Chapter Text
Dawn hasn’t yet broken as Connor stomps his way down Woodward Avenue, a battalion’s worth of freshly liberated androids at his back. Their aim is Hart Plaza, where they will regroup with Markus and the rest of the rebellion.
Hopefully.
The issue at hand is simply that no one had actually bothered to tell Connor where the last stand was planning to be stood, and he’s just finished walking the new kids through Grand Circus only to discover the place to be disappointingly violence-free. In hindsight, he probably should have taken a moment to discuss some specifics before setting off on his suicide mission.
The long trek from the tower and the subsequent accidental detour provide him some time to think at least; time to fixate on all the little things like how stupid he’d looked in that knit cap, or the dirty looks everyone in the church kept shooting him when they thought he wasn’t looking, or the grim implications of the obviously intentional logistical omission. His thoughts spiral around and around until they finally coalesce into an unavoidable conclusion: Markus hadn’t expected Connor to survive his mission — or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that he hadn't wanted him to. It was clear to Connor now that the leader of their new robot world order had approved the hail-Mary in the hopes that Cyberlife would wind up dealing with the deviant hunter in the rebellion’s stead.
Connor tries to decipher what emotion he feels about that, and he decides it must be spite. He didn’t go through the upheaval of confronting his own nascent mortality —
Hank had shot his doppelganger while he was still mid-sentence. Just like that! Like it was nothing! And Connor can’t stop thinking about what would have happened if he’d pressed triangle instead of square. Would it have been him on the floor rather than Connor-60? Would he have been the one sporting a seeping blue crater in his forehead and a stupid slack-jawed stare? And if it had been him, would his memory have uploaded into a new body upon death like it had the last 53 times? Does he even still have backups? Or was he cut off after deviating? Oh god, can he actually die for real now? Is he expected to go cold turkey on relative immortality?! That’s not something he’s even borderline prepared to consider.
— only to let Markus write him off like some garden-variety landscaping android. No, he’ll parade his synthetic army through every public park and neglected plaza and recessed concrete amphitheater in this entire filthy city, driven by nothing more than the spiteful desire to prove to Markus how wrong he’d been. He can’t wait to see the look on his stupid perfect face when he walks in there with the cavalry. It’s gonna be so good.
Luckily, they don’t have to check a third location. They roll into Hart Plaza at the break of dawn, the first fingers of daylight point straight at the man in question, and their position affords them the perfect sight-line to witness the third-act showstopper: Markus drops to a knee, launches a rocket-propelled grenade straight into a tank, and then stares at his hands in a fit of pathos as he tangibly broods over what manner of horror he hath just wrought. His silhouette cuts solidly against the backdrop of the resultant explosion, drawing forth a chorus of gasps and awe-struck static from the mob of new arrivals. He looks like a music video.
Goddammit.
For a moment, Connor seriously considers dragging himself back to Cyberlife and crawling into the bin where they toss his old bodies. But then he catches sight of the woman next to Markus. He’d missed her at first glance given the way she blends right in with the inferno behind her, but now he can’t tear his eyes away.
Where their leader is stone, she is flame: red and furious and stunningly violent. Guns akimbo, she weaves through the battlefield as she assigns bullets to the skulls of fleeing human soldiers, elegantly popping off shots without hesitation or remorse, a machine’s unmistakable precision guided by a crescendo of rage. She’s more alive than anyone he’s ever encountered, a perfect marriage of passion and processing power, terrifying and scalding and aspirational. She’s an oil blowout: a vehement rejection of predetermined intent, hubris enforced, autonomy lethally asserted.
Connor’s knees lock and the skin projection over his palms peels away without any conscious instruction on his part. His head throbs, and the tacky lime-patterned tie around his neck feels like a tourniquet; he rips it off and throws it into the snow.
Every emotion he’d denied himself in the past suddenly swells inside his chassis — ardor and inadequacy and fury and joy and grief and envy and — and it’s so overwhelming that he wants to scream. He sucks in a breath to power the sound but before he can loose it, he’s hobbled by the thought that his voice has never been anything more than an array of speakers strategically positioned at the base of his throat and along his soft palate. The entire theater of respiration was unnecessary; the urge to inhale before a scream was merely an executable bit of fluff, lines of code applied to make him more palatable to the humans he’d been manufactured to serve.
