Chapter Text
You sincerely hoped that whoever first said “the opposite of love is indifference” was rotting in hell like they deserved. To you, indifference was a lack of interest in a person, place, or thing. Indifference wasn’t really the opposite of any specific emotion. That was the whole point! No, you’d say that hate, was in fact, the opposite of love.
But the funny thing about opposites was that if one was spotted, the other was never truly far behind. Like the Sun setting to reveal the Moon, or the harsh winds of winter giving way to a beautiful spring. One inevitably dragged the other behind it. Hate didn’t emerge from nothingness; It required a certain sense of intimacy first. Nobody hated things that didn’t mean anything to them.
The wind howled across the rooftop as you tracked your target, eye fixed down the barrel of your rifle. The cold metal pressed firm against your shoulder, giving you a slightly cold feeling despite your thick uniform. Beside you, Officer Chen adjusted the spotting scope, her gloved hand pressed against the side of her headset as the sound of radio chatter played on the comms.
“Visual remains clear,” she said. “All we have to do now is wait for Captain Allen’s signal to fire.”
You adjusted the rifle’s scope lightly, allowing for a slightly higher magnification. “Hopefully, we won’t need to.”
Your dear spotter sighed as Daniel came into focus.
From what you could see of the android, he was distinctly male-presenting, and a housekeeping model, judging by his uniform. He seemed to be rather badly hurt, with thirium seeping from his shoulder and torso. His motor instability had increased dramatically in the last hour or so; his movements were considerably more choppy than when the DPD arrived at the scene of the hostage situation. The child, thank goodness, was seemingly unharmed, though the way that Daniel was holding her suggested elevated signs of distress.
You scoffed a little at your own observation. If there was a fine line between distress and aggression, Daniel was proving himself to be a remarkably talented funambulist.
Down below, a movement near the entrance to the rooftop caught your eye. You shifted your scope once more, darting between Daniel and this new negotiator on site.
“There’s that negotiator,” you murmured.
“The android from CyberLife?” Chen asked, her gaze never leaving the rooftop’s end.
“Yeah,” you answered. “The android from CyberLife.”
The last word left your mouth with a measured amount of vitriol.
Your gaze narrowed slightly through the scope as he approached Daniel with caution, hands visible at his sides.
And despite yourself, your mind dragged backward roughly thirty minutes earlier.
While awaiting orders from Allen, you’d taken it upon yourself to pace back and forth around the luxurious penthouse apartment as a way to calm yourself down somewhat. Predictably, being exposed to a crime scene whilst your amygdala was already hyperactive was not the best way to reduce stress.
You heard a woman, who you could only have assumed to be the girl’s mother, crying by the elevators as she was being escorted out. Though, crying seemed to be an understatement. She was screaming.
“Why aren’t you sending a real person?!” Emma Phillips’ mother shrieked, mascara streaked violently down her face as an officer tried to drag her towards the elevator.
Standing directly in front of her, somehow perfectly still despite the abundance of chaos, was the android.
Looking back on it, you remembered stopping to stare for around a second and a half. Not because he looked artificial. It was quite the opposite, really.
The philosopher Masahiro Mori, one of your favourites, proposed that human replicas became much more unsettling the closer they approached reality. He called this phenomenon the “uncanny valley”. Imperfect imitation provoked revulsion because humans instinctively recognised something almost-human as wrong.
But until she had seen his LED and identifying armband, Mrs. Phillips had assumed this new negotiator was, in fact, a human. This led your ever-running train of thought to disregard Mori’s theory entirely. After all, it failed to account for an important question:
What happened when the imitation became so infallible that it was impossible to distinguish the non-human from the humans?
Seemingly unbothered by her concerns, or simply unable to alleviate them, the android straightened his posture and looked ahead.
Your attention only shifted when you saw something moving near some broken glass nearby. It was a small fish with orange and silver scales, flopping around on the floor for dear life.
The android noticed it too. And before speaking to anyone else, he crossed the entryway, crouched beside the dying fish, and slipped it carefully back into the aquarium.
