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09:30 pm
Connor had been with Hank for the majority of the day. They had investigated a few deviant reports, but nothing of note. He sat in the passenger seat next to Hank, who had loud as hell heavy metal blasting through the speakers. They were headed for the Lieutenant’s after-work spot, Jimmy’s.
“I had spoken to the medical examiner, Ms. Berkowitz, today,” Connor said, taking the keychain out of his pocket.
Hank chuckled. “Ain’t she a character? She’s the worst woman I’ve met in my life, but she’s fun to hang out with wasted.”
Connor had a questioned look on his face. “She gets intoxicated?”
“Oh, yeah,” Hank nodded, “She drinks like she has no liver.” He sighed for a second, keeping his eyes firmly on the road. “I can’t help but find it sad sometimes. Look, I drink all the time, but that’s because I’ve lived through more than half my goddamn life. I don’t want to impose. I just don’t think there’s not enough time left in that girl.”
Connor looked down at the keychain he had given her. “She wanted me to give you this.”
Hank stopped at a red light, looking at the keychain. “Would ya look at that? She gave it back. Maybe she’ll give back the 50 dollars she fucking owes me.” He quickly put the chain back with the rest of his keys as the light changed back to green.
Connor still had a lot of questions about her. He remembered analyzing her. He looked down at her hand, seeing lithium glass than any proper bone structure. The more and more he thought about it. The more he couldn’t seem to understand. That it might be a prosthetic. He felt a strong inclination to know more about her.
“Connor, what the hell’s wrong with you?” Hank said, giving Connor the ol’ side-eye. “You look like you’re constipated or something.”
“What else do you know about Ms. Berkowitz?” Connor asked.
“Why do you wanna know more about that dingbat? She’s just a miserable middle-aged woman.” Hank muttered.
“I have reason to believe that she’s an older android, then a human.” Just Connor said that Hank made a mean push on the brake, parking just outside of Jimmy’s.
Hank slowly turned his head towards Connor. “W-What?”
“I scanned her. She has no organic matter in her system.” Connor said. His face remained stern. “She had been made with lithium glass. Most new androids are made with more aluminum than glass, due to their durability.”
“What’s her MO? When did her deviancy start?” Hank asked.
“I’m not sure. If I take another scan, I could reveal the model and serial number, but-” Connor was cut off when Hank pulled on his jacket sleeve.
“Get down, she’s right there.” He hushed.
Connor peaked up slightly from the dashboard. Carol was prancing around in heels as well as her brown hair was down. Her intoxication levels were high. That’s one of the things he couldn’t seem to understand. How was she able to ingest alcohol or coffee if she was an android? While they could “eat”, it could clog up their systems and would need to be removed externally. A blonde man came up to her, smiling in seemingly flirtatious behavior. Carol didn’t seem to reciprocate in the slightest. Soon, the blonde started getting aggressive, forcibly kissing her.
Connor felt an urge in his system. “Connor stop-” Hank protested, but Connor was already out of the car. He pushed the blonde out of the way. While his movements were fluid, he didn’t understand why he was defending her.
“What the fuck?! Why’d you push me away from my girlfriend?!” The blonde yelled.
Connor looked over at Carol. She looked, barely alive. Blue was around her lips like she couldn’t breathe. Her knees hit the ground. Her half-lidded green eyes could make out a silhouette of a tall man with brown eyes.
“I don’t believe she’s your girlfriend,” Connor said, glaring over at the man.
“What? Come on, Carol. We’re leaving.” He grabbed her arm hard. There was a slight blue bruising around her wrist.
“N-no.” She uttered out. Her voice seemed raspy and staticy. She must’ve been throwing up before this.
Connor grabbed the man by the collar and pinned him against the wall. “You don’t like it as much either.” He pushed away from the man. “Leave her alone.”
She coughed, slight blue leaked out of her mouth. “S-shit.” She shivered. “C-connor?”
He looked over at her damaged state. He let go of the man and kneeled to her level. Once he got much closer to her, her inhuman differences seemed apparent to him. The only difference between them was Carol’s human brain. It was the only living thing that was left in her. A solid pink brain in a glass container.
