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Connor had never worn a sling, before.
He frowned down at the patch of nylon cloth swaddling his left arm into a neutral position. It was made of a semi-reflective gray weave, comprised of nylon, cotton, and polyester acetal. This particular brand’s product page touted its sturdy, yet lightweight design that was water-resistant, yet breathable, maintaining maximum possible comfort for humans.
Unfortunately for that brand’s product page, it had never needed to consider the comfort of androids until now. It had yet to update its specifications tab with any relevant information on the subject. Perhaps, when he was in a better state of affairs, he would email their product design team, and offer them feedback on potential alterations, in order to facilitate a more ubiquitous design goal.
For instance, this particular sling’s objective was to stabilize a human’s shoulder, elbow, and wrist, while providing as little strain to the shoulder and arm tissue as possible. It took into account things such as pain points, nerve clusters, and blood flow, all to maximize the human body’s ability to naturally mend their wounds, while drastically reducing the likelihood of re-injury before the healing process had finished.
Androids, however, were designed in a far more utilitarian way. Their thirium network, while technically fulfilling a similar role to a human’s circulatory system, didn’t follow the same patterns; it was both a cost-cutting measure, and also a means to ensure a hardier design that was less prone to breakage. It wouldn’t do to have their manufactured workforce being as prone to damage as their human masters, after all.
In effect, it meant that the precise position of the nylon strap, which would curve harmlessly over the upper traprezius of a human, kept getting caught in the minuscule gap between the different plates comprising his chest, requiring near-constant readjustment. It meant that the precise bend of his elbow against the nylon pouch actually increased the pressure placed on his shoulder servo, rather than the opposite. Most of all, it meant that a few key thirium lines were disrupted from reaching their terminating points in a timely manner, slowing the overall processing capacity of his biocomponents.
In the simplest terms, the sling was making it hard to think.
Connor looked down at his left hand, stark white chassis glinting in the mid-morning sunlight, such as it was, and glared at it—willing it to move. It didn’t.
He sighed. But, until his left arm started working again—when that was, precisely, he couldn’t say—he was fairly stuck with it. He reached up to the strap cinch, shifting the nylon out of the groove between his plates. Again. No wonder Hank spoke so poorly of these things.
Connor stood at the iron-wrought railing walling off the Detroit River from the rest of the populace, the great Ambassador Bridge stretching off into the distance of the warm August morning. At least the dermal layer on his skull fully reformed, at this point; Connor had visually verified it in the motel’s bathroom mirror this morning at 6:37 AM. He tilted his head at multiple angles, catching the skin at different light coefficients, in order to ensure that there wasn’t an error in translucency that he’d failed to notice from dead reckoning. While running his various software suites was currently out of the question, he also confirmed that there appeared to be no visual distinction between the repaired bullet hole, and the rest of his cranial plate.
That hadn’t stopped him from gingerly touching the spot with the tips of his index and middle fingers, registering the slight temperature difference between his extremities versus his head, and softly prodded the area to find the seam where the hole had been soldered closed. The technicians in the Sanctuary did an absolutely phenomenal job, especially given his prototypical nature, because he could not feel even the most incremental difference in height, thickness, or texture. It shouldn’t have surprised him, though—they had been been working miracles on the deviants of New Jericho for nearly three years, now.
A gentle breeze wafted from the lapping waves of the Detroit River, glimmering a deep blue from one yawning edge of the horizon to the next. Getting dressed while in his…current state was still a rather time-consuming, and arduous process. The replacement northbridge they harvested from an earlier, deactivated Connor model evidently ran on an older firmware than that of himself. Where, and how, they found that deactivated model, Connor didn’t know, and didn’t ask. He felt he already knew too much of his line’s history, as it stood. While it was thankfully compatible—with some tinkering done by a veritable who’s-who of ex-CyberLife and deviant technicians combined—it still required a lengthy ‘training’ process, in order for all of his components to communicate at peak efficiency.
Typically, such training took place before a new android’s first full boot sequence, as it could take weeks to complete, due to the complexity of android architecture. His, in particular, was projected to be months.
Five weeks, four days, and thirteen hours into Connor’s training process, he was at 48.52% completion. By his math, which was a slower, sloppier affair than normal, he determined he had another six weeks, and two-and-a-quarter days to go before he was fully functional again. It was certainly a much faster recovery time than initial estimates, but from his standpoint, shaving a few days off the end of infinity felt like a rather hollow victory.
Connor’s features briefly twisted into a scowl that he couldn’t contain. He remembered, quite recently, feeling a particular disdain for his various software kits—their quirks, various dependency conflicts, and their near-constant interference in his day to day affairs. Now, standing arm’s length from the Detroit River, processing the world around him with zero additional tools available to him, he felt smaller than he ever thought possible.
The shirt-collar of his plain white button down ruffled against the column of his neck as the wind picked up. Connor allowed his eyes to flutter closed, letting the tactile sensors along his face, scalp, and upper body catalog the feel of the warm breeze against his skin. The way it ruffled his hair was of particular interest, now that he was able to successfully display it again. He’d never realized how much he…appreciated all the sundry information his hair follicles provided him—speed, trajectory, friction, temperature readings—
The way they had bent under the force of Hank’s hand as the Lieutenant cradled his head, trying so desperately to keep him alive—
Connor’s eyes shot open, brown eyes beholding the picturesque view in front of him. He saw none of it.