“Excuse me,” he said suddenly.
You looked up slightly to see him standing directly in front of you now. He was close enough for you to get a proper look at him, upon which his design philosophy became immediately obvious.
He was designed for negotiation. Practically every aspect about him was centered around being able to lower people’s defenses; to gain their trust. Even his cadence had been calibrated with precision, each sentence spaced just far enough apart to feel calming. His eye contact followed an almost perfect rhythm too: attentive without becoming confrontational.
You could practically see the behavioral psychology stitched into his programming.
Whoever designed him understood something fundamental about people: Humans were far more likely to cooperate with things that made them feel emotionally safe.
“I’m looking for Captain Allen. Do you know where I can find him?”
You jerked your chin toward the center of the lobby where Allen was.
“He’s there,” you said.
The android nodded once. But before he could move away, you spoke again.
“If you’re heading out there to help the hostage,” you said carefully, “you should probably look around first.”
He paused for a moment, LED flashing yellow, and then made eye contact with you once more.
“How did you know I was assigned to negotiations?”
You glanced at him once more, letting your gaze drift briefly across the architecture of his posture.
“Call it a hunch,” you said, shrugging lightly.
“My name is Connor,” he began. “I’m the android sent by CyberLife.”
You extended your hand forward, and he took it, albeit looking a tad surprised. You introduced your name and role, sending him on his way.
Now, sixty-something floors above the street, your finger hovered lightly against the rifle guard as Connor slowly approached Daniel across the rooftop.
Beside you, Chen shifted slightly against the gravel. “Jesus,” she muttered under her breath. “He’s actually talking him down.”
She was right. He was managing!
Daniel’s movements slowed to a near halt as he lowered Emma back onto solid ground. She quickly scurried away from him, but she seemed to be in a state of shock, crawling on the floor back towards the balcony entrance.
You’d won. After all of this violence, it finally looked like nobody else needed to die. But, alas, fate was a cruel mistress.
The comm in your ear cracked violently, with the familiar sound of Captain Allen’s voice.
“Sniper team,” he ordered. “Take the shot.”
Everything inside of you went still, as if blood circulation had stopped fully. Beside you, Chen was frozen, too.
“Captain—” she began.
“That’s an order, Specialist.”
Down below, Connor’s head turned ever so slightly towards you. It was clear that he knew what you had in mind, and had the good sense to not tip Daniel off.
Letting out a breath you didn’t know you had been holding, you placed your finger against the trigger. Your scope narrowed, and before you could fully register it, the distance closed entirely. For a second or two, all you could see were the obvious traces of thirium lining his shirt, and the noticeable tremor in his hands.
At that moment, several terms passed through your mind. Phrases like “protective retention behaviour”, or “stress-induced instability”. Every sneaky clinical term that CyberLife had tried to hide behind.
Then, you fired.
The recoil of the rifle slammed into your shoulder in a way that had you sure it would be hurting later on. In the farthest traces of your peripheral vision, you saw Daniel’s body violently jerking before disappearing off the edge of the roof.
Though the whirring of helicopters and general white noise of the city below you were still ringing in your ears, your mind felt quiet.
Connor remained standing near the rooftop’s ledge, coat whipping violently in the wind as he stared downward at the place Daniel had vanished. Slowly, he lifted his head, staring directly at the sniper’s nest.
Even from this distance, you could not decipher his expression. Maybe there wasn’t one at all.
You lowered the rifle carefully, taking extra care to not put any stress on your now throbbing shoulder.
Beside you, Chen exhaled shakily through her nose.
“Nice shot,” she murmured, though she wasn’t really looking at you.
The words settled into your mind, but you didn’t do her the courtesy of responding.
Down below, you saw that Connor had looked away. Specifically, he handed a SWAT team member his gun, and was heading back into the apartment.
You sincerely hoped that whoever first said “the opposite of love is indifference” was rotting in hell like they deserved.
Because as you stared at the scene of what had just happened, one thing became glaringly clear to you.
Indifference would’ve been so much easier.