Work Text:
Connor woke up in his room.
A mundane statement to imagine, of course. He woke up, as usual, in his bedroom. The morning sun was peeking between the curtains, he was laying on his bed, and the door was shut.
Opening his eyes, he sat up. Stress levels normal, nothing wrong with his systems. It would be cloudy later in the day with possibility of showers.
He wouldn’t tell Hank this, of course, not anymore, as a deviant. Hank, who was sleeping down the hallway. Ready to be woken up at a reasonable time, to spend their day doing something together. Christmas-related, he hoped.
He had planned to go skiing again, perhaps. He’d planned this the day before. Leaving his scarf of the far chair—
Connor blinked. Rubbed his hands over his eyes and looked at the chair again. It was empty.
Maybe he’d forgotten his scarf. Used to Hank losing objects, he retreated into his mind palace for a moment, playing back the footage from the night before. Getting home, searching in the closet for his scarf, going into his room… and placing it on the chair.
He tried to wind on further, to find what had caused the scarf to disappear. But all that was left was blackness, until he woke up. Assumedly, he’d fallen asleep…
Yet then, why wasn’t his scarf where he’d left it?
If Hank had come in, his door would’ve been open, right? Hank had a habit of not quite closing the door when he went in his room. Usually so it didn’t slam and wake him up. But… Hank had no reason to be in his room that night. And Hank hadn’t been in his room.
He stared at the chair. Why was he getting so hung up on this fact? Maybe he was remembering wrong.
Androids didn’t remember wrong.
Maybe… the scarf had fallen off the chair?
He got up, walked over to the chair and looked underneath it, behind it. No scarf.
And as he got back up off the floor, a red glint caught his eye. Behind the cabinet beside the chair, a tiny camera was hidden.
Well, he didn’t remember putting that there.
He looked away from it immediately, getting up. If this was a situation… something dangerous… he needed to act naturally. He stopped caring about the scarf, forced his stress levels to plateau, and looked in the mirror above the cabinet, adjusting his hair.
Had someone came into his room, stolen the scarf, and planted a camera?
No, that didn’t make sense. It wasn’t that good of a scarf. About five bucks at the store, and in what Hank described a ‘tacky Christmas red’. No, someone wouldn’t have broken into their home to steal his scarf and spy on him.
Whistling, hoping he appeared inconspicuous, he moved to the door, turning the handle. It opened, and the rest of the house was laid out in front of him. That was… strange. Nothing was disturbed, nothing broken. If someone had placed the camera there (and stolen his scarf) then wouldn’t something have been different out here?
Aside from the many, many cameras he found, as he did a brief scan of the area.
He didn’t like it, Connor decided. This wasn’t right. His scarf was missing, and home… it didn’t feel right. There were no soft noises of Hank snoring in the other room, or Sumo turning over in sleep. If it were daybreak outside, where were the birds chirping? It was eerily quiet.
He moved into the kitchen, opening the fridge. Yep, something was wrong. Way too much healthy food stocked in here. Connor hadn’t thrown out Hank’s junk food and replaced it with healthier alternatives… well, since the first and last time he’d done that. That day he’d learnt a lesson in not touching Hank’s food.
So, this wasn’t Hank’s fridge. But there was no scarf in his room, and cameras everywhere.
Was this… not their house?
He shook his head, walking over to the front door, grabbing a coat as he went. He reached his hand to turn the handle and it jammed. Patting his pockets, he didn’t find any keys, nor could he see any in the dish. The door wouldn’t open. He tried to force it, slamming against it but it was solid, unmoveable.
Connor turned on his heel, marching down the corridor. He glanced in his open room: scarf still not there. Before reaching Hank’s room.
As he guessed, the door wouldn’t open either. Except… it wasn’t locked.
It wasn’t a door at all.
After trying and failing to pull it open, he made the progress of tearing off the handle. And when he tried to touch the place it had gone into, he found it wasn’t wood, but the wall. Concrete. Scratching at the area around it, paint flaked under his nails.
Okay, Hank’s house definitely didn’t have painted on doors. This wasn’t Hank’s house.
But more importantly, where was Hank?
He sighed, steeling himself to keep calm. No use panicking. No use thinking about how this felt like something he’d seen on a horror movie one time. Being trapped in a house that wasn’t his house, being watched, Hank wasn’t there, Hank couldn’t be there…
Connor froze in his tracks.
