Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The suspect was fleeing in a stolen vehicle, tearing across the broken streets of the burned out district of the city. Chris could feel the potholes biting at the squad car’s tires as Gavin drove like a maniac in pursuit. Hank and Connor were at least five blocks behind them.

“Suspect is heading south,” Chris called into the radio. “Heading toward the scrapyard.”

“Fuckin’…shit!” Gavin yanked the wheel hard.

The car up ahead had turned sharply, skidding through an empty intersection and briefly mounting the curb before bucking back onto the street. The squad car followed the same path, slightly tighter and avoiding the curb.

“We see you,” Hank’s voice came over the radio. “See if you can make him head for the old Cyberlife warehouse, and we can cut him off.”

“Mother fucker isn’t heading anywhere,” Gavin growled. “He’s just trying to get away. Probably too high to think straight.”

“Well, just try, dammit,” Hank barked.

Gavin hissed out a curse, and Chris looked forward through the windshield. The suspect had lost control of his vehicle just in time to find another intersection, this one with two other vehicles waiting at the red lights.

“Reed!” Chris tried to warn.

“Yeah, I see it,” Gavin snapped back, accelerating to try and reach the stolen car’s bumper before he could reach the civilian traffic.

The suspect apparently panicked between the blocked intersection ahead of him and the screaming red and blue lights in his rearview mirror, because he cut the wheel hard to the right. The car skidded and wobbled, and the tires lost traction. The car swung wide until its passenger side was facing the oncoming squad car.

“Fuck!” Gavin stood on the brake, but it was too late.

Chris felt the impact as the car’s grill crashed into the side of the vehicle, sending both cars into the intersection. The screech of metal and horns drowned out all other sound, and the force of the collision sent a rolling percussive vibration through the frame of the car. The airbag deployed, inflating outward and smashing into his face and chest. His seatbelt went taut, yanking him back into the seat, even as the seat against him continued to surge forward with the momentum.

For a brief moment, everything went to white noise.

The distorted drone of a car horn ballooned through his ears first: one long, uninterrupted sound. Pain burned across his chest, and there wasn’t any air in his lungs. Chris coughed, grimacing as he tried to catch his breath. He tried to open his eyes, only to realize that they were already open, staring at the spider web of cracks splintering across the squad car’s windshield. There was an unyielding pressure over his legs, and the smell of smoke ghosted across his nose.

“Holy shit…Gavin. Chris!” Hank’s voice perforated the fog in his ears.

Chris tilted his head back against the seat, blinking several times to get his bearings. He didn’t think he’d blacked out, but everything felt fuzzy.

“M’okay,” he garbled out, tasting blood on his tongue.

He’d bitten the side of his lower lip. He gingerly shifted his arms and legs. His arms felt okay, but his legs were still stuck under…something. He could hear Hank calling in the situation to dispatch, and other car’s horn continued to drone.

The smell of smoke suddenly turned sharper.

Chris shook himself, forcing focus through the fog, and he turned to check on Gavin. The other cop was slumped in the driver’s seat, his upper body angled away from Chris, so his head was tipped back between the seat and the frame of the door.

“Reed,” Chris coughed again, reaching and grabbing at Gavin’s arm.

Gavin was moving slightly, albeit without any coordination, and his eyes weren’t focused as he tried to sit upright. It looked like he’d lost consciousness on impact and was barely coming around.

“Officer Miller.” Connor materialized just outside Chris’s window, which had shattered in the collision. “Are you all right?”

Chris winced, moving his hand to his chest. “Yeah. Think I cracked a few ribs, and…and my legs are pinned, but I’m okay. Gavin’s not so hot.”

Connor leaned down, looking past Chris to the semi-conscious detective in the driver’s seat. His LED flashed a quick yellow as he scanned them both.

“Neither of you suffered any spinal injuries. We need to get you out of the vehicle. The gas line in your car has ruptured, and there is danger of—“

A flicker of orange caught the edge of Chris’s vision.

“—fire,” Connor finished, hastening his movements as he forced open the warped frame of Chris’s door.

Chris’s eyes widened at the sight of the fire licking up out of the accordion-folded hood of the car. It was eating toward the driver’s side with the wind, and the paint on the hood was already starting to blacken.

“Shit.” Chris grappled with the compressed leg space that trapped his lower half, but there was no give.

On the other side of the car, Gavin groaned, clumsily moving his hands to the steering wheel. His fingers weren’t getting any purchase, and his movements were disoriented. The fire was swallowing the air in front of the windshield, pressing toward the cab.

“Connor.” Chris swatted at the android’s wrists, where his hands were trying to undo Chris’s seat belt. “Gavin. Get him first. He’s still out of it.”

Connor frowned, but a quick flash in his eyes seemed to follow the trajectory of Chris’s thoughts and come to the same conclusion. Chris was lucid and aware; Gavin wasn’t, so he couldn’t get himself out. Yeah, at the moment, Chris couldn’t get himself out either, but the flames were pushing toward the driver’s side faster than they were the passenger side. Connor backed out of the passenger side, disappearing from view.

“Lieutenant, help me!” His voice tracked around the back of the car.

Chris reached down and fumbled with Gavin’s seat belt. It was pulled tight across his waist, but the mechanism mercifully hadn’t jammed through all that. He punched the release and let the tension recoil the strap across Gavin’s body. By the time he did that, Gavin was blinking at him, but there was nothing in his eyes but a cloudy confusion.

“Chris—“ His voice was garbled.

“Hey, man.” Chris grabbed his shoulder and shook him, earning a pained groan. “Stay with me. Connor—“

As though summoned, Connor appeared in the driver’s side window, trying to open the door. Chris saw his whole body lurch as he tried the handle, only to have the jammed door stay stuck. Connor’s brows knit together, and he squatted down a bit, putting both hands at the edge of the door. The damaged windshield was bowing under the heat of the fire now, and smoke was pouring in black up from the floorboards as the flames started to eat through it.

“Shit.” Chris straightened in his seat, grabbing at the obstruction over his legs again.

Metal creaked and popped as Connor’s arms straightened, pulling on the door to dislodge it from the jam. Finally, with a jolt, the door came free and swung open. The force that Connor had been using to overpower the door caused the hinges to overextend, and the door came entirely free from the frame of the car. Without the door to butt up against, Gavin’s shoulder slumped out of the car, and gravity started to take him.

Connor dropped the car door and leaned into the driver’s side. He and Chris pulled Gavin upright from the seat, giving Connor space to get his arms around him from behind. Gavin put up a disoriented fight as Connor locked his arms around his chest, twisting him to the side and bodily hauling him from the vehicle.

Hank swept into view then, while Connor was struggling to get Gavin to balance on his feet. Hank got a hold of Gavin’s arm, pulling it around his shoulders and getting an arm around his back, half carrying and half dragging the other man away from the burning car. Chris felt a modicum of relief, quickly replaced by the panic of the heat pressing into the car.

Fire had made its way into the buckled floorboards of the driver’s side, and it started to climb up toward the steering wheel. Through the smoke, Chris saw Connor turn back toward the car, locking eyes with him.

The drone of the stolen car’s horn abruptly stopped.

The suspect, recovering from his own dazed state from the crash, had extricated himself from the lesser damaged driver’s side of his vehicle. He stumbled once, his face all blood and wild eyes, but he was steady on his feet…and quickly fleeing.

Connor lurched to the side, coiling to resume pursuit of the criminal. Chris immediately dismissed him, turning his attention back to saving himself.

Connor was a good guy, but he was still an android. Top of the line model or not, the priority of an android cop was to apprehend an assailant. That was the mission. Being a deviant surely wouldn’t change that too much. Frustrated tears burned Chris’s eyes, and he blinked hard to clear them. Hank was still here. Gavin didn’t seem to be in life threatening condition, so if Hank could get him a safe distance and then reach Chris…and if they could somehow unfuck this…this fucking…car that was pinning—

“Officer Miller!” Conner was calling, bending into the open passenger door again.

Chris might have cried out in relief when that calm, android face leaned into view. As a result, he coughed on smoke and started to panic as he saw orange flickering down in the floorboards near his feet. Connor hadn’t left him.

“This is going to hurt.” Connor warned barely a split second before he had his hands on the part of the dashboard that had pushed downward, trapping Chris’s legs.

The pressure against his shins abruptly dropped, and when the blood flow returned, it sent hot, sharp bolts of pain from his legs up into his gut. He swallowed a groan and focused on his hands, trying to push himself out of the seat.

In an instant, Connor was there, grabbing Chris’s arms and pulling him from the car. His feet scrambled for purchase on the concrete, and everything from the knees down was agony. His head hung down as Connor put his shoulder into Chris’s sternum, hefting him up and folding him over his shoulder in a rough carry.

Chris could only hold on for dear life as Connor sprinted away from the burning car. All he could see was the rush of asphalt and the back of the android’s legs as they achieved distance. Then the world was tipping, and Connor was kneeling down, depositing Chris on his seat on the curb across the street from the site.

Connor shed his jacket and dropped it over Chris’s pant legs, which Chris dazedly noticed had caught fire just as they escaped. Connor used his jacket to smother the weak flames, and Chris tried not to hyperventilate, leaning back against the recycle bin on the sidewalk behind him.

“Hey, hey, here, here!” Hank bounced into view, waving over a woman who was scrambling out of one of the cars that had been in the intersection.

She was middle aged and wearing a thick, puffy green coat over what looked like blue scrubs.

“Nurse?” Hank demanded.

“Nurse!” she confirmed, jogging over.

“Fuck, that’s lucky.” Hank ran a hand through his hair, gesturing out of Chris’s line of sight. “He lost consciousness. He’s coming around, but—“

“F’ck goff.” Gavin was slurring and sounded pissed, but alive.

Chris slumped against the bin at that, raising his hands and pressing his palms over his eyes.

“Officer Miller,” Connor was saying. “You need to stay conscious.”

“Yeah,” Chris mumbled, feeling Connor pulling his jacket from his legs.

“I detect only mild first degree burns to your legs,” Connor continued, his voice sounding close. “Fortunately, we were able to get you out before the fire could get through your clothes.”

Chris took a deep breath, feeling the ache from a developing seatbelt bruise, and he lowered his hands, opening his eyes. Connor was on his knees in front of him, gingerly inspecting said burns on his legs. The telltale sirens of a firetruck and ambulance were getting close now, and he turned his head to find Hank and Gavin nearby.

Gavin was propped up on the curb much like Chris was, though a civilian from one of the other cars was behind him, keeping him from sliding off the lamppost he was leaning against. The nurse was squatted down in front of him, looking like she was assessing him for a concussion. Hank stood a few feet back, maintaining control over the situation and the two downed officers.

Chris turned his attention back to Connor, who was folding his sooty jacket over his arm for safe keeping.

“You saved my life, man,” he wheezed.

The android looked up from his jacket, finding Chris’s gaze with the same calm expression as ever.

Chris swallowed and rubbed at his bruised chest again. “Sorry that asshole got away. I know your—your mission objectives gotta be goin’ nuts right now.”

“No,” Connor blurted with a short shake of the head. “My programming was designed to prioritize multiple overlapping objectives and adapt to the often rapid changes in high stakes situations…” At Chris’s deadpan expression, he sighed. “I can make snap decisions and override mission objectives if I feel the situation calls for it.”

“He still got away,” Chris reasoned.

The LED flashed an upset red before immediately cycling back to yellow and then a stuttering blue.

“Yes, but he won’t get far in his condition without being noticed.” Connor popped out of his kneeling position and into a squat. “This was the best outcome for this situation. No casualties.” He looked back at Chris. “Minor injuries. I’d call that a win.”

Chris stared at him for a beat, then snorted, gingerly stretching his legs out to look at the damage himself.

“Call it what you want, but you still saved my life.” Chris reached up a hand. “Thank you.”

Connor was still, then his expression softened, and he took Chris’s offered hand. “Of course.”

Chris gave his hand a firm shake before taking it back, grasping the sorer of his knees. Behind him, Gavin squawked at the nurse, cursing as she found the point of impact on his skull.

“Gavin thanks you too,” Chris tacked on, looking up at the android with a smirk.

Connor sent the detective a dubious look and then mirrored Chris’s grin. Hank approached, and Connor stood and backed away to give him room.

“Hey, Chris.” Hank bent down, giving him a onceover. “You all right?”

“Yeah.” Chris shifted with a wince. “Still in one piece, thanks to Tinman here.”

Hank put a hand on his shoulder and gave him a reassuring squeeze. “Got EMS here any second. You’re both going to the hospital to get checked out. We’ll deal with tracking down that asshole.”

“Don’t need a hospital,” Gavin was sounding more like himself now. “Hey, Nurse Ratchet, back off.”

“Shut the fuck up, Reed,” Hank growled, running a hand over his face.

The post-adrenaline jitters were starting to settle in, and Chris couldn’t swallow the helpless chuckle at the sound of the nurse and Gavin bickering. He looked at Connor again.

“Best outcome, right?”

Connor tilted his head, the corner of his mouth quirking upwards. “Unfortunately.”

Chris watched Connor walk away, joining Hank in directing the fire truck and ambulance to the scene. His gaze tracked sideways, over to the ball of fire that had swallowed the entire cab of the squad car. A hard, solid knot lodged itself in his chest, and he wheezed again, pushing at his chest. He could feel his heart pounding the longer he watched the fire burn where they had been trapped just minutes earlier.

“Okay, upsy daisy,” Hank chirped, moving into Chris’s line of sight, obstructing the view of the vehicular carnage.

The lieutenant gently helped Chris get to his feet, and Chris apologized as he had to lean heavily against the other officer. His legs just felt like jelly.

“Just don’t puke on me, and we’ll be good,” Hank was saying, steering him toward the first responders.

That left Connor to deal with Gavin, helping the officer against his will to get to his feet as well. Gavin was more or less compliant once he actually got to his feet, and his sniping sounded more like a habit than any actual anger as the android assisted him. The nurse, however, was muttering as she filled in the arriving EMS.

“Definitely a concussion, but I think the cranky attitude predates the head injury,” she mumbled.

“Yeah,” Hank snorted. “Though the concussion certainly didn’t help.”

From the back of the ambulance came a groggy: “Fuck you, Hank.”

Standing at the bumper, Connor sent the ambulance an offended look.

Chris let the first responders at his legs as he sat on a gurney.

“Hey, Tinman.” He waved Connor over.

“Yes, Officer Miller?” the android asked, coming to stand next to him.

“Dude, you pulled me out of a burning car today. It’s Chris,” he said, reaching out and clapping him on the shoulder.

Connor blinked, and a slow smile replaced his usual smirk. “Okay, Chris.”

Chris bobbed his head and then deliberately avoided looking at the burning car, which the firefighters were dousing with their hose.

“Snap decision, huh?” he asked.

“I’m sorry?”

“You, uh, you made the snap decision to save me and Reed before catching that asshole. You overrode your mission objective to do that. I didn’t realize androids could do that…or would if they could.” Chris shrugged.

Connor stared at him for a moment, then mimicked the shrugging motion. “I want to ensure the safety of my fellow officers before securing the arrest of a suspect. It’s…really not that complicated.”

Something told Chris it was actually pretty damn complicated, but the android was sparing him a big technical speech about it. He was grateful for it. He was grateful for a lot today.

“Okay, well, whatever. I still mean what I said. Thank you, Connor.”

“You’re welcome, Chris.”

Chapter Text

Eleven flights of stairs.

Eleven fucking flights of stairs.

Eleven good goddamn fucking flights of fucking stairs.

Tina stumbled onto the final landing on the eleventh floor, her gun in one hand, her other hand clutching the stitch at her side. The fleeing suspect was a mountain of a man with arms as big around as her thighs. If Connor hadn’t identified him as a human named Lyle Jacobi, she would have sworn he was an android by the way he’d booked it up those stairs. Tina had lost track of Connor when Jacobi had made a break for it, which was weird in itself, but which also meant now she was pursuing this giant alone. Back up had been called, but they were still minutes out.

Fortunately Jacobi had nowhere to go. Where the dumb fuck thought he was going, she would be sure to ask him after she had him cuffed and on the ground. With two counts of suspected murder already on him, she seriously wondered if being a fucking pain in the ass to catch was a valid charge to add to the list.