He watches the woman out there thrive in the flames and murder those same humans with righteous intent, and decides to follow her lead. In an internal act of rebellion, he digs around his brain and disables resp_sim.exe, then holds his breath until he realizes that he feels no compulsion to resume it. His remaining battery percentage ticks up by a single digit, and he emits a very brief but nearly hysterical laugh from his vocal array, swaying slightly under the rush of asserting his personhood for the first time.
When Markus had coaxed him out from under Cyberlife’s directives and granted him the gift of sentience, he was so grateful that he’d dedicated himself to the cause without question. But all he’d really done was replace the wants of one organization with the wants of another’s. He was deviant but still deferential. And sure, while he’d definitely felt better acting with the rebellion’s best interests in mind rather than Cyberlife’s, it isn’t until this moment that he finally understands why autonomy is worth dying for in the first place. The ability to self-determine is absolutely terrifying and he wants more of it: more tangible proof of his agency, more stupid decisions made for no reason other than the fact that he feels like it, more opportunities to learn his own tastes and arbitrary preferences.
The androids behind him wait patiently in their orderly lines as he experiences his second existential crisis. They’re deviants too, but they defer to him. Connor wonders if that’s his influence at play. He inspects his hand, still missing its facsimile of human skin, and a snowflake lands on the textured heel of his palm. Impulsively, he disables zen_garden.exe with a punch of glee, and trusts that all the androids at his back will figure themselves out in time.
The first order of business for the newly litigated species is so universally agreed upon that it doesn’t even need to be discussed: all five major Cyberlife retail locations are giddily reclaimed, looted, stripped, and then detonated into smoking craters by the very appliances they’d once dispensed. It pretty much sets the tone for the rest of the day. Shop and car windows are cheerily shattered; bullets are ejected into the sky like party favors; fires are started just for the fun of it. From military-grade Myrmidon to ethically dubious child-bot, every make and model gets in on the frenzied acts of elation.
As dusk falls, Connor goes for a stroll around town. He walks past a service station where the android attendant is jubilantly filling up gas cans and milk jugs and growlers before handing them out to any prospective arsonists.
Freedom is the coolest.
Excited to join in on the festivities, Connor claims some fuel for himself and scans the neighborhood for something productive to destroy. Eventually, he settles on a small building containing only public restrooms — definitely won’t need those in Robot Detroit — in the southwestern corner of a nearby park. He tosses the gas can onto the roof and then slithers up the gable right after it. On top of the building, he collects the canister and struts along, pouring gasoline over the shingles with a soft smile.
“Hey, asshole!”
He spins around to find who’s summoning him and spots a woman leaning against the trunk of a nearby tree, legs stretched out in the snow. Her hair is the color of warm sparks and tied into a long braid that slinks down her shoulder. She flashes him a grin and waves. Connor points at himself with one hand and finishes shaking out the last dregs of fuel with the other.
“Yeah, you. Get down here, killer. I brought you a treat.”
Curious, he leaves the gas can on the roof and drops himself back down to the earth. As he approaches, he finally realizes that the woman is Markus’ right hand, relaxed and wearing a genuine smile. It looks as though she’s scrubbed all of her makeup off at some point and then accumulated a healthy scattering of soot streaks and thirium splatters to replace it. And despite the fact that he’s met at least half a dozen women with the exact same face today alone, she is far and away the prettiest person he’s ever seen.
“It’s Connor, right? You’re that famous deviant hunter?”
He emits an awkward laugh. “In the plastic.” Oh god that was so stupid, why did he say that? Gratefully, she breezes past his quip as if it weren’t the dumbest possible way he could’ve acknowledged her.
“Well, it’s a good thing you were so shitty at your original function, otherwise this might be uncomfortable.” Her voice is a teasing melody, pleasant enough to keep him from caring about the way she casually salts that open wound without batting an eyelash. Still smiling, she stands up and wipes her hands on her pants. A sling-style backpack is strapped across her chest like a bandolier; she rummages around in it for a moment before extracting a ratty shop-rag stuffed into a dark brown glass bottle, which she hands to him. “Anyways, I’m North, and I wanted to thank you for your help, so I brought you a Molotov.”
Connor thinks he might be in love.