The Lieutenant’s breaths were coming out in short, ragged gasps. The man had just sprinted nearly thirty meters—systems were already shutting down, couldn’t determine precisely—and, had bodily dragged them both behind cover. He could feel the trail of thirium being left beneath his clothes as he moved. The damage was…substantial, but recoverable. The thirium loss was an issue; the bullet shrapnel wedged three centimeters next to his primary CPU cluster, and directly inside his northbridge was a much larger one. With his northbridge destroyed, it severed the connection between his core processors, and nearly all of his remaining systems. What biocomponents didn’t shut down from thirium loss would from lack of communication with his core.
He had noted the twitching, jittery shutdown timer in his field of view dully. The screaming of errors in his overwhelmed, buckling systems prevented him from doing much more than blankly accepting what information was presented to him. He felt like a machine, all over again. He hadn’t expected death to feel so…familiar.
“Connor!” His hair bunched up against Hank’s palm; it was slick, covered in some kind of viscous fluid. (Right; it was his blood.) Hank’s other hand pressed against another wound in his chest, as though pressure alone would stem the bleeding. Hank’s voice sounded odd; clipped. Strangled. His brows twitched in concern. “Connor, stay with me, kid, okay? C’mon, son, stay with me, just stay with me—“
He blinked the memory away, jaw servos creaking from overuse. Even partial playbacks caused a powerful physiological reaction from his systems.
He shouldn’t have survived. He was a deviant now—had been for thirty-three months, there was no coming back for him, anymore. Hank reminded him of that fact often when on the field. And yet…here he still was. Alive. Alive, and painfully diminished.
“Nice day out, isn’t it?”
The synthetic muscles of his face instantly fell in surprise, head whipping to his left. Lieutenant Hank Anderson stood a pace away, hands buried to the knuckle in his baggy blue jeans, his pink and white zebra-printed button-down ruffling in the wind, much like Connor’s.
Two thoughts came to him simultaneously. First: he hadn’t heard Hank coming. At all. That was problematic.
Second: he hadn’t seen the Lieutenant in over three weeks. It hadn’t been accidental.
He opened his mouth, as if to blurt out some meaningless nicety that his software could provide him in times of emotional conflict. He remained silent. He was unable to run a diagnostic.
Hank’s left brow quirked a fraction of an inch. “Not feeling talkative, or is your voice-box still on the fritz?”
Even without the benefit of Connor’s investigative suite, he could tell that the Lieutenant had lost weight. He wanted to comment; he elected not to. “Lieutenant. I thought you were at work.”
The Lieutenant’s broad shoulders rolled in a seemingly halfhearted shrug. “Eh. Took a sick day.” He regarded Connor with the critical eye of seasoned detective, making a small grunt of approval when he came to his internal conclusions. “You’re up and walking, now; that’s good. I can see you’ve made a lot of progress, these last few weeks.”
Connor’s mouth felt…dry. The cleaning solution used by his investigative software was currently non-operational, and the typical android’s saliva equivalent was malfunctioning, due to thirium blockages. Absentmindedly, he slipped the tips of his fingers beneath the nylon strap around his shoulder, once again attempting to relieve the pressure against his lines. It accomplished nothing. “Yes, the technicians in the Sanctuary have done an excellent job, so far.”
Hank held his gaze a bit longer than what was typically considered socially acceptable. The silence within his mind palace was deafening. Hank’s eyes flitted over to the river, and then back. “So, what brings you out here, this morning? Thought you were still on bedrest.”
A tendon in Connor’s cheek twitched. Bedrest. He had no bed, and the couch at his current accommodations hardly qualified. “I thought I could use some air.”
Hank hummed low in his throat. “Some air, huh?”
Connor’s eyes narrowed of their own accord. Over the last few years, he’d come to recognize many patterns regarding the Lieutenant’s mannerisms—specifically, when he hummed at a very specific pitch, for a very specific length of time, it meant that he disbelieved what he was hearing, and was gearing up to counter-attack. In this specific instance, what the Lieutenant found worth admonishing was beyond him. He blinked deliberately, to display his confusion—and building annoyance. “Yeah. Some air.”
When Hank simply gauged him silently, the sensors on the back of his neck pinged contact—particularly heat—that wasn’t there. It bothered him. “I’ve been cooped up for over a month, Hank—staring at walls and windows, waiting for my body to start working again. Having to wear this—“ he motioned roughly to the nylon sling, “—everywhere I go, otherwise my gyroscope can’t account for the dead weight. I wanted to run a progress test—see how much farther I had left to go.” The non-existent heat along the back of his neck intensified. “And, last I checked, androids walking wasn’t a crime.”
The Lieutenant’s eyes remained just as focused as they had before his outburst, unblinking and discerning. Hank pursed his lips, digging his hands a tiny bit deeper into his pockets. His tone was remarkably casual as he said, “So, Markus called me last night.”
Connor’s thirium pump stuttered.
Hank’s lips quirked into a reasonable facsimile of a humorless smile. “He said that when you two last talked, he thought something was a little off. He called me to make sure that you weren’t trying to push yourself too hard.” Hank’s head lilted to the side, unkind smile widening a fraction. “Imagine my surprise when I learned that you’ve apparently been staying with me for the last eight days. Care to tell me why he thinks that?”
The hollow chasm in Connor’s mind offered him no recourse. He maintained a neutral expression under the Lieutenant’s withering stare with far more conscious effort than he would have ever thought necessary—the lack of programmed responses required his every input to be manual. It was an exhausting process. He couldn’t quite ignore the shame that skittered up the expanse of his neck, and along his lower jaw. Hank wasn’t supposed to know. “Lieutenant, I can explain—“
“Oh, I’m sure you can,” Hank replied in a tone so falsely conversational that Connor could somehow feel his inactive investigative software ping the lie in his HUD. He glanced to his right, anyway, to ensure that it hadn’t. “Is it the same explanation for why you wouldn’t let me see you in New Jericho?”