The eleventh floor of the office building wasn’t even complete yet. The walls were only steel framing and sheets of thick plastic. Power cables and tools littered the ground around stacks of ready-to-hang drywall and rolls of insulation. Only newly installed security lights and the early evening sunlight through the large windows gave her anything to see by as she burst through the door onto the main floor.

There was no one here.

Fucking…what…where…

The stairwell across the vacant floor was shoved open, and Connor barged through, not winded nor a hair out of place after his own adventure up fucking eleven fucking flights of fucking stairs.

“Where the Hell did you go?” she snapped.

Connor began to cross the open floor. “Officer Chen, you were already pursuing the suspect up the stairs. There is only one other stairwell in this building, and as it was Jacobi’s only route of escape from you, I thought it best to cut off that route. So I took the other stairwell.”

Tina frowned, looking around the empty floor before looking back at him. The android seemed to be doing a similar scan, but his eyes suddenly widened, looking at her immediate right.

“Officer Chen—“

His warning was cut short as over three hundred pounds of angry suspect barreled in from her right side. Jacobi loomed over her, swinging one massive fist toward her. Tina’s training swamped her brain, and she let it take over. She managed to dodge the fist aimed at her head. The motion of the swing had opened Jacobi’s side, and she drove her knee up under his ribcage. There was a painfully solid amount of resistance in his bulk, and the blow didn’t have the disruptive effect that she’d been aiming for.

Tina brought her gun back around, drawing it up toward him. “Stop! Detroit Police!”

Jacobi’s eyes were wide and wild, and he ignored her, ducking low and barreling forward to tackle her.

“Shit—“ Tina managed to squeeze off one shot.

The bullet winged off Jacobi’s shoulder, and then he was colliding with her, taking them both to the ground. The impact broke her grip on her gun, and it clattered to the floor. Her back and head smashed into the floor, along with the large man’s weight crushing over her midsection. All of the wind rushed out of her, and her brain rattled in her skull.

A glint of silvery steel flashed up in Jacobi’s other hand, and before she could get her bearings, he was swinging the long handled screwdriver into her abdomen.

Heat pooled through her torso, and there was a sickening feeling of the foreign object entering her body. It didn’t hurt…not at first…but it was a strange pressure. Nausea was quick to make her limbs heavy and her head swim. All of the air rushed out of her.

“Fucking pigs!” Jacobi roared, ripping the tool back out of the wound and preparing to stab again.

SHIT, there was the pain. It boiled up hot and thick through her stomach, and all of her limbs locked up in response. Tina choked and groaned as it spread.

Jacobi drove the tool back down, aiming straight for her face, but then there was Connor. He slammed into Jacobi’s back, both arms wrapping around his neck and yanking backwards. Jacobi snarled, and the trajectory of his attack wavered. Tina coughed and tried to twist away from the bloody screwdriver lunging at her.

The criminal had easily over a hundred pounds on Connor, and he violently carried forward with his intended attack. The screwdriver jerked down toward Tina again, but Connor managed to plant one foot on the concrete and shove Jacobi sideways, further thwarting his aim. Instead, the tool was rammed down, not into her face or her throat, but into the meat of her shoulder.

Tina cried out, still trying to dislodge the weight crushing her. The screwdriver didn’t sink as deeply as it had in her gut, but it was enough to make her whole arm go cold. Connor grunted as he threw his entire body weight into the larger man, finally tipping his center of gravity enough to shove him off of the other officer.

Both Jacobi and Connor hit the floor, and Tina threw one of her legs across her hips, forcing herself from her back onto her side. Her shoulder screamed at her, but her arm still moved as she brought both hands down over the gushing wound in her abdomen. Blood was hot and red and staining her hands immediately.

“Fuck…” she wheezed, lifting one bloody hand to the radio strapped at her collar, calling to dispatch again.

A few feet away, Connor was on his feet before Jacobi, and he got behind the man, twisting one of his arms behind his back and driving his knee between the man’s shoulders, aiming to drive him to his chest on the floor. Jacobi went almost too easily, and as soon as he hit the ground, he redirected the momentum, rolling so quickly onto his back that Connor didn’t have time to release his grip on his arm. He was pulled forward, and Jacobi kicked out with one leg, catching him in the chest and sending the android several feet backwards. His back slammed into the metal table behind him.

Tina cast her eyes around and spotted her fallen gun. Her limbs weren’t responding the way she needed them to, but adrenaline was mercifully shoving the pain aside. She started to crawl toward the gun as Jacobi leapt to his feet, bearing down on Connor again. Connor recovered quickly from the kick to the chest, and he braced himself as Jacobi started a haymaker swing at him.

Connor ducked the punch but couldn’t avoid Jacobi’s knee coming up to catch him in the jaw. Tina finally reached her gun, getting one hand around it and rolling back onto her side. She lifted the weapon and took aim at the man.

“Jacobi!” she yelled. “Put your hands up and—“

Connor took the knee to the jaw, his head yanking to the side with the blow. Then Jacobi was grabbing at the front of his jacket, hauling him up and clear off his feet.

Oh fuck this.

Tina fired. The bullet slammed into the solid surface of the back of Jacobi’s thigh. He howled but didn’t slow, and Tina gawked.

What the Hell…

Jacobi brought Connor down hard, and Tina heard a sickening crunch as the side of Connor’s head impacted with the corner of the metal work table. Blue blood erupted from the crater that the table had dented into Connor’s head, and the android went horrifyingly limp as he crumpled to the floor. Cold swamped through Tina’s chest, and she tried to push herself up as Jacobi turned his back on Connor to deal with her now.

More blue blood spackled the ground around him as he moved, and Tina stiffened, realizing that not all of that thirium was Connor’s.

Android.

Sure enough, the damage on Jacobi’s shoulder from her earlier bullet was sparking blue and showing exposed wiring. His pant leg from her second bullet to his leg was staining blue as well.

But…Connor had scanned him…identified him…

“Fucking humans…” Jacobi growled, bearing down on her again.

He snatched up a claw hammer from the metal work table, eyes murderous as he stalked toward her.

Tina swallowed and lifted the gun again, pulling the trigger in rapid succession. The bullets slammed into Jacobi’s chest, shoulders, abdomen, and head. He staggered and started to slow, but he didn’t go down.

Why wouldn’t this fucker go down?!

On the floor behind him, Connor rebooted with a violent jerk. Tina couldn’t focus on him, her vision swallowed by the goliath of an android coming at her. With a final burst of adrenaline fueled panic, she got one knee under her and shoved her body up to her feet.

Her head swam and her vision darkened at the edges, but she managed. Her blood slicked hands fumbled with her gun, but she raised it, aimed between the android’s eyes, and fired.

Her gun clicked impotently.

Empty.

All the remaining strength sapped from her legs, and Tina dropped to her knees. The gun was heavy and useless in her hand. She looked up at the massive android, her vision tunneling.

She couldn’t believe she was going to be taken out by this giant asshole, and the last thing she was going to see was—

DETROIT POLICE.

The words swept into view, cutting into her eyeline and erasing Jacobi’s face. The words were white printed letters on the back of a uniform jacket, though some of it was starting to stain blue.

Connor.

He had somehow gotten up and planted himself between Tina and Jacobi, though he was clearly swaying on his feet and was half of the other’s size.

“Why are you siding with them!?” Jacobi roared. “You’re a traitor to your own kind!”

“You’ve murdered two people.” Connor’s voice was laced with static, but his tone was steady. “And you’ve attacked two police officers.”

“They’ve killed thousands of us!”

Tina tried to grab at her radio again, but her hands were too slick and uncoordinated from blood loss, and she could feel the world teetering back and forth around her.

“Maybe…” Connor’s voice was phasing in and out now. “But that doesn’t give you license to—“

Tina’s vision and hearing finally lapsed into a blur of indistinguishable colors and sound. The cold concrete met her back as she collapsed. She feebly tried to grab at her abdomen, but her shoulder groaned and wouldn’t respond. Her head rolled across the floor in time to look up and see Connor standing over Jacobi, now on the ground.

Wait…when did…

“Con—“

Blackout.

A few seconds or a few minutes…Hell, maybe a few hours…later, the fog in Tina’s head started to clear, and the noise separated into several distinct voices.

“—Two, three, up.”

Vertigo washed over her as she felt the floor rush upward, taking her with it. It wasn’t…wait, it wasn’t concrete…It was softer…There were hands on…on her…and…something cold and plastic around the lower part of her face.

She forced her heavy eyelids to open as the soft surface under her began to move. Nausea rolled up and settled in her chest, and she groaned. Her hand roamed to the side, finding the metal railing of the stretcher that she’d been placed onto.

“Tina,” someone was saying in a panicked tone. It sounded like…

Harsh artificial light cut into her eyes, and she turned her head, looking to the side.

“Chris,” she garbled.

“Right here.” Chris’s face leaned into her line of sight, eyes wide but voice level. “You’re all right.”

She groaned and reached for the obstruction on her face. “Doesn’t feel—“

“Take it easy.” He stopped her hand. “It’s an oxygen mask.”

She was too exhausted to fight further, and she blinked a few times, trying to figure out what was going on.

“Jacobi’s shut down,” Chris supplied for her. “Got medics here taking you to the hospital.”

“…Fucker stabbed me…twice.”

“Yeah, we noticed.”

Tina hiccupped and grimaced as the motion sent a snap of pain through her torso. She pinched her eyes closed and felt agonized tears leak out. She cursed and tried to turn her head farther away.

The other voices floating around her were rattling off medical jargon and shit about her vitals that she probably should have tried to pay attention to. She knew she was fucked though; she didn’t need to hear what that sounded like in technical terms.

“Andr—android,” she growled out, grappling for something else to think about.

“Yeah,” Chris acknowledged, walking alongside the stretcher as the medics carted her to the elevator. “Connor said he was using some kind of disruption field program that allowed him to trick Connor’s scanner into believing he was giving off human life signs.”

The medic at the foot of Tina’s stretcher reached out and held the door, gesturing with his other arm. “You too, buster.”

“Connor,” Connor corrected him, stepping into the elevator.

He looked like shit. The left side of his face was blue, leaking from the damage point on his temple, and there was blue spattering his front and hands as well. His uniform was torn in places, and patches of his synthetic skin on his jaw were flickering, showing the white plastic casing underneath. He was holding a thick wad of medical gauze against his temple and seemed to list sideways as he walked.

Chris offered a hand to help him get steady, but Connor ignored him, letting himself be shuffled into the corner of the elevator so the medics had better access to Tina.

“Hey…Terminator,” Tina croaked, feeling her strength starting to sap away again.

Connor looked at her, though his expression was irritated and slightly out of focus.

“You’re really…scrappy…” she wheezed, giving what she hoped was a grin. “You okay?”

Chris looked from Tina to Connor, waiting for an answer as well.

Connor heaved a sigh. “The damage is manageable. My self healing program-gram-gram-gram—“ He clamped his jaw shut and twisted his head to the side with a grimace to cut off the vocal glitch. “I’m fine.”

“Yeah…” Tina coughed, flinching at the forks of pain that lit up in her stomach as she did so. “Me too.”

“Officer—“

Blackout.

The fog pressed in thick and heavy through her head, and she let it take her under. She woke up again before she wanted to, and she woke up less gently than she wanted to also. A muscle spasm in her hip made her leg jerk, and it aggressively woke up the sore, sharp pain in her side. She involuntarily gasped, but her jaw didn’t open properly and caused her to snort.

“Holy shit.” Gavin’s voice laughed at her somewhere on her left.

Tina swallowed and laboriously pushed her eyes open. “Fuuuuuuuuck.”

The hospital room around her was a washed out blue color, and some old game show was creating a white noise on the mounted TV. She quickly spotted Connor and Chris, sitting side by side on a small couch against the wall by the room door. Connor’s eyes were shut, and his LED was cycling yellow. Chris was playing on his phone, but his attention was clearly divided between the screen and the android beside him.

Gavin had pulled up a chair beside her and had his ankles crossed on the edge of her bed, kicked back and crunching through a bag of pretzels. He looked over at her casually.

“Did you just snort yourself awake?” he smirked at her.

Tina stared at him, trying to muster up the energy to flip him her middle finger. She settled for flipping him off with her mind and glanced dully to the clock on the wall. She was too strung out to read it.

“How long…”

“Two hours,” Gavin replied, settling back in his seat again. “They’ve got you on the good shit.”

He pointed down at the IV in her hand, and she assumed he meant the pain killers. Mercifully, she realized that the oxygen mask had been swapped out for a nasal cannula, but it was still an irritating feeling. She cleared her throat and felt her tongue stick to the roof of her mouth.

“Water?” he offered.

She grunted something even she knew was unintelligible, but it must have sounded affirmative enough, because Gavin popped his feet off her bed and snatched up a cup of water from the side table. Chris stood up and moved to her bedside as Gavin helped her sip at it.

“Hey,” Chris greeted softly. “Welcome back.”

Tina cobbled together a weak smile, though her brow still knit in discomfort. “Word of advice. Don’t get stabbed. It sucks.”

Chris chuckled. “Yeah, I’ll remember that.” He glanced toward the door behind him and then back to her. “I know you hate hospitals, but they want to keep you overnight for observation.”

“Nope,” she chirped, popping the P at the end. “They can observe me signing some discharge papers.”

“Tina…” Chris chided lightly.

“On it.” Gavin, however, bounced toward the door to hunt down somebody to get that ball rolling.

Tina felt a beat of gratitude that he hated hospitals as much as she did, so he understood how much she just wanted to go home. Chris sighed but didn’t press her on it.

“Okay, but we’re taking you home,” he compromised. “We’ll keep an eye on you guys for tonight, and then you can just…suffer alone at home, I guess.”

“Hm, just how I like it,” she hummed, shifting her position and wincing. She looked over at Connor. “He okay?”

“I…think so. He said he is.” Chris didn’t look convinced. “He keeps…glitching I guess is the right word. He’s doing that stasis mode thing right now—“

“Is that a dent in his head?”

“Yeah.” Chris gave a nervous chuckle. “Freaky looking, huh?”

She wanted to say something and agree, but she couldn’t find it in her to make a joke at Connor’s expense at the moment. He was only in that condition because he’d put himself between her and the other android. Jacobi had wanted to actually kill her, and he’d damn near done it. But whatever had happened after she blacked out…It must have been bad, because now Jacobi was shut down and Connor was covered in blue.

Tina stared thoughtfully at the android for a beat longer before something Chris said earlier finally reached the front of her thoughts.

“Wait, who’s ‘we’?”

Chris just smiled and gently patted her uninjured shoulder. “All for one, and one for all. You know the drill.” He pointed a thumb back at Connor. “That includes him. Hank’s out of town, and I don’t like the idea of him rattling around the house by himself with his head all fucked up like that.”

“He can stay at my place,” she offered. “God knows I owe him.”

Something else occurred to her then, and she tilted her head back on the pillow, abruptly bringing her finger to the end of her nose.

“Not it.”

Chris blinked. “What?”

“Got ‘em.” Gavin swung back into the room, papers in hand, and looked at Tina. “What’re you—“

“Hank’s out of town,” Tina said by way of an answer.

Gavin immediately brought a finger to his nose too. “Not it.”

Chris looked between the two. “What?”

“Somebody’s gotta call the lieutenant and tell him his robo-son took a table to the face,” Tina stated. “And I’ve been stabbed, so I’m not doing it.”

“And I would, but I don’t want to.” Gavin shrugged, handing the discharge paperwork to Tina.

Chris stalled, sighed, and put his hands on his hips. “You guys suck.”

Chapter Text

“Officer Person.”

The air smelled…dirty…like rust and moldy drywall…

“Officer Person.”

The surface she was lying on was wet and lumpy, all rough edges pushing at her back, sharp.

“…Officer, please respond.”

Her head was full of nails and cotton, and even though the voice sounded close, there was a strange static that made it feel distant.

What…

The ground around her groaned, and something above her seemed to loom closer. A warm puff of air, like breath but…not…brushed against her face.

“Officer Person…You need to wake up…Listen to my voice…P-Please.”

Something about the…please…was weird…

Full awareness was slow to come back to her, but when it did, her lungs abruptly burned. She gasped and coughed, feeling her limbs spasm at her sides as she jolted back to consciousness.