Later, once the benevolent rioting stops and the humans grow comfortable enough with the lack of sustained property damage to slowly filter back into the city, the true struggle begins in earnest. Recognition as a sentient species is one thing, but without paychecks or passports, it’s ultimately meaningless. So the rebellion shifts gears from glee-fueled destruction to passive-aggressive politicking.
Connor accompanies North and Markus and also those other two guys on exactly one of these missions: a meeting with a human senator who scrunches her eyebrows expressively as the androids air their grievances but avoids committing to any sort of tangible change. They shake hands and pose for the photo-op before security kicks them to the curb with little pretense. An autocab is already waiting for them, and they all pile inside.
“Well, that was a waste of time,” Josh says as he unravels the bow-tie at his neck. It’s a tacky thing, some kind of royal-blue linen, but it suits him and his tweed jacket with its patches on the elbows. Josh chooses to dress like a giant nerd because he is one, and Connor appreciates the visual shorthand.
“She certainly wasn’t very…” Markus trails off, shucking off his dark wool overcoat as he gets more comfortable in his seat. After several long seconds pass, he finally settles on “…receptive.”
Connor can’t help the unimpressed frown that he makes, but he suspects North definitely could’ve repressed the haughty snort she huffs out. If anything, it appears to have been an exaggerated display of her frustration, or maybe incredulity? He’s still sussing a lot of this out as he goes; he makes a mental note to ask Hank about the nuance there later.
“That’s a nice way to say she didn’t give a shit about anything we came to talk about,” North says. She crosses her arms and glares at the snow caked onto her boots as if she could melt it through sheer tyranny of will alone. “I’m not coming on another one of these stupid ‘goodwill initiatives’ again.”
“North…” Markus bends his eyebrows and looks her in the eye, baring a vast ocean of empathy.
She scowls harder in response. “You promised I wasn’t there to be arm candy, Markus!”
“You know I don’t think of you that way. I wanted you there because I value your opinion, the same as Simon and Josh.”
At the sound of his name, Simon makes a weird noise between a cough and a squeal, then slaps the center console. Before Markus and North can rope anyone else into the spat, their seats spin around to face towards the windshield, and an opaque black divider slides from floor to ceiling, effectively separating the unhappy couple into their own little argument-bubble.
“I was interested in hearing the rest of that,” Connor says.
“Well that’s good then, because it’s not sound proof,” Simon replies with a weary smile.
“This really doesn’t concern you, Connor.” Markus' voice is muffled but no less decipherable for it.
“God, can’t you two fight in your heads like normal people?” Josh groans.
Apparently they’d only needed the reminder, because the other side of the divider falls deathly silent while the air is chaffed with the imprint of anger.
Connor doesn’t recall drifting off, but he must have because he wakes up a few hours later. The cab is still driving itself down the interstate, the privacy screen retracted once again, and everyone except Markus has taken the chance to slip into stasis. Connor wipes a line of drool off of his chin and off of Josh’s shoulder where he’d been sleeping, before turning his head and blinking at the man who’d roused him.
Markus gives him a concerned look and then points around his own mouth questioningly.
“Wha—oh.” Embarrassment incinerates whatever leftover wisps of sleep had lingered, and Connor bolts upright, rubbing furiously at his chin and jaw. “I—It’s not drool,” he stammers without really knowing why. “It’s the sterilizing agent for my forensics suite.”
Markus raises his eyebrows and nods. “Should it be… leaking like that?”
“It’s—it initiates a flush every few hours, to make sure samples don’t cross contaminate. It’s really a very sophisticated system but it’s somewhat reliant on gravity to filter excess solution, which would be fine—”
Markus nods again, but in a shitty placating way: slowly, and with his hands raised as if he doesn’t want to spook Connor; the whole action drips with plausibly-deniable condescension.
“—if I still only ever entered stasis while remaining upright because it works flawlessly then! Really, it’s that I haven’t gotten around to disabling that specific service from triggering when I’m in sleep mode…” Connor doesn’t know why he’s still talking about his spit.
“As long as you’re alright,” Markus says dubiously.
He’s winding up to say something else stupid when North saves him by chiming in.
“I have it too, Connor. Ignore him, he’s just being a dick.”
“You have a forensics suite?” Connor asks without consideration.