Connor felt his shoulders slump, pump regulator sitting sharply out of alignment in his midsection. No, those reasons were very different, but try as he might, he was unable to form the appropriate words. Maybe there were none.
Hank’s smile dropped, eyes becoming flint. “You know, Connor, you’re lucky to have a friend that has your back like Markus does. Not a lot of people have the balls to repeatedly lie to a cop, and especially not a cop like me. He really cares about you.”
Something in the way Hank spoke, as though Markus was just another man in the world, and not the leader of a civil rights movement that was responsible for his continued existence, pricked at his ire in a way he couldn’t readily quantify. Ruefully, he noted how easily those words came to him. “Markus cares about all androids. And he has better things to do with his time than to cover for me.”
The muscles around Hank’s brows twitched. “You’re right, he does. And yet, here we are. He was worried enough about you to stop whatever it was he was doing, and call me to make sure that you were okay. I’m sure if he had all the time in the world, he’d do it for every android, but he doesn’t. A man like Markus needs to pick his battles—and, he picked you.” There was a tensity in the Lieutenant’s haggard features, the strain of some as-of-yet unidentifiable emotion being held back forcefully. “So, why?”
A question such as that, ‘Why,’ was often too open-ended for Connor to fully process on the best of days. On a day such as today, where he was only 48.52% as functional—as alive—as he would otherwise be, it caused his mouth to open and close twice, blinking in complete incomprehension. He hated how sluggish his thoughts were. “Why what?”
“You know full fucking well what,” Hank growled, tugging his hands free from the pockets of his jeans, fingers curled into loose fists. His shoulders squared off, and his posture became rigid—far too serious a stance for a man wearing a fuchsia zebra-print shirt, Connor couldn’t help but think, but Hank Anderson was nothing if not dichotomy made manifest. “We’ve spent all goddamn night looking for you! Are you insane?”
Connor’s jaw twitched to the left half a centimeter, before he manually shifted it back into its default position. “On the contrary, Hank, I’m about as sane as I can be…given the circumstances.”
Hank’s face twitched, at that. “Given the circumsta—Connor, you were nearly fucking killed! It’s a Christmas fucking miracle you’re even still alive, right now, let alone expected to make a full recovery! And, you wanna throw that all away by pulling stupid shit like this?”
The non-existent heat began to permeate through his chassis, a rolling cloud that soaked into the thick netting of wires that ran the length of his arms—what he could feel of them, anyway—and down to his very fingertips. He had long since grown accustomed to the feeling of anger, sometimes even welcomed it, but he had never before experienced it without his investigative software tempering his rage with cold, merciless logic. It was…strangely freeing.
Internally, he recoiled in horror at himself.
Externally, he straightened his stance to mirror the Lieutenant’s to the best of his current ability. It seemed to help relieve the pressure building between his synthetic lungs. “I didn’t ‘pull’ anything, Hank. I exercised my right to leave the premises on my own terms, which by law, neither you nor Markus can stop me from. And, I told you both what I did because if I hadn’t, you would’ve tried to stop me. I did what I had to do.”
“What you fucking had to do,” Hank spat back, blue eyes raking over him in open disdain. Anger burned bright in the man’s gaze; beneath that lurked a far darker, more dangerous frenzy. Connor’s own anger didn’t allow him to contemplate it further. “Alright, asshole, tell me this. Your little fucking plan goes off without a hitch—and then, outta nowhere, something goes wrong. Then what? Huh? You get hurt, or mugged, or hit by a car, or something in that fuckin’ brain of yours goes haywire again—anything goes wrong—what’re you gonna do? Nobody knows where you are, and nobody’s gonna know to look for you, because everybody thinks you’re somewhere else, safe and fucking sound. What happens then, Sherlock? Hm?”
Connor’s thirium pump churned 28% faster. He could feel the strain it was placing on his power reserves, as he was essentially stuck in low-power mode for the foreseeable future. It only caused the heat swirling in his limbs to intensify. “Nothing happens, Lieutenant, because nothing will. I’m fine.”
Hank didn’t move in the slightest, and yet, Connor saw a shift in his eyes, something giving weigh in the man’s mind. His logic algorithm, still diminished, nevertheless cited it as a cause for concern. He couldn’t disagree.
Hank’s voice was quiet, but firm. “…You’re fine, hm? You sure about that?”
Connor noted, with no small displeasure, that his anger was now jockeying for control of his synthetic cortex against a growing, gnawing dread. Not for the first time since awakening in the bowels of what was once the CyberLife Tower, surrounded by over a dozen people, an array of machinery that brought up an immediate and intense swell of terror, and one uncharacteristically timid looking Hank Anderson, he wondered if he had been better off not waking up at all.
Defiant, Connor met the man’s stare with his own, refusing to budge. “Yes. I am.”
A small portion of Connor’s deviant mind, obstinate and self-righteous, pointed out that this stubborn spitefulness was damaging to both parties, and served to only worsen their relationship. ‘Is this really what you want?’
He had no answer for it.
The Lieutenant’s eyes bounced from one iris to another, a beat of tense silence dragging on. Eventually, he looked away, gaze flicking back to the serene waters of the Detroit River, sloshing along its eons-old path without any worry or care of the creatures perched along its shores; the river would outlive them all. Connor briefly wondered if that was part of the view’s allure.
Hank lightly bit the inside of his cheek, nodding to himself as he stared into the distance. “…Okay,” he said, tone quietly agreeable, sucking in a deep breath through his nose. His attention returned to Connor, expression a mask of amiable conciliation. The precise angle of Hank’s head in reference to Connor’s own made the Lieutenant feel so much taller than before. Dread overtook anger. “If you say so.”
