Chapter Text
Elijah Kamski had never truly concerned himself with the workings of Cyberlife after his departure from the company. The decision had not been impulsive, or heated; he knew from the start he wasn't in it for the business side of things and once the company had gotten big enough his departure was simply a countdown as to when the board would stop letting him innovate. The RK model had been a gift, one of a kind, a decision maker. RK200, Markus, an idea as a solution to a friend. He hadn't known what would become of Carl after the accident, whether he would retain his mental state or fall into a depression, and he wanted the android to be able to make decisions under the situation that it's companion could not rationally do so.
And so, he supposes, he shouldn't be surprised that the most easily monetisable route for decision making is police work. Detective work, eventually, it's rather fascinating the route they've chosen to go, judging by the RK800 model that arrives at his house out of the blue with questions. And, just as RK200 had been a decision maker, so is this one. Only not as decisive, so it would seem, from it's unwillingness to shoot one of his RT600s. Apparently the designers had kept in his Zen garden backdoor, along with the internal monologue of Amanda as the face of rational decision making, should the androids retain problems their logical reasoning would be unable to resolve. That wasn't what Amanda was meant to be, but he figured that's what they would make her into; a relay for their instructions instead of someone to shoot ideas at.
RK800 hadn't been a failure, he could see problems in it, but it was a fairly good attempt by whatever scientists Cyberlife was now hiring for their supposed innovation. It's just that he knows he's far, far better than them still. More skilled at programming the finer tuned parts of an AI, it's growth, the feedback and learning processes. Chloe is testament to that, but Chloe was still some time ago. He's sure he can do all sorts of other things now, and maybe it's just a tiny hint of contempt that has him in his workshop with the publicly available specs for the RK800 model pulled up on his screen.
He changes the face, a little bit, not too much. Tilts the jawline, raises the framework for the cheekbones, lowers the lid of the eye to look more arrogant and less sweet puppy dog, pigments the skin tone slightly, and adjusts the jaw, because he has his own plans for it. Elijah's years of reclusiveness had led to him exploring what other countries might be doing with their robotics, and he had discovered a new world in adaptations that didn't even attempt to pass as human, and so, he wants to add in those components as well. It's a leisure challenge, but he feels like an artist again, recreating a popular work in their own rendition, adding in details of their own whims and fancy. He wonders what advice Carl might give him, imagines his fond smile and attentive curiosity. It's no small part in habit that he explains what he's doing to the robot he's working on, no matter that they can't hear him yet, and even when they can, they don't understand it yet.
It takes him longer than he'd spent on RK200, but he supposes that's to be expected for a robot with a baseline detective objective; no matter that he isn't even sure the police force will accept his gift. He knows someone who will. He spends hours digging through difficult cases, accessing some of RK800's memories as well from before the revolution for the sake of having additional input. It's a good thing Cyberlife never bothered to shut out his back doors. He even picks up some cold case files, and a variety of detective television shows that he'd seen in his childhood. The last phase of designing is just frivolity, listening to old music and adding in whatever features piqued his fancy from various international robot articles, scientists he admires, pieces he just thinks look cool. It's a pet project after all, he has nobody to oppose him.
The day he decides to open the android's eyes, he sets it on a chair, and seats himself on a table, legs crossed. "RK900, initiate startup," he commands, once he's sure his android has enough power to start up. He blinks, the fibre optics of his eyelashes flickering the blue of thirium as he looks up at Elijah.
"They match your eyes," he remarks, smiling down at the android as he calculates the basic information. Location, layout of the building, relative height, outside temperature. "It's getting rather warm, isn't it?" He looks out the window, swinging his legs, something in his chest clenching at having finished the project. He's always anxious to see the results, and always sad to be finished with the process. When he was younger, he'd hold his breath, never sure if he'd gotten it right or not, never sure if the android or the component would work as he designed it, but now that uncertainty has faded with a certain sureness that comes with constant success and practice. He likes his new version, his RK900, he's almost tempted to keep it when it responds with, "Yes, it is. Currently 35°C, however, humidity is not high enough to warrant your discomfort, Elijah."