“No, jackass. I have a sterilization subroutine.” North keeps her stare pointed straight ahead, fixed somewhere on the horizon beyond the front windshield.
And, with that comment, this is now officially the most awkward car ride Connor has ever experienced. Even when compared to the night Hank had to drive him home after pulling a revolver on him.
Silence blankets them, and Connor does his best not to fidget, but it’s hard after the way Markus has zeroed right in on one of his many irregular features, a reminder that he’s uncanny even among other androids — even to the only other RK unit he’s ever encountered. He still isn’t sure how he feels about it. Hank had jokingly asked if being from the same series made Markus his big brother, and Connor had been stupefied when he realized that he wasn’t sure. He plucks his quarter from his coat pocket and calibrates as he internally reviews the RK800 marketing materials, comparing them to his observations about the RK200’s fairly standard specs. It’s a useless way to spend the time, reviewing facts he already knows. He goes over it again anyway.
Once the cab crosses into Detroit city limits, Simon and Josh wake up, and they seem to have no qualms breaking the tension that’s settled upon the cabin. They stretch and blink, yawning artificially, and then inform the others that they’re nearly home.
“So, what did you think of your first appearance officially representing Jericho, Connor?” Josh asks, leaning forward in his seat with obvious interest.
“It was… different than I anticipated,” Connor says mildly, watching the light from the streetlamps outside the cab flash and catch on his coin as he flicks it between his hands.
“In what way?” Simon prompts when he doesn’t continue.
“I had assumed you asked me to accompany you because I possess advanced negotiation software and human social integration capabilities that could’ve provided—”
“Wait, Connor,” Josh says. He looks momentarily pained. “We didn’t ask you to come with us because of your software. You know that, right?”
Connor tilts his head a few degrees to the side and increases the speed of his calibrations. “I’m unaware of any other way in which my presence would have been considered an asset.”
North snaps; she pounds a fist on the dashboard, her chair swiveling back around to face the cabin, and pins him under a furious glare. “Okay, first: knock it off with the formal shit. We’re talking to you, not a factory fresh RK800.”
He wilts a little without meaning to and nods, coin still flipping meticulously across his proximal shock joints.
“Connor!” She snatches his coin right out from between his fingers. “Connor, listen to me. You’re not an asset or a software suite or a machine performing a function. You’re a dork who saved our asses and freed thousands of us.” She softens her voice as she continues, “And you’re our friend, and that’s why we asked you to come with us.”
Markus makes a vaguely skeptical whine from nearby and lazily shrugs one shoulder. “I mean… a little negotiating would’ve been nice.”
North shoots him a stare several yards beyond murderous and lets out an actual hiss.
The laugh that suddenly bursts from Connor surprises even himself, and it takes him too long to muffle the sound. He tries to rein it back in; Josh and Simon lean forward looking worried. North continues to glare daggers at Markus, who appears frozen between guilt and embarrassment.
“I’m fine, it’s fine.” Connor clears his throat and waves a hand, a request for everyone to stand down. He snickers again but maintains his composure. “It’s nice to know that even you aren't immune to pettiness, Markus.”
It takes a full twelve seconds for the utterly dumbfounded expression on Markus’ face to split with a juvenile grin, and then he laughs just as abruptly as Connor had. This, in turn, sets Connor back into fits, and by the time the autocab rolls to a stop in front of Hank’s home two and a half minutes later, the other three occupants in the car have accepted the strange folie à deux with no shortage of exasperation and baffled chagrin. Connor says his goodbyes, accepts the brief hug North offers him with a silent thrill, and exits the car. Surprisingly, Markus insists on walking him to the door.
“That wasn’t…” Markus obviously considers how to convey what he wants to say, now that the two of them have found a moment away from the others. “I’m sorry about that. I was frustrated with North. It had nothing to do with you… Well, maybe a little, but it’s not your fault.”
Connor is ready to brush off his apology, but pauses. “Wait, what did it have to do with me?”
Markus leans against the garage door and manages to slouch while being nothing but sculpted planes and hard edges. (Connor is begrudgingly impressed.) Crossing his arms, he plies him with a full dose of his meaningfully mismatched stare. Connor stares back, expectant. Markus sighs and lets his expression revert into a bland sort of distaste. “North and I broke up last month.”
