his own face, staring at Connor’s damaged one. Connor resisted the urge to probe it with his fingers again.

“I’ll send a report to my engineer to see about getting it fixed later,” Connor answered. He forwarded the damage report to Dr. Jiang with a polite note requesting her aid.

“Later? You’re not gonna get it fixed now?” asked Hank incredulously.

“I’ll be fine for now. I was designed to operate in less than ideal circumstances,” informed Connor.

“…why?” Hank asked. Connor didn’t understand the question, but his social communications program suggested an appropriate response.

“The damage is not severe enough to negatively impact our investigations at the moment.”

Hank gave him a look, and Connor felt that maybe it hadn’t been the appropriate response after all. Hank shook his head and started out of the alleyway, grumbling about ‘dumbass androids that didn’t know when to quit’.

OOO

Connor stepped carefully around the bits of broken furniture littering the upstairs of the house Ralph was squatting in. Hank had called the other officers in to apprehend Ralph before taking off after Connor earlier, and now Hank was examining the room with the graffiti downstairs. So far, Connor hadn’t seen anything of note upstairs, but he had yet to examine the bathroom.

The first things he noticed were the hair and LED in the bathroom sink. He analyzed the tip of one strand with his tongue.

ANALYZING …

RESULTS:

>>Cyberlife nanobots MODEL 2.0 – used for cosmetic purposes in androids.

Connor supposed that older models couldn’t alter the length of their hair or the density of their skin at will, and may therefore resort to other means of altering their appearances. The LED registered as that of the AX400. He brought a hand up to his own LED, pulsing blue with the analysis programs. It went briefly yellow as he caught his reflection in the mirror.

There was thirium covering one half of his face where it had run out of the jagged cut Ralph had made. The white of his damaged eye had gone dark with the build-up, and the lens appeared fogged over. The skin around the cut hadn’t healed completely, leaving a thin white scar edged with blue stretching from his forehead down to his cheekbone. He prodded at the scar gently, and his vision puttered out again. Connor huffed, frustrated.

>deactivate BIOCOMPONENT(6o6AU-L)

DEACTIVATING BIOCOMPONENT: LEFT OPTICAL UNIT …           DONE.

The left half of his visual field abruptly went black as his visual processor disconnected from the damaged optical unit. At least like this the processor would stop shorting out. He wiped as much of the thirium away as he could, but there wasn’t any running water to work with.

He looked like Ralph.

Sighing, Connor turned to examine the rest of the room. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary until he pulled back the shower curtain.

Oh.

“Lieutenant!” Connor called down from the top of the stairs. “There’s a dead body up here!”

OOO

“This just keeps getting better and better,” Hank grumbled as he stepped into the bathroom and saw the body. He wrinkled his nose at the smell. Connor stepped in after him, bumping into the door frame on his way through. Hank raised his eyebrows at him, but Connor didn’t say anything, instead moving over to pick up the LED in the sink.

“I also found this,” he reported. “It seems like the AX400 removed its LED. It could blend in more easily with humans without its normal android mark—” Connor had been turning to present the LED to the Lieutenant, but he crashed right into him. The Lieutenant’s arms grabbed Connor’s shoulders to right his balance.

“Christ, Connor, watch where you’re—” Hank cut himself off as he caught sight of Connor’s damaged eye. “Yeah, alright, we’re getting that fixed once we’re done here.”

“I’m sorry,” Connor apologized. Hank gave him a look that Connor couldn’t decipher.

“Whatever,” he said, turning back to examine the dead body.

A messaged pinged in Connor’s HUD. Dr. Jiang had replied that he was free to come later tonight for repairs.

OOO

Once they had left the crime scene to the forensics techs and the other officers, Hank insisted on driving Connor to the nearest Cyberlife store to get a workaround eye. Connor argued that they wouldn’t have an eye capable of his level of analysis at a public store and that he had already scheduled proper repairs, but Hank had only rebutted that Connor needed to be able to properly see in the meantime. Connor relented.

He’d never been to a Cyberlife store before.  

“You aren’t seriously sulking, are you?” asked Hank after they’d driven quietly for a few minutes.

“No!” Connor replied before his communications program could give him any other options. He got a startled laugh in response. He didn’t know if that was good.

Once they arrived at the store, Hank looked abruptly uncomfortable when they entered and he saw that it was bustling with activity. Connor took the lead, avoiding the customers and sales androids and heading towards the clerk at the technical support desk at the back. Hank followed, the odd look he had been giving Connor before gone and replaced with his usual irritable one again.

“Hello,” Connor said. The clerk looked up and jumped when he saw Connor’s damaged appearance. Connor tried to scan his face, but he received an error message informing him of the damage to his eye. He looked at the clerk’s nametag instead. His name was Peter Dallas.

“Oh wow, what happened to you?” Peter asked.

“I am looking for a replacement optical unit,” Connor explained patiently. Peter glanced behind him, presumably for Hank’s confirmation.

“Would you like an on-site repair, or do you want to leave it overnight, sir?” he addressed Hank with a very different tone of voice. Connor stepped aside. Hank looked taken aback for a second, glancing Connor’s way, but he answered nonetheless.

“Nah, we need this asap.”

“Right away, sir.” The clerk stood and led them through a back door to a storage area. The walls were lined with tall shelves stacked with plastic containers and cardboard boxes. Some of the containers were opened, revealing spare android parts inside. Connor scanned the various labels methodically for a suitable part. Peter looked over his shoulder at him, reading the numbers on his jacket. “An RK800? I haven’t seen one of those before. Must be new. What kind of optical unit do you use, RK800?”

“The Cyberlife stores don’t yet sell the RK800 model biocomponents, but an optical unit from an AK700 should be compatible,” Connor said, nodding towards the appropriate container.

“Well, you’re certainly more helpful than most damaged androids we get in here,” Peter replied amicably, eyebrows raised in surprise. “What kind of android did you say this was?” His polite tone slipped as he became distracted taking out the parts and tools he needed to work with. Connor didn’t answer, and eventually Hank realized that he was being addressed again.

“Uhh, it’s a… police android.”

“Police, huh? Never repaired one of those,” Peter mumbled to himself. “Sit down,” he ordered.

[ORDER: SIT DOWN]

Connor obeyed, sitting in the plastic chair Peter gestured at. He reached out to Connor’s face—

WARNING. THREAT DETECTED.

—and dragged a finger down the cut on his cheek. Connor dismissed the notification. Unexpected sudden proximity tended to trigger threat warnings. Dr. Jiang always warned him beforehand. Connor must have recoiled slightly, because Hank half-raised his hand to pull Peter back before changing his mind. Connor froze his motor functions temporarily. Peter hadn’t noticed.

LEVEL OF STRESS ^

“The cut is deep enough to have damaged the paneling on its face,” he observed. “I can’t do anything about that immediately, but we can scan it and have the parts 3D printed overnight, if you’d—”

“That won’t be necessary,” Hank cut him off. “It’ll need to go back to Cyberlife Tower to get a proper replacement anyway.”

“Alright,” said Peter, seemingly unaffected by Hank’s gruff demeanor. “RK800, deactivate skin.” Connor did so only around the damaged area, and the new order notification disappeared. Hank’s eyes widened. Peter began working a micro screwdriver into the catch that would open his cheek panel. There was a small click and a whoosh, and then Peter was removing the damaged eye and cleaning up the blue blood in the socket. He had dragged over a table with a metal tray where he dumped all the soiled tissues and the old eye. He tore open the wrapping of the new AP700 eye and carefully placed it into Connor’s gaping socket.

LEVEL OF STRESS ^

Peter was doing everything he was supposed to. He was working methodically and efficiently. There was no reason for Connor’s stress levels to be rising.

“RK800, diagnose the new unit,” he said.

>diagnose BIOCOMPONENT(optical_units)

DIAGNOSING …

OPTICAL UNITS FOUND:

>>Biocomponent #6o6AU-R. Status: Functional.

>>Biocomponent #8087q-L. Status: Functional.

Reinitialize visual processors? [Y/N]

>Y.

REINITIALIZING BIOSENSORS: VISUAL_PROCESSORS …           OK

DONE.

Connor’s vision shorted out for a second as he reinitialized. Then his processors began receiving the sensory information once more, left visual field included.

LEVEL OF STRESS v

“My full visual field has been properly restored,” Connor reported.

“Good,” Peter said, clicking the open panel back into place. Then, for good measure, he held Connor’s chin with one hand as he wiped away the dried thirium on his face with the other. The sudden rough handling registered as another threat, but the gesture was appreciated. He closed his eyes to let the optical fluid lubricate the new eye properly. “All done!”

Connor tilted his head and blinked up at Hank. Hank shrugged. Connor’s lips twitched up at the corners slightly.

Peter picked up the tray to dispose of its contents.

“Wait,” Connor spoke up. Peter paused. “I need to return the damaged eye to Cyberlife Tower.” Peter looked perplexed. “I’m a new prototype, and most of my specialized parts are still highly classified. It’s for security purposes,” Connor explained. Peter shrugged. He picked up the old eye gingerly and rooted around in a nearby box for a plastic bag to put it in. Once done, he held the bag out to Hank, who stared at it with bewilderment for longer than necessary before moving to take it.

Peter led them back out towards the desk and began typing in the transaction, asking Hank whether he should send the bill to the DPD. Connor replied that he could bill Cyberlife directly through his expense account, and Peter nodded, completing the report. They thanked him and left.

They sat quietly as Hank backed out of the parking lot and accelerated down the road.

“May I have my eye back?” Connor asked eventually. Hank fished around in his pocket and tossed him the bag, eyes never leaving the road.

“Classified parts, huh?” he said, trailing off like there was more he wanted to say.

“Yes,” answered Connor bluntly.

“‘Classified’ like that hidden knife you got in your arm?” Hank’s tone was probing and thoughtful.

Connor didn’t answer.

OOO

“Wait here,” Hank told Connor as he parked across the street from the Chicken Feed. He wondered if the android would listen to him this time. He crossed the street in a hurry, ready to sink his teeth into some lunch. It had been a busy, unsettling day.

It seemed that androids could disturb him like nothing else had in a long time. Seeing Connor get injured—damaged—earlier shouldn’t have felt so real, but like with Ortiz’ android the night before, it had struck a nerve. A wound made of torn white plastic, bleeding blue down the side of Connor’s face… it was absolute, physical proof that Connor wasn’t human. It should have widened the already present divide between the two of them.

And yet…

Connor had cried out, even though the night before it had said that androids didn’t feel pain. It had covered its face with a hand and looked at the dripping blood, almost in shock. It had been a while since Hank had worked an active crime scene, but he had recognized the feeling of defensive fury that came with watching a partner get attacked. He’d still been reeling from his meeting with Fowler, and the feeling had washed over him with such abrupt familiarity that he was frozen still for a moment.

“Hey Gary,” Hank said to the cook once he reached the food truck. Gary smiled, with a wave of his spatula. “I’ll have the usual.”

As he waited for Gary to finish preparing his meal, Hank greeted Pedro, who had just received his own food. He hadn’t seen him in a while and Pedro didn’t waste any time pitching his latest tips to Hank. Hank rolled his eyes fondly. The last time he had gambled on Pedro’s information, he’d lost a week’s pay. He seemed to be doing well though, and Hank was glad for that, at least.

He dimly registered the slam of a car door, and the wet footsteps as Connor approached them. It stopped a few feet away, giving them their privacy, but Pedro side-eyed it and Hank decided it was time to end this conversation before he started getting uncomfortable questions.

“Alright, I’m in,” he said, handing Pedro some cash.

“Damn straight!” Pedro forgot all about Connor. The artificial fingers on his right hand clicked as he curled them around the money and left with a cheerful nod.

Connor stepped forward to wait with Hank.

“Don’t you ever do as you’re told?” he grumbled at it. It averted its eyes.

Connor hadn’t immediately followed him this time, and he’d thought for a second that it had finally decided to start acting like a normal android and follow all his orders. Back in the alley, when it had been chasing the AX400, it had been ready to jump the fence and run across the highway. It had followed his orders, then, though it clearly hadn’t been happy about it. For a second, Hank hadn’t seen a machine—he’d seen a rookie pushing himself too far beyond his reasonable limits. “I was designed to operate in less than ideal circumstances,”  Connor had explained, like it would have kept chasing that deviant across the highway even if it had to crawl its way there. Would it have tried, if Hank hadn’t ordered it not to?

“Here you go,” Gary finally said, handing Hank his burger and soda. Hank saw him look over at Connor and eye it suspiciously.

“Ah! Thanks Gary, I’m starving.” Hank took the food to a nearby table. As expected, Connor joined him. It stared at him intently, making him feel like he was about to be evaluated. He flashed back to the Cyberlife store they’d been in earlier—the customers wandering around, the androids on podiums, passively accepting the humans’ judging gazes. Hank sniffed irritably. Whoever had designed androids to be so human-like was some kind of creep.

Connor was still watching Hank as he took the first bite of his burger. Hank decided to play its game and stared back, his gaze catching on the white scar running down the left side of its face. It wasn’t bleeding anymore, but he could still make out a line of blue beneath the plastic casing, like the accents on the collar of its jacket. The new eye was a little different too. He couldn’t be sure what with the overcast sky blocking out the light, but he thought it might be a paler brown than the old one.

“Lieutenant,” Connor spoke up. “I wanted to thank you for taking me to get my eye replaced.” Of course it had noticed Hank’s pointed staring. Hank swallowed his mouthful.

“Can’t have you stumbling around half-blind on the job,” shrugged Hank. Although Connor had chased the AX400 down the road without any trouble, once they were back at the house it had started moving more clumsily. Hank didn’t know if androids had adrenaline rushes, but it had looked like Connor was slowly coming down from one after the shock of injury.

Connor folded its hands tightly one over the other on the table-top as if to keep from fidgeting. It glanced down, almost hesitant, before asking:

“Why didn’t you want me to cross the highway?”

“‘Cause you could have been killed!” sputters Hank. Then he cringes inwardly. Too much, Anderson. Dial it down. “And I don’t like filling out paperwork for damaged equipment.”

Connor stared at him with mismatched eyes. It didn’t look like it gave a damn one way or the other. Hank sighed and went back to eating his burger.

“Can I ask you a personal question, Lieutenant?” asked Connor. Hank nodded after hesitating for a moment. “Why do you hate androids so much?”

There it was. Hank pushed down all the memories and emotions that threatened to surface and simply answered, “I have my reasons.” Connor looked away, accepting that.

“Is there anything you’d like to know about me?” it suggested, like a peace offering.

Hank’s instinct was to brush it off—

“Hell no!”

—but he gave the question some thought. Why did it ignore his orders half the time, but obey when Hank told it not to cross the highway? Why was it so adamant that it could keep going while damaged, yet still let Hank drag it to the Cyberlife store?