Hank shoved him as hard as he could.
Connor’s gyroscope shrieked from the sudden movement—had Hank always been this fast?—right hand flailing out fruitlessly to grab at the railing, eyes wide and mouth open. His plasteel fingertips tinged against the iron balusters like spokes on a moving bicycle’s wheel as he sailed backwards, legs clumsily—uncoordinated, sloppy, he couldn’t, he couldn’t—trying to find purchase, or equilibrium, or something—
They found the ground, instead.
He landed on his back, hard, skidding another foot and a half on the dirty pavement, working arm resting awkwardly between two balusters, legs tangled up with each other, and his sling—that goddamned piece of nylon—now sitting askew, useless left hand jutting almost directly into his chin. His gyroscope struggled to ascertain exactly where up was, while his ocular units attempted to refocus their lenses after being so roughly jostled from the fall. He spotted no less than three-and-a-half Hank’s leaning against the railing, arms crossed over his chest, looking for all the world like a very unbothered citizen enjoying a balmy August morning.
Connor gritted his teeth, triangulating where his limbs were in relation to his body. He tightly gripped one of the rustic metal rods near his right shoulder; he shifted his legs, with effort, using them as leverage to slowly hoist his upper body up.
“C’mon, Connor, up and at ‘em!” said unbothered citizen called out, feigning encouragement. “A little love tap like that shouldn’t have knocked you over! Not with all the fancy fuckin’ software you’ve got.”
Connor didn’t have any fancy fucking software, right now. Hank knew that. “I’m—ugh, going,” Connor ground out as he slowly, lethargically forced his body into action. It didn’t want to. He made it move, anyway. He needed to get into a sitting position, and fix his sling. Without it, his gyroscope couldn’t properly reconcile—
“Looks like you’re having some trouble getting up, Connor, now why is that?” Hank shouted across the small distance, tone still infuriatingly jovial. “I thought you said you were fine! You wouldn’t lie to me, would you?”
He clenched his teeth that much harder, a deep, dark pit beginning to form in between the clumps of wiring connecting to his pump regulator. It was neither anger, nor shame; it was heavier, and hotter, than both. He tightened his hold on the iron baluster, and yanked himself that much closer to a sitting position. His artificial lungs kicked on, spotting a temperature spike in his central core. He belatedly realized that he’d enabled an overclock.
He had to overclock his hardware just to sit up.
The dark pit grew.
Several impossibly long moments stretched on in silence, with the only sounds between them being Connor’s pants of exertion, and the shifting drag of gravel beneath clothing. Connor’s state being what it was, he couldn’t have possibly seen the tension in the Lieutenant’s outwardly-relaxed posture, coiled like an over-tightened spring. He didn’t see Hank’s fingertips digging into his bare bicep so hard the skin threatened to bruise, or notice the way he had to carefully control his breathing to maintain the facade of nonchalance. Connor only saw the next rung of the ladder, the next hurdle he had to clear, before he could stand up.
He would stand up—shift. He was fine—scratch. He would be fine—scrape. He could do this—scrrrrrtch—he was the most advanced—scratch-ting-scritch—the best there was—
His gyroscope didn’t warn him of his awkward footing, not until the world was again tumbling around him, the railing rushing up—
Hank’s arms encircled his shoulders, stopping his descent as abruptly as it started. His face was half-buried in a fuchsia zebra-print cotton-polyester weave; the railing hovered less than two inches from his forehead. Distantly, he noted Hank’s heartbeat through the contact of his radial artery; it was elevated, and for good reason. He’d never known the Lieutenant to be this agile—or, perhaps, without his predictive capabilities, he was now just experiencing Hank Anderson as everyone else on Earth did. Something in that was deeply disturbing to him.
“Easy,” Hank murmured, grip as iron-wrought as the century-old railing that nearly impaled his skull. “Move slowly.”
That black hole in his midsection expanded ever wider, engulfing his thirium pump regulator in a dark, impossible pressure. His silicone teeth clacked together, the synthetic tendons that controlled his upper lip spasming of their own accord. He made the slightest, most rudimentary attempt to struggle in the man’s grasp, footing still unsure, still so, so angry— “Let go.”
“Fuck you, make me.” He stabilized Connor’s balance with a practiced ease despite the interference, Hank’s hands a steadying presence on his shoulders, atop the slope where a human’s deltoid would be. Connor scowled, resenting the relief—his gyroscope’s betrayal of him. Hank scowled in kind, punching out, “Look, if you don’t want me around, that’s fine, I get it—“ Hank’s tone certainly implied otherwise, “—but for fuck’s sake, Connor, let someone help you. You’re in no goddamn condition to be on your own, right now.”
“I—“ His vocal modulator spluttered. He grabbed the crooked sling, still bunched around the curve of his neck, and hastily shifted it back into position, meeting the Lieutenant’s gaze sharply. He paid no mind to the tremor that formed in in his good hand—he had a good hand, now. The dark pit pulsed in his abdomen as it grew and consumed. He felt his jaw roll beneath his chassis. “Why did you shove me?”
“To prove a point—and, you’re lucky that’s all I did. Markus wanted me to punch you. You don’t wanna know what Fowler wanted.” He noted the fury in the Lieutenant’s gaze, how it served to highlight that unidentifiable, deeper frenzy slowly rising to the surface. “Y’know, I gotta hand it to you, Connor—I’ve never met anyone that’s managed to piss off their entire species before. What the hell were you thinking? If you wanted space, you could’ve just said something, instead of running around on everyone, and scaring the living shit out of all of us.”
