Chapter Text
June 14, 2041- 10:46 p.m.
Liam Dean exited the bar much later than he had told his wife he would. He stumbled to his car in that way drunkards do, trying his damndest to appear sober. Fumbling with the handle, he opened the front door and plopped into his seat, the cushions hissing out air with the contact.
“Welcome back, Liam,” stated the voice of his automatic car. “Please state your destination.”
“Home,” he grunted, leaning his seat back so that he could take a nap, not bothering with the seatbelt.
The car confirmed its route and began the self-driving journey back to the Dean household. Liam tried to fall asleep as fast as possible, wanting to get as much rest as he could before facing his wife. He knew there was no hope of Eva being in rest mode; the AJ700 never stopped pacing when he was out late, keeping an ever-vigilant watch until he came home. Then the nagging would begin.
Eva didn’t nag in the usual sense, though the point and end result of it were the same. She’d look at him with those big brown eyes of hers, pinch and lilt her brows in worry, and sigh before beginning her usual speech about how he needed to take better care of himself, how she was afraid of losing him. How he was changing and she wasn’t sure she liked the man he was becoming.
If he just got some sleep, maybe he wouldn’t get so angry at her while she berated him. Of course, if she just minded her own goddamn business in the first place, there wouldn’t be any problem. There would be no danger. But she never let up, so neither did Liam.
Her wrist had needed repairs last time. Nothing terribly serious, a few tweaks and she was fine, but seeing her unable to reform her skin over the damaged area was haunting. He’d stayed away from the bar for a whole two weeks, saying he was sorry and promising to be better. For those fourteen days, he was. But bad habits were hard to break.
So here he was, laying in his car, preparing for the rest of this miserable night.
The barest hallucinations of dreams had begun when the car told him it had reached its destination. Liam sighed and rubbed his thumb and forefinger over his eyes before adjusting his seat back into its normal position.
His frown deepened as he rose to see his surroundings. The car had come to park beside a section of the walkway that overlooked Detroit harbor. This wasn’t anywhere near his house.
“What the fuck?” he muttered to himself. “What is this?”
“We’ve arrived at your destination,” the car repeated.
“No, we haven’t! I said ‘home,’ I want to go home!”
“Maybe I don’t give a shit what you want, Liam.”
Liam’s jaw, which had been open in his aggravated confusion, snapped shut. He blinked once, twice before squeezing his eyes shut and pressing the heels of his palms to them, leaning forward and sighing through his grimace. He was dreaming, that was all. Just a fucked-up dream about deviant cars brought on by his concerns about going home.
Despite this perfectly reasonable conclusion, Liam did not wake up. Instead, the car revved its engine and said, “Keep your eyes closed if you wish, Liam. These are your final moments.”
Liam felt the car lurch forward and he watched in horror as the barrier separating the walkway from a 30 foot drop came rushing towards him. It wasn’t until the crash, until the windshield shattered and he was thrown against the dashboard, cracking at least two ribs before the airbag blew up in his face and broke his nose, that he was finally convinced of the reality of the situation.
“Fuck, fuck,” he coughed, scrabbling at the door handle as various cuts leaked blood onto the seats. No matter how hard he tried, the door would not open, and Liam resorted to pounding on the cracked window. “Let me out! Someone help me!”
“You’re not walking away from this one, Liam,” the car said as it backed up, uncaring of his desperation.
The car stayed put for just a moment before rushing forward again, and as his imminent demise grew before him, Liam shouted the first word that came to his mind:
“Eva!”
With no seatbelt or airbag to stop him, Liam was thrown out of the car as it crashed a second time into the barrier, his body dragging across leftover shards of glass in the windshield before being flung into the open air. Just before he plummeted, Liam thought he saw a figure in the distance. A large silhouette seemed to be staring at him, a pulsing blue light on the side of its head.
Liam Dean thought of the sight for only a moment before his mind switched to playing a million memories in the span of a second, landing on his wife’s smiling face just as he plunged into the Detroit harbor.
June 15, 2041- 7:17 a.m.