She coughed up bits of blue. Her turtleneck was scuffed, slightly, revealing the blue LED placed in her neck. “Help m-me, please,” Carol begged.
Connor felt like he was given a choice. He could help save her, and then bring her in for questioning later. Or, he could leave her there on the pavement, leave her to die along with the rest of the deviants before her. It was a dangerous decision on his end. Saving her could cause more software instability, but he’d be saving the life of someone who wanted to end it. Even when she had purposely chewed him out, he reached out his hand, helping her up to meet his level.
“You’re gonna be alright,” Connor said. His russet brown eyes were calming. Carol felt safe for the first time in a long time. He walked her over to the car, giving her a spot to rest in the back.
Hank sighed, getting up from under the wheel. “You owe us.” He grumbled over to her in the backseat.
“Uh-huh, sure.” She mumbled. She was battling the urge to just throw up all of her bio components, just to spike Hank.
“You’re pretty fucking lucky that Connor saved your ass,” Hank said, glaring at her from the driver’s seat. “You must be batshit insane getting drunk like that. If I had known you were a fucking android-”
“You’d turn me in, right?” Carol muttered. “And what makes you think I won’t get out of this? I can just move to another fucking town. I’ll leave the country if I have to.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Connor said, finally. “Besides, I have the right to handcuff you to the seat.”
Carol scoffed. “I can’t believe this. Ten years never caught. What’s gonna happen to me?”
Connor’s LED began to flicker again. “I do not know. You’re technically not a deviant because you have a human brain, but you are physically an android. It’s a very strange predicament.”
“That’s one way to put it.” She slumped back in the back seat. Her body felt like it was on fire.
“I think what we should do is take you back home. I don’t want that blue shit all over my fucking seats.” Hank grumbled.
After a long and awkward car ride, they finally arrived at Carol’s apartment downtown. Connor carefully helped Carol up to the stairs. It was an extremely underdeveloped part of Detroit. The apartment was damp and windy. She moved away from Connor’s hands, falling slightly to the ground.
Hank looked around the apartment. “Holy shit,” He said, walking over to her kitchen. The windows looked broken and bashed. The entire thing looked abandoned. Horrible reaching came from the bathroom.
There was a strange coolant smell that emanated as Carol continued to get the alcohol out of her system. Connor stood by monitoring her slightly. Now he could determine that she wasn’t a deviant, he was somewhat drawn to her system.
Her toilet seemed to be painted a fluorescent blue. She glitched and twitched against the bathroom floor. “G-goddamn it.” She groaned.
“You’re losing thirium,” Connor said, a slight worry in his voice. His LED switched again. He didn’t understand why he was so concerned.
Carol glared. “I-I got a few tanks of it. I’ll be fine.”
“You’re going to die if you keep going on like this. I will force you to take care of yourself if you don’t let me help you.” It was Connor’s turn to glare back. Her stubbornness was almost as bad as Hank’s.
She gulped. “Fine.” She slowly got up off the gross floor and headed into the bedroom with Connor following shortly behind. The bedroom seemed to be the cleanest out of the entire apartment. Carol crawled into the neatly made bed, feeling her system shutting down for the night.
Hank looked through the kitchen. Two tanks of thirium just laying on top of each other. “I’m surprised she didn’t caught sooner,” He mumbled to himself.
Carol stared up at her ceiling with an IV full of thirium in her arm. “Connor?” She called to him, quietly.
He nodded in response.
“Why did you help me?” She asked.
Connor looked over at her for a moment. He thought he had an answer, but nothing came out. He stood there, silently thinking.
“I don’t know.” He said, finally. “I just had to. You didn’t look too good. I saw you in pain. I had noticed how that man put his hands on you. It’s not right.” He twitched a little. He began to feel more instability in his software.
“You’re the only person who’s ever done that for me.” Carol felt a small tear run down her cheek as she began to close her pale green eyes. “Thank …. you, Conn-” was the last thing she said, before totally falling into a simulated sleep state.
Connor smiled one last time, before getting the Lieutenant from the kitchen.