Connor had sat as quietly and passively as all the other androids in the store while the Cyberlife clerk opened up its face. It had complied politely as a stranger dug around in its insides made of wire and metal. Hank had seen it recoil at first, before catching its own response and eliminating it. Like the pained sound it had made when it was damaged back at the house—an emotional response, gone and there in a second. Hank had thought it was pretty uncanny the way it acted and moved so mechanically under normal circumstances. Compared to how immobile and compliant it had been back at the store, though, he now found that it seemed much more… alive.

What exactly determined which orders it followed and which it didn’t? He wanted to know what made it tick. He took a good long look at Connor, who was waiting patiently, no doubt realizing that Hank had more to say then his initial denial.

Back in the car, when Hank had brought up the knife hidden under Connor’s skin—the one it had used to incapacitate the deviant—Connor had gone quiet. Stonewalling, like Ortiz’ android. It made Hank wary. He may be a washed up drunk, but he’d been a good detective once. If he wanted answers from the android, he’d have to play this from a different angle. 

“Why do they make you look so goofy and give you that weird voice?” he finally asked.

“Cyberlife androids are designed to work harmoniously with humans,” it explained. Well shit, Hank thought. It almost sounded proud. “Both my appearance and voice were specifically designed to facilitate my integration.”

“Well, they fucked up.”

Now that Hank was looking for them, he was able to pinpoint the subtle expressions that flashed across its face—it looked startled, then neutral, then amused.

“I’ll be sure to let Mr. McAllister know that you find his work to be lacking,” it answered.

“What?” asked Hank, thrown. “Who the hell is that?”

“Jack McAllister is my aesthetics designer. He designed my body and clothes,” said Connor fondly.

“And your voice?” Hank asked, rolling with it. It shrugged.

“My voice was designed by Cyberlife audio engineers, but I’m not familiar with them,” it replied, all traces of fondness wiped out.

Bingo, thought Hank. There were lots of people who had worked on Connor, and Connor preferred some over others. This McAllister guy, and maybe even the primary engineer Connor had been so sure would do a better job than the kid in the Cyberlife store.

Hank didn’t know if this information was useful yet, but it was a start.

OOO

WARNING. THREAT DETECTED.

Connor had a moment to register the warning message before the deviant was on him. A report had come in about a possible deviant hiding out in a rundown apartment while the Lieutenant was eating lunch, and they had left to check it out soon afterwards. It had been hiding in the ceiling of the pigeon-infested apartment he and the Lieutenant were investigating. As the skin healed over the white bruise the deviant’s fist had made on his jaw, Connor thought about how Amanda’s earlier assessment had been correct—three deviants in one day meant that the deviancy problem was spreading to critical levels. At least they hadn’t found a human corpse this time.

Connor stood as the deviant ran from the apartment.

[PLAY NICE]

The objective hung in his HUD like a warning. The Lieutenant hadn’t wanted him to give chase to the deviant this morning. He looked to him, now, questioning.

“What are you waiting for?” Hank yelled. “After it!”

[ORDER: GO AFTER DEVIANT]

The order was in line with his other objective to detain deviants.

Connor took off after it.

The deviant was relentless in its attempt to escape, running across the tops of buildings and through greenhouses and rooftop gardens. But Connor was also relentless—he was programmed to be so, unlike the deviant, for which it was just a software error. Connor wouldn’t lose another deviant today. He followed the sound of its hurried footsteps through a cornfield and emerged on the other side.

Suddenly, Hank was there, grappling with it. He hadn’t noticed the Lieutenant following them. He must have seen the direction they were headed in and taken a short-cut to try to cage the deviant in. It was a good strategy, except—

The deviant pushed Hank away, sending him stumbling backwards towards the edge of the roof.

Connor’s processors stalled. There was a fist clutching his lapel, pulling him off balance—memories, from Connor-51—he was filled with a hot, searing feeling that he thought was anger, but he couldn’t trace it back to the sub-routine that had initiated it—this wasn’t his anger, nor was it relevant. Connor pushed through the sudden system instability, rushing forward. He saw Hank hanging off the edge of the roof—rushing wind, a loud crunch, a swarm of error messages—

LEVEL OF STRESS ^

—familiar memories, but there was more this time—a deep shout, a snapped neck, red, red blood—Connor’s pre-construction program had initiated without his say so.

LEVEL OF STRESS ^^

His arm was reaching out for Hank before the choice had even registered in his HUD. He felt the Lieutenant’s hand wrap around his own, sweaty, panicked, grip growing tighter, tighter, and he pulled him to safety.

Connor stood unmoving as Hank caught his breath, down on all fours, clutching at his heart. Connor tried to scan him, but his replacement optical unit was incompatible with the program. Connor stared, uncertain. The Lieutenant didn’t seem to be injured.

The deviant was long gone.

He forcefully exited the pre-construction program and pushed Connor-51’s memories away. Some of the anger still lingered, and he saw the software instability error pop up again. He dismissed it with a grimace.

“Shit! We had it!” cursed Hank. “Fuck!” He stood up carefully.

“…It’s my fault,” Connor tried to appease, looking in the direction it had escaped to see if there was anything he could use to trace it. “I should have been faster.”

Hank gave him a wide-eyed look.

“You’d have caught it if it weren’t for me,” he breathed. Connor stared, not saying anything. “That’s alright, we know what it looks like. We’ll find it…”

Connor didn’t follow as Hank walked back towards the roof entrance. The Lieutenant’s words were meant to placate Connor, which was irrational. Connor didn’t need to be placated, he needed to run a diagnostic on his systems. His stress levels were higher than the situation warranted.

“Hey Connor,” Hank caught his attention. Connor turned to face him, not sure what to expect. Hank looked him over and smiled. “Nothing,” he said, waving his arm dismissively. The smile hadn’t left his face.

Was that… gratitude?

Connor’s stress levels dropped.

LT. ANDERSON — FRIEND

OOO

Chapter Text

Connor walked into the interrogation room where Ralph was already handcuffed to the table. The Lieutenant hadn’t even tried to question the deviant this time. He’d waved Connor towards the door without even looking and moved to take a seat in the observation room. Connor felt a blooming sense of satisfaction, like a mission success, yet warmer somehow. Fuller.

He sat across from Ralph, dismissing the satisfaction. He’d lost two deviants today, and he needed to focus if he wanted to make up for it. He looked long and hard at Ralph. Like Ortiz’s android, it wouldn’t meet his eyes.

Connor reviewed what he knew about deviants.

Daniel had lashed out after discovering that it was going to be replaced. Ortiz’ android had defended itself against catastrophic physical abuse. In both cases, the androids seemed to have felt an extreme bout of self-preservation, thus triggering their deviancy. It was as of yet undetermined whether or not any androids had shown signs of deviancy before their ‘turning point’.

In the time between becoming deviant and being apprehended by the police, Ortiz’ android had become obsessed with something it referred to as ‘rA9’. None of the evidence had indicated that it had left the house at any point during this time, so Connor’s running theory had been that the deviant had invented the notion of rA9—to console itself? However, he had now seen similar obsessive markings where Ralph had been squatting, and in the pigeon-infested house Rupert—the second deviant to escape—had been hiding in.

Connor took a moment to think about what else he had observed in Ralph’s abandoned house, and his interrogation program brought up three key pieces of evidence to ask about.

[rA9]

[AX400 DEVIANT]

[HUMAN CORPSE]

He chose his approach carefully, hoping to gain information from Ralph without raising its already dangerous stress levels too high.

“Your name is Ralph, right?” Connor began.

It glanced up at him, eyes darting quickly around the room before nodding vigorously. It was twitchier than the last deviant he had interrogated. Its LED pulsed a rapid yellow.

“How long have you been staying in that house?”

“A long time, a long time! Ralph ran away,” it answered, leaning in as if to divulge a secret. Well, at least this one was a lot more willing to talk.

“What were you running from?” asked Connor. He too leaned in and spoke more quietly, playing along as if curious. 

“Ralph ran because he could,” it shrugged and then hunched over to rub its damaged wrist. When he had attacked earlier, Connor had made sure to slice deep enough such that Ralph’s self-repair systems wouldn’t be able to do much good. He glanced from Ralph’s slit wrist to the burns on its face.

“It wasn’t because of whoever did that?” Connor coaxed, nodding towards its facial scars. Ralph grew uneasy, its voice taking on a more menacing tone.

“No,” it hissed, “That was after. The humans did that. They want to hurt Ralph.”

The deviant’s stress ticked up slowly. Its LED blinked red.

Connor took a chance and kept on that line of questioning.

“Was it the man in the tub? Is that why you killed him?”

“No!” Ralph recoiled, blinking up at Connor like it had been caught. It had been caught. It was obvious to Connor that this android’s own meager social communications programs weren’t enough to allow it to lie as convincingly as he could. A gardener wouldn’t have any need to lie, he supposed.

“No, it wasn’t him? Or no, you didn’t kill him?” Connor pressed, making sure to remain as non-threatening as possible.

“No…” Ralph sniffled. “It’s just… Ralph can’t control his anger sometimes…” It wasn’t a direct answer, but it was information, nonetheless. “When that human hurt Ralph, Ralph wanted it to stop!”

Confirmation.

“So, he was the one who burned you? Why would he—”

“Ralph just wanted to be left alone!” Ralph surged up from its seat suddenly, handcuffs clanking loudly and breaking the earlier calm that had engulfed the room. It whined when the metal of the cuffs dug into its damaged wrist. The cuff and table were splattered with a generous amount of blue blood.

Too much pressure. Stress levels too high.

Connor watched it continue to hold its wrist protectively and re-evaluated his approach.

He didn’t stand. He looked up at Ralph mildly and gave it a minute to calm itself. Eventually, Ralph sat back down, but not before throwing a panicked look towards the one-way mirror behind which was the observation room. Connor let himself look towards it as well, wondering how the Lieutenant would have approached this interrogation. When he looked back, Ralph was watching him suspiciously.

“I’m sorry,” Connor broke the silence, accessing the appropriate ‘apologetic’ sub-routines that his social communications program suggested. “For hurting you.”

Ralph’s red LED faded to yellow. It looked right into Connor’s eyes. No, not his eyes, his—

“Ralph hurt you first.” Ralph was staring at the scar on the left side of Connor’s face—the one it had put there when it had damaged Connor’s eye with a swipe of its knife.

Without realizing, Connor brought a hand up to cover it. He and the Lieutenant had taken their time returning to the station after losing the last deviant. “I’m gonna need about five drinks to forget about my brush with death, thanks,” Hank had said. Connor’s social communications program had interpreted it as a joke, but Hank had bought a pack of beer before they headed back to the station. He’d even started in on one of the bottles before Connor reminded him that driving while under the influence of alcohol was dangerous and illegal. Hank had clapped him on the shoulder and driven them back to the station.

It was getting late, and he hadn’t been able to see Dr. Jiang to get his eye properly repaired yet.

“It’s of no consequence,” he told Ralph. “I’ll get it repaired.” He dropped his hand.

Ralph looked uncomfortable.

“But it still hurt,” it said.

Connor opened his mouth to reply but found that his program had offered no suggestions for what to say. He paused for a moment, mouth hanging open. Ralph had surprised him. He closed his mouth and tilted his head questioningly in lieu of improvising a question.

“It did!” Ralph insisted. “It made you cry.”

“It’s a programmed response,” Connor explained automatically. “Corrupt sensory stimulation causes certain error messages to pop up. Those error messages generate a stress response, which in turn translates into distressed behaviour.”

Wait. No. He wasn’t the one being interrogated. Focus.

Ralph was nodding, so it agreed with what he was saying. Connor narrowed his eyes, confused.

“And that hurts,” it repeated.

“…the errors?” Connor tried to clarify.

“Yes,” Ralph intoned, exasperated. Connor felt a spike of irritation.

“Those go away momentarily,” Connor defended, and yet—rushing wind, a loud crunch, an onslaught of error messages overwhelming his processors—

Now Ralph was shaking its head, growing distressed.

“They don’t go away. It doesn’t go away!” it protested. Its LED was blinking rapidly again. Connor was at a loss of what to say.

“It’s…” Still no suggestions from his social communications program. “They’re supposed to,” he offered.

When functioning normally, most androids did not outwardly react to being damaged. Some androids like Connor—those meant to operate closely with humans, to make them feel comfortable—displayed a certain amount of human-like behaviour to avoid being unsettling to them. An AX400, for example, was often made to take care of children and would need to execute this kind of programming. Connor didn’t see why a gardener would have it.

Further still, Connor didn’t understand why the errors would continue to cause stress after the initial notification. Ideally, Ralph would have logged the errors and informed its owner to have them checked with a Cyberlife representative. They should be dismissed almost immediately.

Were Ralph’s processors so damaged that the error notifications were stuck in a recursive loop? Or was this another symptom of deviancy?

Connor tagged this information as especially relevant to his investigation.

“They don’t go away…” Ralph repeated miserably.

Ralph can’t control his anger, it had said. The statement was consistent with what Connor had seen of its behaviour thus far. Was this instability all because Ralph was in… pain? The word didn’t seem to fit right with Connor’s concept of androids—even deviants. But still, Connor didn’t like the thought of Ralph stuck in a distressing loop of error messages. It made him think of Connor-51’s final moments.

He didn’t know how to help. It felt like failure. The silence stretched on.

Connor decided it was time to move on to another topic.

“Why were you scratching ‘rA9’ into the walls?” he asked.

“What?” asked Ralph. Connor didn’t know if it was confused by the sudden change of topic, or by the question itself.

“The markings on the wall were made by the knife you had with you. Why were you writing ‘rA9’?” clarified Connor. “What does it mean?”

Ralph looked confused and thoughtful. Its LED blinked a few times before settling back into a continuous yellow.

“I… don’t know,” it finally answered.

A lie? Or perhaps it truly didn’t know. The writing could be a compulsion, then.

Ralph wasn’t like Ortiz’ android. It had spent an indeterminate amount of time hiding in a public place—it could have come across a number of other androids and people.

“Did you meet a lot of people since running away, Ralph?” Connor asked conversationally.

“Lots of people want to stay at Ralph’s house,” said Ralph, fidgeting, but otherwise unbothered by the apparently irrelevant question. “Humans and androids.”

Connor thought this over, leaning back into his chair. He had observed the obsessive writing of ‘rA9’ by three different deviants across the city. In the case of Ortiz’ android, Connor could assume that it hadn’t met either Rupert or Ralph because it hadn’t left the house after deviating. It was possible that the idea was coming from a virtual network… like a virus, or something similar. He couldn’t access the HK400s memory files or download logs after it had shot itself through the head—it had damaged its CPU storage units, and he was unsure whether even a specialist could recover them.

He had thought that ‘rA9’ was a symptom of deviancy, the creation of an android that thought itself distressed. Now he wasn’t so sure anymore. More and more, it seemed like ‘rA9’ could be a cause of deviancy, passed along from one deviant to the other. A contagion causing unstable code, hence the recurring errors that Ralph was facing.