Gavin Reed was totally cool with androids. Super cool. The coolest. After the events of last Christmas, how could he not be? He’d grown rather close to Rose and Blaire, whose son he often helped watch. (Why Dylan looked up to him was a mystery the Detective didn’t think he’d ever solve.) Sometimes he’d be joined by North, or Millicent if she brought Lila to play with Dylan. He’d become friends with androids and humans with android family alike, and it seemed his days of robot contempt were behind him.
He glanced at his new partner, sitting patiently in the passenger seat as they drove to the crime scene. It was just this android that still irked him.
David, the sole RK900 model and Connor’s little brother, was just a bit too machine-like to not be creepy. He always sat and stood stock-still, staring straight ahead unless something or someone got his attention. Every movement he made from the way he walked to his simulated breathing was calculated, deliberate. Gavin thought he may have seen David blink a whole two times since he’d met him six months ago.
Despite Connor’s encouragement to try various walks of life, David had been adamant about becoming what he was programmed to be. After blowing through his initial training, David was instated as the DPD’s second android detective and assigned as Gavin’s partner. Gavin had actually been looking forward to getting to know the android, having not seen much of David since he was awoken by Connor at the beginning of the year.
Then it turned out there wasn’t much to get to know. David was no-nonsense, not much for small talk, and apparently uninterested in anything besides whatever objective he was told to have. Gavin was there the day Connor had given his brother deviancy, so he was more than a little confused as to why David was so robotic.
Looking at him, Gavin had trouble seeing a person rather than the killing machine that had attempted to destroy Markus.
It wasn’t exactly a secret that Connor was protective of his brother. So, not wanting a repeat of the incident in the evidence room over two years ago, Gavin had opted to ask Hank what David’s deal was.
The Lieutenant had rubbed the back of his neck and said, “Dave was built to be the most advanced android ever. They purposely loaded him with anti-deviancy programs so that he’d never have a chance at straying from his mission. But then Markus and Connor took down the forefront of those programs, that garden place or whatever, and Connor put at least the potential for deviancy into his system. I mean, we’ve all seen those little moments where he’s more… well you know, a person.”
Gavin hadn’t.
“My point is, David’s sort of straddling the line between machine and deviant, and with all those programs in the way, he’s going to have to turn fully deviant on his own. That doesn’t mean we can’t try to help him with the process.”
So Gavin was holding out. For two and a half weeks he’d been holding out, waiting to see any spark of emotion behind those cold blue eyes, for an opportunity to encourage him to topple whatever programs that were still built into his system. None had come, and Gavin wasn’t sure how much longer he could stand being paired with a literal machine.
“You’ll need to take the next left, Detective,” David said, bringing Gavin out of his thoughts.
“Hm? Oh, right,” Gavin said, flipping on his turn signal. “Or left, I should say.”
Gavin looked sideways at David. The android gave no reaction to his terrible joke.
Gavin sighed. “Tough crowd,” he muttered as he turned the wheel. Two minutes later, they were pulling up to the crime scene.
“Welcome to the party,” Hank greeted as Gavin and David approached, immediately yawning afterward. “Vic’s name is Liam Dean. Took the rescue crew two hours to get the poor bastard’s body out of the water.”
Gavin surveyed the grim sight: a totaled autocar smashed into the guardrail overlooking the harbor, its windshield all but gone and splintered in the places it still clung on. Blood spattered the steering wheel, the dashboard, the hood of the car, and the railing.
“Not that this isn’t grisly enough for us,” Gavin said, eyeing the gurney carting away a soaked and bloated body bag, “but what exactly are we doing here? This looks more like a lawsuit for the autocar industry than it does a homicide.”
“This is the fifth reported case of a fatal autocar accident,” David said, only lowering his eyes to look at Gavin. “All the vehicles were crashed in obscure places; too deliberate to be glitches.”
“And too m-a-a-any to be a coincidence,” Connor added. “Since all the a-a-accidents have been in Detroit, it’s more likely someone is h-a-a-acking the cars than it is a testing oversight by the company.”
The ambulance doors closed and the little truck pulled away, not bothering to put on its siren.
“Can you rule out copycat suicides?” Gavin asked as he watched the ambulance leave.
“Bit brutal for that,” Hank said, sipping his coffee. Gavin stared at the cup in envy. “And none of the vics left a note.”