“You have nothing to be scared about, Hank, I’m capable of managing on my own,” Connor all but spat, the sensors of his legs still reporting erroneously of uneven terrain beneath his feet. He added spitefully, “I’ve done it for over a week now—without you or New Jericho noticing.”
Hank’s eyes narrowed. “You are awfully fuckin’ cocky for a guy that almost piked his own skull on a railing. You wanna know I found you, Connor? It was easier than you think.”
Connor glared at the Lieutenant, unwilling to admit that part of him was, in fact, curious.
Hank brought up an accusatory finger. “You knew you’d get spotted by other androids, so you found a place on the opposite side of town to hole up in, and paid in cash—some shithole roach motel, the kind that doesn’t give a fuck who you’re running from, so long as the money’s good.” Hank’s index finger then tapped against his own temple. “And, you wore a baseball cap to cover your mood ring.”
Connor kept his expression neutral through the surprise that jolted through him. How did he—?
“I told you, Connor—not a lot of people are willing to lie to a cop like me.” An acrid smugness twisted the Lieutenant’s lips; it was an ugly, joyless thing. “You think you’re so fuckin’ clever, coming up all these different ways to cover your tracks and disappear. But, you never accounted for the fucking transit. Can’t use cash on a train, and auto-taxis only take plastic. Once we realized the game you were playing, all we had to do was look—and then, we found everything.” He waved his hand non-committally. “Including your little day trips over here.”
“That information’s protected,” Connor retorted without thought—he had accounted for the transit, “you’d need a subpoena to get it.”
Hank’s eyes bored into his own. “Who said I was the one who got it?”
Connor blinked, twice. The dark pit inside him suddenly turned cold.
Hank’s brows rose, that sourness in his expression intensifying. “Oh, starting to sink in, now, huh? Starting to realize just how much you fucked up? You pissed off a lot of people, last night, Connor. I was just the first.”
Connor’s body was made of a dense titanium-reinforced alloy, his plasteel outer frame being a highly damage resistant, industrial-grade polymer. He was one of the most sophisticated pieces of technology to ever exist, and yet, he felt like nothing more than some hollow plastic cup, rolling, forgotten, along a run-down sidewalk. In the space where his thoughts should be, he only felt a thin piece of twine, tugged taut and rapidly fraying. He didn’t understand the feeling; he didn’t understand feeling.
The Lieutenant’s hands, powerful and insistent, gripped his shoulders again, squeezing tightly. “What were you thinking, Connor?” Hank hissed in a stage whisper, blue eyes searching his own with an intensity that was almost physical, pinning him in place. When Connor didn’t answer—he couldn’t, he couldn’t—Hank shook him once, the barest hint of clenched teeth showing. His model’s make ensured that his visual feed remained steady even as his head bobbed from the harsh movement. “Huh? Are you trying to get fucking killed?”
The twine snapped.
“I should’ve already been fucking killed!” Connor heard the sharp echo of his own voice bouncing off of tree trunks and pavement amidst the other, more soothing ambiance of the park, the unexpected sound unpleasant to his audio receptors. He’d wrenched himself from Hank’s grasp, teeth bared in a heated snarl, the dark pressure—self-hatred, he finally realized—boiling over into his thirium lines, churning like it belonged there. Maybe it did.
His chest heaved from the overclock he couldn’t shut off, more words he hadn’t known were there erupting from his vocal modulator, searing the mesh lining of his throat as they passed, “Don’t you get it, Hank? I shouldn’t be here! Not with you, not with Jericho, not like this—I should be dead! I knew it was coming—I accepted it!” He looked away from Hank, from that pointed stare of a veteran striking directly into his core, eyes sweeping around the scenery behind him to find something grounding. Nothing sufficed. “And, then I woke up, strapped to a machine meant to dismantle me, surrounded by faces I don’t know, unable to do anything—and, you’re telling me I should be grateful?”
He threw his right arm out wide, noting with white-hot fury the way it affected the stability of his visual feed. “I’m a specialized prototype, Hank, best in class! Designed from the ground up to survive situations that would kill most others, human or android!” He huffed out a sardonic, humorless laugh at himself; it felt like the only rational thing left to do. He wondered, his thoughts hazy from thirium buildup, if this was what insanity felt like in a human. “…What kind of a specialized prototype can’t hold up a tablet? Or walk in a straight line without help?”
“An injured one.” His tone was incredulous, but soothing; forgiving. Connor hated it.
His face twisted into a scowl—he didn’t understand, he couldn’t— “I’m not supposed to be injured, Hank! I’m not designed for it!”
“It doesn’t fucking matter what you were designed for, Connor, it matters what you are!” Hank rebuked, eyes glinting dangerously in the overcast mid-morning light.
“And, what am I, Hank?” Connor snapped back, seeing that unidentifiable something peeking through the Lieutenant’s anger, poking up from the waves like the tip of a very large, very deadly iceberg. He couldn’t bring himself to change course. He jabbed his finger into his chest forcefully; he tried not to notice the pressure building beneath his ocular units. “What am I, if my body doesn’t work? What am I, if I can’t contribute anything of value? What am I, if I can’t even—if I can’t—I—“
Words built up in the column of his throat, each word log jamming the other, preventing further movement. The more he struggled to extricate something, anything, the worse the pile up became. His mouth worked soundlessly; he was sure his LED was red from mounting distress. He couldn’t slow his breathing.