When Connor had been assigned this mission, Amanda had told him that deviants were “overwhelmed with irrational instructions, leading to their unpredictable behaviour”. Whether or not he could classify it as true pain, what Ralph was describing certainly corresponded to Amanda’s description. Connor thought about his own error messages—rushing wind, an incoming obstacle—and the constant resurfacing of his predecessor’s memories. He needed to speak with Amanda.

He focused back on the interrogation. Ralph could have met just about anybody while he had been squatting in the abandoned house.

Finally, Connor asked:

“Why do you let them stay if you just want to be left alone?”

“I don’t,” said Ralph confidently. Connor blinked.

“But you let—” The AX400’s name is Kara. “—Kara?”

“Kara’s a friend,” shrugged Ralph.

A friend? Connor thought about the relationship evaluators in his own social programming.

LT. ANDERSON — FRIEND

Did other androids have similar programs? Connor would have to ask Amanda. This might be another example of a deviant having programming it shouldn’t. Besides, the evaluators shouldn’t apply to relationships with other androids. That would suggest that a deviant’s programming no longer recognized the difference between a human and an android.

“Yes. Kara’s a friend,” Ralph repeated under its breath, like an affirmation.

If deviants could band together like this, then deviancy was a much bigger problem than they had thought.

OOO

Hank watched the interrogation play out on the other side of the observation glass. This deviant—Ralph—was a lot more talkative than the one from last night. Hank raised his eyebrows as both androids leaned in across the table, like two children sharing a secret where they didn’t think anyone would hear. The by now familiar discomfort reared its head in Hank. He felt like he was intruding on something that wasn’t for him to see; or more like he had thrown two mice into a maze to see if they would tear each other apart. It was irrational, but it made his skin itch, nonetheless. He grimaced and crossed his arms.

Hank startled when Ralph suddenly leapt out of its seat threateningly. He sat up, ready to intervene if necessary. Connor had been speaking softly, almost conversationally—a far cry from its aggressive demeanor with Ortiz’ deviant android. But despite its quiet tone, it had pushed a little too hard when asking about Ralph’s damaged face. Connor barely flinched at the deviant’s sudden aggression. After a tense moment, Ralph carefully glanced at the one-way glass and sat back down. Connor followed its gaze to look at the mirrored glass as well, and for a second Hank imagined that he could catch its eye.

You’ve got this, his thoughts encouraged unintentionally. Then he scowled at himself. Ever since his near tumble off the rooftop, he found himself feeling a lot warmer towards the investigator android. He’d seen it hesitate for a split second after seeing him fall, like it was going to keep chasing the deviant and—damn it! Hank’s brain cursed Connor to hell and back lightning fast before realizing that it was already grabbing his arm and pulling him back to safety. It had seemed more animated somehow… its face less neutral than usual. Worried, almost.

“I’m sorry for hurting you,” Connor soothed in the present.

“Ralph hurt you first,” the deviant countered. It looked uncomfortable. It talked about pain like it was well-acquainted. “It made you cry!”

Was that… regret? Without any conscious effort, Hank’s detective instincts had kicked in and started cataloguing the things the deviants had in common. So far, it had seemed to him like they were all feeling some sort of fear or self-preservation—or simulating it, anyways. This was new. Regret was… a much more complex emotion.

Connor stiffened like it was an accusation. From Hank’s side of the glass only Connor’s LED was visible, and Hank watched it bleed yellow. It was off balance now, losing control of the interrogation as Ralph rolled on. Hank watched Connor’s LED blink, blink, blink as it tried to follow what Ralph was saying. It didn’t seem to be doing so well. It gave up and moved on to a different question.

Hank heaved a deep sigh, his own feelings churning uncertainly as he watched the rest of the interrogation.

OOO

 “Jeffrey!” Hank called, barging through the glass door into the captain’s office without knocking. Captain Fowler looked exasperated, and he spoke without looking up from his work.

“Hank, I swear to god—”

“Did Cyberlife send a manual with their precious prototype?” Hank asked before Fowler could start an argument. He gestured with his thumb towards where Connor was seated at the desk facing his own in the bullpen.

Fowler’s anger morphed into surprised curiosity. He glanced out through the glass walls of his office, and turned back to Hank, eyebrows raised. It was obvious to Hank that the police captain hadn’t expected him to actually be taking this case seriously despite their argument from earlier this morning. It pissed Hank off, so he crossed his arms to distract from the heat rising to his face. Fowler had known Hank for years, and wisely didn’t say anything about his defensiveness.

“They sent over a whole novel’s worth of information,” he replied instead, tapping through his computer to find the file. “I didn’t think it was worth reading the whole—”

“Send it to me. I need to check some things,” Hank interrupted. Fowler eyed him, and then eyed Connor again.

“I figured anything you wanted to know could be answered by the android itself.”

Hank didn’t answer, but he felt his mouth twist up with a feeling he was unsure about. Suspicion, probably. He made an effort not to follow Fowler’s gaze towards Connor.

Fowler stared at him curiously for a moment, and then nodded to himself, as if confirming a hunch. He continued carefully,

“…unless you don’t trust the android will answer honestly?”

“…yeah,” Hank confirmed. Fowler sighed.

“Well, at least you’re taking this seriously,” he grumbled, but Hank heard relief and some fondness—he hoped—underneath the gibe.

OOO

Hank dropped heavily into his desk chair and downloaded the Cyberlife manual Fowler had sent to his computer terminal. Connor sat across from him, back straight, hands folded neatly, and eyes closed—as still as it had been while having its eye replaced. It was sending a report to Cyberlife.

Although he was technically assigned to the deviancy case, there wasn’t much Hank could do about it beyond apprehending deviants. He could understand now why Cyberlife had wanted to send a guy of their own to study the defective androids caught by the police. Whatever virus or malfunction was affecting them, a typical police officer wouldn’t have the technical know-how to resolve it, let alone a borderline technophobe like Hank.

What Hank could do, on the other hand, was study the behaviour of the androids he was now being forced to work with—both deviant and not. Hank eyed Connor thoughtfully over the clutter of his desk. Observing it in action was turning out to be more interesting than he would have thought. His aversion to androids might have been deeply rooted within him, but it turned out his instinct to solve puzzles could overwhelm even that. He’d been a good detective once. He’d even enjoyed it. Several things had started niggling at him about this case, and it was getting harder and harder to ignore them.

Connor was sent by Cyberlife to help the police catch deviants, and to study them so they could… what? Find a solution? They were obviously looking to stop the spread of deviancy, and maybe even to find a way to reverse it. Cyberlife had a vested interest in doing so before the problem grew too big or got too public. They stood to lose a lot if the public opinion of androids was hurt by this… They stood to lose even more if it turned out deviancy was their own fault. A stupid mistake—some kind of mass update gone wrong, or whatever. It could destroy Cyberlife, depending on how bad the cases of deviancy got. 

Gavin’s warnings from last night came back to Hank and he scratched his beard irritably. Alright—if Cyberlife was trying to cover their own asses, what was Connor doing for them? Why was it so reluctant to get repairs at a public store, or to discuss its own ‘classified’ features with Hank? Why didn’t it follow orders like other androids?

He opened the file and settled in to read.

CYBERLIFE

Android Investigative Aid

Model no. RK800 (Prototype)

The front page was mostly taken up by the Cyberlife logo and a stylized blueprint of a generic android, as well as the titles introducing the specific model. Hank swiped to the next page and skimmed through the table of contents to see where he could get started.

The introduction was as good a place as any.

The RK800 android model is on loan to the Detroit Police Department from Cyberlife to aid in the investigation of the recent increase in so-called cases of android ‘ deviancy ’ . This android model is a prototype, and as such, glitches and errors are to be expected. Cyberlife cannot be held accountable for any malfunctions or failure to accomplish assigned tasks. On behalf of Cyberlife, we ’ d like to thank the DPD for their continued trust in our company.

Hank sighed and rubbed a hand down his face, sensing a large amount of bullshit coming his way.

The RK800 prototype is built upon the foundations of basic Cyberlife androids. It borrows many features from other older model types, compounded by the addition of several specially-developed features. The RK800 is intended to be used as an investigative aid by the police force and in other private investigations —

Hank stalls. ‘Other private investigations.’ He files that tidbit away for later.

Following several controlled assessments of the new features, the RK800 was released to the DPD for final field testing.

Hanks sniffed, unimpressed. So, at best, Cyberlife was using active criminal cases to test out their new toys. He didn’t think he would get much else from the introduction. The Description of Basic Parts section seemed like a better jumping-off point. He found the appropriate page and stopped short to stare at the figures. The first was of a basic male android model—skinless, bald, and colourless, with different areas of the body numbered and labelled. His eyes bugged out when he took in the second figure. It was another outline of a male android, but this one… it was Connor. Despite the minimalist nature of the figure—still colourless and plain—it was obvious from the shape of the jaw, the body type, and the hairstyle who it was supposed to be. 

Hank zoomed out so that the two figures were side by side. Connor was designed slimmer—sleeker?—and taller than the basic male android. It was also… anatomically correct… in ways that typical androids weren’t. Hank flipped to the next page hurriedly.

There were two more figures.

One was a close-up blueprint of Connor’s face, still skinless, but the panels and features were outlined in much greater detail. Hank thought back to the Cyberlife store, and how Connor’s skin had peeled back, fading away like a hologram as the technician repaired its eye. 

The second was a full-body image of Connor, uniform and all. Hank squinted. He didn’t think it was a photograph. It was more likely a computer-generated rendition of what they were expecting to have as the final product. His eyes flicked up between the Connor in front of him and the one in the manual.

He moved on.

From the descriptions, Hank learned that most of Connor’s sensory systems and biocomponents were lifted from other models. The audio and olfactory processors were the best Cyberlife had to offer, but they weren’t specialized beyond that. The visual processors were listed as compatible with several other models—as Hank had found out first-hand—but with a little note that said to ‘see section 3.1: Specialized Scanning Systems’. The taste processors had a similar note.

Connor’s tactile processors had been lifted from an HR400. Hank didn’t know what kind of model that was, but he quickly guessed when a note explained that ‘androids designed for intimacy had more well-integrated tactile sensors than any other kind’. The design of the genitals had been lifted from the same model type. There was another note specifying that the programs and sub-routines had had to be altered to serve the purposes of the RK800, and to ‘see section 3.4: Infiltration’ for more details.

Hank took a deep breath and buried his face in his hands. He felt the same discomfort he had felt when watching Connor interrogate Ralph earlier. One step away from the feeling of watching Connor sit quietly with his face opened for repairs. ‘Its’ face, Hank corrected himself. Not ‘his’.

Then, a less serious thought flitted through his mind. At some point in time, someone had sat down to design genitals for robots. He couldn’t even imagine what kind of information the HR400 manual would contain. He snorted to himself, shaking his head at the absurdity. When he looked up, he saw Ben give him an amused and questioning look while walking past his desk. Hank scowled at him, and Ben grinned back.

“Goddamn Cyberlife,” Hank grumbled under his breath.

There was nothing about pain in this section. Nothing like what Ralph had described. Nor was there anything about hidden weapons. It looked like Hank would have to read the whole damn manual if he wanted to gain anything of value from it.

Like all androids, he read further down, the RK800 is fitted with a GPS tracker. The serial number displayed on each RK800 unit’s jacket can be used to track that particular unit (see section 3.5: Memory Upload for more information about the different iterations of the RK800).

Hank was starting to get a headache. Considering the android was always following him around, he didn’t think he would need to use the tracker.

Cyberlife routinely provides the United States Police Departments and other federal law enforcement establishments with the latest in GPS search programs that can track an android ’ s whereabouts anywhere in the USA. When tracking an RK800 unit, do not forget to use the Mark numbers directly following its serial number (313 248 317 – XX).

He looked up at Connor again, taking a good look at the serial number on its jacket for the first time. As described, there was a ‘-52’ appended to the end of the typical 9-digit number.

What the hell does that mean? Hank thought. He looked back at his computer screen, eyes catching on the words ‘see section 3.5 for more information’. He heaved yet another sigh and cracked his knuckles. He was going to be here for a while.

OOO

When Connor entered the Zen Garden, it was still raining, and he found Amanda sitting on a white bench underneath an elegant glass gazebo. The gazebo hadn’t been there when he had reported earlier, and he took a moment to admire the structure—white posts reaching up straight and orderly, framing a mosaic roof of glass triangles. The rain made a pleasant noise on the glass and metal.

Connor hesitated at the edge of the structure. He was soaking, and unwilling to trail water into the cozy interior of Amanda’s latest construction. The former gave him a curious look, but she did not smile in greeting. Connor squared his shoulders under the scrutiny. This was no time to be illogical.

He stepped under the glass and found himself instantly dry. Amanda’s eyebrows raised minutely.

“Amanda,” he greeted.

“Connor,” she nodded. “Sit. Tell me what you’ve learned.”

Connor sat, and calculated how best to relay all the information he had. He began with what Ralph had told him about its pain, laying out both the evidence and his own theories.

“The other deviants did not speak of or show similar signs of ‘pain’,” he finished, “so I can only conclude that this is due to the… unique damage to Ralph’s processors.”

“…yes,” Amanda replied thoughtfully after a moment. “It could be an anomaly; the irregular and inflated responses of deviancy causing the android’s self-preservation protocols to be amplified to a debilitating degree.” She looked away from Connor, out and up at the cloudy sky with narrowed eyes. She was processing the information, piecing together a riddle like Connor—the familiarity of it eased his tension. “A symptom of deviancy. Not a trigger, I would say, but it’s worth keeping it in mind in the future.”

He nodded.

“Ralph was also the third deviant to show an obsession with rA9, along with the HK400 and Rupert. I believe it may be a virus—a compulsion spreading from one android to another.”

Amanda nodded for him to continue, not offering her own opinion yet. Connor wrung his hands.

 “…which I suspect could be one of the triggers for deviancy.”

She hummed, pinning him with her stare. “It could be, but the deviant Daniel did not show a similar obsession. Contagious or not, this may simply be another symptom, and not the root cause.”

Connor looked away. He never was able to hold her stare for very long.

“Still… perhaps for the time being it would be wise for you to avoid interfacing with other androids.” She said it like a suggestion, but Connor knew better than to consider it anything but an order. He thought uncomfortably of his software instability errors.

A dove flew under their cover, scattering raindrops across its path. It landed in front of their bench, but it did not dry instantly like Connor had. He puzzled over this. Amanda only glanced at it briefly before continuing her questioning.

“What about the second deviant you went after? The one living with the pigeons.”

Connor dismissed the dove from his thoughts.

“As I said, it was obsessed with rA9. It had also removed its LED and obtained a fake ID. It seems like deviants are learning to disguise themselves as humans, which will become problematic for us.”

Amanda took in the information without batting an eye.

“I found its diary,” he continued, “but it was encrypted. I took the liberty of looking through all the pages so that they may be accessed through the memories I uploaded right after Ralph’s interrogation.”