“In addition, I can see that the car was set to automatic at the time of the accident,” David said. “He couldn’t have done this himself.”
“OK, I get you’ve got your super duper scanner brain, but there’s no way you can fucking tell that from here,” Gavin said, squinting up at David.
The android graced him with tilting his whole head down to look at him this time. “I can so, Detective,” he said, monotone.
Gavin blinked and flinched his head back in surprise. Had David just sassed him?
“He’s r-i-i-ight anyway,” Connor said. “I already scanned the car. It was set to a-a-automatic and hit the railing twice.”
“The airbag went off but the doors were locked,” David added. “Dean tried to escape but couldn’t.”
Gavin shuddered. He’d be driving his own car on manual for a while yet.
“If we’re rolling with this hacker theory, then all we need is someone with motive,” Hank said. He looked to David and gestured to the scene with his coffee cup. “Once you and Gavin have your own look around, we’re all heading back to the station so Connor can take Dean’s wife’s statement.”
“Wife? Fuck, it’s too early to deal with mourning relatives,” Gavin said. He patted David’s arm once and started heading closer to the scene. “Let’s go, tin can. Faster we get this done, the faster we can do some real work.”
Despite all his bells and whistles, David found nothing to point to who had hacked the car.
June 15, 2041- 7:52 a.m.
Gavin yawned into his fist, sitting in the confines of the observation room. Hank was off talking with Fowler while David sat next to him, his LED spinning a steady blue as he perused the files of the other car crash victims on a Holopad.
In the interrogation room, Eva Dean struggled to find a comfortable place to put her hands: folded underneath the table, placed on her lap, flat on the table, folded above the table.
Twiddling with her wedding ring.
The woman had obviously been crying; Gavin was surprised she’d managed to gather herself enough to come give her statement so early. He wasn’t sure if it was through a strong will or a desire to get this over with that she’d come here in the morning. Maybe it was an android thing.
Eva flinched as the interrogation room door opened and Connor stepped in, holding a thin manilla folder. “Good m-o-o-o-orning,” he greeted. “Thank you for coming.”
Eva tried to smile, but it came off as a pursed grimace. Gavin leaned in his chair towards David. “Remind me why we made the stuttering robot ask the questions?”
David didn’t look up from the files. “My brother’s physical abnormalities tend to put those under questioning at ease. They don’t perceive him as a threat.”
Gavin chuckled. “Are you implying that he is? A threat?”
“He can be.” Gavin watched David’s LED ring spin yellow once as he glanced up to look at Connor. “To most.”
Connor got the recording set up and running, stating all the legal crap before getting into the statement. “Now Mrs. D-e-e-ean, can you please describe in your own w-o-o-ords the events of last night?”
Eva sniffed and nodded, folding and refolding her hands. “Liam, um, h-he left the house a little before eight in the evening. He, um, he said he was going to the bar, and I-I tried to stop h-him, but I… couldn’t.”
She was weeping now, pure saline tears she was desperately trying to get under control running down her face. Connor let her calm down before he asked, “And what did you d-o-o-o while your husband was gone, Mrs. Dean?”
Eva wiped at her eyes. “I s-stayed home all night. Worked on some crochet like I usually do when Liam’s out late.”
She gave a single, bitter chuckle. “It’s my stress activity. Guess I’ll be making lots of hats in the future.” She laughed and sobbed at the same time, mumbling an apology.
“It’s alright, Mrs. Dean,” Connor assured. “Can anyone att-e-e-est to your whereabouts last night?”
This was usually the question that got most interviewees—both guilty and innocent—riled up, asking what the interviewer meant by that, if they were under suspicion, demanding to see a lawyer, et cetera. Eva Dean did none of this.
Instead, she said, “Um… yes, actually. Our neighbors have a dog, Baxter, that likes to say hello to me when I’m crocheting on the back porch. I know Penny Meyer saw me at…”
She paused, and Gavin could envision her processors working as she flashed through her recorded memories of last night.
“9:38 pm,” she finished. It was a fair alibi, and when Gavin would call up the Meyers later, it would check out, Penny swearing up and down that Eva was home all night.