Hank, all of an arm’s length away, looked at him as though he were on the other side of an impassible ravine. The expression on his gaunt features, his cheekbones slightly more pronounced than they were a month ago, was one of a vague, saddened affirmation. “So, you’ve finally realized you’re not Superman. You’re just as fragile and fallible as the rest of us.”
Hank’s words stung. He didn’t know why. His attention focused on the Lieutenant, a newly-formed anger forcing his voice-box to cooperate. “What is it that you want from me, Hank? Is this another point you’re trying to prove? That I’m broken? Some—some walking piece of glorified fucking scrap metal? Is that what you want to hear?” When Hank didn’t respond, those brilliant blue eyes unyielding, Connor shouted, “Answer me!”
Hank blinked slowly, staring at him. The anger was still there, smoldering in the background, but had been currently usurped by a tightly restrained sorrow. After a moment, the Lieutenant simply pressed his lips together, and shook his head. “No.”
Connor was certain he should be receiving temperature warnings, now, if his software were still working properly. His brown eyes darted around, to the ground, the iron-wrought balusters, the tiny tufts of green weeds beginning to poke out between the slabs of concrete. The visual feed was largely ignored in favor of trying, desperately, to bring his body back under his command. It was fruitless. His diagnostics were inaccessible, his suites inoperable, everything about him was locked down, corrupted, unusable—he had no control over anything, he couldn’t—
“This is what you wanted, isn’t it?” Hank asked solemnly, lacking the vitriol that Connor knew should be there. He sounded pained; Hank shouldn’t be in pain— “You wanted to manage it on your own, right? Because you were fine? Then, get a move on and do it.”
Connor noted distantly that his vision had become distorted, the glinting blue waters of the Detroit River warbling like ripples in a pond. His good hand found its way over his synthetic lungs, as though pressure alone could stymie their movement. Fingers dug into his white button-down. They were cold. He couldn’t get cold. Words were spoken without his consent; his voice was unrecognizable. “…I should be dead, Hank. I should be dead.”
Connor desperately needed to hear a soothing baritone fill the void of ambient silence. When he didn’t, he felt the dark pit begin to collapse back into itself, dragging him slowly, inexorably, down with it. The sensation was indescribable.
He was saved from oblivion by that soothing baritone asking, softly, “…Do you wanna be?”
“No!” he blurted out, his lungs stuttering back on—when had they turned off?—as his gaze, still distorted, snapped up to the Lieutenant’s.
He’d grown accustomed to seeing a wide gamut of emotional states shining bright in the man’s eyes, but always beneath a carefully crafted mask of stoicism. Sometimes, it slipped, other times, it cracked, but never for long. He was not prepared to see it shatter completely, leaving behind wide, wild eyes, earnest, and hurt, and absolutely terrified—
“—on’t fuckin’ do this to me, Connor, come on—please—“
His eyelids fluttered, closing the memory playback; the motion dislodged some of the saline build-up. He didn’t notice.
Connor had never before felt a regret so immediate and all-consuming.
Hank looked at him, expression open in a way that made Connor’s chassis feel like it had been dropped into a vat of acid. The tremor in his voice invoked a similarly visceral reaction, reverberating unpleasantly through Connor’s chest plate. “Good…because I can’t go through it again.”
The Lieutenant’s face spasmed, and his hands were, once again, on Connor’s shoulders. The grip was different, though, this time—more desperate, like he was afraid Connor would disappear from his grasp, at any moment. Maybe he was. “You died in my arms, Connor. I was covered in your blood, listening to others talking about funeral arrangements when a tech figured out that you were somehow still alive in there. I was—“
Hank stumbled over his own vocal chords; a rarity, for him. He scowled at himself, fingers digging into Connor’s white button-down as he inhaled and tried again, more slowly. “…Do you have any idea what I’ve—“ Hank’s mouth clamped shut with a strangled noise deep in his throat, lips pressed into a thin, wobbling line beneath his moustache. He looked away sharply, towards the river that didn’t care about their suffering, face twisting in a silent, but heated battle. “…Fuck,” he eventually spat out under his breath, releasing his hold, stepping back and pivoting to lean heavily against the vintage metal railing. He looked exhausted; beaten.
Connor’s jaw was slack throughout, blinking away saline in a combination of shock, horror, and something far more complicated that he refused to identify. He’d hurt Hank.
His expression hardened in resolve, then. He’d hurt Hank—that would not stand.
With a reserve of power he thought long depleted, Connor forcefully accessed the root of his system—every last line of code, every electrical impulse, every synthetic fiber and synapse in his flagging and damaged body—and bent it to his fucking will. He would endure whatever he had to, if it meant Hank didn’t suffer another catastrophic loss. He would not fail his mission—no matter what it took.
His breathing evened out.
He reached up with his good hand to wipe away his stray tears as he slowly, tentatively, closed the short distance, stopping just next to Hank’s right shoulder. The Lieutenant’s head was hung low as he leaned on his forearms, hands loosely clasped, left hand absently kneading the right. His foot was hooked through the bottom rung of the baluster, but his back, beneath the bunched up fuchsia and white pattern, was far more tense than the pose implied. Most of his face was obscured by an admittedly well-kept sheet of silver hair, but what he could see was pinched. Pained.
Connor believed in neither God nor rA9, but he silently hoped that, should the universe be lucky (or unlucky) enough to have a deity in charge of it, someone within that otherworldly command structure was keeping an eye on Hank, because Connor certainly hadn’t been.
His memory playback, a temperamental beast at the best of times, decided to play back Hank’s every word from these past five-and-a-half minutes, and he felt his struggling body nearly give out entirely from the extra weight placed upon it. Hank was absolutely correct: he had well and truly fucked up. He was such an idiot.