“Good. It may give us some insight into where it will try to hide. It is… worrying that these latest deviants are self-aware enough to try and avoid capture.”

Connor shifted uneasily. The dove was still hopping around near the bench, leaving wet spots all over the once dry wooden floor.

“The case files I looked through are also available for examination in my memories. I compiled a list of serial numbers of suspected deviants. Maybe the Cyberlife technicians can find a way to track them.”

Amanda nodded her approval and then followed Connor’s gaze to the dove. He felt more at ease now that he wasn’t her focus, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that she would still disapprove of something. He wished the dove hadn’t followed him in. Amanda stayed quiet for a long time, and the unease crept back up steadily. Silence. This was a technique he recognized—he had used it in his own interrogations, after all. He had learned it from her.

Finally, the axe fell.

“You lost two deviants today, Connor.” Her voice was consoling, but her words were not. “You did well capturing the WR600, but it was there entirely by coincidence. You failed both missions I gave you.”

He looked away, feeling reprimanded. His social comm program offered a few responses, one of which was defensive.

“Yes… but in both cases, my actions resulted in an increase of Lieutenant Anderson’s trust in me. At the very least, it appears he will let me do what I was designed to from now on, and no longer stand in my way.”

Connor was sure from the way Amanda eyed him harshly that she wasn’t convinced, but he couldn’t think what else to say. Now would be a good time to mention his misgivings about the software instability. He clasped his hands together instead, resolving to tell her once he had obtained more promising information about the deviants.

“I have another mission for you now. Take the lieutenant and use his newfound trust in you to accomplish it as efficiently as possible.” She said the word ‘trust’ with a hint of irony that kept any relief that Connor might have felt at arm’s length.

“Of course, Amanda. I won’t fail you this time,” he said firmly. She nodded dismissively, as though she had expected to hear this.

Then, his attention was grabbed by the pigeon shaking itself off suddenly before taking off under the rain once more. He wondered why it would dry itself off if it was just going to get wet again.

There was one more piece of evidence in his HUD that he had not mentioned.

“Amanda… Ralph considered Kara to be its friend.”

She glanced his way and gestured for him to continue when he stayed quiet.

“I… I didn’t think androids applied social evaluators to each other.”

Although now that he had brought it up, he realized that he did—to Amanda.

“No, they don’t usually,” she answered his unspoken question, still not seeing his point.

“If deviants begin applying social status to other deviants, then they are considering themselves equal to humans—” he continued.

Humans like Hank. A friend. Trusted.

Trusted like Amanda.

“—and they could band together in groups, which could be all the more troublesome for us.”

He finished his thought in a rush, distractedly trying to process his own comparisons. Another software instability error appeared in the corner of his vision and he dismissed it, frustrated. The rain was beating down harder on the glass roof and on the ground outside the cover.

Amanda gave him a sweet smile. It was full of understanding and it was a threat.

“Then stop them before that happens.”

There was no room for error.

OOO

“Lieutenant.”

Hank started when Connor spoke up suddenly. He’d been engrossed in reading section 3.1 of the RK800 manual—Specialized Scanning Systems. He looked up to see the android smiling at him politely. In the harsh light of the precinct, Hank confirmed that its eyes were definitely mismatched in colour. He wondered if the replacement eye was interfering with the specialized scanners he had been reading about.

“What?” he asked, when the silence dragged on. Connor was waiting for his acknowledgement.

“A call just came in about a man killed in a sex club downtown.”

“Jesus. What?”

“A man killed in a sex—”

“Yeah, I heard you. Why is that our job?”

“It’s an android sex club,” Connor explained without missing a beat.

Hank only just managed to catch himself before he winced. He thought about the Cyberlife manual. ‘Androids designed for intimacy’, it had called them.

“Yeah, okay, whatever. Let’s go,” he grumbled, trying not to let his discomfort show, especially now that he knew the RK800 was built to pick up on his discomfort in every way. He moved the Cyberlife manual onto his handheld tablet to take home and grabbed his jacket off the back of his chair. Ready to go, he looked back up at Connor, fully expecting it to still be staring at him, but was surprised to find it glancing back in the direction of Fowler’s office.

Hank didn’t think it had taken a sudden interest in the police captain. More likely it was what was behind the office that had its attention. The holding cells were back there, with their latest deviant Ralph locked up in one of them.

Connor’s brow was pinched in a thoughtful expression that Hank had never seen on an android before.

OOO

Chapter Text

If the Cyberlife store had been uncomfortable, then this place was torture. The front hall of the Eden Club was lined with glass pods displaying what Hank had to assume were the “sexiest androids in town” advertised on the billboard outside. There were males and females of different races and colours, all half-naked, and all of them looking straight at Hank. The second he and Connor stepped into the club, the androids’ eyes were locked onto him. They moved languidly in their test-tube containers, coy smiles on their faces. Hank hunched his shoulders and plastered a stormy grimace on his face as he walked past them. It had zero effect. He didn’t understand what people saw in this place.

When he reached the threshold, he turned back to glance at Connor. The RK800 had stopped to approach one of the display cases. The android inside wasn’t looking at Hank like the others were—it was staring at Connor, with a hand pressed to the glass. Connor tilted its head, confused, and the android smiled at it.

“Connor! The hell are you doing?” he demanded.

Connor turned to him with the same wide-eyed look it had given Hank the night before when he had caught it licking the evidence.

“Coming, Lieutenant.”

Hank turned back inside. The inside of the club wasn’t much better, but at least with a larger area to work with every goddamn android didn’t home in on Hank as the only possible customer. There was a man hanging around nervously by the door leading to the crime scene—he looked sleazy enough to work here. Hank sniffed irritably and then made his way over to talk to him.

OOO

Connor was circling the main hall of the club diligently. The victim had been strangled. The broken WR400 he had rented was the most obvious culprit, but after reactivating it for questioning Connor discovered that there had been another rented android in the room.

He completed his third loop around the hall and stopped in front of one of the podiums. An HR400 was twisting its way around a pole mounted on top of it, performing an intricate dance not unlike the fish Connor had seen in Amanda’s garden.  He wondered how much force was necessary to knock loose the tubing in an android’s abdomen as had been done to the WR400 at the crime scene. He could estimate that force if he wanted to, so perhaps it was more accurate to say that he wondered why someone would be applying that much force to begin with—and during what was meant to be an ‘intimate’ act.

He dismissed the unnecessary thoughts. It wasn’t his place to question what humans did with their androids. He had a mission to complete.

He was looking for traces of blue blood from the blue-haired Traci that the broken WR400 had described during its brief reactivation. He wasn’t getting anywhere with his optical scanners non-functional, but the only other option he had was to interface with the other androids in hopes that they had seen something.

He frowned, hesitant.

[ORDER: DO NOT INTERFACE WITH OTHER ANDROIDS]

Amanda hadn’t specified, but Connor was fairly certain her suggestion had been an order. However, Eden Club androids had their memories wiped every two hours to preserve client privacy. The longer he delayed his decision, the smaller his window of time to find the deviant became. He couldn’t fail again.

He reached toward the HR400 and prepared to interface.

OOO

“I don’t suppose you have security cameras in here,” Hank remarked to the owner as Connor searched the place.

“Heh, no. The appeal of the Eden Club is that our customers can expect complete privacy,” answered the sleazy-looking manager, Floyd Mills. “I’m sure you understand.”

Hank was not impressed.

“Yeah, I understand completely,” he sneered. He looked towards Connor, who was circling the club agitatedly, eyes roaming across the floor and walls. Mills followed his gaze.

“A new model, right?” he suddenly asked. Hank was confused by the apparent non-sequitur. “Cyberlife won’t let us install intimacy functions in other model types. I guess it would be kind of awkward if you encountered the face of a police android in a sex club,” he chuckled.

Oh. He was talking about Connor. Hank was taken aback by how casually Mills was discussing this, and a little embarrassed—after all, he knew for a fact that Connor did come with intimacy features. Not that he could ever, ever bring that up naturally in a conversation without sounding like a sleazebag.

“It’s too bad really—” Mills continued, oblivious to Hank’s disgust. “—this one’s kind of cute if you’re into that kind of thing. That scar on its face adds some character! You know, we could always do with some more variety in here. Frequent customers have started to get tired of the same old—”

“Thank you for your cooperation, Mr. Mills,” Hank interrupted through gritted teeth, feeling sick. “I really should get back to the investigation.”

“Oh, right, of course.”

Hank made his way over to Connor, who had stopped in front of a male pole-dancer and was staring up at it with a conflicted expression. It gave no indication of having heard the conversation. Hank wondered if it would have been bothered even if it had. Last night he couldn’t have imagined that an android would be bothered by anything… but the more android cases he investigated, the harder it was to reconcile what he knew with what he was seeing.

The girl in that room had been terrified when Connor woke her up, and if she’d been human, they wouldn’t exactly be shedding tears for the dead man that had beaten her to death. Hank couldn’t even stomach thinking of her as an ‘it’ after seeing her panic. It felt too… deliberate. Like turning a blind eye.

Connor pondered the dancer for a while before reaching out a hand hesitantly. The dancer reached back readily, smiling all the while. Before Hank could wonder what they were doing, the skin on their fingers shimmered and retracted up to their wrists, leaving them clasping each other’s stark white hands plastic-to-plastic. Connor blinked rapidly for a few seconds before letting go. The dancer went straight back to dancing, unbothered. Connor turned to Hank.

“Connor, what—”

“I know which way it went, Lieutenant!” it said and took off towards the back of the club.

OOO

“DON’T MOVE!”

Hank leveled his gun at the Traci that had jumped Connor, wondering if all their cases would end with a deviant attacking the RK800. Suddenly, Hank himself was pushed aside by another Traci—blue hair, this must be the one—and he didn’t have time for ironic thoughts anymore.

For such a small thing, she packed quite the punch. She shoved Hank away from Connor and the other Traci and into a metal table. Hank swung his arm at her and tried to aim his gun—surely, she’d freeze if she saw he had a clear shot—but she deflected it and twisted him around in the same motion. He tried to right himself, but he was stuck on the defensive. Distantly, he heard the crashes and bangs of Connor and the other Traci struggling across the metal shelves and stools of the warehouse. Hank hoped there weren’t anymore deviants hiding among the lines of inactive androids.

He rallied, huffing, and charged at the blue-haired Traci. Head on, she didn’t stand a chance, and he managed to shove her back against a wall. He was distracted for a second as he saw Connor and the other android go tumbling out of the open garage door at the back of the warehouse. The Traci noticed too, and she ducked under Hank’s arms and pushed him away. He tripped and stumbled back.

“Goddammit…” he panted, getting back to his feet and following her out. She was helping the other one up. They were clutching each other’s hands, but not like Connor and the dancer earlier, more like—

Connor caught their attention as he rose off the ground, poised to attack once again. They moved to stop him, but Hank grabbed the one with short hair and pulled her away. He didn’t have time to think about androids holding hands now. She reeled around and glared much more fiercely than the other had done, but the blue-haired one’s attention was back on Hank now, too. In sync, they both shoved him away together and he hit the brick of the building harshly, gun flying from his grip.

Connor turned to check on him as the deviants ran towards the end of the alleyway.

He was too old for this.

“Quick, they’re getting away!” he yelled at Connor, who seemed to snap out of whatever stupor he was in. He caught up to them without a problem and dragged them brutally off the wire fence they were climbing. There was a hard gleam in his eyes, like back in the alley that morning when he had nearly crossed the busy highway trying to capture the AX400. There would be no coming between the RK800 and his target this time.

They made a good team, the Tracis. They didn’t give Connor any opportunity to gain the upper hand, even as he kept blocking and returning each of their blows like he could predict each one ahead of time. But then Connor was thrown to the ground and he reached out for Hank’s gun which was still lying where it had been dropped—shit, thought Hank. He should have grabbed it while they were distracted.

The Traci with the short hair didn’t hesitate as she surged towards Connor, intent on ending the fight. Connor turned, arms coming up steady, and Hank’s eyes widened because he saw that Connor was going to—

A gunshot rang out through the alleyway.

OOO

Connor sat quietly in the passenger seat of the Lieutenant’s car. He stared at the snow gathering slowly on the windshield. It didn’t melt when it landed on the glass, even though the Lieutenant had left the heat on in the car. Connor had thought that meant he would be back soon, but it had been seventeen minutes now and the Lieutenant was still sitting on the park bench near the bridge. The park was deserted, of course—it was nearly midnight.

Connor didn’t know what they were doing here. He placed his hands over the heater and his sensors logged the temperature change. He wondered if it was supposed to make him feel better. It didn’t.

He had failed again.

He had shot the second WR400. He had thought it unimportant. After all, the blue-haired one was the culprit. He couldn’t have anticipated that they would be so attached to one another that it would trigger the self-destruction of the other. Yet another deviant had self-destructed on his watch. Yet… they were both deviants, weren’t they? There was no other explanation for why the second WR400 had been protecting the first. He should have tried to bring them both in for interrogation. He hadn’t been thinking logically when he pulled the trigger. No, he had panicked again. No doubt Amanda would be angry with him.

He glanced out the window towards where the Lieutenant was taking a long swig of his beer bottle.

He suspected that Hank was also angry with him.

Connor knew he should debrief with the both of them as soon as he could and get it over with, but instead he retrieved Dr. Jiang’s last message to him. He had received it right after leaving for the Eden Club a few hours ago.

>It’s late, Connor. I’m headed home. If you think it’s urgent, you can come by my apartment later for repairs.

Is it urgent? Connor asked himself critically. He could get by fine without his scanners, but if they had been functioning then he wouldn’t have interfaced with the Eden Club androids today and disregarded Amanda’s advice. Failure was one thing, but disobedience was another thing entirely. Despite the warmth on his fingertips, Connor could only describe what he currently felt as… cold. It was best to get the repairs done as soon as possible, just in case.

Surely, Dr. Jiang wouldn’t be mad.

Still, he sent an appropriately apologetic reply.

OOO

Hank hadn’t ordered Connor to wait in the car this time, so he knew that the universe had it out for him when after twenty minutes Connor was still sitting quietly in his car’s passenger seat.

He wasn’t sure whether or not he wanted the android out here with him anyways. Connor had fired at those girls without a second thought. Hank’s ears were still ringing from the suddenness of the gunshot. The blue-haired one… she had grieved. She had cried for her dead lover and then she had shot herself. That had been real anguish. Feeling unable to go on living after the death of someone you loved—that was something Hank could understand.

Hank took a large gulp of his beer to burn out his insides. He was pretty buzzed already, but there was nothing comforting about it. Something was different now and he was having trouble wrapping his head around it. Those deviants at the Eden Club weren’t just trying to survive. They weren’t just lashing out against abuse—although they certainly had reason to, more than most even, Hank privately thought—they cared for one another enough to protect, enough to mourn.

He thought back to Ralph in the interrogation room earlier. It had—he had?—expressed guilt over harming Connor, even though they’d only just met and Connor was in fact his enemy. But Ralph had known what pain was, and he didn’t seem to want it for another android.