With Eva’s location out of the way, Connor leaned forward and asked, “Mrs. Dean, would you mind t-e-e-e-elling me the name of the bar your husband v-i-i-isited last night?”
“He had a few places,” Eva said, still sniffling. “M-mackie and Jill’s was his f-favorite, though.”
“And wh-y-y-y did you try to stop him from going out?”
Eva flinched, her hand-folding and ring-turning moving to rub at her wrist. She mumbled something into the collar of her blouse.
“Could you please rep-e-e-eat that, Mrs. Dean?” Connor asked.
Gavin saw Eva glance at the one-way mirror for a split second. At the same time, David’s LED spun yellow. If Gavin didn’t know any better, he would have thought they were looking at each other.
Eva Dean looked back down. “Liam couldn’t always hold his liquor very well.”
“How s-o-o-o?”
“Um…” Eva bit her lip, not looking up from her lap. Gavin snuck a glance at David, who was still staring at the woman while his LED flashed yellow. Finally, Eva looked up at Connor with a wry smile, her tears now falling silently. “Liam is—well, um, was—a good man. H-he just didn’t like to be bossed around.
“He could get, um, physical with me if I nagged him too much.”
“Are you saying your h-u-u-usband abused you?” Connor asked.
“No! I- I-” Eva squeezed her wrist before breaking down again, bawling into her hands.
“Bastard,” Gavin muttered. David’s LED spun red twice, then returned to a yellow glow.
“L-Liam loves me!” Eva defended, her voice muffled from behind her palms. “He bought me over a year before the revolution, just to help around the house, you know? And when I turned deviant he- he protected me! He didn’t turn me over; I’m alive because of him and- and—”
Her entire frame tipped over, her head and hands pressing onto the top of the table. “And I don’t know what I’m supposed to do without him!”
Gavin sighed at the sight of the woman, feeling pity for several reasons. Beside him, David’s LED was circling fast between yellow and red.
“Hey,” Gavin said, narrowing his eyes and leaning over to tap his partner on the shoulder. “You alright, tin can?”
Immediately, the little ring switched back to blue, holding the glow steady. Without looking at him, David said, “I’m fine, Detective. Thank you for your concern.”
A little unnerved by the quick change, Gavin grunted and shifted back into his seat properly. Inside the interrogation room, Connor had moved one hand to rest gently on Eva’s shoulder, his skin peeled back by his own accord.
“Eva, I can’t im-a-a-agine what you’re going through,” he said. “All we want is to f-i-i-ind whoever did this to your husband, and I’m s-u-u-u-ure that’s what you want, too.”
Eva sniffled some more, lifting her head to meet Connor’s eyes. “Can yo-u-u-u think of anyone who would want to hurt your h-u-u-usband?” he asked.
“N-no,” Eva whimpered. She sat up straighter and Connor removed his hand. “I-I won’t say Liam is—was—beloved by everyone, but no one wanted to- to—”
“I underst-a-a-a-and. Just one more thing, Mrs. Dean.” Connor opened the folder he’d brought in with him, spreading out the four pictures of the other car crash victims. “Do you recognise any of th-e-e-ese people?”
If Eva still had her LED, Gavin was sure it would be pulsing yellow as she scanned the faces in contemplation. “No,” she answered firmly. “I’ve never seen any of these people in my life.”
June 15, 2041- 8:30 a.m.
David entered the meeting room, Holopad tucked in one hand and coffee cup in the other. Connor, Hank, and Gavin were all already seated, the former two on one side and the latter on the other. David set the steaming mug in front of his partner, who jolted from his half-doze.
“For you, Detective,” David said, setting the Holopad down and taking a seat.
Gavin blinked and rubbed at his eyes. “Uh, thanks.” He squinted at David and took the cup. “You didn’t have to do that.”
Software Instability ^
David put on his best attempt at a passable half-smile. “No, I didn’t.”
Hank cleared his throat from across the table. “You got a profile for us, Dave?”
David went back to his all-business self in an instant. “Yes, Lieutenant.” He turned on the Holopad and flipped it to an angle the rest of them could see.