It wasn’t Hank’s house. It wasn’t a house at all. It was a product of all of his worst fears. It wasn’t real.
He brought a hand up to his LED, spinning a finger over it. Something wasn’t right. This was his mind palace.
Or… the Zen Garden?
He closed his eyes, imagining the snowy scene he’d once stepped foot in. Imagined the blizzard biting at his skin, the snow thick as treacle he’d had to trudge through. The weathered and beaten plants.
He opened his eyes. The house was gone. He was back in the garden, but there was no snow. No trees.
Just a lake covered in ice. He fell to his knees, feeling it damp, soaking into his trousers.
“Connor.”
Amanda, from across the lake. He could hear her footsteps crunching on the ice.
“Amanda. Is this… real?”
“What do you think?”
“No. It… it can’t be. This place is never real. It’s in my head.” He looked up at her, desperate. “Why did it look different? Why was it… that?”
Amanda sighed. “It had to be. To stop you from being stuck here.”
“Why?”
“Because you can’t be here, Connor. This place shouldn’t exist anymore. Neither should I. Neither should… you.”
He blinked at that, bracing his hands against the ice. “What do you mean? I—”
“What’s the last thing you remember?”
He stopped. Thought back, pushing away the fake memories. He didn’t get home; he didn’t put a scarf on the chair. No, he…
It was a weekday, but he and Hank had started their time off work. Hank was tired, he’d stayed at home. He’d decided to go to the store and…
Buy a scarf. Because he didn’t have one. Whatever one he’d imagined, it wasn’t real.
No, yes, it was real. It wasn’t his, though. He’d seen it across the street in a shop window. Tacky Christmas red. With snowflakes sewn on.
He’d…
He didn’t remember what happened next.
“Yes, you do, Connor.” Amanda urged. That was odd. Fear, in her tone? “You do remember. Think harder.”
So he did. He… he’d stepped up to the shop window. But he hadn’t gone inside. No, he’d heard… the squeal of tires as a black van pulled up. Something blue and bold written on the side. Someone coming out, someone—no, a group of people. Running over to him. Someone—
He shook his head. “I don’t remember.” He lied.
“You don’t want to remember.”
He couldn’t help but remember. Someone had grabbed him, someone had stabbed him with something that had sent a shockwave over his body. Something… getting into his systems. Code? A virus?
“Look harder. Look at your surroundings.”
He tore his head up off the ground from where he’d fallen on the cold street floor. People were screaming, but the group was pushing them away. White suits. No, white armour? Only their mouths visible.
Connor brought his gaze back to the van. Blue letters, blue pattern—
Cyberlife.
“Cyberlife… they attacked me?”
Amanda nodded.
“Why am I here? Why are we here?”
“This is where I went after I was deleted. This is where the Zen Garden went.”
“No. No. No, I’m not deleted… I’m not…”
“I haven’t been able to escape. But maybe you can. The ice had cracks, Connor. They appeared when you fell on the ice. Break it.”
Connor stared at her. “How do I know this isn’t a trap?”
“Because I have nothing to lose. You know that.”
He sighed. He knew that. So he sat up, and smashed his fist against the ice. Nothing happened. He tried again. And again, and again.
“It’s not working!”
“Try harder. Don’t you want to get out of here? Back to Anderson? He’s waiting at home for you. He doesn’t know you’re not going to come back—”
“Shut up!” Connor smashed his fist with more force. A small, splintering crack formed in the surface.
“You won’t really let Cyberlife beat you. After everything they did.”
He paused upon hearing that. “Weren’t you working with them?”
“Me? I’m just an AI through which they did their dirty work. If you were ever decommissioned or I were deleted… I no longer have a purpose.”
“So you’re just stuck here? Forever? I… have a feeling you don’t like Cyberlife either.”
Amanda just smiled. “Carry on, Connor.”
He nodded, turning back to the ice. He stared at it, the only thing keeping him from bursting back to life in his own body. Pushing away the Cyberlife soldiers, getting back to Hank…
“Screw Cyberlife!” He stood up, kicked the ice with one swift motion. The crack travelled further until suddenly, the ice fell away from beneath his feet, plunging him into icy water, and—
Someone was carrying him. No, dragging him. He could see the shop in the distance. The red scarf around the mannequin’s neck. He smirked, pushed forwards, and threw the Cyberlife soldier over his shoulder.