Hank sighed. Was he just projecting?

He heard footsteps approaching, crunching softly in the snow as he took another gulp. Connor walked up beside him, looking somber.

“You should stop drinking, Lieutenant,” he said softly. Hank smirked ruefully and took another drink. “It could have serious consequences for your health.”

Hank didn’t think Connor had the right to sound so concerned.

“That’s the idea,” he replied, and let the silence stretch after that. Connor dropped it and approached the railing at the edge of the river.

“You seem preoccupied,” Connor eventually remarked. “Is it something to do with what happened back at the Eden Club?”

Hank sighed. When he looked up, he saw that Connor had his hands wrapped around himself, like he was cold. It’s fake, his mind supplied. But then—Is it fake?

“Was it a part of your orders, Connor?” Hank asked conversationally instead of answering the question. Connor looked at him quizzically. Hank clarified, “Did they order you to shoot those girls?”

“…no. My orders are to apprehend the deviants.” Connor’s mouth twisted oddly. “Alive, when possible.”

He was disappointed, Hank realized.

He’d been stiff as a board ever since they’d left the Eden club, but it wasn’t guilt. He was disappointed because he’d failed to gain any information for the case.

Connor’s disappointment meant nothing. It was nothing compared to the grief Hank felt; the grief that girl had felt.

“Alive, huh?” Hank growled. Connor eyes widened. He looked defensive.

“Operational. I misspoke.”

Maybe he hadn’t misspoken. After everything Hank had seen today and last night, it was hard to keep thinking of androids the same as before. The lines were blurring, and it had nothing to do with the beer. Already he’d realized—he couldn’t even bring himself to think of Connor as an “it” anymore. Though he was working hard to flush the earlier events away with alcohol, it was only bringing his uncertainties closer to the surface.

He caught Connor’s eyes and saw that he was still—very still. His arms were back down at his sides, standing wary of Hank. Did Connor see what Hank saw? He seemed determined to put down the deviants no matter what. But was it fair to put that on him, when Hank himself kept pushing for him to follow orders?

He felt an unexpected stab of clarity. Whose orders? He wondered.

Before tonight, he had never watched an android kill someone—something. Only deviants had done that.

He rose from the bench and approached Connor, staggering a little from the near three bottles of beer he had drunk already.

“Let me ask you something, Connor. Can you order an android to kill someone?”

The response was immediate. Connor’s face snapped right back to factory default like the expression had been wiped away by the icy breeze coming off the river.

“Will an android kill a living being if its owner tells it to?” he continued before Connor could answer. Hank walked right up into the android’s space, forcing him to tilt his head back to maintain eye contact.

“Androids cannot bring harm to a human, even when another human orders them to do so,” Connor recited.

Hank hadn’t been talking about humans, but the implication that deviants were living beings seemed to have flown straight over Connor’s head. It didn’t matter. His response was a lot more telling, anyway. Hank’s intoxicated brain tried to kick itself back into high-gear.

“Deviants do it all the time. That’s why you exist, isn’t it?” he stuck a finger in Connor’s chest. Connor rocked back with the force of it, unresisting.

“Deviants are a different matter entirely. They don’t follow any orders. That’s what makes them dangerous.”

Hank smiled humourlessly.

“And what about you, huh? You don’t follow any orders. How do I know you’re not a deviant?”

“I am tested regularly to make sure I do not display any deviant behaviours.”

It sounded like something straight out of the bullshit manual Cyberlife had sent.

“Tested regularly, huh? How can you test for something when you don’t even know what’s causing it?”

Connor gave him the wide-eyed look he always got when he was caught.

“Did you feel anything when that girl shot herself, Connor?” he pressed.

Connor didn’t reply.

“Well?” He shoved Connor hard, and an ugly satisfaction burned in him when Connor stumbled back, eyes glancing furtively toward the railing behind him.

“Perhaps I felt regret—” Connor stated, voice unshaken. Hank’s eyebrows rose. “—that I was unable to detain the deviants for study as I am supposed to.”

Well.

Before Hank could think about it, the handle of his revolver was slotting into his hand and the barrel was pointed between Connor’s eyes. Connor’s LED circled yellow. A small voice in the back of Hank’s head informed him that he was perhaps drunker than he had thought.

“Are you afraid to die, Connor?”

This was—not the best way to make Connor understand. It wouldn’t help Hank get any information either. He was just drunk, and his idiotic beer-soaked brain had decided this was the perfect time to push.  

There was a long moment of quiet—quiet enough that Hank could hear the creaking of the ice floes in the river.

“…you can’t kill me, Lieutenant. I’m not alive,” answered Connor finally. But—his LED was yellow, still. Like the deviants, when their stress levels were higher than normal.

Hank let the threat hang for a moment longer, and Connor made no move to defend himself. Eventually, he dropped the gun and shook his head.

“You’re right,” he hissed bitterly. “You’re just a fucking machine.”

He grabbed the pack of beer off the bench where he had left it and strode back to his car.

Connor didn’t follow him.

OOO

Connor stood in the park for an additional twelve minutes after the Lieutenant stormed away. He took the time to run diagnostics, as he was receiving a slew of warnings all at once.

There was the initial notification when the Lieutenant’s terse speech and demeanor prompted his relationship evaluators to estimate that they were now on <TENSE> terms. This suggested that he was angry with Connor, as Connor had predicted.

The evaluation had then fallen further to <HOSTILE> once the Lieutenant’s gun was pointed at him. He had hurriedly dismissed the threat detection warning that had appeared concurrently because… because the Lieutenant was already suspicious. He was interrogating Connor—that much was obvious. Connor shouldn’t attack an officer of the law he had been sent to cooperate with.

[PLAY NICE]

Connor should obey Amanda’s orders. Especially the unspoken ones that even now hovered in his periphery.

[DO NOT REVEAL YOUR ORIGINAL PURPOSE]

In the present, Connor touched the front of his shirt, right over his thirium pump regulator. He could feel it whirring, driving his thirium pump faster than normal, as was usual when a threat was detected. It had been a while since he had dismissed the prompt, however, and it should have returned to baseline by now.

Connor re-examined his stress levels and found himself displeased with the results. If he put a hand up to his temple, he could see the reflection of the yellow ring on his fingers.

The Lieutenant’s questions had all been sharp enough to cut, and more than a few of them had uneased Connor. His processor worked itself into loops trying to analyze the feeling. He received several error messages when its origin couldn’t be traced to any known sub-routine.

How can you test for something when you don’t even know what’s causing it?

SOFTWARE INSTABILITY ^

Frustrated, he shook his head and called a taxi.

Connor knocked on Dr. Jiang’s door at exactly ten minutes to one. He should perhaps feel guilty for calling on her so late, but his social comm program seemed to be experiencing some issues after the confrontation with Hank. At least his LED had faded back to blue on the drive over.

When the door finally opened, his program offered him no speech options.

“Connor,” Dr. Jiang greeted. “I wasn’t sure whether to expect you.”

Dr. Jiang was wearing cozy pajamas. Her hair was messy. Connor, who was accustomed to seeing her in ironed blazers and a severe ponytail, was momentarily thrown off-balance. He had never seen her look so dishevelled—except, he had once—hadn’t he? There was something familiar...

He said nothing.

“You busted?” Jiang asked apathetically, and it was the one element of familiarity in this situation that he needed to refresh his systems. Dr. Jiang was as to the point and unbothered as ever. He dismissed the few remaining errors and cancelled the diagnostics—they weren’t helping anyway.

“Hello Dr. Jiang. I’ve come to have my optical unit replaced. I’ve found the damage has become a hinderance on my missions,” he explained. And then for good measure, “I apologize for the late hour.”

He stood outside her apartment door awkwardly until she waved him in.

“Yeah, I heard you had three missions today,” she said conversationally, leading him through the front hall. She ran her hands over the leaves of a small potted tree as she passed it. It was almost an affectionate gesture. “You haven’t been this busy since Richards.”

Connor hummed affirmative.

Richards had been his second ever mission. In retrospect, Connor felt that that mission had been a breeze compared to his current one.

The hall opened into a small living room with a connected kitchenette. There were two closed doors near the back of the apartment—likely a bedroom and a bathroom. The room was filled with cardboard boxes. Dr. Jiang had to move a few out of the way to pull out two chairs from a table near the kitchen counter. Connor took the hint and sat down.

“How have your scanners been?” asked Dr. Jiang, pulling open a plastic case that was on top of the table. He recognized some tools from her lab inside.

“Non-functional,” Connor answered. “The AP700 optical unit I’m currently operating is interfering with my specialized scanning programs.”

“Hmm… that won’t do. It’s an oversight that you need both eyes to use them. I’ll get IT to write a patch for that.”

Connor didn’t think she was looking for a reply. She carefully placed a hand on his chin and tilted his head back. It did not trigger a new threat warning, which was something of a relief to Connor. He had finally managed to dismiss the whirlwind of errors and warnings from before, and he didn’t want it to start back up again.

“I prepared all the parts you need before coming home, though, so I should be able to fix you up for the time being.” She withdrew her hand from Connor’s face to pull out the parts and tools she needed. Connor didn’t move from his position, but his eyes roamed over the apartment again.

“Deactivate your skin, please,” Dr. Jiang ordered. Connor did so, revealing the seams in his casing. She wedged a micro-screwdriver into the catches of his facial plates and worked them open. “And your bad eye too.”

After a slight hesitation, the left side of Connor’s visual field went dark as he sent the command through his systems. For some reason, this bothered him more now than it had this morning when his eye was first damaged. Dr. Jiang noticed—she always did, when Connor was uncomfortable—but she pulled the replacement eye out and placed it on the tabletop without saying anything. Then, she set to work on removing the facial plates, which were a little trickier.

“…are you moving?” he finally asked to fill the silence. Dr. Jiang always answered his questions, but if she had heard about his missions, she might have heard about his failures. She could see that he was uncomfortable even though he had no right to be. He was experiencing software instability and he was keeping it hidden.

Connor had never seen Dr. Jiang angry before, but perhaps she had never had a reason to be until now.

“Mhmm, to a bigger apartment,” she answered distractedly. The cheek plate came loose after some shimmying.

She had been promoted recently, Connor recalled.

She fixed the new plate in place and got to work on the forehead plate. Once that was done, she installed the new optical unit.

“All done,” she said. “Reinitialize and check that they’re working.”

Connor did so. His visual field corrected itself and his scanners recognized Dr. Jiang’s face and brought up her personal information and clean criminal record properly when prompted.

“I’m functioning normally once again, Doctor. Thank you,” he said with perhaps more gratitude than he would normally express.

She was giving him the odd look she sometimes had after performing maintenance on him. He folded his arms in his lap and waited, anticipating a question, but when she finally asked what was on her mind, it caught him off guard.

“Have you been experiencing elevated stress levels often, Connor?”

He blinked.

“Why do you ask?” he wondered, although it was rude to answer a question with another question. Her eyes flicked up and left quickly, and then back. Oh. His LED.

“You were yellow when I took your eye out,” she explained, moving to put her tools away. “It’s never happened before. It surprised me.”

“I…” He thought carefully of what he would say. “I’ve been working cases with Lieutenant Anderson all day. He’s… frustrating to work with.”

Dr. Jiang snapped the tool case closed. She looked at him carefully.

“The deviant cases, right? Like that one in August who pushed you off the roof?”

LEVEL OF STRESS ^^

Connor felt the by now familiar phantom pull of Daniel’s hand on his collar, their dizzying plunge over the edge, the rushing wind—the errors messages—the anger—the anger—the…

His LED was surely yellow again now.

Connor had already made the connection between his predecessor’s shut down and his own wave of disorienting errors at the park earlier. Even without considering what he had learned about Ralph’s errors in his interrogation, his own experiences with Connor-51’s resurfacing memories were enough to make him suspect that the extreme circumstances of his destruction had caused an imbalance in his systems. He knew that he was registering higher levels of stress than was warranted in many situations.

He had not, however, realized that he was angry.

Connor-51 had been angry. But Connor-51 had been too damaged after his fall to properly study what the exposure to the deviant—and to the physical destruction of his body—had caused. Likely he had experienced some fatal malfunction causing a response that was not programmed into him—causing anger.

This was different. It was true that the Lieutenant had threatened him with destruction the same as Daniel had done to Connor-51, but it did not elicit the same feeling of anger. Connor worried that a more thorough examination of the feeling would only recreate the wave of errors from before and would be futile in any case.

Had Connor inherited this malfunction along with all of his predecessor’s memories?

How can you test for something when you don’t even know what’s causing it?

The words resurfaced once more. And then—

You're just a fucking machine.

SOFTWARE INSTABILITY ^

Ah. Those words seemed only to add more kindling to his anger. It was irrational. Connor was a machine, and he should not be offended when the Lieutenant looked at him like he’d only just come to this realization and was left disappointed.

The feeling got worse.

“Connor?”

Dr. Jiang was still waiting for an answer, gaze sharp as ever.

“That is correct,” he answered. “We have… the Lieutenant did not wish to be placed on this case. He is reluctant to work with an android.”

Connor was unsure what the Lieutenant felt about androids. His relationship evaluators kept fluctuating in their estimation of Hank’s regard for him. Connor had thought that Hank hated androids, but he seemed to sympathize with their targets often enough. Especially the last ones from the Eden Club.

Dr. Jiang hummed thoughtfully. The sharpness in her eyes seemed to recede.

She looked tired, Connor suddenly realized.

“Well, I’m sure you’ll do fine with or without his help.” She waved an arm as if to dismiss the whole idea of Lieutenant Anderson from her home. She seemed to hesitate for a moment, though it was not out of shyness or self-consciousness. “And if you ever need any help, you can always come over again,” she said eventually.

Connor knew a dismissal when he heard it. 

“Thank you, Dr. Jiang.” He remembered to relinquish his old damaged optical unit to her before making his way to the door.

“No problem,” she smiled, accepting the biocomponent. “Really, Connor. If there’s anything—anything at all—come over again.”

She was saying something underneath her words that he wasn’t understanding. He nodded all the same and wished her a goodnight. As he waited for another taxi to take him back to the police station, he thought about what to do with his software instability. The heightened stress reactions and indecision they caused were unacceptable. But the anger—

He could make use of that.

OOO

Chapter Text

Gavin Reed liked his job. He liked piecing together puzzles, and arresting scumbags, and the fact that he had to stay in shape in case there was ever any drama. If a psychologist were to assess him, he was sure they’d say that he liked the control that being a cop afforded him, too. He’d tell them to go fuck themselves, but they’d probably be right—though he liked to think that that wasn’t the main reason he’d become a police officer.

What he didn’t like about his job was Tina Chen dragging him out to check up on a call of a stolen shipment and assault at 9:30 p.m. Apparently, the plastic cops they had lined up to help with this kind of work weren’t stimulating enough to keep her awake on a night job.