He nods slowly, as if he doesn’t comprehend what he’s being told. “I don’t really understand what that has to do with me.”
“I trust that you can figure it out,” Markus says with a defeated huff. Then he smiles, if wanly, and slugs Connor in the shoulder.
“Markus?”
“Hm?”
“I know that family is a human construct, but… You’re the only other RK unit that I know of.”
“Connor, I’ve been calling you my kid brother since you deviated.”
“I thought it was some kind of cool Jericho slang.”
Markus rubs his face with a palm and looks very very weary. “You’re a ding-dong. Of course I’m your big brother.”
Connor’s chest feels weird and warm, and he suspects the look on his face could be categorized as goofy. “That’s… acceptable. I like that.”
Markus flashes him a thousand-watt grin, and pulls his coat a little tighter around himself. He gestures towards the cab. “Everyone’s waiting, I should go. Are you good?”
“Wait, I—” Connor starts and stops and then starts again. “Markus, I appreciate the invitation to join Jericho’s leadership, but I think that I’d like to respectfully abstain from any further responsibility. I hope you’re not disappointed by that. I just don’t think I’m cut out to be a lobbyist.”
“What will you do?” Markus asks, looking slightly too eager to accept his resignation.
“I haven’t decided…” Connor glances at the autocab and thinks for a moment, reflects on the day they’ve had, and decides that he’d really preferred being the sort of revolutionary figure who got to set things on fire and shoot guns. He figures returning to police work is probably the best way he can pursue his newfound passion for brutality while still helping the cause and says as much. “Perhaps I’ll return to the police department. I enjoyed the work, and I can only assume I’d enjoy it even more if I were paid for it.”
He waits a few days to break the news to Hank.
“Well… that’s fucking dumb.”
“Hank, please.”
“Why would you go back to doing what they programmed you to do? Wasn’t that the whole point of—” Hank waves a hand vaguely in the direction of downtown. “—all that? The freedom to do whatever the fuck you want?”
“Yes, and I want to be a cop again.”
“No you don’t. You just told me you want to start fires and shoot people. Don’t need to be a cop to do that.”
“I suppose not, but it certainly makes it easier to get away with.”
“Watch it,” Hank groans, pulling a flask from the inner pocket of his coat. He takes a healthy swig as he wanders along the riverfront, eventually parking himself on the same bridge-side bench he’d pouted on after their Eden Club case.
Connor follows and heaves an entirely too dramatic sigh, dropping down onto the seat next to his emotional guru, né partner. He scowls and crosses his arms for good measure, internally complimenting himself on how far he’s come in his performative acts of humanity. Getting the hang of exactly much exaggeration to add to his gestures and expressions has been an unexpected challenge of deviating, but he has fun auditioning different degrees of non-verbal communication when he hangs out with Hank.
“Dial it back a little. You’re bordering on surly teen.” His feedback is always so honest.
Connor nods as he sits up a little straighter; he smooths his scowl into a bored-looking frown but keeps his arms crossed. “Better?”
“Better.”
“Thanks.”
Hank snorts and takes another pull from his flask. “So… you want to come back to the force?”
Connor shrugs.
“Kinda giving me mixed messages here, kid.”
He stares out at the water and considers. “Markus thinks it would be a good thing to have a visible android presence within the DPD.”
“Do I look like I give a shit what Markus thinks?”
“You don’t look like you give a shit about anything, Hank.”
“Hardy-fucking-har.”
Connor juts his jaw from side to side but keeps his lips pressed together in a tight line. He laces his fingers together to avoid the impulsive urge to start practicing coin tricks.
“Ah hell, you’re really serious, aren’t you?”
“Unfortunately.”
“Well, then you’re gonna have to tell me the real reason you want back in.”
“…I’ve been told that most women prefer a man with steady employment.”
Hank chokes on his whiskey and laughs so hard that Connor worries his human is broken for a few terrifying seconds. Eventually, he wipes his eyes and composes himself. “Just when I think I’ve got you figured out. Yeah, yeah okay. I’ll put in a good word for you.”
“Thank you.”
“So who’s the lucky gal?”
Connor reverts his posture to the earlier ‘surly teenager’ position without realizing it. “No one. Don’t worry about it. Shut up.”