The shame that he felt nestling between his biocomponents, like prickly vines, slithered their way up his titanium-alloy spinal receptors, and adjacent thirium lines. Strangely enough, even though his left arm from the shoulder servo down was entirely inoperative, he nevertheless felt the twisting of thorny petals down to his colorless plasteel fingertips.
Finally, his allowed his eyes to drop, coming to rest at the guardrail directly to the right of Hank’s foot. He swallowed; the mesh lining of his throat remained tight, regardless. It served no functional purpose for his vocal modulator. He struggled to force the words out, anyway. “…I’ll head back to the Sanctuary, and I won’t leave until I’m cleared to.”
Hank didn’t respond.
Connor closed his eyes briefly, allowing his tactile sensors to feel the gentle breeze as a potential grounding technique. He felt only the bite of remorse, instead. He straightened his spine as much as his ailing body would allow, lips fighting against him as he continued, “And…I’ll make sure Markus and the others know that you’re welcome to visit whenever you’d like.”
Hank’s head turned away minutely, quietly uttering, “Don’t make yourself uncomfortable on my behalf.”
Conner flinched. He deserved that. More than that.
He was uncertain of what to say—what he could say that could even begin to make any of this right. He thought back to statements made a few minutes ago, and canted his head to the side in a futile attempt to catch the Lieutenant’s attention, quirking his features up into a wan facsimile of good humor. He even chose phrasing that would sound appealing. “…You can beat the shit out of me, if you want.”
Hank shook his head slowly, his gaze dropping that much further. “I don’t want to.”
Lieutenant Hank Anderson was one of the greatest men Connor had ever been fortunate enough to know—and Connor had made this man sound like a wounded animal.
A quiet part of him, one that he fought into a box over and over again, briefly wished that the bullet had done its job, so he wouldn’t have to be feeling this ever-deepening pit of shame that he found himself sliding headlong into. Just as quickly as the thought arrived, he mercilessly crushed it underfoot. That line of thinking—intentional or otherwise—was what got him into this mess, to begin with. He wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice.
Hesitant, perhaps even fearful, Connor haltingly lifted his right hand, and rested it on Hank’s shoulder. He felt Hank’s detoid twitch beneath his hard-light fingerpads. “Hank, I—“
“Don’t,” Hank warned lowly.
“I’m sorry,” he said, anyway. From the rapid tensing of muscle fibers beneath his hand, he knew he was very much on borrowed time; it was now or never. He hastily continued, “I know nothing I say will make it better, and please know I never meant to hurt you—“
“Connor—“
“—But, I honestly believed that I would be less of a burden on my own, and—“
The Lieutenant sprang to life, then, shoulders squared, back straight, head up—muscle and sinew and bone all working in concert to create a force of nature that bore human features. And that force of nature was now moving, very intently, in Connor’s direction.
Connor backed up a few of steps out of pure instinct at the sudden movement—something he’d never felt compelled to do before with Hank—and, despite what could possibly be his impending demise stalking towards him, kept talking, anyway. He would face his consequences without compromise, so long as he went to his grave honestly. “—I didn’t want you, or Markus, or anyone at New Jericho to feel obligated to fix me—“
Hank’s arm shot out. Connor closed his eyes; he accepted his fate.
Instead of a well-earned body blow, Connor found his head forcefully shoved under the Lieutenant’s chin, arms holding him against Hank’s chest with a strength that felt downright superhuman. He heard the deep thrum of Hank’s heartbeat against his ear, felt the controlled breathing of a man trying to remain calm—and, he kept talking, anyway.
“I’m sorry, Hank,” he murmured regretfully into the Lieutenant’s clavicle, feeling his lips quiver—an act of defiance from that broken twine that hung in tatters on the fringes of his mind palace. “I didn’t—“
“Shut the fuck up,” Hank quietly ordered.
The floodgates had opened; Connor couldn’t stop himself. “I didn’t want to be a burden, Hank, I—“
“God, you never fucking listen, do you?” Hank breathed incredulously above him. A large hand pressed against the back of Connor’s head—
“—you’re gonna be okay, kid, I promise—“
—As Hank tilted his own down. His baritone rumbled just above Connor’s left ear as he stated, in no uncertain terms, “As long as you are alive, Connor, you have never, and will never, be a fucking burden to anyone or anything. Do I make myself fucking clear?”
Connor’s vocal modulator was in a full-on revolt. “Crystal,” he managed.
“Good.” The Lieutenant’s grip on him tightened further, if that was possible, the slightest shift of his hold effectively cocooning Connor’s head between his arms, hand, and chin. “Good.”
He closed his eyes, indulging himself with the myriad sensory information introduced by Hank’s presence. Connor was warm, Connor was safe, Connor was valued—even at his lowest point, even when helpless and adrift and prideful and stupid, he was still valued. He wasn’t a burden. He was never a burden. He repeated it like a mantra.
Connor realized, belatedly, that he’d fisted his good hand into the back of Hank’s fuschia zebra-print button-down. He felt that maybe he shouldn’t have this—shouldn’t cling to the man who he had wounded so deeply, so callously. But, Hank didn’t object to it, and currently, he trusted Hank’s mental acuity more than his own. Instead, he pressed himself closer; his previous fear of the Lieutenant’s judgement, mere minutes ago, felt like a distant nightmare.
“…God, kid, I thought I’d lost you.”
Connor’s eyes flew open.
Hank’s voice was nearly inaudible, his confession spoken in the faintest whisper under his breath. Connor had never, ever heard the man speak this way before—not when a gun was held to his head, not when he was blackout drunk and his inhibitions were non-existent…not when Connor was bleeding to death in his lap. He had no idea what to do; he had no software to bounce off of, no queries he could run. He remained still in the Lieutenant’s arms, awaiting his next move.