He turns, faster than he'd meant to, and the RK900 smiles at him, a minute twitch of lips that reveals the seam at the side of his mouth. "You are not fond of the rain, are you?"
"No," he tilts his head, his own lips echoing the smile. "You heard me?"
"The words remained in my memory, and were not purged from my cache by the time you programmed the understanding of language in me," he remains seated, eyes roaming over Elijah's form like he's piecing together a puzzle, and Elijah rests back on his palms, letting him look. Waiting for the conclusions.
The LED on the side of his face spins blue, spins yellow, spins blue again, and he blinks brighter than he had earlier. "You should eat, it has been more than sixteen hours since your last meal."
"That tends to happen when you sleep where you work," Elijah chuckles, offering his hand to the android, more pleased than he should be when it's taken. When he feels the synthetic fingers drag over his, touching and registering the sensation of touch with an impassive but calm expression.
"Would you like coffee, Elijah?"
"Yes, I suppose I would," he remembers again, being a teenager, enough coffee in his body to replace his blood, caffeine rattling his brain for new solutions. Now it's just a pleasure drink, for the occasional late night.
RK900 drops his knuckles, fingers so light they had been ghosting, and stands up. Elijah is tempted to lay down on the desk, he's sure 900 will play nice with the Chloes, and even more sure he knows where the kitchen is. He doesn't count the minutes, but 900 is back sooner than he would have been, steaming mug of coffee in hand. And this time, he chooses to sit on the desk with Elijah, body angled in a way that he would describe as friendly if 900 had been human. As is, it's only an imitation.
"Are you a deviant?" He asks, because he has to, because Elijah Kamski is nothing if not a perfectionist.
"Did you make me to be?" 900 returns, gaze never faltering, and Elijah is taken with him immediately. He reaches his hand out, trailing fingertips over the artificial skin of 900's face, watching his LED spin as he analyses the motion. It doesn't show on his face.
"Yes, I suppose I did," He mumbles, setting the coffee mug down within reach but far enough, thumbing over the seam of his android's mouth. He knows every seam, every line, every angle of 900's body, and there's a moment where he wants to keep him so badly he tenses up.
"Elijah?"
"Mm?"
"You're tense," he observes, innocently, a nudge to get him to reveal his thoughts. The kind of nudge he's only once bought into, but the attempt makes his smile fond.
"So I am."
900 explores his house, his garden, whatever catches his fancy, and yet every night he returns to Elijah's workshop and powers down; something he hadn't expected. But he didn't build 900 to be a robot, so he asks, what it is that's keeping him here and the answer he gets is, "Because I have no desire to leave."
And Elijah believes that. He wouldn't. He's curious, of course he is, but it's not a curiosity strong enough to be human, to make him want to leave and find his own way. He will, eventually, of that he has no doubt, but Elijah Kamski the reclusive genius isn't the person to pull him in the direction of humanity. He much prefers robots with their robotic quirks, to an absolute imitation of a human.
RK900 learns to read and write immediately, but then he learns the piano, how to draw, what Elijah does in his free time. He's a novice at composition, because creativity is a human trait that takes far too long and far too much input to learn right away. Still, he tries his hand at painting, at drawing, at the analysis of styles and types and one day he paints a canvas in something he's never seen before and Elijah's head spins with the weight of success. Deviant. Fully, entirely deviant.
"What does it mean?" He looks worried, and Elijah's brow furrows as he leans his head against 900's stiffened shoulder.
"It means you're a deviant," he tries to make it simple, reduce it to just a fact, but 900's gaze doesn't move an inch from the canvas he's laid out in front of him in the living room.
"I always was," comes the whispered answer, like he isn't sure anymore, and perhaps the fault is Elijah's for needing proof.
The painting is a bird, in a large cage with an open door, twig in it's mouth and wings tucked in nicely.