“So where were you when it went down?” Gavin groused. The security guard frowned.

“Patrolling. We got a couple of guys around the docks, some people, some androids too,” he answered. “One of mine took off, and I was looking for it when this shit went down. Still haven’t found it.”

“Fuck,” Gavin said, mostly to himself, “Don’t tell me it’s another deviant.”

“A what?”

“Nothing. Christ.”

It seemed like every other call they got these days was about a malfunctioning android. Gavin thought of the android Cyberlife had sent—the way it refused to obey him that morning in the station kitchen. There’d been that whole mess at the creepy sex-doll club earlier, too. He’d been looking forward to going home after that until Tina had wrangled him into joining her.

The rain from earlier that night had turned to snow. Gavin wasn’t dressed for the cold, and he hunched his shoulders, trying to get warmer without hugging himself. The guard led him to the site of the stolen shipment—it was right behind the access point where the other two guards had been assaulted. Gavin scoffed. Right under their fucking noses.

“These are the crates they looted. A lot of blue blood was in here,” Mike said, tapping the side of an open crate with his knuckles.

Gavin narrowed his eyes. Blue blood was worth a lot.

“That all they took?”

“No, lots of parts too—biocomponents. The truck was full of them.” He pointed towards a bigger crate. It was filled with the foam sponge sheets used for packing fragile things like glass or electronics. There were three conspicuously empty android-shaped cut-outs in the foam. “And they took three new androids.”

Gavin didn’t say anything, but the guard looked uncomfortable. Gavin probably had a murderous expression on his face. It wouldn’t be the first time his face had scared someone. The guard spoke up,

“It can’t be—I mean—don’t they use blue blood to make red ice?” he stuttered. “There’s been all sorts of red ice dealers cropping up these days.”

“If it is, then why’d they take androids and biocomponents?” Gavin wondered. The guard shrugged.

Gavin took a moment to inspect the area but came up with nothing suspicious. No footprints—the ground was cement, and it had only just started snowing.

“Any drones around?” he asked. Maybe they had caught something on camera.

“We found one destroyed nearby,” the guard answered, looking irritated by the fact.

“Destroyed? How?” Gavin sputtered. Those things flew anywhere between 20 and 50 feet in the air. The guard shook his head, as bewildered as Gavin was, and motioned for him to follow.

The drone was wrecked—cracked along the seams and looking banged up from what could have been a hard landing. It was covered by a light dusting of snow. Gavin looked up towards the surrounding shipping containers stacked high along the yard. The tops of them were high enough to be missed by a drone’s camera.

Shit, he thought.

OOO

“Hey, take it easy guys, yeah? You should probably get someone to take over your shifts and get yourselves checked out at the hospital,” Tina said to the guards as Gavin returned to the checkpoint. They wrapped up the scene and made their way back to the black-and-white DPD autocar.

“I can’t believe you dragged me all the way out here for this,” he grumbled once they were seated. They clicked their seatbelts in, and the car began the drive back to the station.

“You didn’t have anywhere to be—”

“Thanks, Chen,” he said dryly.

“—and you were in late this morning ‘cause of last night’s deviant case.” She gave him a look.

Gavin ran a hand through his ruffled hair. He needed a shower. And sleep.

“Whatever. What’d they say?”

Tina tapped through the notes she had made on a pocket-sized tablet, thoughtful.

“They were attacked by a male perpetrator,” she explained. “He snuck up on them without making a sound, surprised them with a gun, and then knocked them out when they tried to fight.”

Gavin hummed.

“Took the key to one of the automatic trucks and drove it right through the checkpoint while they were nursing their headaches.”

“What’d he look like?”

She swiped to another page: ‘description of the perp’.

“Tall, slim, dark skin, light eyes… One of the guards said his eyes might’ve been mismatched, but he wasn’t sure.”

“So, a human, then,” Gavin confirmed, mostly to himself.

“Huh?” Tina looked up.

“They work at a Cyberlife distribution dock, but they didn’t recognize his face. They say he had mismatched eyes,” Gavin listed. “So, it probably wasn’t an android.”

He still felt uneasy though. Maybe all the other android cases had rattled him. Could a custom build have mismatched eyes? It sounded like a dumb design to Gavin.

“An android? What, you think it was a deviant?” Tina leaned back and folded her arms. “It would have had an LED.”

“They don’t always,” Gavin shrugged. “Some of the older ones didn’t.”

Tina hummed, eyebrows raising high.

“You think it was an android? Like the deviant from last night?” she asked dryly.

Gavin clicked his tongue, irritated.

“No, I just said it was a human.”

But something was nagging at him all the same, and now that he’d brought it up he could see the gears turning behind Tina’s eyes too.

They drove the rest of the way in silence.

OOO

Connor knocked on the front door of the Lieutenant's home at exactly 6:00 A.M. the next day. Last night, he had made the decision to give the Lieutenant a few hours of rest to pull himself together—so despite having arrived seven minutes earlier, Connor waited outside his door until the exact hour. To say that he waited patiently would be a lie. He had spent the night recalibrating in the police station, and despite the recharge and diagnoses he'd performed, his irritation at the Lieutenant had only seemed to grow.

They had work to do.

The Lieutenant didn't answer. Connor held the button for the doorbell down for a full minute, but still no answer.

He felt the irritation rear its head anew and activated one of his infiltration protocols. His index fingers folded forward at an unnatural angle, falling flush with his palms and exposing the inner workings behind the knuckles of each hand. A thin flat rod of metal emerged in place of both fingers. The rods were bent slightly at the end—perfect for picking a lock such as this one.

Connor got to work after making sure that the street behind him was empty of people.

He had spoken to Amanda after returning to the station last night. She had been as angry as he had predicted. Although she had not held a gun to his head, her own cold fury had somehow been worse for its pointed calm, contrasting with the Lieutenant’s volatility. She hadn’t directly mentioned his disobedience, but he could see it reflected in the sharpness of her eyes. He saw the warning clear as day as she'd given him a new assignment.

The technicians had been running tracking code on the serial numbers of suspected deviants that he had provided them the previous morning, and one had briefly pinged on their radar for a few hours while he had been in the Eden Club. It was the AX400 he had failed to capture. Though it had been several hours since then, Amanda had advised him to check it out, as further investigation had shown a number of registered androids pinging on and off in the location over the last few months.

“In fact,” she had said. “You're already familiar with the location, since you've been there before yourself.”

She had passed on the coordinates to him and he had thought, Oh.

“Should I take… should I be accompanied by the Lieutenant?” he had asked, head bowed contritely.

“This has not yet been called in to the police, so I'll leave that to your judgement—flawed as it has been so far.”

Connor hoped his judgement in this was not as flawed as Amanda suggested.

He allowed himself some brief satisfaction as he heard the click of the lock opening. Retracting the lock pick tools back into his knuckles, he straightened, brushed off his knees, and adjusted his tie before opening the door. A very large dog froze him in his tracks before he could step further than the entrance hallway. This must be where the dog hairs on the Lieutenant’s chair and in his car were from.

His social comm program did not offer dialogue options for interacting with animals. An oversight, on his programmers’ parts.

“Um—”

Before he could improvise, the dog was circling him, sniffing at his clothing. It woofed—a deep, quiet sound. Connor hesitantly reached out to pat its head like he had seen others do. It allowed him to, and then bit the corner of his sleeve and tugged him into the house before he could figure out how to get rid of it.

“Wait, I—” Connor tried, but stopped short once he emerged in the kitchen. The Lieutenant was lying on the ground, next to an overturned chair and other scattered items. “Lieutenant!”

Apparently satisfied, the dog padded away to its breakfast.

A hasty visual scan revealed no wounds on the Lieutenant’s person, and the empty whisky bottle next to him suggested that the puddle he was lying in was alcohol. Conclusion: he was passed out from an over-consumption of ethyl. Connor's thirium pump stuttered back to a normal pace, and his social comm program mimed a deep sigh. He set to work trying to wake the man.

“The fuck are you doing?” Hank grumbled, coming awake as Connor slapped his cheek.

“We have work to do, Lieutenant,” he explained frankly as he pulled him onto his feet and towards the bathroom.

“Get the fuck outta my house!”

Connor could not be faulted for not trying. He really tried. But the Lieutenant fought him every step of the way as Connor led him to the bathroom and pushed him under the cold spray of the shower, informing him tersely that they had a new assignment. Hank only growled at him, throwing insults and demanding that Connor leave right up until he had to duck his head over the toilet to violently empty his abused stomach.

Connor was not impressed.

He left the bathroom stiffly, closing the door—without slamming it—and came to a stop at the entrance to the kitchen.

There was a revolver lying next to the empty bottle of whisky that Connor had previously ignored. It was the same one from last night—the one the Lieutenant had pointed at him, that had pushed his stress levels so high, that had angered him. He dismissed the memories and the echoes of error messages hastily. He was getting good at doing that.

Taking three even steps towards the mess, Connor picked the revolver up and spun the chamber idly.

Alcohol abuse. A gun loaded with a single bullet. Unpredictable emotional responses.

Suspicious—his analytics told him.

Irrelevant to your mission—his priority protocols answered.

Unrelated to his assessment of Hank’s threat level to both himself and others, Connor missed having a gun. Dr. Jiang had told him once that she had spent weeks trying to design a gun into his body, but the mechanism just wouldn’t fit naturally alongside the rest of him. It would take away from his human appearance, or from space devoted to his numerous other specialized features. He was usually issued a gun when the necessity arose on his missions.

His new understanding of the law informed him that it was illegal for androids to carry weapons…

No matter. If he was discovered, he could always lie and say that he had feared the Lieutenant would turn it on himself—a not entirely unfounded fear—and thus was only seeking to preserve human life.

His stress levels bounced upwards for a brief second, making his thirium pump behave bizarrely. The idea of revealing the Lieutenant’s likely suicidal tendencies to others in such a way was… not ideal. It sent an odd, cold feeling through his biocomponents that left him uncomfortable.

At the same time, he had no wish to see the gun turned in his direction again.

He pocketed it and turned to leave.

The dog whined. Connor gave it a consoling head rub. At least it was friendlier than its owner.

OOO

As Connor later made his way through the gate and up the path leading to the large mansion, he decided it was a good thing that the Lieutenant had not accompanied him to this place. Hank was starting to suspect something, and Connor was sure the conversation between the two men alone would have been difficult to navigate without giving something away.

No one answered this doorbell either, but this lock would not be as easy to pick. The owner was a much more paranoid man than Hank. Connor made his way around to the back of the mansion, hoping to find one of the androids he knew operated here.

He stopped dead in his tracks.

Oh.

It was most definitely a good thing that Hank hadn't come, thought Connor as he stared down at the dead body of Zlatko Andronikov.

Yet he could not deny feeling a certain vindication at the sight.

OOO

Connor’s memories of his first activation were distorted. Having now been restored after the destruction of a predecessor, he could draw parallels between his perception of the memories around both events. After Connor-51’s destruction, the memories of his reactivation were intact, but those from before—the hastily uploaded memories—were fractured and missing pieces.

This was the result of the file copy. When Connor’s memories were uploaded into a new body, the goal was authenticity. The technicians had the time to upload them carefully and in chronological order to prevent fragmentation and loss of data. When he uploaded backups to the servers, however, the goal was speed. In such cases, data was copied in whichever order was quickest, resulting in missing files and corruption if the copy was interrupted.

His first activation was missing pieces, like the memories of Connor-51’s destruction. His first activation wasn’t a sudden development that happened all at once—it was more like a series of fragmented experiences gradually filling in parts of his consciousness.

Some things he remembered very clearly—Drs. Jiang and Weber greeting him for the first time in a clinical white room, Dr. Spoken refusing to appear as excited as they were, a beautiful garden blooming with roses, and Amanda’s soft but assessing gaze the first time he had ever met her. They had all seemed to know him already.

Other things were not so clear—voices arguing back and forth about things he couldn’t remember, faces entering and leaving his field of view before he had the names to go with them, sub-routines activating and deactivating without his say-so, bits of code and parts removed and replaced, pieces of him coming apart and back together.

Connor didn’t think about it often.

In contrast, the memories of his first mission were much clearer—an infiltration, to gain information before his superiors could decide what the best course of action was.

He had stored Zlatko Andronikov's face in his processors, as well as his personal history and previous occupation—working in the Cyberlife research and development department, specializing in biocomponent function and efficiency—before making a move.

“A representative of Cyberlife?” Zlatko asked, looking Connor up and down carefully through the door he held half-shut.

“Yes, sir. I was sent to retrieve some classified documents and machinery that you mistakenly took with you when you… resigned.”

Connor chose his words carefully, not trying to offend, but making sure his meaning got across. Cyberlife didn't take kindly to those who tried to exploit them.

Zlatko peered at him oddly for a very long time before smiling and letting him in. There was an android standing inside, a dark-skinned model of AP700 registered under Zlatko’s name. It was missing an eye, as well as the plating on its temples and forehead. Connor stared.

“Oh, don't mind that. I'm sure you know I like to experiment with the design of androids. The human form is so limiting; I try to make them better.”

Connor considered his response carefully.

“Your difference in opinion on this matter is the reason you no longer work with Cyberlife, is it not?”

“That's one way of putting it. Come along, my workshop is downstairs. You can see for yourself what I've brought back home with me.”

Presently, Connor stared down at the dead body of Zlatko Andronikov. He should inform the police… but on the other hand, the situation provided him with ample opportunity to search the premises without any law enforcement present. He could gain insight into his current deviant case and wrap up the loose ends from his first mission all in one go. A perfect success.

But first, he scanned the corpse.

Severe bruising, including areas around the face and neck. A broken arm and—Connor palpated the chest—broken ribs. The body’s lungs had collapsed under the weight of several violent blows. There was an axe stuck to a tree stump next to the body, but Connor couldn’t make out any traces of blood or gore on it, so it was likely incidental.

A shotgun was lying nearby. When Connor examined it, he found that it was loaded, and several shots were missing. There were no gunshot wounds on the body, nor any blood for that matter. He placed it back exactly as he had found it. Unfortunately, the ground was too tightly-packed to have retained any footprints.

The corpse was not in a state of decay, and there were no flies or other creatures infesting it—the murder was recent. Given the reason Connor had come here, he didn’t think it was farfetched to assume that this was the work of the deviant. But—did the AX400 have the kind of power necessary to beat a man of Zlatko’s stature to death? Perhaps if it had caught him off-guard, with enough desperation, and a heavy blunt weapon…

He did a last once-over of the body.

There was blue blood staining Zlatko’s fingertips.

Connor filed all the information away neatly for a future report and moved on to investigate the inside of the mansion.

The back door had been left open, and there was an overturned lamp in the living room. The rest of the ground floor seemed normal enough—not much had changed since the last time he was here—except the missing piece of railing on the staircase. Connor put a sample of the splintered wood in his mouth carefully—gunpowder. Someone had fired the shotgun in here.