Hank swallowed; it sounded impressively loud against the shell of his ear. The words, again, were carried by the softest exhale, nearly lost in the breeze. “I thought…God, Connor…”
Connor felt Hank’s fingers, thick and trembling, flex against his shoulder and back of his head, as though trying to physically verify he were still real. Hank’s emotional distress was palpable; Connor couldn’t help but count his pulse, zeroing in on Hank’s breathing to determine if he was suffering from any sort of physical ailments that Connor hadn’t picked up during their…previous conversation.
Connor’s brow twitched. Did he just feel moisture on his scalp?
Hank’s breathing remained even—unnaturally so, Connor surmised, especially given his elevated BPM. The Lieutenant was doing some form of deep breathing exercise, and he possibly had been for several minutes, in order to remain calm—and, there it was, again. Connor was certain something wet was hitting his hair.
His halfway thirium-starved mind couldn’t help but wonder if it had started raining.
…Oh. The Lieutenant was crying.
Oh no—Hank was crying.
Alarmed, he immediately extricated himself, briefly surprised that Hank relinquished his grip so easily, when he was clearly capable of keeping hold of Connor for as long as he saw fit—but then, that wasn’t Hank. He stepped back, still well within arm’s reach, and quickly gauged the Lieutenant’s countenance. Hank had pulled himself back up to his full height, gaze askance while he breathed slowly through parted lips, lightly biting his inner cheek. His expression, while not exactly neutral, was closer to it’s normal stoic facade than the typhoon of raging emotion Connor had witnessed a moment prior. In the partly-cloudy light of the August morning, it would have been easy to miss the sheen of transparent splotches pooled beneath his not-quite reddened eyes, especially given the veneer of impassivity he displayed.
He hadn’t cried enough yet for it to affect the capillaries. Somehow, that seemed unfair to him. “…Hank.”
“Yeah?” He sounded winded; he still looked steadfastly away. If Connor hadn’t seen it with his own two eyes, he would have never guessed—not on his own, not with every software suite on Earth at his disposal.
Connor opened his mouth, as if to blurt out something his Social Relations program would opt for, in emotionally trying times. But then, those things weren’t true to Connor; they were tools to utilize at his discretion, not a core part of his personality. He didn’t need some program to tell him what to do, or what to think—and he never did.
He set his jaw, expression determined, and did what instinct demanded he do: he latched his good hand against the back of Hank’s neck, and dragged him into a hug.
He’d expected Hank to put up some kind of resistance—to shrug him off, or swear, or to simply even stiffen up, the way he was wont to do with sudden, unexpected contact. He had not expected Hank to all-but collapse against him, face buried in the crook of neck, and arms wrapped so tightly around his torso that he could feel the joints in his chassis creak. He felt the collar of his shirt become tacky, bunching up against his skin as it was quickly soaked through with tears. Hank’s sobs were nearly silent, an unfortunately impressive feat, but the force of them shook Connor to his core—both figuratively, and literally.
Hearing Hank in pain hurt—hurt worse than his own pain did. Connor felt his saline protocol start again; he didn’t try to stop it. He simply pressed his hand reassuringly against the back of Hank’s head, and let himself—let them both—feel. He couldn’t take back what he’d done, not exactly, but he could at least start to make amends, here and now. Hank needed him.
“…I’m okay, Hank,” Connor found himself saying, his vocal modulator wavering. For once, the distortion didn’t bother him; it felt…strangely right. “I’ll be okay.”
Hank gasped against his neck, voice choked and warped, “You fuckin’ better be. You hear me?”
“I do. And, I will be. I promise.” Connor closed his eyes again, wishing, more than anything in the world, that he had his left arm working. That was it, then—that was his primary goal. He would regain his full functionality, so that, by the end of it, he may be able to give the Lieutenant the support and comfort he deserved—starting with a proper hug. With luck, maybe Hank would even accept it. And, if one or both of them were to shed tears, with luck, they would be under more auspicious circumstances. “I promise.”
Off in the distance of the great Ambassador Park, two figures watched Lieutenant Hank Anderson, and Detective Connor Anderson of the Detroit Police Department, hold each other in broad daylight. Anyone who knew the two officers, knew that such displays of affection were almost never seen—and, never in public. Of course, anyone who knew the two officers, also knew that the two were frighteningly attached to one another; they proved, more than once, that they were willing to die, and kill, for each other. It was frankly astounding how often they found themselves in perilous situations. If they’d held any other job, or lived in any other city on Earth, it would have been enough to turn a lot of heads, and make a lot of enemies.
Luckily enough for them both, the androids of New Jericho found the two of them an interesting enough oddity that most found it endearing.
North wasn’t necessarily one of those androids.
She glanced to her right, spying Markus out of the corner of her eye. “You think they’ll be alright?”
“Yeah. I think they will be.” Markus’ lips quirked into a warm little smirk, the kind he reserved for special things that made him happy on a deep level. North always loved it when she saw him smile like that; it currently annoyed her that this time, it came from something to do with a human, but who was she to police his joy?
She pursed her lips, humming. “You’re still gonna punch him, though, right?”
The smirk widened a fraction, and became a lot less friendly. “You’re goddamn right I am.”
She joined with her own smirk. “Can I punch him, too?”
He lifted his hand courteously. “Ladies first. Let them finish, first, though.”
North mock sighed, rolling her eyes; she wasn’t exactly sure how much of a joke it was. “Fine.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “They’re lucky I like the dog so much.”