"I don't know, 900," he sighs, trying to remember what Carl told him about painting, about analysing brush strokes and themes, "Are you the bird?"
"You are the bird," 900 sounds sincere, and he supposes the bird does have his eyes.
"Why are you worried?" He asks, tense, voice raising an octave, and when Elijah looks up the concern in the eyes that meet his is too real to be android, too beautiful in it's dim glow to be human.
"Can you learn to show less on your face?" Elijah blurts out, poison on his tongue, and 900 looks taken aback.
"Do you dislike it?"
"No, no, don't think that," He takes a second, a heartbeat, and rephrases, "I could never dislike you, 900."
"Then why do I need to be less expressive?"
"Everybody won't be like me."
900 stiffens again. It's a very human habit that he probably picked up from seeing Elijah do it when he'd just been activated. "Then I don't have to be around everybody," 900 sounds desperate, and Elijah squeezes his hand, "Not everybody, but somebody." He can't forget that he built RK900 with a purpose, and this waiting period is only the stationary zone as the government works around laws and political nonsense he doesn't quite care for. He has his ways of knowing RK800's involvement with the police force is under suspension, and he's waiting for laws to settle and for the now-predecessor to resume his job.
"I will learn," 900 promises, closing his eyes. He's doting on this android, he knows that, but having something so advanced wrapped around your finger is a kind of joy Elijah wants to have for as long as he can, a trust he wants to keep for as long as he can hold it. And he is easy, he's hardly a test of the phenomenal skill this android possesses; to keep him here would be such a monumental waste. There's a hundred applications more warranting of this advanced machine's intelligence than brewing coffee in Elijah's kitchen, and a hundred reasons Elijah tells himself that RK900 can't stay with him.
Chloe dotes on 900 as well. One of them, anyway, becomes his communication partner, the sounding board in the physical world that Amanda should be in his Zen garden. Or rather, 900 describes her as similar to Chloe."She's kind," he says, "She understands what I'm saying, and she offers valuable input to any information that might confuse me. She's like what you would call a friend, perhaps a mentor."
And that is exactly it.
When the laws have started to finalise, Elijah starts giving him case files. Old ones, unimportant ones, ones he just happens to obtain. 900 studies them from where he is, bouncing questions about details he doesn't have against Elijah and Chloe and Amanda, and posits a probable solution along with a percentage rate of his accuracy. He's almost always right, as Elijah will discover in the online news reports days later. He's intuitive, brilliant, and his reasoning is impeccable. The one case he'd been wrong had been an anomaly, an outlier case, unsolved for too long for it to matter anymore, and then all of a sudden closed without much fanfare. None of them understand it, but it adds to 900's experience to recognise anomalies do happen. Elijah himself is one, though not of the criminal kind.
"Am I to work in the department?" he asks, one evening, pausing mid song and lifting his fingers from the porcelain keys of the piano. Elijah tugs his blanket closer around his shoulders, and looks up at 900. He searches, but there's nothing in those eyes for him to discern information from, nothing in his face to gauge what answer he might like to hear, what answer will make him smile with that android-like fondness and comment something he'd heard on a tv show.
"Do you want to?" It's only fair to ask.
"That is what you made me for."
"But do you want to?"
900 only smiles, resuming the song from the moment he'd stopped playing. His smile is subtler now, and though Elijah misses those wider smiles, he knows it's for the best to have him be more unreadable. He can always asking him to stop if there comes a time it doesn't matter.
"Who are you calling, Elijah?"
"Someone," he has to remember to be as vague as possible, because he's always been like that, because it would actually be suspicious if he wasn't. 900 tries not to eavesdrop, but he doesn't have to, all that Elijah says into the receiver is, "I'd like you over next weekend," and then he hangs up, and turns a sadder smile towards 900 than he's ever seen before causing his android's LED to spin red, the corresponding light casting over his cheeks.
"It's a shame I'm going to hand you off to my brother," he closes his eyes and thinks of Markus, and then he opens them to 900s waiting smile.