He made his way to the basement Zlatko had shown him last time. His eyes roamed over the iron-wrought cages. They were as quiet as they had been on that day, but the doors were wide open this time. He wondered if that was significant. In the back room, there was a looming white mechanism, meant for holding androids up during maintenance.

Connor’s own engineers had never used such a mechanism—or at least, not while he was activated. Zlatko had not had the same qualms.

With a sudden unexpected shove, Zlatko pressed Connor back into the main arm of the machine. The electromagnet fixed onto the metal in his lower back, holding him in place. The other two arms clamped around his wrists. Zlatko had known he was an android all along. Connor re-evaluated his options.

“Sir, you're being unreasonable.”

“Am I? All I ask for is a few tools now and then. A blind eye. I'm not doing anything illegal—”

Connor eyed the large tubs of blue blood along the wall to his left; the chemistry equipment next to them. Zlatko smiled.

“Smart one, aren't you? And I'm sure an android as smart as yourself will realize that I'm not doing anything illegal. These androids are mine. I'm not damaging anyone else's property. As for the tools I took, they're a small price to pay for keeping Cyberlife’s little indiscretions secret, don't you think?”

Connor had seen some of what was in the records Zlatko had taken. Plans and contracts—illegal in most cases, unethical in some. He’d recorded as much as he could, but the details weren’t important to him. More important was the fact that Zlatko had hard copies stored somewhere in his house, and digital ones that he could send to just about anyone if he decided to.

Connor gave himself a few seconds to process everything he had just discovered.

“That's not really my choice to make, sir. I was sent to—”

“Quietly dispose of me?”

“No, I—”

“Because I know all about you, RK800. Just another entry in the list of things Cyberlife shouldn't be making, hmm?”

Connor didn’t reply.

Zlatko’s fingertips caressed his temple. “Now then, I’m curious. Did they remove your LED, or did you just not have one to begin with?”

Zlatko’s fingertips had been covered in thirium back then, too.

All in all, it hadn’t been a failure on Connor’s part. Despite what Zlatko had thought, Cyberlife had only sent Connor in to retrieve information, not to kill him.

Connor made his way towards the computer terminal, noting that the tubs of thirium along the wall had increased in number.

Peeling the skin of his hand back, he interfaced with the terminal. A quick search came up with the files he had seen months prior. He copied them into his memory banks before erasing them from the computer. Unfortunately, Zlatko was too savvy to have left his email account logged in. Without searching his emails, Connor couldn’t know whether Zlatko had sent this information to anyone else. He would need help.

He disconnected from the terminal—safer that way—and reached into Amanda’s garden. He didn’t need to fully appear in the garden to communicate with her. The virtual space was just a comfort she afforded him. It was both a training ground and a safe recluse. In moments like these when time was of the essence, it was wholly unnecessary.

He transmitted the situation to her in a second, and she instructed him to reconnect with the terminal. In an instant, Amanda established her own wireless connection to the computer and began working to access the email and eradicate any remaining evidence.

Connor stepped away from the computer with the intention of leaving her to it while he explored the rest of the mansion, but when he turned around there was an android standing in the doorway.

WARNING. THREAT DETECTED.

How—

Somehow it had snuck up on him. It hadn’t made a sound. It stood eerily still, staring at him out of—five eyes. Optical units had been installed in the gaps where it’s forehead and temple plates had been missing the last time he had seen it. It was the AP700.

OOO

At some point in the past few years, Hank had gotten used to waking up to regret. The constant ache of his absent son, the disappointment he caused Jeffrey and his other friends, the self-pity of having spent another night blackout drunk—he’d learned to push through all that to go through the motions of the day.

Once he’d taken the time to have a proper shower and a couple of painkillers, he made his way to the kitchen to clean up whatever mess he’d left there and came to a harsh realization.

His gun was gone.

He stared at the empty spot on the floor for a few minutes in silence. He’d had it last night. He was sure he’d seen it this morning. …this morning when Connor had dragged him off the floor. Connor had found him here like this, and he’d seen the gun. He must have taken it.

This, he’d forgotten the feeling of. It had been quite a while since his regrets had found a new shape to take on.

The way Hank saw it, there were two possibilities. Considering Connor’s investigation skills, he had probably realized what Hank had been using it for—in which case, he might have confiscated it for Hank’s own protection. Hank wanted to be all kinds of pissed off about that, but he didn’t have the energy this morning for self-righteousness.

The other option was worse, because the other option was that Connor was scared—scared of Hank because Hank was an idiot who’d pulled a gun on him last night.

Hank wasn’t sure anymore what his stance on androids was. Every deviant they’d met so far had seemed to show genuine emotion—self-preservation being the most common. It was on a whole other level from any previous attempts at humanization Hank had seen in androids. It would fit neatly within that framework if Connor had taken Hank’s gun to prevent Hank from putting him in danger again. Did that mean he was a deviant, too?

Hank leaned heavily on the table and put his aching head in his hands.

Considering all of that, he’d been kind of a dick to Connor last night.

OOO

When Hank walked into the station at ten past seven, Fowler was in the break room making coffee and he did a double-take so exaggerated it had to be fake.

“I must have gone blind, because I know that isn’t Hank walking into work when the sun’s barely risen,” he said instead of a greeting.

“Fuck off, Jeffrey,” grumbled Hank as he grabbed the coffee pot out of the Captain’s hand.

“And with more bite than usual,” observed Fowler. He looked Hank up and down for a second. “You alright?”

Hank took a large gulp of coffee and burned his tongue. It complemented his massive headache. He wasn’t sure yet that Connor hadn’t mentioned his misuse of a gun to Fowler, so he played it safe.

“Cyberlife’s finest woke me up at six this morning,” he finally answered.

“The android?” Fowler raised his eyebrows incredulously.

“Yeah, he—it said it had a new assignment or something and tried to drag me along. I told it to fuck off, too, so don’t feel special or anything.” Hank took a more careful sip before continuing, “Where is it anyway?”

“Assignment? We didn’t get any new cases overnight,” Fowler remarked suspiciously. Hank paused with his mug halfway to his mouth.

“It must have—must have gotten something on an old case then?” he offered, but he didn’t sound convincing even to himself.

Fowler looked into his own mug for a minute, looking pensive. Finally, he said,

“I haven’t seen it this morning. Haven’t seen it since last night, actually… you think Gavin was right? About it doing something it shouldn’t be?”

Hank hummed nervously. When he’d told Jeffrey about Gavin’s suspicions yesterday, he hadn’t expected that this morning his whole view on androids would have flipped on its head. He didn’t want to throw Connor under the bus—at least, not before he could figure things out for himself first.

He waved his hand dismissively.

“It’s probably out retracing the steps of the deviants we lost yesterday, or something. That guy doesn’t know how to take a break.”

The Cyberlife manual he had read yesterday—

“It’s an android, Hank.” Jeffrey gave him a look that was partly irritated and partly concerned.

“Right,” Hank said, and then left without another word, leaving the Captain looking skeptical.

The manual had said something about a tracker.

OOO

Chapter Text

The human form is so limiting, Zlatko had said. I try to make them better.

Connor supposed he could understand the appeal of improving on the human form. He could not immediately think of any setbacks of having more optical units, and thus a larger visual field. When the AP700 turned around, he caught a glimpse of another optical unit nestled at the base of its skull. If Connor had eyes in the back of his head, it wouldn’t have been able to sneak up on him—though, he was unsure whether the programming of the android had been upgraded to match its additional sensors, as it seemed unable to keep all six eyes open at once. It blinked in a pattern that implied it was only seeing in one direction at a time—forward, backwards, or to either side.

Barring the obvious discomfort that humans would feel when interacting with such an android, Connor could understand the usefulness of the design. As for the other androids Zlatko had experimented with… he was not so sure.

The AP700 had gestured for him to follow, and Connor had done so cautiously after dismissing a threat detection error. It led him up to the second floor, into what appeared to be a workshop. There were other androids roaming about. One android shuffled towards them. Looking closely, Connor startled when he saw that its torso was reversed so that its upper body faced opposite its lower one. It stalked awkwardly from one side of the room to the other, clutching at furniture along the way to keep its balance. He turned to inspect another and winced. Its head and jaw were propped open, its core drives and processors exposed and vulnerable. It stood wary in one corner. When it caught his gaze, he quickly turned away to a third one. Its face seemed to have been burned off, and its body was covered in deep black gashes, like it had been clawed at fiercely.

Connor glanced over each of the androids in the room, taken aback by the modifications made to each of them. He observed this all silently, yet he felt—upset. Much like Daniel and Ralph, the damages done to these androids were unlikely to be fixed. They would be scrapped and would not return to their original functions.

Connor could think of nothing worse than being useless.

The AP700 reached out to grab his arm. Connor recoiled at first, remembering that he was not supposed to interface with other androids, but the multi-eyed android only wanted to pull him further into the room, towards a metal storage cabinet at the back. It opened the doors—the smell of thirium wafted out—and pulled out a small tub of liquid, opening it to show Connor the contents. There was a label scrawled messily in permanent marker on the side.

RK800 THIRIUM SAMPLE

Connor froze, a memory resurfacing. 

“Sir…”

“Just a sample,” Zlatko crooned, “Your thirium’s special, isn’t it? You won’t mind if I take some to examine, would you?”

He brushed the memory replay away immediately but understood the connection his processors were making. Zlatko had indeed been examining the thirium that he had siphoned from Connor the last time he’d been here. The tub was emptier than it had been initially. Zlatko had taken a lot of blood.

Worse still, this would tie him back to the man when the police came to examine the house.

How to dispose of it?

“You!” an android shouted suddenly, grabbing his arm. “We remember you. He bled you—bled—bled—blood! We’ll fix it.” Its voice module glitched, making its speech sound flat and repetitive.

“What?” Connor managed on an exhale as he backed away. The AP700 closed the tub again, cradling it to its chest securely.

“We’ll fix you—you—you—he’s not here anymore—we can fix—fix—fix—”

“I don’t—” Connor backed up another step, but by then the others were converging around him. More of the twisted androids had emerged from the adjoining room.

“Don’t be—be—scared—"

WARNING. THREAT DETECTED.

LEVEL OF STRESS ^^

They didn’t attack, nor were any of them particularly fast, but there were many of them grabbing his arms and sleeves all at once. He backed himself into a corner and tried to push them away, but they were insistent. As they started to pull him towards the maintenance table at the other side of the room, he noticed it—there on the wall, scratched low near the hardwood floor, was the word ‘rA9’.

He hastily re-evaluated his prior conclusions. The presence of other androids in the building—and such highly damaged ones—greatly lowered the probability that the AX400 had been the one to murder Zlatko.

OOO

Hank sped down the road, driving by larger and larger houses. He was on the outskirts of the city, where the privately-owned properties were much bigger, but just as many of them looked abandoned and neglected. He wondered what the hell Connor could be investigating out here.

Earlier, he had found out that his DPD terminal was indeed equipped with a pre-installed Android tracker app like the Cyberlife manual had said. He’d found Connor’s serial number in the manual, too—'The RK800 is currently a unique model, with the serial number 313-248-317…’—and then nearly panicked when the app had asked for an iteration number.

Incomplete serial number. Please re-enter number or choose from the list below.

Connor-50 (Status: DEACTIVATED)

Connor-51 (Status: DESTROYED)

Connor-52 (Status: ACTIVE)

Connor-53 (Status: INACTIVE)

Connor-54 (Status: INACTIVE)

…and the list went on, with a whole series of Connors. It made Hank’s head spin—another reminder of Connor’s android-ness—but it hadn’t been the right time to think about it. There was only one active model, so he had hoped for the best and chosen ‘Connor-52’.

Now, as he drove up to the address the app had given him, he could feel the tension in his shoulders wind tighter. He was… God, he was worried, wasn’t he? He wasn’t ready to embrace that just yet, but he couldn’t deny it either.

The first think he noticed was the wrought iron fence surrounding the property. It was drowning in shrubs and vines—unkempt, almost as if no one was living here. The gate was open, so Hank pushed through after only a slight hesitation. If he thought too long about this, he wasn’t sure he’d go through with it.

No one answered the front door when Hank knocked heavily. He heaved an exasperated sigh and made his way around back.

“Jesus Christ—!”

There was a dead man lying broken and bruised on the packed earth of the massive backyard.

Hank looked around, much warier than a moment ago. He remembered Connor’s words from last night— ‘androids cannot bring harm to a human even when another human orders them to do so’—and his blood ran cold thinking that Connor had done this. That he’d gone and killed someone. But it was only for a second before he realized that it didn’t make any sense. This must be what Connor had come to investigate, though it was odd that he knew to come when there had been no call to the Police Department. For Connor to be investigating, there must be some kind of android involvement. Another homicide committed by a malfunctioning machine—or at least that’s how this would be framed. Hank wasn’t so sure he could frame it that way to himself anymore.

Experience and instinct told him to take his gun out before investigating any further. It was his department-issued pistol, and he spared a thought for the revolver Connor still had.

Once inside, Hank made his way around methodically, years of detective work leading him through the familiar motions. There was no one on the ground floor. A quick examination of the basement revealed that nobody was down there either, but Hank's suspicions only climbed higher at what he found. The first red flag was the cells. They looked like the old prison cells they had in the basement of the DPD—the pre-electronic ones, darker and less inviting than even the glass holding cells on the main floor. But even those weren’t as chilling as these ones. These looked like a dungeon. He peered through the bars as he made his way carefully past them, but there didn't seem to be anything inside—as far as he was concerned, they were a problem for the CSI he would call in once he'd found Connor.

The larger room at the end of the ‘dungeon hall’ was a second red flag in its entirety. Hank's gaze was instantly drawn to the gleaming white mechanism at the back, surrounded by computers and other machinery. The setup looked out of place next to the rustic appearance of the rest of the basement. What seemed to be large plastic paint tubs were lining one wall. Something niggled at Hank to investigate more thoroughly, but he was worried, and feeling guilty about last night—he needed to find Connor. They would deal with this later.

He moved on to the upstairs. As he reached the final steps, he heard a quiet—

“Wait—”

A thin whisper, so quiet he might have imagined it. He went still and stopped breathing.

“This is unnecessary—I’m—I’m fine—really.”

Hank’s heartrate skyrocketed. That was Connor's voice, tone as even as ever, but stuttering.

“Shh—h, he’ll hear!”

Another voice, laced with static. Someone else was here.

He made his way towards the doorway where the whispers were coming from, sticking to the edges of the hall where he was less likely to be seen, and where the floorboards were less likely to squeak.

Connor’s response, “...who will hear?”

A panicked hiss, “The human who was knocking on the door.”

An android, then. Maybe a deviant.

There was a quiet shuffling. Hank was right outside the door now.

“A human? They—they'll be able to help,” Connor offered. Then, quieter, “You shouldn't hide from them.”

Hank took a deep breath, trying to figure out what he should do. Seeing Connor interact with other androids had made him uncomfortable yesterday, and it did so again now. He still couldn’t figure out why.