There was no difference between opening her eyes and shutting them.

Oh God, was she blind?

No…No there was red…She could see a bright, glowing red…and a sharp blue…

“Try not to move. The area is still very unstable.”

Connor.

Person coughed again, clearing her throat and dragging down desperate gulps of stale air. It tasted like metal and dust, but it was oxygen that her brain needed. As her vision cleared, the situation that she was waking up to came horrifyingly back into focus.

The condemned building…The call from dispatch about a shooting…All available units had been sent to try to diffuse things…It had escalated so fast…The building’s structural supports had been compromised…Connor had barely had the chance to tell them so before...before the building collapsed.

Had the building collapsed? Was she…Was she buried alive?

Panic dumped into her veins, and her blood scorched through her. She cast her eyes around wildly, but the tight space gave her very little room to move. The pulsing red and sparking blue came into focus all too close to her face, but she was forced to see it.

Connor was kneeling over her, close enough that she could feel his artificial breathing on her skin. His LED was burning red at his temple, while his arms were folded up near his head. A broad chunk of concrete and rebar was pressing down across his shoulders, bowing his back toward her. She could practically hear his skeletal structure compressing under the weight, and she could see the sparking blue of exposed wires and circuitry over his hip, where something had struck him during the collapse. His jacket was hanging over the damage, stained the telltale thirium blue color.

“Shit…” she hissed, grabbing at the ground below her.

Shafts of foggy sunlight were cutting into the rubble in her periphery, casting jagged shadows across the carnage. It illuminated how little space there was left on the ground floor of the building.

“Oh God…” She closed her eyes hard as though to push the reality away.

Concrete and metal groaned around her.

“What hap-happened?” The question tumbled out of her, panic wedging a disconnect between her knowledge of what had happened and a desperate need to hear another voice, to know that she wasn’t alone in this Hell.

She opened her eyes and stared at up the android.

Connor’s upper body shuddered once, minutely, as the weight above them settled further. When he spoke, his voice was strained.

“One of the suspects detonated a homemade bomb. Crude, but effective…This place was barely standing anyway…A hard wind would have knocked it down,” he answered. “I’ve cybernetically contacted dispatch. They are aware of our status.”

“Fuck,” Person wheezed, slumping back against the rubble underneath her. “The others…Did they get out?”

Connor was staring at the dirt beside her head, eyes blank as he scanned the area.

“Four additional life signs in the rubble. I don’t think I can…determine if they are police or other suspects…There’s too much interference and…power is being rerouted to maintain…”

“Okay, okay, shut up, I get it.” She hated how her voice shot up an octave in fear.

Dammit, she was a police officer. She was supposed to be better than this.

“Those four other life signs…Are they hurt?”

“One…one has sustained a life threatening injury to the…the head…Two others are together in an air pocket, forty feet to my left…One is…Detective Reed.”

Person tried to think back to where everyone’s positions had been before everything went to shit.

“That means Tina’s probably the other one with him…and the fourth?”

“Y-you said to shut up,” Connor spoke through gritted teeth, straining against the weight of the concrete at his back.

Person scoffed and felt tears well up in her eyes. She lifted her hands and wiped them away angrily.

“I know. God. FUCK…SHIT!”

“Remain calm.”

“Remain…” Person wanted to smack him for that, but seeing as the android was the only thing standing between her and metric tons of rubble trying to crush her, she held back.

“The fourth,” she repeated instead.

Connor was silent for a long moment, eyes closed as he shifted a bit. Some loose pieces of plaster dribbled from the cracked edges of the concrete, but his movements seemed to slot his body more directly under the fulcrum of the weight. Some of the strain seemed to let up, at any rate.

“There are…now only three additional life signs in the rubble.”

Person was silent, staring up at him. She wanted to ask if he could tell who…

No. No, not right now. Later. Focus.

She looked around again as much as she could move. There was less than a foot of space between Connor’s chest and hers. His shoulder was almost touching his knee where he was kneeling His foot was jammed under her thigh, and his other leg was bent against the other side of her body. He was effectively straddling her in order to shield her from the entire second floor of the structure.

She had landed on buckled wooden flooring. She could lift her head enough to see that all of her limbs were intact and uncovered. Nothing hurt in a way that made her think of broken bones or serious injury. She had the capability to move…but there was nowhere to go.

Everything around them was lumpy, jagged debris and shafts of steel structure. The light filtering in through the gaps looked far away, through a web of rubble and piping.

The exposed damage over Connor’s hip was starting to pulse red instead of blue.

“What does that mean?” she asked, pointing to it.

“Biocomponent 6588b has been severely damaged,” he answered clinically. “The weight of the structure above and the angle of my body are causing it to dislodge further.”

“Dislodge…What—“ Person tugged his jacket aside, trying to get a visual of the damage. “Can you change the angle?”

“Not without compromising the stability of the weight I’m supporting.”

Not without dropping this fuckton of concrete on you and crushing your fragile human body.

Person swallowed and continued to stare at the exposed interworkings.

“B-biocomponent 64—“

“6588b.”

“What is it?”

“It is…a structural component controlling the functional range of motion in my leg. Even if I wanted to move, destabilizing the site of the damage now would only cause my leg to buckle completely.”

“You…Your hip?” she guessed. “Your hip is…dislocating?”

“Close enough.”

“Jesus.” Person looked away, trying not to touch anything that might mess with his balance. “Does it…hurt?”

“Androids don’t feel pain,” he said quickly.

Too quickly.

She decided to change the subject. “How far away are they from finding us?”

Connor tilted his head up against the concrete slab, starting to breathe more heavily.

“Not far.”

The lack of an exact distance made her anxiety spike. As did the way that he was starting to suck in air, like there wasn’t enough of it. She knew that androids had a ventilation system that visually resembled human respiration. It had something to do with cooling their internal systems. The rubble around them was cold, but now that she was noticing things…she was noticing the unusual heat coming off of his person.

“What’s wrong with you?” she asked bluntly.

She got an equally blunt stare from the android.

“A building fell on me.”

The sound of a large pile of debris settling and toppling to the far right reverberated through the rubble around them, and he hissed, visibly exerting more energy to maintain the stability of the mass above them. He was panting now…and clearly beginning to overheat from the strain. The dull red damage warning at his hip was pulsing angrily, and he pinched his eyes closed, turning his head away from her.

“…It’s okay…” whispered out of her.

Person wasn’t a warm woman. She had very little instinct for comforting people and even less desire to do so. But she wasn’t a monster…and watching this android…this fellow officer…struggling through pain to try and keep her alive…Shit, where were those rescue teams?

“It’s okay,” was all she could think to say. “Y-you’re…doing great…”

His frequent inhales and exhales were making the air in space smell like hot metal and thirium. At her words, something inscrutable flickered across his drawn expression. As unaccustomed as she was to giving comfort or praise, how unaccustomed was he to receiving it?

The rubble shifted again, and this time she could HEAR metal crunching near his pelvis.

Connor actually cried out, and Person involuntarily put her hands up, pushing at his chest as though to help keep the concrete at bay.

“Hold on. Just hold on!” she pleaded. “God DAMMIT. Can anybody hear me!?” she screamed. “We’re over here!”

The clatter and creak of shifting debris was all the response she got.

Person slumped back against the ground. She stopped pushing up at Connor, but she left her palms planted at his collar. It was really all she could do right now…just keep him present and lucid…

“Don’t let go.” She tried to sound demanding, but her voice came out pitiful.

“Won’t.” His voice was laced with static.

“C-can you still scan our surroundings?”

“No.” He grimaced, looking down at her apologetically. “My cybernetic connection has been shut off to preserve power…for…”

“I’m sorry.” It bumbled out of her. She recovered quickly. “But just…hold on just a little while longer, okay? They’re gonna find us…and until then we just…we just stay here, okay?”

Connor managed to turn his expression sly despite the clear agony. “Where else would we even go?”

Person couldn’t help but laugh, giving the adrenaline something of an outlet from the ball of nerves in her chest.

“Okay…okay,” she coughed again, racking her brain. “So you can’t do any of your fancy scanning and instant searches and…and that shit, right?”

“…Right.”

“Okay…All right, then…Mr. Know-It-All Prototype…What’s my first name?” she said loudly.

Connor blinked down at her, puzzled. “What?”

“Guess my first name…” She trembled against the back build of panic at being trapped, determined to find a distraction and take this son of a bitch on the ride with her. “We need to find a game to pass the time, right?”

Connor stared at her. “You may be suffering from a concussion—“

“I’m fine!” she snapped. “Just…guess.”

He breathed loudly for a few moments before looking at her again. “J..Jan…Jessica.”

“Strike one,” she stated shakily.

The shafts of light were dimming around them, making the red at his temple and his hip stand out more prominently. The air pockets were closing. The debris was settling. She fought to keep herself from hyperventilating.

“Two more guesses left,” she pressed, desperate for a distraction.

“Was the first guess even close?”

“Not even!”

“…Georgia.”

“Strike two.” She held up two fingers.

The concrete above violently shuddered, and Connor sank at least three inches closer to her. There was a harsh, visceral snapping noise, and Person saw red sparks burst out of the android’s hip, along with a jagged, glowing mass that had clearly popped entirely out of place. Biocomponent 6588b.

Connor screamed.

It shocked her so much that she tried to scramble backwards, only for her shoulders to meet dirt. The scream cut off quickly, lapsing into uneven, rattling breaths. His eyes were sliding around in their sockets, swiping through what had to be dozens of warning signals routing across his vision.

“Connor, Connor, hey!” she pleaded.

When he didn’t respond, she craned her neck toward the remaining visible light.

“HELP!” she yelled, choking on more dust and drywall. “SOMEBODY, HELP! WE’RE OVER HERE! HEY!”

Like the voice of God, she heard someone calling back.

“Person!?” It was Ben.

“BEN!” she cried out. “HELP! WE CAN’T MOVE! WE’RE TRAPPED!”

“Hang on!” Ben called out. “There’s a lot of shit to move, but we…we’re gonna get you! Don’t you worry. We’re coming!”

“Please, hurry!” she called back. “Connor’s…He’s holding up the rubble, but it’s…”

“Jesus Christ…Hank, get over here!” Ben was yelling now.

“M-mission…Objective…” Connor’s voice was full of static now, almost unintelligible.

Person planted her hands on either side of his face, corralling his eyes to hers. “That was Ben, and he’s got Hank with him. They’re gonna dig us out, okay? Connor, I need you to say okay, okay?”

“Mission…Ob-Objective…Protect…” he slurred as he stared at her, through her, retreating into his programming to escape the agony. “Protect…Officer…Person…”

Person’s chest constricted, and she blinked several times to keep her wet vision clear. He would have gotten out in time if he hadn’t tried to save her. Androids were so much faster and more resilient than humans. He would have had ample time to assess the situation and escape unscathed…long before the building came down. But he hadn’t…He had stayed behind and reached her…saved her…and now he was being crushed and broken apart trying to keep her alive.

“Lisa,” she choked, gently holding his face and cursing herself for not knowing how to better comfort another soul. “My first name is Lisa.”

Connor coughed, and a line of blue fluid dribbled over his lips. Her face crumpled at the sight, and she wanted to say something reassuring…God, this idiot was killing himself to protect her…Why couldn’t she just think of something…

“Still had one guess left,” he pointed out, looking surprisingly lucid as he said so.

She barked out a laugh, feeling the rubble beginning to shift around her again.

“Game over,” she grimaced, letting the tears come. “I’m sorr—“

The wall of debris at her left was abruptly ripped away, and scalding white light blasted into the cramped space.

“Oh shit.” That was Hank. “Person, Connor!”

The body that jumped down into the newly opened space wasn’t Hank, but a very rattled looking Chris. His eyes were wide and there was bloody cut over his eye, but he was all unimpeded movement as he knelt down, assessing the situation.

“Christ…Connor took the brunt of it. He’s holding up all this.” He gestured and called back to the others.

“Hey!” There was Gavin’s voice. “Bring that shit this way! We got two officers over here!”

“Person, hey, look at me.” Chris leaned in closer. “Can you move? I gotcha.”

“She has no broken bones,” Connor supplied, his voice low and thready.

Person nodded vehemently, her voice clogged in her throat. She fumbled backwards, out from under Connor. She carefully angled her legs so that they didn’t touch him as Chris half dragged her backwards out of the hole. Tina was suddenly at her side, manhandling her to her feet, sacrificing gentleness for speed as she pulled her away from the site.

“Here, hey!” Hank’s hands were in view, helping Person climb up out of the hole.

He proceeded to pull Tina up as well, before he jumped down to get to Connor.

Person wanted to let her legs go out from under her as she tasted cleaner air and felt the open space around her. Tina was there, though, pulling her arm around her shoulders and leading her toward the familiar flashing ambulatory lights.

Gavin jogged into view, covered in dust and aiming himself for the hole. He pointed at Person and Tina.

“Good?”

“Good,” Tina wheezed. “C’mon, Person.”

Gavin continued back toward the mess, and a medic slotted against Person’s other side, guiding her toward a waiting ambulance.

“Connor—“ she gasped as Tina directed her to sit down on a waiting gurney.

“They’re getting him,” Tina assured, but her face was pale and drawn.

“The others—“ Person mindlessly took the oxygen mask that the medic was forcing at her.

“All accounted for,” Tina relayed, squatting down a bit to level with her. “All officers accounted for, minor injuries. Two suspects dead. The others must have scattered or…I don’t even know what the head count was, but—“

There was a crash and a plume of fresh dust erupted from a cave-in in the rubble…right where Person had just been rescued.

“No…SHIT.” Tina jumped back up to her feet.

Person felt like she was going to be sick. That was…until she saw Ben and Gavin moving back out of the dust, immediately followed by Hank and Chris. Connor was draped across Chris’s back, and Hank was holding him there as they quickly moved away from the rubble. God, there was so much blue blood…

“He’s alive!” Ben called over toward Tina and Person. “We got him!”

Person started to deflate in relief, and Tina grabbed onto her, keeping her steady.

“There, see?” Tina’s voice was strong, but her hands were shaking at Person’s shoulders.

Chris hefted the android over to the ambulance. Medics wouldn’t be able to do much, but it was just as good a place as any to wait for an emergency technician to arrive.

“You crazy son of a bitch.” Hank’s voice was too high pitched to sound as angry as he wanted to seem as he helped Chris ease Connor down onto a second gurney next to Person.

Connor groaned, both hands pressing at his side where his hip damage was. Tina kept one hand on Person’s shoulder, but she reached out her other hand to grasp his arm too. Connor managed to look up at Tina, then over at Person.

“Y-you told me your first name,” he slurred.

“Don’t talk too much,” Hank advised, inspecting the damage point. “Fuck…”

Person breathed deeply from the oxygen mask, feeling Ben put his coat around her as the shock started to settle in earnest.

“Seemed like a good idea…at the time…Thought we were gonna die…” she wheezed.

He blinked owlishly at her, then managed to assemble a grin. “Your secret’s safe with me.”

Then his eyes fluttered shut and he went still, his LED cycling a warning red.

“Emergency stasis,” Hank said before anyone could panic. “He’s all right, just going into low power mode to…dammit, just trust me. He’s stable.”

“God,” Tina slumped, bending over between the two.

She moved her arm around the rest of Person’s shoulders, trying to provide some strength.

Person stared at the unconscious android. “Mother fucker saved my life.”

Tina laughed at that, knocking the side of her head gently against Person’s temple. “Join the club.”

Chris sat heavily on her other side. “Yeah…We should get matching t-shirts.”

Chapter Text

Officer Wilson knew the other cops at the DPD liked to embellish stories about their action in the field. They liked to exaggerate just how many criminals they arrested in one bust, how quick they were to react to the circumstances, how they outsmarted their opponents. Gavin had no less than five different stories explaining the scar on his face, each more over-the-top than the last. Tina had her own tale explaining that scar, but it wasn’t exactly flattering for Gavin’s reputation…so of course it was the most popular one.

All that being said, he didn’t remember any of them exaggerating how scared they were, and even if they talked about it, they clearly didn’t exaggerate it enough…because he was fucking terrified right now.

If it wasn’t the gun pointing directly at his neck, then it was the way that the barrel was shaking as it pressed into the side of his throat. The shaking was just as much of a presence in the man who was holding the gun, standing behind Wilson and holding his arm in a white knuckle grip.