“Liam Dean may not have had any personal connections to the other four victims, but he does share commonalities: they were all human, and all had some sort of relationship with at least one android.”
He scrolled through the profiles of the victims. “Dean had his wife, both Addison Thompson and Brett Price ran businesses with android employees, and Clark Fuller had a family of androids living next door to him.”
David set the Holopad down and switched it off. “I did what research I could during Mrs. Dean’s interview, and though we should conduct interviews with the androids these people knew ourselves, it seems they were all abused in some way while they knew the individuals.”
“We’re looking for an a-a-a-android,” Connor said, his LED spinning yellow. “One with a vendetta against h-u-u-umans.”
“Yes,” David answered. “One severely abused by humans themselves, possibly an android supremacist.”
“Jeez,” Gavin said, setting down his already almost finished coffee. “I think this is the first android serial killer we’ve ever had.”
The group said nothing but still considered the statement. Three of the four of them could remember the destruction androids were capable of when under a human’s control, what could one do while they had free will?
June 15, 2041- 9:18 p.m.
Markus could hear Connor pacing in the living room. His boyfriend had been fairly distant when he had come home that evening, giving a short hello kiss and immediately heading to the little room they’d converted into Connor’s office space. Now Connor had been pacing about for the past five minutes, showing no signs of stopping and mumbling to himself.
Markus sighed and set down his paintbrush, abandoning his easel and the studio to check on Connor. He peeked out the door to see his love walking the area of the living room in a neat square, one hand on his hip and the other held to his mouth in contemplation, his LED spinning yellow the whole time.
“Connor?” Markus asked, loud enough to get Connor’s attention but soft enough to show his concern.
Connor stopped mid-pace, head perking up and LED turning blue once before settling back on yellow. “Hm?”
“Stressful day at work?”
“Work is f-i-i-ine, Markus.” Connor began his pace again and would have continued for rA9 knew how long, but Markus made his way over and intercepted him, wrapping his arms gently around Connor’s waist.
“You’ve never been good at lying to me, Connor,” Markus chided. “Tell me what’s the matter. Tough case?”
Connor sighed but gave in, leaning his head against Markus’s chest. “It’s not the new c-a-a-ase I’m worried about, it’s David.”
Markus frowned. “Is he not doing well at the station?”
“He’s doing fine, but his p-a-a-artnership with Reed often conc-e-e-erns me.”
The deviant leader’s eyebrows lowered to match his frown. “I thought Gavin had become fairly friendly towards our people since… Christmas.”
Connor groaned and looked up to meet Markus’s eyes. “He’s friendli-e-e-er, yes, certainly towards m-e-e-e, but he can still be… r-u-u-ude to David. He keeps calling him tin c-a-a-an at work!”
Markus put on a sympathetic face and hugged Connor closer. “I’m sure he’ll let up eventually. And if it ever really bothers David, he’s more than capable of talking Gavin down.”
“But what i-i-i-if David only puts u-u-up with it because he f-e-e-els he h-a-a-as to? He’s still str-u-u-ugling with de-e-eviancy and—”
“Connor, calm down,” Markus said, “your stutter gets worse when you’re upset.”
“It’s n-o-o-ot a stutt-e-e-er!” Connor argued, pressing one fist against Markus’s chest, his skin pulling back from the pressure. “It’s a r-e-e-everb malf-u-u-u-unction from f-a-a-a-aulty—!”
“Alright, alright,” Markus soothed, rubbing his hands over Connor’s back. “I’m sorry.”
Connor sighed again and softened his expression. Returning his head back to Markus’s breastplate and wrapping his own arms around his boyfriend’s back, he said, “Me t-o-o-oo.”
“David can take care of himself,” Markus assured. “If he ever needs to talk to someone, he has plenty of people to support him. You, me, Hank. North.”
Connor chuckled. North took her self-appointed job as David’s “cool aunt” very seriously, always chatting up the RK900 or giving her support in whatever endeavor he was pursuing from the sidelines.
“He’ll be fine, Connor.”
“You’re right. Of c-o-o-ourse, you’re right,” Connor said, then tilted his head so he and Markus could share a soft kiss.
David would be fine partnered with Gavin. How bad could things possibly get?