Chapter Text
When he blinked back to awareness, Markus was sitting on his knees at Connor’s bedside, the nurses still holding his thirium pump, his blue blood pooling beneath him on the mattress. The android had ceased his silent scream, and his mouth was closed and face blank once more. His LED continued to cycle through shutdown warnings, the red light bathing Markus in a desperate feeling.
“What did you do?”
Markus turned to find Hank glaring at him, shock and fear warring for space in his eyes.
“I asked him how we could help him,” Markus said simply, breathless. He felt exhausted by the endless power behind Connor’s emotions, even though the android had allowed him only to glimpse the merest flicker of them.
“And?”
“Did you get anything that will help us?” the nurse asked before Markus could answer Hank. He looked up at her hopelessly and shook his head, confusion lacing his words.
“Not anything I could understand. He just showed me a picture before he switched off again. A picture of a coin. A quarter. 1994. I don’t know what it means….”
Behind him, Hank sucked in a breath.
“Did it look like this?”
Markus turned in time to see the lieutenant pull a small coin from his pocket, clutching it once tightly before pressing it into Markus’ palm, 1994 side up.
“Yes! That’s it! What is it?”
Markus’ rising hopes were quickly dashed by Hank’s shrug, the man’s eyes fastened only on the coin resting in the middle of Markus’ hand.
“It’s nothing, just a regular quarter. Connor used to flip it all the time, until I took it from him cause he was annoying me,” the cop said flatly.
Markus brought the coin towards his face to inspect, hoping to find an irregular seam or some sort of defect, anything to tell him what was so important that Connor showed him this image out of the countless ones he could have to save himself. Had he meant to save himself at all? Or did he just want Markus to relay a message? Did he want Hank to have the coin?
No, he had already known the lieutenant did, apparently even trusted him not to have disposed of it. So what did it mean?
“His pump stopped responding! He’s not circulating enough thirium!” The nurse cried behind him, too exhausted to reach out to him in anything but words.
“Connor, fuck, no! C’mon, kid, you gotta fight!”
Hank was on his knees at Connor’s side, gripping his hand by the wrist, fingers pressed to the pulse point as if he was looking for signs of life. Connor’s hand lay palm up on the bed, unmoving, fingers curled gently. Above Hank, his LED faded to an almost imperceptible glow, threatening to blink out with the slightest hesitation on Markus’ part.
Out of options and knowing there was nothing he could do but watch Connor die, Markus laid the coin gently in the android’s hand. Obviously, it had been important to him. He hoped distantly that he would get some comfort from the object, if he could feel it at all. His LED went dark, and the nurses holding his unresponsive heart shared a look of horror with each other.
“No….” Hank breathed, letting Connor’s wrist go in favor of hovering his hands over the the android’s face, as if afraid to touch.
For a moment, nothing happened, nothing except Hank’s labored breathing as he tried not to sob, and the dull thunk as the nurse replaced Connor’s dead thirium pump, her blue hands trembling. Nobody dared to speak.
It was in that silence that they heard it, the small click of something opening, and Markus could only stare as the tips of Connor’s index finger and middle finger fell open on their hinges, exposing a piece of wonderfully familiar machinery.
A charging port.
He was on his feet and running before he could form a full plan of action in his mind, but his feet lead him to his own room, where he kept his old charger that he had stopped needing the last time Kamski upgraded his battery. It was there in case of emergency, because his battery was incompatible with most other charging ports. But Markus was an RK200, an earlier prototype of Connor himself. His plans had laid the foundation for Connor’s build, and CyberLife, prepared for any scenario, had
of course
included the option for direct charging for their most advanced model.
The charger was old, and nearly forty pounds, but it was nothing to Markus. It barely slowed him as he flew back to Connor’s room, mind spinning. It made sense, now, why the model had been reluctant to show him this. To save his own life, or to save Hank from pain, Connor had exposed a vital truth about himself: that he still had some of Markus’ parts.
He landed on his knees beside the bed where Hank was now cradling Connor’s head in his lap, stroking the hair off the android’s face in a paternal display of affection that made Markus ache for Carl. Thoughts swimming, he matched the appropriate cords to Connor’s fingers, and switched on the charging port, holding his breath. Hank watched him blankly, but his eyes slid back to Connor’s LED.
They waited in silence.
It took exactly 43.3 seconds, but finally,
finally
, Connor’s LED blinked back on, the red swirling before settling back into the pattern it had held steady up until today. Hank’s breath came out in a rush, his tears falling onto Connor’s cheeks as he pressed his forehead to Connor’s LED.
“Thank you,” he said, so quietly it sounded more like a sigh.
Markus could only nod, overwhelmed with his own emotions and implications. Connor had given Markus the slightest sliver of trust, because now Markus knew where his defects were. They were in the same places his were, if he could only figure out what parts remained compatible between the two models. But with Connor laying still as death on his bed, covered in drying thirium and his chest cavity still open, he looked less like a threat and more like one of Markus’ own. In time, he hoped he could be.
The nurses hurried out, off to wash their hands, while Markus helped Hank slide another shirt on Connor and pull another blanket from the supply closet. The thirium on his current one would dry and disappear in a few hours, but Markus wasn’t going to argue with Hank right now, not like this. The old man was still crying, and refused to leave Connor’s side for longer than a few seconds, his meal spilled and forgotten under the man’s chair.
When Connor was clothed and covered in a clean shirt and blanket, Markus took his leave, probably sensing Hank’s need to be alone with his son.
He’d realized, without a doubt, that is what Connor was to him. The kid had walked into his life in one of his lowest moments, stirred up all the emotions he thought were long dead, and watching him die had felt no different than it had to watch Cole die.
Hank needed to hold the android in his arms, and feel the faint thrum of his heart as it pumped blood back into his limbs, watching the blue flush touch the hunter’s pale fingers and cheeks. Hank couldn’t help but shudder.
He never wanted to hear that scream again.
He didn’t know how long he sat there, cradling his son’s head in his lap, telling him stories in hopes that he would hear, in hopes that he would see something break the relentless cycle of blinking on his LED. But nothing happened, and Hank felt himself lost in the despair. Connor wasn’t dead, he was here in his arms.
But he wasn’t alive, yet, either.