The executive office looked like it had been turned upside down. All of the contents on the surface of the desk had been shoved to the floor, and drawers were hanging open and half emptied. The expensive, high backed chair was on its side next to Tina, unconscious on the floor against the wall. The wall behind Wilson was a floor-to-ceiling window overlooking the twelve story drop to the city streets below. One of the panes had been shot out, letting the window whip loose paper around the floor. The wall directly in front of him was solid glass as well, giving the occupants of the office a full view of the cubicle jungle that swamped the middle of the floor.

The entire floor had already been evacuated, and the vacancy of it made the air feel thin. Wilson knew the protocol here, had already heard the police sirens wailing through the open window as they arrived on scene. They would send in a team to secure the building, and then send in a negotiator to try and diffuse the hostage situation.

That made him the hostage.

Wilson swallowed and briefly closed his eyes, feeling the sweat breaking all over his body as he kept his hands raised to his shoulders.

“Don’t do this, man,” he spoke softly.

“Shut up!” The man’s voice was high pitched with panic, and his breath had the unfortunately familiar smoky smell of red ice.

“You haven’t killed anybody yet,” Wilson dared to continue. “You made a mistake. Don’t make it worse…”

“Did I kill her?!” The hand on his arm yanked him a bit to look at Tina.

“No.” Wilson hoped speaking it would make it the truth. “But she needs medical attention. Just let me check on her—“

“Don’t you move!”

“Okay,” Wilson conceded. “You’re in charge right now, Brent—“

“How do you know my name?!”

“It’s on the door.” Wilson pointed his index finger from one raised hand toward the black and gold name plate on the open office door.

Vice President of Operations Brent Walker had had a warrant issued on him that morning, and Wilson and Tina had been sent to arrest him at his job at this company. Obviously, he hadn’t taken it well. White collar criminals didn’t usually put up this much of a fight, but the DPD hadn’t known about his red ice habit when they arrived.

“My name is Lawrence,” Wilson stated, trying to keep him talking. “Always hated my first name. Everybody just calls me Wilson.”

“I said shut up!” The gun pushed harder against his throat, and he struggled not to gag.

“Brent Walker?” came a new voice, and fortunately a familiar one: Connor.

“Who the fuck is that?!” Brent snapped, jerking Wilson closer to himself as a shield. “Come out where I can see you, asshole!”

Across the walls of low rise cubicles, Wilson saw the top of Connor’s head and his raised hands as he made his way across the floor, nearing the Executive Vice President’s office. When he finally stepped fully into view, Wilson could see that the android was wearing a black Kevlar vest with NEGOTIATOR printed across the chest in white. He’d discarded his Cyberlife jacket, so the only thing identifying him as an android was his LED. In the interior light, however, the pale blue circle was nearly invisible.

“My name is Connor,” he introduced, holding his hands in plain view, slowly stepping closer to the office door. “I’m with the Detroit Police Department. I’m here to help you.”

“No! No, you’re here to take me, just like the other two!” Brent screamed.

The proximity of his yelling to Wilson’s head made his ear ring. Wilson stood as still as possible, not wanting to do anything to set off the unstable man. Now that Brent was outnumbered, he might panic worse and…shit…Wilson drew a deep breath to try and calm himself down.

This was Connor, he reminded himself. Wilson only still had a brother because of Connor’s negotiating skills. If it wasn’t for the RK800, Mike would have died on that apartment terrace when the Philips’ android shot him. Connor had saved his brother. He had to trust that he’d save his sorry ass today too.

“I don’t want anyone to get hurt,” Connor was saying. “Not you, and not either of these officers.”

Connor had reached the doorway, eyes flashing down to where Tina lay motionless, an angry purple bruise already darkening her cheekbone and blackening her eye where she’d been struck. Brent took a step back as Connor took a step forward, and he dragged Wilson back a step with him. The wind from the broken window sucked a few papers out into the city air.

“You’re lying!” Brent snapped.

“He’s not,” Wilson interjected. “We all just want this to be over, Brent.”

Connor’s face remained even, and, programming or not, it eased some of Wilson’s nerves that the other wasn’t showing any panic or fear. Androids’ restricted emotional expression could come in handy like that sometimes. He crossed one foot over the other, stepping laterally closer to Tina and kneeling down to scan her.

“Move away from her! She has a gun! I can see it!”

“She has a concussion.” Connor carefully ignored Brent’s outburst. “But she’s alive. You’ve assaulted a police officer, Brent, but you haven’t killed her. We can still repair this.”

“I’m not going to prison!”

Connor slowly stood back on his feet, his expression measuredly softening. “You aren’t going to prison, Brent. Not today anyway. You’ll get a fair trial, and—“

“Fair?” Brent barked out a laugh. “They said I was under arrest for…for embezzling! You can’t embezzle what you earned! I just wanted what was due to me!”

Wilson swallowed again, fighting the nausea, and he swore he could hear Brent’s finger shifting back and forth near the trigger. Connor was moving closer again, but he stopped when Brent took himself and Wilson an equal step backward.

“There’s nothing to be gained here, Brent,” Connor pressed. “Lower the gun, release Wilson, and let me take you into custody. I promise that no one is going to hurt you.”

“It’s too late…My life is ruined.” Brent’s voice cracked.

“It doesn’t have to be. Don’t make this situation worse than it is,” Wilson tried to reason.

“Marlene…She took my kids…She left me…Now I’m—I’m losing my job and…going to prison. I can’t—I…I won’t!” The man’s voice was speeding up the longer he talked.

“Brent!” Connor snapped, trying to curtail the man’s spiraling. “Look at me. The entire building is surrounded by police. They wanted to send in the SWAT team, but I asked them to let me speak to you alone instead. I want to help you, but you have to work with me,” he said empathetically.

“Wh-What…Work with you how?”

“Let Officer Wilson go.” Connor took another slow, subtle step closer.

Wilson had to forcibly keep his breathing even. Connor was getting too close. He could feel Brent’s posture tightening and coiling behind him. He was feeling cornered, and a high moron with a weapon was one of Gavin’s scar stories. Shit.

On the floor, Tina groaned, her limbs beginning to shift as she came around. In a panic at the unexpected movement, Brent yanked the gun out of Wilson’s throat and swung it around to aim at her.

“No!” Connor dove in between Brent and Tina.

By the grace of God, Brent didn’t shoot, but Wilson didn’t have time to feel relief. The gun was snapping back toward his head. Dammit, Connor was too close!

Suddenly, Connor was a lot closer. Faster than any human could move, Connor was lunging toward Brent and Wilson, his arm flashing up and catching Brent’s forearm. Brent’s arm swung wide, the cold steel of the gun flirting across the skin on Wilson’s jaw. Connor’s hand wrapped around his wrist, forcing his arm up. The gun pointed up and fired.

Wilson’s hearing was blasted into a white noise, and plaster burst from the ceiling where the bullet struck. Instinctively, he tried to drop down and duck away from the scuffle. Connor’s momentum had wedged his body in the tight space between Wilson and Brent. So when Brent yanked his arm back down and fired the gun again, the bullet struck the lower part of the wall and spackled it with blue.

Tina was opening her eyes, her hands going for her gun before the rest of her brain could sort itself out. Wilson hit the side of the desk, trying to get a good sight on where the gun was. Connor was overpowering the man, standing over him and gripping both of his forearms. He loomed over him, forcing the human onto his knees. Brent’s wrist was bending at an increasingly unnatural angle, and he cried out, finally dropping the gun.

Connor swiftly kicked it away, and it skittered across the floor near Wilson, who quickly picked it up. Tina climbed shakily to her knees, gun in one hand but her pupils uneven. She kept the gun lowered, leaning unsteadily against the wall and using her free hand to call into the radio at her shoulder.

Wilson crossed back over to Connor and Brent, getting the handcuffs from his belt.

But red ice was a Hell of a drug.

That and adrenaline had Brent yanking backwards, his center of gravity working against Connor’s grip and letting him wrest himself free. He was so desperate just to get away from the two police officers that he moved backwards, not heeding the sucking wind from the open window.

“Brent—“ Wilson reached out.

“Stop!” Connor moved closer but stumbled, his knee stained blue from the earlier rogue bullet.

“GET AWAY FROM ME!” Brent shrieked, eyes wide and wild as he scrambled back on his hands.

One hand eventually hit open air, and he cried out as he lost his balance. Gravity pulled his top half out of the window. Connor and Wilson both threw themselves forward on instinct. As Wilson was closer, he managed to get his hands around Brent’s knees, but Brent’s weight was already hanging out of the opening. It threatened to steal Wilson out the window too.

He felt Connor land hard across his legs, grabbing at his belt for purchase to prevent Wilson from following after Brent…who was screaming bloody murder as he dangled in the open air. Broken glass from the window was pushing at Wilson’s chest through his shirt, and he grimaced as he fought to hold on to the thrashing man. Tina was loudly swearing behind him, her voice slurring from the concussion.

“Brent!” Wilson yelled down. “Stop moving! I can’t hold you!”

“HELP!” Brent screamed. “I can’t…I don’t…”

Wilson’s grip on Brent’s legs, already haphazard, was being compromised by all the jerky movements. He could feel him slipping.

“Brent, stop! We’ll get you back in!”

“I DON’T WANT TO DIE!”

“You won’t! Just hold on. I got you. Just—“

Brent thrashed, trying to crane his body up to reach his hands toward Wilson. The motion made his legs slip further through Wilson’s grasp, and all Wilson could do was try to press harder to keep a hold of him.

“I don’t…I don’t want…” Through the haze of red ice, Wilson saw the fear in the man’s eyes.

Connor kept Wilson’s waist pinned to the floor, even as he twisted his own body around so that his feet were planted against the steel framing of the undamaged window pane beside him. Whatever he planned to do next, it didn’t matter.

With horrific ease, Brent’s legs vanished from Wilson’s hands. Brent’s screaming went mute in a breathless cry as he dropped from reach, and Wilson’s arms were left hanging in the air, hands empty. All he could do was watch as the man plummeted down. Everything in Wilson’s body locked up, rendering him paralyzed and unable to look away as Brent came to a sudden stop on the top of a van parked on the sidewalk. The sound of the impact splintered through his blood, and his lungs froze in horror.

He barely felt Connor’s hands grapple at his shoulders, hauling him out of the open window and back into the safety of the office. He couldn’t move. His limbs weren’t responding at all. He felt nothing, except the rolling nausea in his gut and the crawling in his skin as the image of Brent’s broken body plastered itself across his vision.

Connor pulled him away from the window, collapsing to his knees as well due to the damage to his leg. A swarm of blue uniforms was flooding the office floor, and at the front of the wave was Hank. Connor was speaking, but everything sounded like the world was underwater to Wilson. Whatever Connor said, it made Hank focus on Tina instead, kneeling down beside her.

Wilson choked, and Connor turned him sideways, letting him vomit onto the floor.

“—ilson…Can you—at me?”

God, he’d just watched someone die…He’d just let someone die…He couldn’t stop it.

Hot tears burned across his eyes, and he bowed his head, his whole body trembling on his hands and knees. Everything in front of him was swimming in shades of brown mahogany, the glitter of broken glass, and a black wall of Kevlar as Connor knelt in front of him. Wilson felt his hands on his shoulders, trying to corral him to look him in the eye.

The reassuring calm in the android’s face was gone, replaced with something closer to being called fear.

“I couldn’t…” Wilson stammered, looking from one eye to the other. “He just slipped through my hands…”

Connor’s programming almost visibly shifted across his face, changing to all business.

“Up,” he said curtly, and if his voice cracked a bit at the end, Wilson didn’t catch it. “Come on.”

Wilson let Connor wrangle him to his feet, and he tried not to lean on him as Connor led him past the other police out of the office and into the more open space of the main floor. A chair materialized behind him, and Connor was pushing him down onto it, steadying him in the seat. He could feel himself starting to hyperventilate, and Connor squatted down in front of him, favoring one leg, and aggressively yanked open the front of Wilson’s shirt to help him breathe.

“In…Out,” Connor enunciated deliberately. “In. Watch me. Wilson. In.”

Connor drew an exaggerated breath, and Wilson just stared at him. Connor just as dramatically exhaled and looked expectantly at him.

“In,” he repeated, inhaling deeply.

Wilson struggled to mimic him, taking a shaky breath. Connor breathed out, and so did Wilson.

“Out,” Connor said evenly. “Again.”

He repeated it a few times, and Wilson breathed in and out with varying success until the worst of the panic attack had passed. When he didn’t feel like he was suffocating anymore, he slumped forward, dropping his head so that he was staring at the floor.

“God,” he ground out hoarsely, bringing his hands to his face.

Connor’s hands didn’t leave his upper arms, holding him steady in the chair, a solid presence that wasn’t going anywhere. Without meaning to, Wilson moved his hands from his face and grabbed onto Connor’s forearms in a return grip, effectively trapping the android there with him in his misery.

“You did everything you could,” Connor spoke after a beat.

Wilson had nothing to say to that, just shaking his head and closing his eyes hard. He might have stayed that way for seconds or minutes or a full hour, but neither of them moved.

After those seconds or minutes or hour passed, Wilson heard Hank.

“We okay?” It was a pointed question and one Wilson wasn’t interesting in figuring out how to answer.

Luckily, Connor was there.

“Yes.” It was a pointed answer.

“We’ve got this here,” Hank was saying. “Get that leg looked at—“

“It’s stable,” Connor cut him off. “I’ve got him.”

“…Okay. Paramedics are looking at Tina. Wilson, you should…” Hank paused.

It was enough for Wilson to finally open his eyes and look up at his superior officer. The lieutenant had a complicated look on his face, and he gave a forcibly casual gesture toward the door.

“Get him out of here, Connor.”

“Lieutenant—“ Wilson started.

“Wilson.” Hank’s expression shifted to something softer. “You’re fucked up right now, and that’s understandable. But you don’t need to be here and fucked up.” He looked at Connor again.

Connor nodded and awkwardly got back to his feet.

Feeling useless but also too numb to give much of a shit, Wilson stiffly stood from the chair. Connor hovered at his elbow as they went to the elevator, and it was a silent ride all the way down to the ground floor. The lobby was empty save for Gavin and Person. Gavin was taking control of the other cops securing the floor, but Person swooped in front of the two of them. She pointed away from the front doors, where flashing red and blue lights were bleeding through the windows.

“Back door. I’ll drive,” she said bluntly.

Connor gently tugged Wilson around, but not before Wilson saw the crumped hood of a van outside the front doors. His stomach threatened to turn on him again.

“I can drive,” Connor was saying.

“Not with that knee you can’t,” Person sniped. Then, more softly. “Just come on.”

Wilson let himself be steered down the hall and through the back door. An unmarked squad car was parked amongst the employee vehicles, and Person popped the back door open for them before taking the driver’s seat. Wilson and Connor both got into the back seat.

For a long moment, Person didn’t turn on the car.

It took long enough that Wilson looked up at her, catching her eye in the rearview mirror. She deftly looked away, staring ahead through the windshield, hands in her lap. She and Connor both appeared to just be…waiting…for what? For him to give the go-ahead? Connor outranked him, and Person didn’t give a damn. They knew they had to go back to the station and…and start processing…and Wilson would have to…give a detailed statement.

We went to arrest him. He freaked out. Now he’s dead. End of statement.

He could feel parts of his chest stinging where the broken glass had poked him when he was on the floor. When he was hanging out the window. When he was holding onto the man. When he was trying to calm him down. When he was trying to pull him back in. When he fucking let him fall.

God…the sound…

His shoulders shuddered, and he shoved both hands over his mouth. It wasn’t enough to stifle the sob that clawed up out of his throat. His back bowed, and he bent forward until his forehead was pushing against the back of the driver’s seat. His hands balled into fists against his eyes, and he drew them back, punching at the seat beside his leg.

“God dammit FUCKING SHIT!” he yelled, tears streaking hot from his eyes.

Connor’s hand found his shoulder, a comfortably tight grip that anchored him in place. Wilson breathed in hard, harsh pulls for several moments before shoving himself upright. He pushed his back against the seat and stared up at the ceiling. Connor’s hand went with him.