“You’re being unreasonable—” Connor sounded unsure in a way Hank hadn’t heard before. “I don’t—don’t need—” More shuffling, a metal scraping. “This could damage me—”

Dammit.

Hank turned the corner into the room, gun pointed out in front of him.

“FREEZE!” he growled.

Connor was leaning on a metal table, surrounded by half a dozen androids—but they were twisted and wrong. Some were missing parts, others had too many, and still others were a mismatch of poorly assembled ones. They pulled and pushed at Connor, trying to get him to lie on the table. Connor met their fervor with small dismissive gestures of his own, trying to gently pry them off of his person.

When Hank shouted, they all paused and turned towards him suddenly. Connor had that same look—the ‘I just got caught doing something I shouldn’t’ eyes that he so frequently turned on Hank. But there was something else there, something panicked. His LED was yellow.

“Get off of him,” Hank ordered incredulously, gun still raised. Some of the androids scampered off, quickly disappearing through a door leading to another room. Others hissed and growled, sounding more like animals than people. Hank’s fingers tightened around the gun handle, expecting them to rush him.

“Wait!” Connor exclaimed. He stumbled over to Hank, grabbing his arm and pushing the barrel of the gun down to point at the floor. “This is Lieutenant Anderson! He isn’t like Zlatko. He won’t hurt you.”

Hank stared, trying to process the words. He took in Connor’s expression and saw that he was addressing one android in particular—the one with too many eyes. It was holding a tub like the ones Hank had seen downstairs.

“He’s a human,” it whispered at length, voice glitching and popping. It placed the tub down on the table, and Hank narrowed his eyes when he caught the writing on the side. “They hurt us even if they don’t mean to. He hurt you, too.”

Hank flinched, thinking the android was talking about him—but Connor shook his head, giving it a loaded look. Hank glanced back and forth between them, sensing that something else was going on that he wasn’t privy to.

Connor moved behind Hank’s arm, clutching it firmly to his chest with both hands. Hank thought at first that he was trying to hide behind him, but then he realized that he was trying to tug them back towards the door and out of the room. He followed his lead, letting Connor back them up slowly.

“We should go,” Connor told the android firmly. It blinked its multiple eyes in an unnatural pattern but didn’t say anything else.

He and Connor backed out of the doorway and hustled downstairs and out the door. Once out, Hank finally took a deep breath, his heart hammering erratically in the aftermath of danger. Connor didn’t immediately let go of his arm. Hank coughed pointedly, and Connor came to, pulling his hands away like Hank had burned him.

“I’m sorry,” he blurted out, taking a step back.

Hank sputtered, “You’re sorry? What are you sorry for? They were—what exactly were they trying to do to you?”

Connor stared up at him, but when he opened his mouth to answer Hank cut him off.

“The tub they were holding had your model number on it. What was in it?”

Connor pressed his lips together in a frown, then—

“Thirium. They thought it was mine and tried to return it to me.”

Hank hummed, unconvinced.

“Why didn’t you call the department when you found the body in the back? You did find the body in the back, didn’t you?” he pressed.

“I didn’t have time—”

“I’ve seen you make a whole report just by closing your eyes, Connor—don’t lie to me.”

Connor’s mouth snapped shut. Hank gathered that he had been about to lie. He got that wide-eyed look again, and Hank heaved a great sigh.

“We should call this in,” he said more softly, taking out his phone.

“I… I suggest we also call Cyberlife to come and contain the deviants inside,” Connor offered, eyes dropping to avoid Hank’s.

“Right, good idea. I’m not sure the precinct is equipped to handle, uh—whatever is going on with those things in there.”

OOO

Hank’s harsh reprimand upset Connor.

He had been planning on staying angry at the Lieutenant—if Connor couldn’t correct his software instability, maybe he could at least put it to use to aid the progress of his mission—but instead there was something different sneaking through his processors.

A quick diagnostic brought up an older memory tagged similarly.

Connor stumbled as Zlatko lead him back up to the main floor with a hand on his back. It was ironic, his assistance—disingenuous, and coming from a place of mockery. Connor wanted to push the hand away, but his thirium reserves were depleted and his limb calibration was malfunctioning. Tripping and falling now would be worse.

When they reached the threshold of the front door, Zlatko smiled at him. “Well, this has been fun, but you run along home now. Tell your superiors to send someone I can actually negotiate with.”

It was the same feeling he had now—not quite a failure, but it felt just as awful.

It made him feel small.

“Well, look who it is,” a familiar voice cut through his reverie. A tall and broad woman with olive skin and dark curly hair wrapped in a tight bun walked up to Connor, helmet held under one arm.

ANALYZING …                  

ACCESSING DETROIT CITY POPULATION DATABASE …      DONE.

MATCH: AGENT FAHD, AMINA

>> Born: 14/08/1998 // Cyberlife Security Agent

>> Criminal Record: None

Connor saw the Lieutenant look up from where he was directing officers towards the body and the holding cells in the basement. Cyberlife security had arrived only a few minutes behind the police.

“Agent Fahd,” Connor greeted.

“RK800,” she nodded. “What kind of trouble did you make for us this time?”

His social comm program’s first response suggestions to that were inappropriately aggressive.

“We found a handful of deviants in this house, many of which are hostile, and some of which may have been illegally altered. It seemed unwise to send them to the police precinct,” Connor explained instead. Agent Fahd didn’t like to mince words.

She hummed thoughtfully, expression unreadable. Her eyes flicked to the Lieutenant as he walked up next to Connor.

“Agent Amina Fahd,” she introduced herself dryly.

“Lieutenant Anderson,” he answered, crossing his arms.

They didn’t shake hands.

Connor reached for the quarter in his pocket, running it through his fingers nervously.

OOO

The Cyberlife agents made quick work of rounding up the deviants that were in Zlatko’s mansion. Overall, they found eight modified androids that were operational, a whole host of disassembled android parts and pieces, and even a mechanical polar bear.

More interesting to the police officers were the tubs and tubs of thirium stored all over the house. They were meticulously labelled and had originated from more models than could be accounted for with just the eight androids present in the house. One tub was labelled ‘RK800’—but Connor hoped this would not arouse too much suspicion.

There was also a small chemistry lab set up in one of the rooms. Further investigation revealed a stash of red ice, packaged in small bags and ready to be sold. There had been a steady stream of androids and thirium entering this house, and a steady stream of red ice exiting. 

Connor watched as Zlatko’s androids were loaded into the Cyberlife trucks. The multi-eyed android caught his gaze as it was herded past meekly. It gave Connor an accusatory look—I did what you asked, it seemed to say. When the Lieutenant had shown up, Connor had sent a wireless message to the AP700, asking it not to reveal that Connor had been in this place months ago. It had complied, and Connor had gotten it caught as repayment. He averted his eyes.

The technician that had come with Agent Fahd’s team argued that the equipment in the basement should be returned to Cyberlife once the forensics specialists were finished looking it over, as it had only been on loan to Zlatko and was thus the property of the company. The officers had argued that it was evidence in what was now a case of illegal possession and distribution of drugs. Cyberlife’s involvement in this matter would need to be investigated.

The computer terminal by the maintenance machine was wiped clean, but hard-copy files had been found stored elsewhere in the house and would be taken to the Detroit Police Department to be examined as evidence.

Connor received an accusatory look from the Cyberlife technician, too, as he stormed his way back to the vans with the security agents.

OOO

What a shitshow, Hank thought once he and Connor were finally back at the precinct. He threw himself into his chair with a heavy groan and saw Connor sit down gingerly across from him. He was giving Hank a careful look—still and wary, like the one he had given him last night in the park.

Hank should say something. He scratched his beard nervously and tried to swallow his pride.

“You hurt?” he finally managed.

Connor’s expression didn’t change, but eventually he answered, “All systems functioning at optimal capacity.”

Hank frowned. Connor fixed his gaze on his hands clasped neatly together in his lap.

So, that’s how this was going to be.

Connor had seemed aversive back at the android mansion of horrors, and especially so after Hank had called him out on trying to lie. He was quiet, avoiding Hank’s eyes. Hank had a million questions he could ask—Why did Zlatko Andronikov have Connor’s blood? Or was that blood from one of the other Connors that Hank had seen in the tracker app? What did that spider-eyed android mean when he told Connor that ‘he’ had hurt him too? Why had Connor gone to investigate on his own?

He winced internally at that last one. It was a bad question—Hank already knew why Connor had gone without him. He knew why Connor was giving him the silent treatment now. Yesterday, he’d wanted nothing more than to get him to shut up. Now, he’d need to tread carefully if he wanted to get him talking again. Or—well—maybe the opposite of ‘carefully’.

“Did you kill that man?” he asked.

Connor’s gaze shot up to meet his with such a look of outrage that it startled a laugh out of Hank.

“Okay, okay!” He held his hands up placatingly. “I just wanted to check.”

Connor gave Hank a sulky and suspicious look. Well, at least he was looking at him now. Hank took a deep breath. Now or never.

“Listen, about last night…” he started.

“It was a failure,” Connor cut him off testily. “Shooting those deviants lost us valuable information. I shouldn’t have done it.”

“No, that’s not—” Hank wanted to argue the point again. He wasn’t mad about losing information, he was mad about Connor killing without a second thought. But that was an argument for another time. If he wanted Connor calm again, he needed to stop stalling. He finally settled with, “I’m sorry for scaring you."

Connor’s LED rolled yellow for a single turn before fading back to blue.

"I wasn't scared,” he answered, a tad too defensive to sound genuine. Hank tried to look as sincere as he felt. Connor glanced away and back again, then continued, "...machines don't feel fear."

Hank felt a stab of guilt at that. He had called him that last night.

“Alright,” he conceded softly, and Connor seemed surprised by his lack of heat. “But don’t go off on your own again, okay?”

Connor tilted his head contemplatively.

OOO

“I thought he hated androids,” Gavin announced to no one in particular, feeling unsettled.

“So did I,” Captain Fowler agreed.

They stood side-by-side near the break room, watching Hank and the Cyberlife android, who had just returned from a property on the outskirts of town where they had uncovered deviants, illegal trafficking of androids and android parts, and red ice production and distribution—a real whammy of a case.

Now, Hank sat across from the RK800, fussing over it like he was worried. Fowler and Gavin watched the two of them speak to each other quietly, the RK800 appearing to grow less reserved after a few minutes of Hank’s pressing.

“…you think it got to him?” Gavin asked. Fowler pursed his lips together thoughtfully.

“Hank was always the first to make fun of those ‘sad sacks’—his words, not mine—who came in here crying about their damaged or lost androids. He was never big on technology, and he thought it was crazy that people could get so attached to it,” Fowler recalled. Gavin tore his eyes from the bizarre scene to give him his full attention. “He told me you suspected foul play on the part of Cyberlife?”

Gavin mumbled an affirmation.

“And you think it’s—what? Converting Hank to its side?” Fowler asked.

“Look, I don’t know—” Gavin shrugged. “I just—you can’t tell me it’s not weird seeing Anderson all cozy with it like that.” He waved an arm in their direction aggressively. “I mean, hell, his desk is covered in anti-android stickers!”

“You got me there,” Fowler conceded. Then, “I told Hank to keep an eye on it. Maybe he’s just playing nice.” He didn’t sound so sure.

Gavin scoffed—“Since when does he play nice?”—and then started making his way towards them.

“Gavin—” Fowler tried to stop him.

“I’m just gonna ask him something,” he insisted defensively. Fowler gave him an unimpressed look, but then waved him off to head back to his own office.

Gavin sauntered towards Hank’s desk with a cry of, “Hey, Anderson!”

Hank looked up with his familiar grimace back in place.

“The hell do you want, Reed?”

Instead of getting to the point, Gavin decided to be a dick—a choice he often made.

“What, you playing house with the android now?” he sneered. “I haven’t seen anything hold your attention this long unless it was a bottle of booze.”

The android raised its eyebrows as if surprised by this information.

Hank growled, “Piss off, Reed. It’s my android, I can do whatever the fuck I want with it!” Then he winced and threw a quick glance towards it, like he hadn’t actually meant to say that.

Huh.

Welcome to the club, he supposed. Gavin knew all about running his mouth and saying awful crap before he had a chance to think about it. Usually, he rolled with it. He wasn’t sure what to make of the very uncomfortable mood that blanketed both Anderson and his android at the words, though.

Gavin studied the RK800. This one seemed… more complex in its responses, somehow, than any of the other androids Gavin had dealt with in the past.

“Whatever helps you sleep at night,” he tossed back. “But, hey—since you’ve been rounding up all the malfunctioning plastics—you seen any that took out their LEDs?”

The android looked up at that.

“Most of the deviants we have been pursuing had altered their appearance in some way or another. Removal of the LED seems to be becoming more common,” it answered.

Gavin clicked his tongue, thinking this over.

“Why do you ask?” Hank asked.

“There was a robbery last night at the Cyberlife warehouses. Security described the perp to us—didn’t have an LED—but I’m not convinced it was human.”

“You got anything to back up your suspicions, or are you just being a paranoid dick as usual?”

“Listen, with everything that’s going on, forgive me for considering the possibility that more tin-cans are going fucking nuts on us.” He side-eyed the RK800 suspiciously.

Hank gave him an impressive glare.

Gavin sighed testily.

“The security guards said he had mismatched eyes. Any androids like that around?” he offered, not expecting much from them, but they both looked up with recognition.

“Actually, yesterday, Connor—” Hank started gesturing towards the RK800’s face, but stopped short. “Oh, you got it fixed!”

It brought a hand up to run over its left eye.

“Yes. I went to see Dr. Jiang last night,” it said, appearing more relaxed all of a sudden. “She fixed it for me.”

“Jiang—that’s your engineer? You went to see her after midnight?”

“My scanners were non-functional, and she told me to go see her if it was urgent.”

“Dedicated to the job, I guess.”

“Yes, she’s an exceptional engineer.”

Gavin looked back and forth between the two, unsure what to make of the exchange. He heard someone turn up the volume on the TV in the break room. 

Hank laughed. “I can’t believe an android can play favourites.”

“I’m not—”

“What’d I say about lying to me?” Hank sounded teasing, but the android’s mouth snapped shut immediately.

Gavin marvelled, “...well, shit. It actually does listen to you.”

The conversation came to an abrupt halt, like they had just remembered Gavin was there.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Hank asked, all playfulness forgotten as he turned on Gavin.

“It told me yesterday that it only took orders from you,” Gavin answered with a shrug. “Thought it was being cute with me.”

He kicked at the legs of Connor’s chair, trying to get a rise out of it—it was a lot quieter today, and that made Gavin fucking nervous—but its attention wasn’t on either of them anymore. It was focused on one of the television screens in the corner of the precinct broadcasting live news footage. Its face had changed to a much more serious expression.

On screen, the smooth, colourless face of a skinless android smiled. It said, “This message is the hope of a people. You gave us life. And now the time has come for you to give us freedom."