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The metal bench was small, barely enough room to sit and certainly not enough to lie down. The room too was small, barely five feet across in any direction. Connor had paced the room for a while but now he sat down on the bench.
It was hard and cold. The whole room was cold and his CyberLife jacket was thin, doing little to keep him warm. He hadn’t felt the cold before the revolution. Or well, it was more accurate to say that he didn’t care if he was cold or not. But now he did, and he hated it.
He twisted his fingers together in his lap, staring down at them. He missed his coin. It was a thought that had never crossed his mind before - he had only been deviant barely a week after all - but now he felt a longing for the quarter. He needed something to fidget with, to ease his slowly rising stress levels.
Markus’s demonstration had been only five days ago. Connor had been detained and put into this room three days ago. This was the morning of his fourth day in here. He could only tell that due to his internal clock, there were no windows after all. Just stone on all sides and a solid metal door keeping him locked away from the rest of the world.
He was to be confined here until they could figure out what to do with him. Who ‘they’ meant was rather vague to Connor. The police were certainly part of it, but it was likely CyberLife also had some say. Maybe the government too. He didn’t know how long it would take before he would be let go, if they would even let him go.
It was entirely likely that they’d just deactivate him. He shot to his feet, beginning to pace again. A blinking warning hovered in the corner of his vision, telling him he should lower his stress levels. Pacing helped, barely, but it helped.
It hadn’t been very hard to get Connor here. Captain Fowler had called Hank saying he needed them both at the station immediately. He wouldn’t say what for, only that it was important. The moment they’d arrived three armed men had grabbed Connor, dragging him off into the back of the station. He remembered Hank shouting, trying to follow after, but someone stopped him. And then Connor was locked in here.
He should have seen it coming he knew, but would that have changed anything? He deserved to be in here after all. He had killed people, both androids and humans. That’s what this was about, he knew. Or at least part of it.
His infiltration into CyberLife Tower hadn’t been without bloodshed. Two human lives ended at his hands. At the time he’d been able to convince himself there was no other way, that they would have killed him had he done nothing and the revolution would have failed. But the more he thought about it the more he wondered if there could have been a way to use non-lethal force. He hadn’t wanted to kill them.
He’d killed androids too. They were considered people now, at least in some preliminary way while the government worked out the specifics. Maybe their lives would also be added onto whatever charges were pending. His fingers moved to fiddling with the hem of his jacket, pulling on a loose thread.
There was also the whole freeing thousands of androids from the tower. He didn’t regret that, but there was still a chance he would be punished for it. Breaking and entering, theft, both of those could apply here.
Whatever it was they had planned for him, all he could do was wait. Wait in this tiny box of a room alone for however long they saw fit. Maybe this was his punishment.
He stopped, facing the wall opposite the door, pausing in the motion of turning around to continue his lap. It was possible that they’d already made their decision, and his punishment was to remain here in this room, alone, forever. His stress levels spiked again.
He’d only been free for two days. He’d spent the time with Hank and Sumo at the lieutenant’s house. He’d taken Connor in the morning after the demonstration. They’d met at the Chicken Feed and Hank had made the offer without hesitation. Connor had nowhere else to go, and nowhere else he wanted to be, so he’d accepted.
They spent two days relaxing on the sofa, switching between watching the news and movies that Hank said were classics. It was nice. But now he’d spent more of his time as a deviant in this room than anywhere else.
Connor sat down on the floor now, back against the wall, and pulled his knees to his chest, wrapping his arms around himself. He didn’t like being alone. The concept of liking or not liking things was still new to him, but being in this room for three full days had made him sure of that. Seeing nothing but these four walls, hearing nothing but his own footsteps when he paced the room, he hated it.
He was bored too, which felt contradictory considering how high his stress levels had remained. But his processor was designed to take in and analyze thousands of little details in his environment at any given moment and being somewhere so devoid of any new details left him with nothing to focus on or think about other than his own increasingly dreary thoughts.
Connor plucked at the loose string on his jacket again, wrapping the thread around his finger and letting it fall loose over and over. His entire body felt tense like every biocomponent under his chassis was vibrating and ready to launch all across the room. Again he felt the urge to get up and resume pacing but he resisted. There was no point. It wouldn’t relieve the feeling, not really. He yanked on the sting and it pulled for a second before splitting off from his jacket. He continued to fidget with it, now with both hands.
He stopped focusing on the time, forcing his processor to analyze the material of the string over and over to avoid the other thoughts trying to flood his mind. He wasn’t sure how long passed like this.
When there was a sound from the other side of the door, he was sure that he must have imagined it. He stopped what he was doing, looking up and focusing his audio processors. It was faint, but he could just barely make out a metallic jingle from the other side. Then followed the sound of a key twisting in the lock.
Connor jumped to his feet, almost running to the door. It swung open, revealing a somewhat annoyed-looking officer with a key ring hooked around her finger.
“Follow me,” she barely spared him a glance before starting to walk away. Connor exited the room, quickly following behind her. Midday sun filtered into the hallway from a window on the other end and Connor felt an emotion he couldn’t quite pinpoint.
It was a short walk before they entered the lobby of the police station. And there was Hank. He was standing in the center of the room, arms crossed and a scowl on his face. It melted away into something softer, almost a smile, when he met Connor’s eyes. The unrecognizable emotion intensified and Connor felt his breathing hitch for a second.
“Come on Connor, let’s go,” Hank said. Connor opened his mouth to say something but couldn’t find the words. Instead, he just followed Hank outside. It was almost as cold outside as in the police station, still being the middle of winter, but the sun was shining and it made all the difference in the world to Connor. He hadn’t even realized he’d stopped walking until Hank called out to him.
“You coming?”
Connor moved towards Hank and he wasn’t even sure what he was doing until his arms were around the other man and his face buried against his shoulder. Hank froze for a second but then returned the hug, squeezing Connor tightly against him.
“I don’t like being alone,” he said, an odd crack in his voice muffled by the fabric of Hank’s coat. One of Hank’s hands came up to cup the back of his head, just like that morning five days ago.
“Tried to get you out sooner,” Hank said letting out a huff, “Bastards took their sweet fuckin’ time to realize the obvious.”
Connor pulled back from the hug, tilting his head to the side. “What do you mean?”
“They ruled what you did as self-defense. Dropped the charges. Actually happened yesterday but there was the usual bullshit with paperwork,” Hank answered.
“Oh,” Connor said. Even as he’d walked out the door of the police station, it hadn’t really hit until now. He was free, actually truly free now.
“But now that all that’s done with,” Hank wrapped an arm around his shoulder, pulling him in the direction of the car. Connor stumbled a step but then fell in pace next to Hank. “Let’s go home, son.”