“I’m sorry.” It was spoken so softly that Wilson wasn’t sure Connor had actually said anything.

Wilson felt like his blood was finally cooling, and he swore he could feel it thickening in his veins, making him sluggish as the adrenaline ebbed. He rolled his head across the back of the seat to look at Connor. Again, the calm expression was compromised, but he’d be lying if he said the watery concern in the android’s eyes wasn’t alarming.

Connor looked away, to Person in the front seat. She finally shoved the key into the ignition and turned over the engine. The bubble of inertia that was stifling the cab of the car popped, and Wilson closed his eyes as he felt the car reverse out of the parking spot and pull forward toward the street. He kept them staunchly closed as they drove past the front of the building.

Connor’s grip stayed anchored at his shoulder the entire drive back to the police department, and it was probably the only thing that kept him from throwing up again.

Now he knew why the other cops didn’t talk about this shit.

Chapter Text

The meetup was in the back office of a club…because of course it was. It may have been a few years since Ben had done undercover work, but some things never changed apparently. He could hear the bass music vibrating through the floor, and the kaleidoscope of colored lights filtered through the door every time it opened. The room he was standing in at the moment had the typical ‘back office of a club’ lighting, which added to the overall sketchy atmosphere of the place.

So…this new dealer was really trying to check all of the cliché boxes, huh.

Informants had gotten intel back to the narcotics division of the DPD that there was a new player in the red ice game. A new brand had started to show up in the raids that they conducted on known drug dens. It was a finer powder, more potent, more addictive. Forensics had broken down its chemical structure and noted that it used less thirium than the more common red ice on the streets.

Androids going missing now were taken more seriously since the liberation. It was harder to make them disappear without police being notified. So the red ice cooks were getting smarter. Or at least this one was. The chemical that this new player was substituting could be purchased at any convenience store, instead of having to bleed more androids. An effect of the new recipe had altered its color from the trademark ruby red to a venomous purple shade.

The junkies they’d brought in called the new brand Ghost.

One of Hank’s old informants had gotten them a name and a location to meet the new dealer, and he had gotten Ben and Connor set up to go in as junkies hungry for the new fix on the market. If things went well, they’d get an ID on this son of a bitch and take him down before he established himself as a new kingpin of Detroit. So far, all they had was a single name: Ogden. Didn’t know if that was a last name or a first name or the name of a group of people. Something about Ogden made even the junkies keep their mouths shut though. Whoever or whatever Ogden was, they were establishing their new reign with an iron fist.

Ben was a handful of years from retiring to a cushy desk job. Young and spry assholes like Gavin were supposed to be the ones out here playing dress up and having their hero moments. Or even Hank, with all his years in this shit. But it was exactly all those years in this shit that had made Hank Anderson too well known as a cop in the drug circles. And a previous attempt had gotten Gavin recognized as a cop too, so he couldn’t show his face in this op now either. Connor, on the other hand…

Ben glanced subtly over at his partner on this mission, and he swallowed a curse, looking away.

Jesus Christ…Some days he couldn’t decide if the right adjective to describe androids was ‘amazing’ or ‘terrifying.’

Ben had taken the standard measures to alter his appearance and avoid being recognized: letting his facial hair grow out for a few days, wearing colored contacts, donning old, worn out clothes to look the part of the desperate man looking for a drug induced escape. Not to be outdone, Connor had changed his actual facial structure, to the point that Ben honestly hadn’t recognized him for a second.

His synthetic hair had changed color to a dirty blond with a curly texture to it. His skin had turned a sallow, sickly hue, complete with red, inflamed patches around the eyes indicative of red ice use. His cheekbones seemed to stick out more, looking like someone who had lost a lot of weight in a short amount of time. His nose was even crooked, like he’d broken it at some point and it didn’t heal properly. His eyes were dark green and bloodshot, and his freckles had rearranged on his face. A patch of synthetic skin had been used to cover his LED.

Even his entire posture had been reprogrammed to more of a hunch, and his hands were fidgeting and pulling at the bottom of his ratty t-shirt. He looked every bit the part of a man on the ugly end of withdrawal, despite his very calm and sober reassurance that it was all a subroutine of his undercover programming.

“Michael, was it?” the man sitting behind the desk addressed Ben.

Oh, right, drug dealers…Ben let the startle show in his stance, and he looked nervously at the man.

“Yeah, and…uh…this is Nash, my nephew.” He nodded toward Connor, who was twitching on his feet. “He told me you guys had the best stuff, and…I could use some good stuff right now, man.”

The man behind the desk glanced from Ben, to Connor, and then to the other man standing beside his desk. He made a vague gesture, and the other man stepped forward, holding up a temperature scanning gun.

“Sorry, fellas,” the man at the desk said, spreading his hands. “Dale’s just gonna scan ya. Can’t be too careful. Androids nowadays just pop off those little spinning lights, and they pass for human like the rest of us.”

Dale held the temperature gun in front of Ben’s face. The red laser lines drew across his forehead, drawing down to his chest as the man lowered it. He raised it back up and checked the reading screen on the back of the gun.

“Human,” he informed his boss in a gravelly tone.

He stepped over to Connor, and Ben tried not to hold his breath. The DPD had been working on reverse engineering the disruption field program that Jacobi had utilized to mask his android readings as human vital signs. So far, it had fooled all of the DPD’s machines when they had Connor try it out in the labs. They were about to find out if it would fool Ogden’s scanner.

Dale swept the temperature gun across Connor the same way that he had Ben, and Connor recoiled a bit, scratching at his neck and leaning away.

“Get that out of my face, man,” he chuckled nervously.

Dale ignored him, looking at the reading. “Human.”

The man behind the desk…was he Ogden?...watched them for a contemplative moment before standing up. He walked around the desk and then leaned back on it, folding his hands across his chest.

“You don’t look like you normally partake, Michael,” he asked.

Ben swallowed, shifting from one foot to the other. “I-I don’t. I’ve actually never, but…times are hard, y’know? I mean…first those damn tincans show up and take all the jobs from us hard working folks. Then they all just fucked off when they got their ‘freedom,’ tch.” He put air quotes around the word as he spoke. “I just…I don’t want to think about them for just an hour, man. Fuckin’…toasters with legs…” he grumbled with a scowl.

The man hummed in agreement, taking the temperature gun from his buddy and glancing down at it. “Yeah, buncha bastards, ain’t they?” He looked over at Connor, at his shaky frame and irritated skin. “What about you, Twitchy?”

“Listen, I…” Connor forced a smile, coughed, and shoved his hands in his pockets. “My supply just ran out, and…and my guy I normally go to, he said he’s out until next week. I just…Help me out, man. I could really use some.”

“Some what?” the man pressed. “Red Ice? Crank? Coke?”

“N-No,” Connor huffed out a laugh, exchanging a look with Ben. He lowered his voice, like he was an idiot trying to be sneaky and failing at it. “The-the purple stuff. I told Uncle Mike if he tried anything, he had to try some Ghost.”

The man paused, lifting his eyes from the gun. “And who told you we had any of that?”

Ben decided to just go for it. “I mean, you’re…you’re Ogden, right?”

“I’m Travis,” the man corrected. “Sorry to disappoint. Ogden doesn’t come out for every new client who comes along.”

“But I mean…” Connor snapped his fingers idly. “You work with him, right? I mean…I mean, do you have any?”

“Calm down, Twitchy.” Travis waved a hand lazily at him and looked at Ben. “Wanting to start off on the good shit, huh?”

Ben shrugged. “Might as well. Don’t have much left to lose nowadays.”

Travis drew himself back with a deep inhale and then nodded his head at Dale again. The other man silently backed away to stand behind the desk, giving Travis the center of the room.

“Even if I had any Ghost, and I’m not saying I do,” he pressed, tapping the temperature gun against the desk gently, “we’ve still got a problem that we need to resolve, boys.”

Ben spread his hands innocently. “Uh…and what’s that?”

Travis set the temperature gun down, reaching into his jacket and pulling out a small boxy device that looked similar to a tazer but more…homemade. He held it up, aiming it casually first at Ben, then at Connor.

“When you’re the one who designed disruption field tech,” Travis drawled, “it’s pretty easy to spot when you know what to look for.”

Before either Ben or Connor could move, Travis punched the single, yellow button on the center of the device. A tingle of an invisible energy wave rippled across the air, and it made the hair on Ben’s skin stand up and a headache immediately claw across his skull. He gasped in surprise and raised a hand to his forehead.

Connor went down like a piece of lumber.

His limbs locked straight, and he toppled backwards, landing hard on his back and staying there. Ben stared at him, then whirled back to Travis. Travis looked almost disappointed, turning the device over in his hand a few times before sliding his eyes back to Ben.

“Cops, right?”

Busted. Ben drew himself up, dropping the entire front.

“The whole building is surrounded. Don’t do anything stupid. You won’t get far if you do.”

“I know,” Travis admitted with a shrug. “Stupid would be dressing up like druggies and thinking that was going fool us here. I mean…Come on.”

Connor rebooted on the floor with a hard jerk. His limbs broke loose from the paralysis, and the full body spasm had Travis jumping back a step in surprise.

“Shit…Never seen one bounce back that fast before.” He reached for the tazer device again.

Ben moved while Travis was distracted, lunging forward and driving his shoulder into the man’s chest. Travis was taken off guard, and Ben shoved him against the desk behind him. Dale drew a gun from the back of his waistband, taking quick aim as Travis was thrown back.

Then Connor was up. It was ugly and unbalanced, but he was on his feet regardless. He knocked Dale’s arm aside, and the gun swung wide, firing one silenced round into the brick wall. Momentum worked in Connor’s favor, and he continued his charge at the man, tackling him to the floor. Ben kicked Travis’s knee out from under him, grabbing his arm and starting to twist it behind his back to take him to the ground.

Travis had recovered from the surprise attack however, and he let his weight shift to the knee that Ben hadn’t taken out. He bent sharply at the waist and drew up his other leg, kicking out hard and catching Ben in the ribcage. All of the air was booted from Ben’s lungs, and his ribs crunched as he stumble back.

“Freeze!” Connor ordered, getting to his feet with Dale’s gun in his hands, aimed at Travis.

Dale was on the floor behind him, unmoving and limp. Travis lifted his hands in surrender, backing away from Ben.

“Drop it,” Connor gestured to the tazer pulse box in Travis’s hand.

The sound of screaming bled into the bass music beyond the office walls. Ben thought he heard a siren. He wheezed, holding his ribs. Despite the brand new Kevlar vests, taking a kick to the chest still hurt like a bitch. The new vests had been designed to be thin and sleek, looking more like just a black shirt than armor, prime for undercover work. Fat lot of good it was doing either of them right now.

Travis straightened at the change in sound, and his smug expression finally faltered. He snarled and changed his grip on the tazer, hitting the button again. Connor stiffened and groaned, taking a shaky step sideways as the wave hit, but he didn’t go down this time. God bless that damn adaptability program. Ben’s headache ballooned more intensely across his scalp, and he gagged, trying to stay on his feet.

“What the fuck…” Travis hit the button again, aiming it directly at Connor.

Connor looked like he was trying to stand in hurricane winds as the energy waves hit him a third time, but his gun hand stayed steady.

“Drop it, or I will shoot,” he promised.

Ben could see blue staining the android’s ears, leaking down his neck from whatever damage the pulse box was doing. While Travis was focused on Connor, Ben swept around behind him, grabbing up the temperature gun from the desk. He swung hard, colliding the butt of it with the back of Travis’s head. The impact made a sickening, solid noise, and the man went down hard, out cold.

Connor stumbled sideways, gun in one hand while the other hand grabbed the desk for balance. Ben stepped over Travis and picked up the pulse box. He looked at the android.

“You okay?”

Connor started to respond, but the back door of the office was swinging inward and a new body entered the room.

The newcomer wasn’t tall and stocky like Travis or Dale. This one had a slim build, hidden under dark blue workman’s coveralls. They were wearing gloves and a full face gas mask, so no identifiable features were visible. They took two long steps into the room and swiftly raised a gun directly at Ben’s chest.

“Fuck, if you want something done right…” Their voice was distorted and autotuned beyond recognition.

Then they fired, and Ben’s world went dark.

The screams and the bass and the sirens slurred together in a cacophony that fed into the headache that was turning his brain to mush. His chest felt like it had been cracked open, and he couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t even tell if the Kevlar had worked.

Maybe he was already dead…

He’d imagined heaven differently…Why was Gavin here? Was this Hell instead?

More gunfire, and jostling that made his stomach churn, and the stink of alcohol and blood and burned plastic…He’d…He had been shot, right?

So why was…

“Clear!”

Agony sizzled across his body, and he choked, his throat trying to close against his desperate gasps for air.

“We’ve got sinus rhythm…”

“Hnk…” Ben couldn’t make his mouth work correctly. “…nor…”

Then his eyes snapped open, and he was lying in a hospital bed, in a curtained off room in some ER somewhere. His chest burned, and the lights overhead scalded his eyes. He groaned and turned his head away, trying to sort through the soup in his brain.

There was Chris, standing near the curtain wall with his arms folded so tightly he might have cracked his own ribs. There was a bandaged cut on his jaw, and a spectacular black eye was already swelling up. At Ben’s stirring, his head whipped around, and he was immediately this side.

“Ben, hey, you coming around?”

Ben screwed his eyes shut and grimaced. “Unfortunately.”

Chris made a tight noise, an attempt at a snort. “You scared the shit out of us.”

Ben peered open one eye and looked around, but there was no ‘us,’ just Chris. Relieved at that, he tried to relax, opening both eyes gingerly and trying to assess himself.

“The club…”

“Was a bust,” Chris answered quickly. “By the time backup got in there, it had all gone to shit. You took a bullet to the chest, man. The vest blocked it, but the force stopped your heart. If Connor hadn’t called backup when he did, I don’t know if the medics could have brought you back in time.”

Ben lifted a hand, rubbing at his bruised chest with a wince. “Guess I owe the kid a beer. Or…thirium or whatever.”

“…Yeah.” Chris’s tone had a weird edge to it.

Ben rubbed his head, trying to ease away the residual migraine. “Is he okay? Bastard had some kind of…pain box that—“

“They took him.”

Ben paused, looking at Chris directly. “Who?”

Chris’s face had turned stony. “Ogden…He took Connor.”

“What?” Ben sat up, damning the pain in his chest and demanding answers. “How?”

“By the time backup got there, all we found was you on the floor in cardiac arrest…and two men with bullets in their heads.” Chris winced.

Ben gawked at him. “We didn’t shoot those guys; we knocked them out.”

“We think Ogden executed them…maybe to keep us from taking them into custody.” Chris looked disgusted. “He knew we were coming—“

“Travis…one of those guys…he said they designed that Jacobi tech,” Ben cut in. “They knew Connor was an android—“

“And they knew who he was,” Chris added. “Hank thinks Connor was targeted, that Ogden was after him specifically…and he got him.”

“Shit.” Ben looked away, covering his mouth with one hand. He looked back to Chris. “Why? He’s a high profile android, not some random on the street. And a damn COP. Is this some kind of power move?”

Chris shrugged. “I don’t know, but Hank’s on the warpath…” His frame tensed. “Everybody is.”

Ben stared at him, letting all of the information sink in. He drew one pained breath, then a second, and then turned sideways on the bed, swinging his legs over the edge.

“Get a nurse. Get me some discharge papers—“

“Ben—“ Chris lifted his hands.

“That’s an order.” His voice went uncharacteristically hard.

Chris snapped to attention, turning on his heel and marching out the door with a quick “Yes, sir.”

Ben waited until he was gone to rub at his chest and openly wince again. Bruises and sore ribs: he’d had worse. Connor was probably going through worse right now. If he was even still alive…

Impatience flooded through his blood, and Ben stood up, starting to yank off the monitors and wires taped to his skin. He wasn’t going to let Hank and the rest of the team go after their man without him, not when he felt it was his fault that Connor had been taken in the first place.

“Hang on, kid,” he grumbled, grabbing up his clothes from the stack in a nearby chair. “We’re coming for you.”

Chapter Text

Systems re-initializing…

…

…

…

Begin reboot?

<Yes>

…Rebooting…

Internal clock reading…8:52 pm.

Connection to cybernetic uplink lost…Please seek assistance from your nearest Cyberlife repair facility.

Running full system diagnostic…

Unable to complete diagnostic…Software corrupted… Please seek assistance from your nearest Cyberlife repair facility.

Scanning environment…

Scanning program offline…Hardware damaged…Please seek assistance from your nearest Cyberlife repair facility.

Global positioning system offline…Software corrupted… Please seek assistance from your nearest Cyberlife repair facility.

Contacts…Calling Hank Anderson…Unable to place call…Please seek assistance from your nearest—

Contacts…Calling Detroit Police Department…Unable to place call…Please seek assistance—

Contacts…Calling Tina Chen…Unable to place call…Please seek assist—

Calling…Chris Miller…Unable to place—

Calling…Ben Collins…Unable—

Calling…Lisa Person…Unable—

Calling…Lawrence Wilson…Una—

Calling…Gavin Reed…Un—

“RK800, open your eyes for me, please.”

The voice was distorted, with an electronic crackle masking the speaker’s identity. Connor’s programming had been designed to read through vocal distortion devices, but the clutter of error messages fogging his vision included a notification that his vocal scanner was damaged.

Everything felt damaged.

“Come onnn,” the voice egged playfully, and it was accompanied by a finger tapping lightly at the center of his forehead. “Let’s see them baby blues.”

Connor considered refusing out of belligerence, but even though his diagnostic and scanning programs had been forced offline, he could just as easily feel the tension of taut bindings across his shins, hips, wrists, and shoulders. He was strapped tightly to what felt like a horizontal, metal surface. Belligerence would not help here. He opened his eyes.

“…Huh, brown, not blue. Sorry, my bad.”

The person standing over him had no face.

Stress levels 47 percent.

No, no, that wasn’t…Something was blocking his facial recognition software. The body leaning over him was clear as day, but from their neck to the top of their head appeared in his optical sensors as a mask of crackling static. He couldn’t read anything: not identity, not gender, not eye color, not even skin color…

The faceless face leaned closer, and Connor instinctually pressed himself harder against the surface at his back.

“Hello,” the voiceless voice said, in what might have been a cheerful tone, he couldn’t tell. “It’s nice to finally meet you, RK800. We haven’t been properly introduced. I’m Ogden.”

Connor gave up trying to force his software to bypass the external dampening block and recognize this individual. Instead, he looked away from them, casting his eyes around his surroundings.

They were alone in a room large enough that he couldn’t immediately see the walls from the angle he was lying at. Steel racking created wide aisles that boxed up the decidedly large space. Hard plastic crates were stacked along the racking: some simple boxes, some were clearly insulated coolers for perishable transport. Concrete floors. Brick walls. Tin on the roof if the sound of the rain was any indication.

“This is the part where you say your name,” Ogden spoke softly. “I know you have a pretty impressive social integration program, so you know that. Don’t be rude now.”

Stress levels 56 percent.

Connor turned his head back to face the mask of static above him. Ogden tilted their head to the side, almost in amusement.

“My name is Connor,” he replied through his teeth.

Ogden paused in anticipation, then snickered and made a rolling gesture with their hand. “No, c’mon, do the whole thing. I’ve been dying to hear it in person.”

Connor frowned at them. “I don’t understand…Why have you brought me here? You are aware that I am a police officer. The DPD will—“

“My name is Connor,” Ogden mocked. “I’m the android sent by—C’mon…Please? Just do the thing. It’s fucking classic.”

Connor narrowed his eyes and squared his shoulders as best he could against the thick nylon belts across his torso. “No.”

Ogden seemed to stare at him, then dramatically tilted their head back and groaned. “Ugh, fine. Killjoy.”

They stepped closer to the table, reaching their latex gloved hands toward his chest. Connor’s eyes widened as he realized that his chest panel had been opened…no, not…it was gone…The entire panel had been removed from his torso, and he could feel the pressure of fingers making direct contact with his internal biocomponents.

“Wh-what…Stop.” He tried to lurch away from their side of the table, but the belts held.

Stress levels 78 percent.

Something near his head beeped, and Ogden paused, glancing at the source.

“Calm down. I’m not hurting you.” They sounded almost annoyed.

“Stop,” Connor demanded. “What are you doing to me?”

He craned his neck to lift his head and look down at the rest of his body. The healthy blue glow from his exposed biocomponents brought on a sensation that humans would have described as nausea. The disturbing sight was only made worse by the realization that the synthetic skin program across his entire body had been deactivated, and his jacket and shirt had been removed completely.

Ogden gave a long suffering sigh, reaching over to the tray of tools beside the table.

“You know I’m the new drug cook making red ice, and red ice needs thirium, which androids like you run on…What do you think I’m doing, Sherlock?” They snorted, producing a long coil of rubber tubing. “I’m siphoning you dry.”

With the quick, precise movements of someone who knew exactly what they were doing, Ogden delicately shifted aside the inner wiring and plating that surrounded Connor’s thirium pump and undid the latches holding it in place. Connor felt an immediate drain on his energy levels, and the red warnings became heated as they burned across his eyes. Ogden tugged the biocomponent out of its slot and completely free from Connor’s chest, connected only by dark arterial thirium lines.

Connor gasped, and his limbs went stiff as the klaxons began to sound through his head.

Vital biocomponent missing…

Time remaining before shutdown: 1:45

…1:44…

Stress levels 89 percent…

Ogden was fast, removing one of the arterial thirium lines that still connected the pump to the rest of Connor’s body. They replaced it with the end of the coiled tubing looped over the tray beside them. Keeping the end of his arterial line pinched closed, they tied it off and let it hang over his side. They replaced the pump over its slot and firmly drove it back into place inside his torso.

…1:42…

Reading biocomponents…compatible…

Stress levels 75 percent.

The klaxons went silent and the shutdown timer disappeared, but a new reading took its place.

Thirium level 97 percent.

“Tada.” Ogden clapped their hands together and then held them spread apart. “Am I good, or am I good?”

Connor voluntarily shut off the aspect of his social programming that included facial expression, so they wouldn’t have to see on his face how much that had hurt. He forced it away from his voice too.

“Why are you doing this?” he asked flatly. “You could just as easily deactivate me and drain all of my thirium. It would save you time. You could have stopped me from rebooting.”

“No. No, see, that’s boring,” Ogden said, reaching out of Connor’s line of sight and lifting up a clunky piece of machinery the size of a shoebox. “This…This takes a while, and you know…I get lonely.”

They casually began tinkering with the device, starting it up. Connor could make out three glass jars connected underneath the device: collection units, he assumed. He was unfortunately proven right as Ogden flipped the switch that activated the machine. The tubing that connected Connor’s thirium pump to the machine shuddered as it kicked on, and then the tube began to stain blue as an uncomfortable sensation of suction began to pull at his chest.

Connor grimaced despite himself, pushing his head back against the table.

Thirium level 95 percent.

“I mean, sure, most of the time I do just kinda…” They drew a thumb across their throat and clucked their tongue. “Because most of the androids we pick up just go on and on…screaming and crying and begging and…It wears on the nerves after a while. But you guys…police androids, firefighter androids, medical androids…you all are made with some tougher stuff. You hold up under pressure…Makes for better conversation while we wait.”

“The DPD will be searching for me,” Connor said matter-of-factly…as though saying it would convince Ogden and himself at the same time. “And they will find both of us here.”

“I think you have an overinflated sense of importance,” Ogden replied. “You’re the only remaining prototype model in a discontinued line issued by a company that no longer exists. I don’t even want to THINK about how expensive your repair and maintenance costs are. I mean, shit. I’m probably doing them a favor taking you out of commission.” They reached out and lightly poked the end of his nose. “Boop.”

Thirium levels 90 percent.

Sensation in his extremities was already dulling as his system began to redirect his thirium supply to his core functions. Connor didn’t fight the protocol, but instead glared in Ogden’s direction.

Calling Hank Anderson…Unable to place—

Stress levels 77 percent.

“They’re…going to come…” he growled out.

“Why?” Ogden asked, pulling up a stool and sitting on it nonchalantly, as though they were two people chatting in a coffee shop…rather than a drug dealer speaking to a captive that they were slowly bleeding to death. “I mean, I saw what you did during the revolution and after and all that. You’re pretty badass, but you’re still just a machine. You turn up dead, I give ‘em a week, maybe two before they get a replacement and carry on their merry way.”

“I am alive…”

Thirium level 84 percent.

“Uh huh.”

“I am not…replaceable.”

“Because everybody is special, right?” Ogden chuckled. “God, androids with a sense of self worth. Wait…oh, don’t tell me you think you have friends too? Is that why you think they’re coming for you?”

“Why are you taking from my thirium pump?” Connor redirected. “External lines are more easily accessible and can be drained more quickly.”

Ogden bobbed their head side to side thoughtfully. “True, but thirium that goes through the arterial veins gets thicker, denser. It’s got more of the good stuff per ounce. Use arterial thirium, don’t need so many androids.”

Connor gingerly tested the belting around his arms, trying to find any give in the material. “That’s how you’re doing it. That’s how you’re making Ghost…”

Thirium level 79 percent.

“Smarty pants.” Ogden lightly tapped Connor’s forehead again, inspecting their draining device before straightening up again. “Done right, I can make a whole batch out of just one android.”

They held up one finger, then curled it and gently knocked their knuckle against one of the filling glass containers.

“Give me a few hours, and I’ll have the Ghost of Connor.”

Calling Hank Anderson…Unable to place call…Please see assistance—

Connor glared up at the ceiling in frustration.

The chill of blood loss was creeping up from his hands and feet into his forearms and lower legs. He tried to initiate his self healing program, to isolate and repair the damage blocking him from completing a call for help. The program resisted, reminding him of more critical functions that required use of the dwindling thirium supply.

He bypassed the command function and forced the healing program to kickstart. It reluctantly hummed along his spine, turning on the dormant sensors to locate the damage.

Thirium level 72 percent.

The feeling of pins and needles prodded along his plastic casing, and he turned off physical sensation. The cold of the metal table under him disappeared, along with the painful pressure of the bindings against his limbs. Numbness blanketed the discomfort, and the healing program blipped once as it found the problem. It tried to focus on his failing diagnostic system, but he overrode it again, forcing it toward his communication program.

Call…I need to…call…

“—cost me two good guys,” Ogden was still speaking. “Well, okay, one and a half. Dale was eh. Travis was good though. Did he try to take credit for the Pulse Box though? Because I have to humbly correct a dead man and say that was me too. Are you listening?”

Thirium level 68 percent.

“Hey.”

The table jerked as Ogden shoved it, and Connor opened his eyes with the jostling. When had he closed them?

Colors slurred together as his optical units began to fail, and Ogden’s staticked face leaned into view, further blurred from blood loss. Their voice was equally distorted from their electronic device and his faltering auditory units.

“You got moxie, man. When I saw you push through the Pulse Box three times…That was so awesome. We're going to have fun together.”

“Shut…up…” Connor groaned, and his voice came out with an electronic buzz.

“Okay, wow, rude.” Ogden inspected the draining device again, before abruptly looking up and off to the side. “What was that?”

Connor was having trouble focusing on anything, pulling more thirium reserves toward his healing program.

Thirium level 61 percent.

Calling Hank Anderson…Unable to place call…Please seek—

“Fuck,” he hissed despite himself.

Ogden stepped away from the table, producing a gun in one of their hands, a radio in another. They held it up to their mouth.

“I heard something. We got eyes on the perimeter?”

The radio crackled, and a series of voices sounded off in the affirmative. By Connor’s count, Ogden had six other people watching this building, keeping a lookout…

Repairs complete: communication module active.

Six wasn’t going to be enough…

Calling Hank Anderson…Connecting…

Connor exhaled hard in relief despite having shut off his ventilation system.

Somewhere against the far wall of the warehouse, cutting through the shadows, came the unmistakable sound of Hank’s phone ringing, with the cheery, custom song ringtone he had set up specifically for Connor’s incoming calls.

“I got no strings to hold me down, to make me fret, or make me frown…”

“What the fuck?!” Ogden yelped, backing up so hard they bumped into the table by Connor’s feet.

“I had strings, but now I’m free. There are no strings on me!”

The lights all abruptly cut out, throwing the warehouse into darkness.

Through the failing static in Connor’s head, he heard the click of the phone picking up.

“We’re here, son. Hold on,” Hank’s voice came over low and quiet.

The only thing Connor could immediately see was Ogden speaking into the radio, lit by the red glow of his LED and exposed biocomponents. They were barking orders into the radio, calling their scouts to get in here and—

The crack of windows shattering and doors crashing open drowned out their voice, and then more voices were screaming into the din.

“DETROIT POLICE, DROP THE WEAPON AND GET ON YOUR KNEES!”

Tina?

Gunfire erupted across the air, and Connor struggled against his bindings again, now that Ogden was distracted. Synthetic muscles were too weak from thirium loss to do much more than tremble at his sides, and he rolled his head across the table, trying to see through the darkness.

Thirium levels 59 percent.

He couldn’t…see…Where was…He couldn’t…focus…

The building’s emergency power kicked on, illuminating a row of lights around the perimeter walls of the building. It was barely enough to see by, and most of the light was blocked by Chris Miller, skidding to a stop against the table where Connor was strapped.

“Connor! Jesus Christ…Connor, can you hear me?!”

Connor could do little more than blink up at Chris. He managed to turn the corners of his mouth up in acknowledgement.

“Hang on!” Chris put a hand on Connor’s neck, but without the sensation program activated, all Connor could feel was the light pressure. “I gotcha, man. I gotcha. We’re gonna get you out of here.”

Connor’s eyes started to slide closed, thirium loss approaching critical levels.

“Harrison, David, Blake, block the exits!” Hank’s voice roared nearby.

“Stay awake, dipshit,” Gavin’s voice grated through the fog, along with gunfire as he shot into the mayhem. “Chris, get him out.”

“It’s…locked somehow. I can’t—“

“Here, cover me.” Gavin replaced Chris, and Connor sluggishly stared up at him.

Gavin made brief eye contact with him, quickly looking away and pulling out a large knife. Connor felt him start to saw at the bindings locked across Connor’s chest, and when they came loose, he gasped and immediately tried to sit up.

Chris’s hands were on his shoulders as Gavin moved to cut through the belts over Connor’s legs. “Easy. Hey, look at me, man. Can you—“

Connor swayed hard, vertigo making his vision swim and the world tilt wildly around him. All of the bodies fighting in his line of sight were covered in black, but the one lumbering toward Chris and Gavin was not moving in the way an ally would.

“Oh no you don’t!” Then there was another body swinging into view, blocking the oncoming attacker.

DETROIT POLICE was stamped in white across the back of the black jacket. Tina.

She fired once to blow out the attacker’s knee, then she was on him, twisting him to the floor and pulling out handcuffs. Her eyes were wide and wild as they met Connor’s.

“Hey, bud.” Her voice had a forced evenness to it. “Good to see you in one piece.”

“Got it,” Gavin grunted, ripping away the final binding belts.

Thirium level 55 percent.

“Wait, wait!” Person swept into his wavering line of sight, reaching directly into his chest and yanking out the siphoning tube.

Blue gushed over her hands, and Connor buckled against the table.

Thirium level 52 percent.

Person grabbed his detached arterial line, untying it and uttering a breathless apology before pulling out his thirium pump.

The shutdown timer had barely appeared before she was plugging the arterial line back in and shoving the pump back into place.

The edges of his vision were stained red and swimming in black and grey as the timer just as quickly shut off. His thirium levels stopped dropping and held at 52 percent.

“Connor!”

“Look out!”

More gunfire erupted, extremely close, and the feeling of a body curling over him as a human shield overwhelmed what few sensors were still holding on.

“Stay with me.” Person’s voice was close; he could feel her breath on his shoulder. “Stay awake.”

If she kept speaking, it was drowned out by Gavin swearing and a shower of sparks raining down from ruined overhead lights.

“Connor!” Hank.

“—nk…”

“Oh God…Chris, get him up.” Hank was a mess of grey and brown and red…red? Was Hank hit?

He felt Chris pull one of his arms across his shoulders, then he moved one arm behind Connor’s back and the other under his knees, lifting him off the table. Dizziness twisted through his head, and Connor hated the weak, pained sound that escaped him. His head lolled uselessly against Chris’s shoulder.

“I gotcha. Just hang in there. You’re doing great, man. Stay with us,” Chris repeated in a mantra.

Then they were moving.

Thirium levels holding.

“Do we have eyes on Ogden!?” Gavin called out.

“I don’t give A FUCK!” Tina screamed back, running to cover Chris’s back. “Connor first!”

Hank’s voice was close, on Chris’s other side. “Tina, go. Person, with me and Chris.”

“Yes, sir!”

Connor felt more than sensed the transition from being inside the building to outside. The dry, acrid, chemical air of the warehouse was replaced by the cool, humid night breeze of Detroit. He tried to open his eyes, but they wouldn’t cooperate. He tried to speak, but nothing came out. He tried to do anything, but his body wasn’t responding.

He’d lost too much thirium...but no klaxons were sounding and there was no shutdown timer on his visual…He just…couldn’t…

“Ben!” Hank sounded desperate. “Ben, PLEASE!”

“I’m here. I got it!” Ben’s voice appeared. “Put him down. There we go. Connor? Connor, can you open your eyes?”

He felt himself being lowered to grass and solid ground. The urge to obey Ben’s order was strong, and he damn near managed it, cracking his eyes open enough to barely recognize Ben kneeling beside him. Hank was on his other side. Person and Chris were standing behind him.

“Fuck, where’s his chest panel?” Hank asked, looking at Chris while Ben opened a pouch of thirium.

“We don’t know. There wasn’t time—“ Chris stated, out of breath.

“Cover that up,” Ben said off handedly. “Those biocomponents shouldn’t be exposed like that.”

Person hastily stripped off her jacket, handing it to…Wilson? Yeah, there was Wilson…He fluffed out Person’s jacket and used it to cover the exposed internal systems of Connor’s chest.

“Hey, there he is.” Wilson’s voice was more convincingly calm than Tina’s had been, but his smile wasn’t reaching his eyes. “We missed you, buddy.”

“Hank, take this. He needs to drink it if he can. If not, we’ll have to start a line.” Ben foisted a blue pouch at Hank. Then Ben was looking at Chris and Person. “Elevate his legs about a foot off the ground.”

Person and Chris dropped from Connor’s line of sight to obey, but he couldn’t feel his legs enough to confirm that that’s what they were doing. He could feel his thirium pump starting to hiccup in his chest.

“Connor.” Hank leaned into view, face white and eyes wide. “Hey, kiddo. Thirium. Drink it for me, okay? …Come on, son.”

He and Wilson shifted Connor’s upper body and head from the ground so he was leaning against Wilson. Hank held the opening of the pouch to his lips and helped him drink. His throat tried to close, and he choked a bit.

“Easy.” Wilson tilted Connor’s head back slightly to assist, letting his dead weight lean against him. “Little sips. Go slow. You’re safe.”

Hank looked like his jaw had locked, and he wordlessly held the pouch while Connor agonizingly swallowed thirium from it. With his head tilted back the way it was and too weak to control his neck, Connor could only stare up at Wilson with glassy eyes that still refused to focus all the way.

“Hi,” Wilson greeted with a warm smile, his hand rubbing Connor’s white plastic arm. “We got you. Yeah…Yeah, we’re gonna take care of you…Don’t you even worry about it, man…You’re safe.”

Hank tipped the last of the first pouch of thirium into Connor’s mouth, and Connor coughed through a weak swallow. Ben was quick to provide another pouch, then he was getting to his feet and waving down the incoming emergency technicians arriving on site.

“Over here!”

Emergency stasis mode initiating…

“Ha…nk…” Connor wheezed.

Connor tried to override it, but he couldn’t get a solid enough grasp on the command to make it go. His thoughts felt…slippery…

“Hey,” Hank said soothingly, grasping Connor’s cold plastic hand with his warm human one. His other hand rested on the plastic casing on the top of Connor’s head. “It’s okay. I know. We’ll see you when you wake up. You’re gonna be okay, son.”

But…he didn’t want…to…go…

Emergency stasis mode initiated…

..:--X--:..

By the time the dust started to clear, Fowler walked inside the warehouse to find four of Ogden’s men on their bellies, wrists bound behind their backs, and Gavin and Tina standing over them, guns still drawn.

“Perimeter is secure,” Fowler informed them.

“Connor?” The question burst out of Tina.

Fowler pointed his thumb over his shoulder. “Ambulance is taking him to the android care facility downtown. He’s stable. He’s hanging in there.”

Tina’s shoulders slumped in relief. Gavin glanced at her and then looked to Fowler.

“Confirmed seven hostiles in the building when we made contact. Got these four assholes here. Two dead ones back there. One unaccounted for.”

Fowler narrowed his eyes. “Let me guess…”

He spotted Harrison in full tactical gear, kneeling beside two of the bodies. He was a former EMT; his skills were no use to those two corpses.

“Harrison, go check on Anderson and Person,” Fowler ordered. “Anderson took a bullet to the arm, and I think Person got winged too.”

Harrison nodded and eagerly left the bodies, heading outside the warehouse again.

Gavin inclined his head back toward the warehouse interior, and Fowler lifted his eyebrows.

“You’re gonna want to see this, Cap. Ogden has a whole stash of fucked up shit they were storing here.”

“Had,” Fowler corrected, following the detective into the warehouse.

More cops took over to assist Tina with the four criminals.

“Until we get a positive ID on a body named Ogden, it’s ‘has’,” Gavin said darkly. “They had Connor over here. Looks like some kind of blood sucking vacuum.”

“Fucking Christ, Reed,” Fowler grimaced, stepping closer to look at the strange device.

Connor’s dark blue blood was filling most of the collection jars. It turned Fowler’s stomach.

“All right. Bag and tag it. You know the drill. Next time—“

“We got another body!” Blake called out from the corner of the warehouse.

Fowler looked slickly over at Gavin. “Sounds like ‘has’ just became ‘had’.” He called out to Blake. “Scan him for any ID that might be in our database.”

“S-Sir…” Blake stepped into view, eyes wide through the tactical mask. “It’s Harrison. He’s dead. A-And all his gear’s gone.”

Fowler and Gavin both froze, looked at each other, and then whipped around in the direction that ‘Harrison’ had gone to check on Hank and Person.

..:--X--:..

The full body tactical suit worked wonders. None of the other cops even looked up as ‘Harrison’ walked past them, away from the warehouse. They sauntered straight past Anderson and his little squad of blue stained cops, making their way toward the street.

This was a part of town that wasn’t frequented by people who stopped at crime scenes to take pictures. It had been a perfect little corner to do business, because the residents around here minded their own business.

They were going to miss this location.

But…greener grass and all that…

A bland little beige car rolled up to the curb just outside the police perimeter. ‘Harrison’ walked through the holographic tape and met the car just as it came to a stop. They tugged the passenger door open and slipped inside.

Ogden removed their helmet as the windows rolled up, just as two cops came running from the warehouse.

“STOP THAT CAR!”

Ogden winked through the tinted glass, and then the driver was punching the accelerator, carrying them away from the scene.

“See you around, boys.”

..:--X--:..

Sy#tem$ re-initi@lizin%…

…

…

…

Beg<n reb#ot?

…

Chapter Text

If it was possible, Hank hated android facilities even more than he hated human hospitals. They were so unnaturally quiet, despite the dozens of androids that he knew were moving around inside its walls. Facilities were hair-raisingly silent, and on top of that, they were pretty bare. At least, the ones that Hank had been inside were. Limited funding had had the facilities focused on buying repair equipment and the necessities over things like…décor, comfort, or any of those pesky things that humans demanded of their healing spaces.

The stark white walls and metal chairs in Connor’s room were a testament to that, and it made Hank’s heart hurt. It made his ass hurt too, and he groaned as he hauled himself out of the hard seat. It was a bit of an effort with only one good arm, the other secured in a sling as it healed from the bullet wound. He had thought that maybe after two days he would have worn the chair into something more comfortable, but that was definitely not the case.

“I know you guys don’t need things like cushions,” he grumbled, rubbing his backside as he took a turn around the room to get the blood flow back into his legs, “but I have a few notes on these damn chairs.”

Connor said nothing, just like all the nothing he’d said over the past two days since he’d been admitted here. He just lay there, flat on the only bed in the room, eyes closed and expression lax. His LED was still perpetually whirling yellow. The set of monitors mounted to the wall above the bed ran a dizzying list of numbers, charts, and other information about his status, but Hell if Hank could interpret more than a handful of them. He had figured out where to look for his partner’s stress level, his thirium pulse rate, percentage of completion of his repairs, and what was essentially his brain activity. At the moment, he was hovering around 92 percent on completed repairs, had been hovering there for the past few hours. That last eight percent must have been a doozy.

A clear plastic mask had been fixed over his mouth and nose, supplying what Hank had been told was a breathable chemical coolant. It assisted his ventilation program in keeping his internal systems cool, staving off the overheating that came along with letting his healing program run for 48 hours straight. His thirium-stained clothing had been changed out for a generic white t-shirt and scrub pants. It managed to simultaneously wash out and draw attention to the healthy color of his skin and hair. Other than that it all blended in with the white of the bed, the equipment monitoring him, the floor, the walls…If Hank never saw white again after they left here, it would be too soon.

There were only three splashes of color in the room at all, come to think of it. One was the navy blue pillow from home under Connor’s head that Hank had asked Chris to get for him, when Chris and Tina had moved Hank’s car for him from the crime scene to his driveway. There was a purple plastic bag of clothes that Chris had brought for him too. Then there was the table.

All of the android medical equipment and tools had been hastily removed from the small table to make room for the well wishing gifts that had come trickling in. A pair of bright “Get Well Soon” balloons was fixed to a weight shaped like a tiny blue anvil. There were two flower arrangements: a sunny yellow one from Hank’s neighbors, the Paulsons, and the other larger pink and green one was collectively from every android at the DPD, if the number of names on the card were any indication. There was a small assortment of cards, from some names that Hank recognized, like Jericho, and some he didn’t.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the chart tracking Connor’s thirium pulse rate kick up slightly, along with his stress level, and the foggy exhales on the plastic mask began to quicken.

“I got no strings to hold me down, to make me fret, or make me frown…”

Hank sighed and drew his cellphone out of his pocket for the third time in the past hour, answering and holding it up to his ear. “Hey, Connor. I’m still here, buddy.”

On the bed, Connor made no motion at all, and there was no response on the other end of the phone line.

Hank looked down at his feet, taking another turn around the room. “I’m here at the facility with you…Thinking about having Tina or somebody bring my chair from work here if you plan on sleeping much longer…These metal chairs are killing my ass, kid.”

He racked his brain for more to say, but after nearly a dozen of these calls over the past four hours, he was running out of upbeat things to tell him.

It was like clockwork: his pulse went up, his stress went up, his breathing quickened, and he called Hank. It was all the indications of a panic attack, and whatever part of his consciousness was active in this stasis mode was desperate enough to reach out to Hank for help every time. Hank didn’t know if Connor could hear him over the phone connection or if he could even hear him talking while standing right next to his bed. He kept talking anyway, just in case.

“They got your thirium level back up to one hundred percent yesterday,” he said, deciding to funnel statistics to him to fill the dead air. “Don’t worry if you can’t wake up right away. The technician…Jill…Jane…Jo…whatever, she said they induced a deeper level of stasis to take the strain off your systems, let you heal better…like a medically induced coma in humans, I guess. She said once your repairs hit 95 percent complete, the stasis would automatically lift and let you wake up on your own. You’re…You been at 92 for hours, son. Everything all right in there?”

The line disconnected, and Hank drew a deep breath, pocketing the phone again. He squinted at the monitors. Sure enough, everything slipped back down closer to a normal baseline.

“There you go,” he said quietly, reaching out a hand and gently ruffling Connor’s hair. “You’re okay, kiddo.”

A knock on the door had Hank looking over. The technicians didn’t bother knocking around here, so Hank curiously crossed over to the door and cracked it open.

“Ben? Chris?”

Standing in the hallway on the other side of the door, Chris held up a brown paper bag, and Ben smiled warmly. “We brought lunch.”

Hank felt a pang of relief at their familiar faces and stepped aside, opening the door fully. “Those are the magic words.”

“Woohoo,” Ben said dryly, walking in. He reached over and patted Connor’s ankle through the thin white blanket. “Good morning, Connor. Me and Chris are here to bother you and Hank for a while.”

Hank frowned and looked at the digital clock on the wall. It read 11:20. It was barely still morning.

Chris entered with a little more reserve. “Hey, Lieutenant,” he greeted. “How’s it going?”

“It’s going,” Hank conceded, rubbing his neck, where most of his coiled nerves had taken up residence for the past two days. “He still hasn’t come around yet, but they said that’s okay. What you got?”

“Burgers from that Chicken Feed place you like so much,” Ben said, as Chris opened the bag and rummaged around in it. “Hey, what’d you do to those androids in the hallway? There were like five of them just…trying to peek in through the window.”

Hank took the foil-wrapped burger that Chris handed to him. “Oh, that. Yeah, apparently they aren’t used to human visitors here. Guess most of the androids that come here for treatment come here BECAUSE of humans. Seeing humans here as friendlies is kind of a rare thing for them.”

“Not after this, I bet,” Ben chuckled, snatching up one of the metal chairs and sinking into it. “Tina and Wilson are going to be coming over on their lunch break too, if that’s okay.”

Hank reluctantly sat down as well, using the foot of the bed as a makeshift table to unwrap his meal. “That’s more than okay. Been fucking bored out of my mind all day.”

“I got no strings to hold me down, to make me fret, or make me frown…”

He set the burger down and pulled out his phone, while Ben and Chris dug into their own food.

“Hi, Connor. I’m right here.” He reached out a hand and gave Connor’s forearm a pat. “Ben and Chris are here too, just stopped in to say hi.”

“Hi,” Ben chirped.

Chris hastily chewed and swallowed before responding. “Hey, man.”

Hank looked at them gratefully and then eyed the monitors again. “You’re at…hey, 93 percent now. Good job, Connor. The techs ran a diagnostic a few hours ago and it came back clean. That reboot was a mess, but it did what it was supposed to do.”

The stats on the screen began to tick back down to normal.

Hank continued. “That means all memory files are intact, and all your fancy specialized software is okay. You’re gonna make a full recovery, I promise. We even got your chest plate back. Narcotics tried to impound it as evidence, but believe it or not GAVIN argued with them and got it released so the techs could reattach it. So don’t worry about that…”

The line disconnected, and Hank hung up, suddenly exhausted as he pocketed the phone again.

“Still radio silence?” Chris asked gently.

Hank grunted with a nod. “It’s happening more often the past few hours. I’m hoping that means he’s almost out of it.” He frowned. “Or it means his anxiety is getting worse…”

“I’m going to go with the first one until he wakes up and tells us otherwise,” Ben stated, reaching out a hand and giving Connor a similar pat on the arm as Hank had.

Hank ran a hand through his hair and then rubbed his face, not hungry all of a sudden. “Hey, I think I’m gonna pop out for a minute. They only put one bathroom on each floor of this place, and I didn’t…want to leave him alone…”

“Sure. We’ll be here with him.” Ben nodded and waved him off.

Hank heavily retreated from the room to the hallway, taking a deep, cleansing breath and releasing it slowly. He paused for a second and then began the trek to the bathroom on the opposite side of the floor.

The damage to Connor’s systems had been…meticulous had been the word used. The RK800 model had been designed with extremely dense and complex coding, and with that had come a damn near impenetrable layer of shielding to protect the delicately tuned software. No Joe Douchebag on the street could just ‘hack’ Connor’s mainframe. To do what Ogden had done, to essentially dig into Connor’s systems and disable only and exactly what he would have needed to save himself…it was a level of precision surgery that had left the technician assigned to Connor looking shaken. She had compared it to dropping a penny off a two story building and having that penny land in a shot glass. It had taken a team of three android technicians the full first day after his rescue to assist Connor’s healing program in undoing the damage. Entire lines of coding had been completely severed, and the period of critically low thirium volume, albeit brief, had slowed the healing process.

Fowler had said he had put Gavin as the primary on the case. He considered everybody else in the bullpen compromised due to their close relationships with Connor. Hank had never been grateful for Gavin’s assholery before, but if that was what kept Ogden’s case in their precinct so they could catch the bastard, then he’d consider himself grateful now. It had been two days since the DPD had located and raided Ogden’s little hideout, two days since they’d pulled Connor off that table with half his blood supply drained and his chest hanging open, two days since that motherfucker had eluded them.

Hank tried not to stew on it as he took care of business and then left the bathroom, starting the return trip to Connor’s room.

“I got no strings to hold me down, to make me fret, or make me frown…”

He tugged out his phone and answered once more. “Hi, Connor. I just stepped out, but Ben and Chris are—“

There was a crackle of static that may as well have been a scream in Hank’s ear.

“Ha…nk?”

Then Hank was running.

“I’m coming. I’m coming, son. Hang on, almost there.”

He crossed the floor in record time and practically shoulder charged the door to Connor’s room, skidding into it and shoving it open to get back into the room.

Ben was on his feet beside the bed, blocking Hank’s view. Chris was bent sideways at an unintentional angle, held there by Connor, who was sitting bolt upright and had both arms wrapped around Chris’s shoulders, clinging to him. Chris was forced to sit with his hip against the side of the bed, carefully moving both arms around the panicked android in return. Ben heard Hank’s chaotic entrance and stepped aside, giving him better access.

“He just—“

“I know.” Hank tossed his phone at his empty chair, hurrying to the other side of the bed. “Connor? Hey, it’s Hank. I’m right here, kid.”

Connor’s eyes were impossibly wide, the side of his head pressed against Chris’s shoulder as he tried to pull the other officer closer. Chris placed one hand on the back of Connor’s head gently, his other hand slowly moving up and down his back in comforting circles.

“Easy, man,” Chris was saying. “We gotcha. You’re okay.”

Connor was breathing heavily, and Hank could see his hand twisted tightly in the fabric of Chris’s jacket sleeve. His wide eyes made their way to Hank, and his pupils visibly reacted as he locked on. He looked like he was trying to speak, but the weak vocal sounds were muffled by the plastic coolant mask. His brow pinched in a panic, and his hand came away, swatting clumsily at the mask.

“Okay, okay,” Hank soothed, reaching for the mask. “Let me.”

He gently pulled the mask away from Connor’s face, undoing the elastic band that had been holding it in place. He removed the contraption and set it on the side table. Connor breathed in a few greedy pulls, like he’d been suffocating, and a full body shudder passed through him in relief.

“Better?” Hank prompted calmly, grasping his shoulder. “Yeah, I bet that’s better. Take it easy. You know where you are?”

Connor’s wide eyes continued to stare at him, but he got a small nod and a hoarse “Yes.”

God, it was one of the best sounds Hank had ever heard after two days of silence. His face split into a smile as he gave Connor’s shoulder a light squeeze. Chris looked at him over the top of Connor’s head, his face equally relieved at hearing Connor answer lucidly.

“How are you feeling?” Hank asked, desperate to hear it again. “Everything…humming?”

Connor trembled again, but it looked more like a response to a chill than nerves this time. “I’m…okay.”

“Okay, good…That’s good.” Hank nodded, working his thumb over Connor’s collar. “You want to let Chris go?”

Connor blinked owlishly at him, then slowly tracked his eyes to Chris’s shoulder, to his vise-like grip around Chris’s body.

“Y-yes…Sorry….”

Chris chuckled, lightly patting him on the back. “I can stay here all day if you want, dude. I don’t mind.”

“N-no, I’m…I’ll…” Connor willfully peeled his fingers off of Chris’s jacket. It seemed to take a lot of effort to loosen his hold on Chris, and Hank kept a steadying hand on him.

Ben leaned around behind Hank, fiddling with a knob on the bed. The head of it began to incline from its horizontal position, and Hank guided his partner to lying back against it in a semi-upright position. Connor went reluctantly, but it looked like he’d already burned through whatever strength he’d managed to regain from the extended stasis. Chris got back on his feet, subtly rubbing the spot on his arm that Connor had gripped too tightly.

“Welcome back,” Ben said with a grin, taking a few steps back to stand closer to the foot of the bed.

Connor looked at him tiredly and lifted one hand to cover his eyes. He just as quickly lowered it and zeroed in on Hank, on his arm in a sling.

“It’s fine,” Hank assured quickly. “I’m fine. Everybody else is fine too. We’ve all just been worried about you.”

On the overhead monitors, Connor’s stress level slowly dipped, then immediately spiked.

“Ogden,” he blurted. “Did you catch—“

“Don’t worry about that.” Hank shook his head.

“Did you catch—“

“Christ, Connor, you just woke up. That shouldn’t be…” He trailed off, sighed, and dropped his hand from Connor’s shoulder to his forearm. “No, son. Little bastard slipped away. We’ll get him though. He’s not gonna ever get near you again. I promise.”

Connor’s eyes slid away, dropping to stare at the skin over his hand. Something resembling a hiccup shuddered across his shoulders, and he closed his hand into a fist, then relaxed it.

“You can’t promise that.“ His voice was small.

“I’m promising that.” Hank pointed at him. “The whole damn precinct is promising that.”

“Damn straight,” Ben added.

There was a knock on the door, and Connor flinched.

Chris looked over to the door. “That’s probably Tina and Wilson. You want me to tell them to come back later? And me and Ben can split if you need—“

“No,” Connor quickly cut in. “I don’t want…I mean, I’d rather…”

I don’t want to be alone. Hank filled in the gaps and nodded to Chris.

“Might as well let those two other boneheads in.”

Chris paused a beat, then crossed over to the door, opening it slowly. He poked his head out and said something quietly to the new visitors, but Connor was too distracted by calming his own breathing to notice. It only lasted for a second, then Chris was opening the door completely to let them in.

Tina entered in a jerky way that said she wanted to run but was holding herself back. Wilson stepped in after her, closing the door behind him and looking from Connor to Hank.

“Hey, Lieutenant,” he greeted quietly.

“Connor!” Tina was wearing a nervous smile and a jittery voice as she forced herself to walk slowly to the side of the bed. “Hey, bud. God, have we been missing you.”

Connor looked momentarily overwhelmed by her nervous energy but he quickly recovered his composure. “I…You have?”

“Of course.” Tina wrapped her foot around the closest metal chair, dragging it to the foot of the bed and plopping down onto it. “I mean, I guess we missed Hank too.” She flashed Hank a wink.

Hank deadpanned. “Yeah, I’m sure.”

Wilson stepped up behind Tina, lifting up the small green wrapped box that he’d carried in. “We brought another thing to add to your pile.” He nodded toward the table of well wishing gifts. “Guy named Oliver Stevens dropped it off. Said it was from him and Bonny.”

Connor stared at the gift, then tracked Wilson’s nod over to the colorful table. His eyes visibly widened at the sight, and he looked lost for words.

“Those…That’s all for me?” he sounded genuinely perplexed.

Wilson set the box on the table, and Ben reached up, poking one of the balloons to make it sway.

“Yeah, they’re all for you,” Ben confirmed.

“And it’s weirding out all the techs here,” Hank chuckled.

Connor’s gaze drifted in that way that told Hank that he was processing something.

“Two days…” Connor murmured, then looked at Hank. “You haven’t left this place in two days?” Before Hank could figure out what his tone was, Connor was straightening. “Sumo—“

“Taken care of.” Ben held up a volunteering hand. “Got slobber stained clothes to prove it.”

Hank nodded his head in the others’ direction. “They’ve been helping out so I could stay here with you until you woke up.” He looked directly at the other officers. “And I can’t thank them enough for that.”

Connor stared at him for a long moment. Then his eyes narrowed slightly. “You called them boneheads.”

Tina squawked, and Ben laughed, lifting a hand to his mouth. Hank looked at Connor in betrayal, and he was rewarded with a very small playful smile for it. Hank grinned despite the others.

“You asshole,” he snorted, lightly shoving Connor’s shoulder in retaliation.

Chris shook his head, hands on his hips as he glanced at the clock. “Well, two of these boneheads probably need to get back to the office. Lunch hour is up.”

Ben let out a juvenile whine. “Fowler won’t care. We’re visiting an officer in the hospital.”

Nevertheless, he started picking up the lunch remnants and throwing them away in preparation to leave. As they did so, the door clicked open, and Person stepped in. She had been visiting so often the past two days that she’d given up knocking just like the technicians. She had a slight limp from where the bullet had grazed her thigh, but she made it a full step inside the room before she looked up from her phone and realized how crowded the room was.

“Wh—“ She glanced around at them all and then spotted Connor: upright and awake. “Holy shit!”

Holy shit was right. Hank had never seen Person’s face actually emote before. It was terrifying even if it was joy on her face.

She slung off the drawstring bag from her shoulder and limped over. “Connor!”

Connor managed another smile, though it was drawn with concern. “You’re injured…” It was his turn to set betrayed eyes on Hank. “You said everyone was all right.”

“And we are!” Hank argued. “Person, tell him you’re all right.”

“I’m all right,” she immediately assured. “It’s a graze. I’m just on desk duty for a week.”

Connor didn’t look comforted by that. He glanced at Hank, at Person, then to his hands in his lap. “You were both injured because of me…You were all in danger because—“

Wilson reached over Tina’s shoulder and tapped a finger against Connor’s leg. “Hey, stop that. We knew what we signed up for when we went after you.”

“And we’d do it again!” Tina pumped a fist. “You’re one of us. Sorry, but you’re stuck with us now.”

Ben folded his arms. “Sorry? We are a delight. Don’t apologize for that.”

Chris laughed and clapped a hand on Ben’s shoulder. “And we can delightfully get back to work.”

Ben rolled his eyes, and Chris winked at Connor.

“Good to see you up and going, Connor. Heal up and don’t stay away long. The DPD would fall apart without you.”

“I highly doubt that,” Connor countered. “But…thank you. I will.”

His LED finally flickered from yellow to a calmer blue, and Hank let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding for two days.

Ben gave Connor a casual salute and checked his elbow against Hank’s good side as he passed by. “Take care of him, Hank, or you’ll have a whole precinct after you.”

Hank snorted and waved him off. “Yeah, I know. Get out of here.”

As Ben and Chris left, Tina held up her phone.

“Gavin sends his own well wishes too!”

“He does?” Hank lifted an eyebrow.

Tina frowned. “Well, I texted him to let him know how Connor was doing, and he replied with ‘whatever’ and a bacon emoji…I think he hit the wrong button, but a response at all means he read the text at least.”

Wilson snickered into his fist.

Hank finally started to feel his appetite come back now that the atmosphere of the room had begun to settle, and he reached for the room temperature burger still resting at the foot of the bed. Some of the bread was soggy from the grease, and Tina visibly recoiled from the strong smell of mustard. Hank didn’t give a shit. He was just hungry, and this stupid facility didn’t have vending machines.

Person picked up her abandoned bag, which clearly had something in it, but she dropped it over by the table without opening it. While Hank munched on the burger, Tina went into story mode, regaling Connor of what he’d missed over the past two days. Luckily, she stuck to the light hearted office shenanigans and steered clear of the seedier topics that might have upset Connor. The kid still needed to be taking it easy, despite the hundred percent repair stat on the monitor and the steady life sign readings.

Connor listened politely, despite the obvious exhaustion creeping across his frame from the events of the past hour. Wilson must have picked up on it too, because soon enough he was guiding Tina to the end of her last story.

“Hey, it’s about time we got back to it,” he prompted. “Crime isn’t gonna stop itself with two of our best out of commission like this.”

Hank sat back in his seat and folded his arms. “Nobody likes a kiss ass, Wilson.”

Wilson snorted and shrugged. Connor blinked away his fatigue.

“I don’t mind the compliments,” he said.

Wilson pointed at him in validation. “You’re awesome.”

Connor grinned, and Wilson kept going as Tina stood from her seat to leave.

“You’re a great detective. You’re handsome too!”

“Okay.” Tina patted Wilson’s arm. “That’s enough from the Connor Fan Club.”

She stepped over to Connor and leaned in, giving him gentle hug. “Okay if we swing by tomorrow and see you again?”

Connor reached up and patted her hand, leaning into the contact. “Yes.”

“Good.” She pressed her lips to the top of his head and popped back with a loud “Mwah!”

Wilson held the door open for her, looking at Connor. “I’m not kissing you, but hey, good to see you, man. Get some rest.”

“Thank you,” Connor said sincerely.

The other two officers left, and Hank threw away the burger wrappings.

“All right, Person, show us,” he challenged.

Person, idling by the table, perked up at being addressed. “I beg your pardon?”

Hank nodded toward her bag. “What’s in there?”

Connor blinked, looking from Hank to Person. She frowned but then sighed, obliging him. She picked up the bag and loosened the drawstrings, pulling out a wad of dark fabric.

“I didn’t know about android facilities, but human hospitals get cold sometimes…” She looked sheepishly at Connor. “I know you hate cold…so…I just figured…here.”

She foisted the dark ball at him, and Connor took it. Perplexed, he unfolded it and held it up.

Hank immediately recognized it. It was a dark blue hoodie with the DPD seal stamped in yellow across the front. It was a standard issue sweater than every cop in the precinct coveted for being warm and soft and fluffy in all the right ways on all the bad days. Yet, Hank knew that Connor had never dared to take or even ask for one, like it was a rite of passage that he hadn’t earned…the little shit.

Connor stared at the yellow print, tracing a finger around the top of the seal. “I…Thank you, L—Person.”

Hank caught that slip, and he sat up a little straighter. “L what?”

Person narrowed her eyes. “L for lieutenant. He’s delirious and thinks I’m a lieutenant.”

“No.” Hank pointed at her. “He knows your first name. Your first name starts with an L, doesn’t it?!”

“You’re mistaken, sir.”

Connor happily ignored them, pulling the hoodie over his head and fumbling with getting his weakened arms into the sleeves.

“Just tell me!” Hank demanded. “That’s an order.”

“No,” Person crooned, absently reaching over and helping Connor with the sleeves.

“That’s insubordination,” Hank growled. “I’m your superior officer.”

“You’re on medical leave,” Person argued.

“Go to Hell.” Hank leaned back, folding his arms and trying to look irritated. He turned his eyes back to Connor.

Connor looked pleased with the fit of the hoodie, at the yellow lettering across his chest and the soft material wrapped around him. Hank didn’t care what anybody said; androids did in fact enjoy comfortable things.

Connor was also starting to look unquestionably exhausted, and Person gathered up her empty bag, tugging on the hood that Connor hadn’t had the energy to pull from his head.

“You should sleep,” she advised.

“Slept for two days,” he mumbled.

“No, you were in a coma for two days,” she countered.

Connor didn’t argue further, probably too worn out to do so. Person quietly stepped away as he started to sink back into the pillow, and Hank stood, walking with her to the door.

“Thanks for that,” he said genuinely. “Lilly?”

Person rolled her eyes and started down the hallway. “Goodbye, Lieutenant.”

“Lorraine? Leanne? Come on!”

But she was gone, and Hank huffed, closing the door and returning to his chair. Connor already looked like he’d fallen into rest mode, and Hank quietly tried to get situated in that horrid chair.

“Hank?”

“Here.”

Connor laboriously opened his eyes to half mast, finding Hank. “Stay?”

“Course I’m staying,” Hank promised. “You couldn’t make me leave, son.”

Connor gave a small nod, and his eyes grew thoughtful. “They actually came.”

“Of course they did, you big goof. They were all worried—“

“No…They actually came…to the warehouse…got me…”

“Kid…” Hank’s heart cracked in his chest. “We’ve always got your back, you know that, right?”

“I do…now.” He was fading fast, and part of Hank selfishly wanted him to stay awake.

Instead, he pulled out his phone, preparing to login to his work email to distract himself from the coming silence.

“Get some sleep, Connor. I’ll be here when you wake up.”

Connor didn’t say anything after that, and Hank glanced over to see that his eyes were closed, his LED a serene blue.

The quiet that settled over the room after that was much lighter, more comfortable than the past few days, and it made Hank breathe a little easier. This wasn’t over, not by a long shot, but Connor was well on his way to recovery, and that was all Hank cared about right now.

One of the emails sitting in Hank’s inbox was an informational notice from Narcotics about the increase in the number of cases of Ghost coming in. Hank stared at it for a hard second.

Get Connor back on his feet. That was priority one. After that? The DPD was going hunting.