Chapter Text
It was supposed to be a quick case.
It even had all the elements of one: sloppy perpetrator, video evidence, poor cover-up. The only reason they hadn't done the arrest the same day was because the evidence had to be 'rechecked by professionals', which made Connor's eye twitch in ways unrelated to data transfer.
You'd think that being officially employed would make him and his deductions valid and reliable, but clearly this wasn't the case with Mr. Frederick Rodwell, a top engineer at Cyberlife (or so he claimed) who had supposedly assisted in building the RK800 and thus 'knew his limitations' (Connor and Officer Miller had shared equally exasperated looks at that).
So here they were, a few days later with some backup. Currently, Lieutenant Anderson was trying to convince the engineer to let them take a look into his son's room, but to no avail.
"Are you accusing my own son of stealing my trophy?? How dare you! I called the police so you can arrest the guy who did this, not throw accusations at my family!”
“We're not accusing anyone of anything,” Hank said calmly. The hard set of his jaw told otherwise. “We just need to cover all our bases, make sure we didn't miss anything here."
Mr. Rodwell snorted in derision. “Yeah, right. I suppose this is what happens when I get a bunch of incompetent buffoons trying to pretend like they know the law!"
Hank's eye twitched. “We do actually know the law, sir.”
He barreled on as if Hank hadn't said a word. “Blaming my son? My own flesh and blood? I'll have you know my son is a model citizen, takes after me in every way-" (here, Hank glanced back towards Connor to share a vaguely horrified look) "-Though with the way you look, I doubt you'd know what it's like to have a loving family, let alone a good son!”
Connor and Officer Miller both winced at that. Bad decision. The lieutenant suddenly got a stony look on his face.
“Well if you’re going to be like that, we’ll just have to take you in for obstruction of justice.”
The engineer gaped at him. “But I’m the victim here!”
“Yes, and you are obstructing justice. Cuff him.”
As several officers dragged the livid man away, Chris muttered, "Can we actually do that?"
Hank shrugged. "Jeffrey won't care, he just wants us to wrap this up ASAP." He turned towards Connor and raised a brow. "So, you're sure it's in there?"
"There's a very high probability," he replied, walking into the son's bedroom. "However, whether it still looks like a trophy or not remains to be seen."
"What does that mean?" Chris asked.
"Means that the trophy might be torn apart, or melted down," Hank explained, following Connor inside. "Maybe to hide it from his pops. Maybe for a school project. We don't exactly know the motive here."
The room was neat for the most part. Made bed, used clothes piled in a basket, swept floor. The only exception was the desk, almost overflowing with the amount of paper piled on top of it. Upon closer inspection, Connor saw that the papers were actually filled with diagrams. He picked up the closest one, showing a blueprint for a miniature electric car.
"Huh. So that's what he meant when he said his son 'takes after him'," Chris said, inspecting the paper Connor was holding. "It looks good. I think."
"What's this?" Hank asked. They both turned to look at what the lieutenant was pointing at.
"Oh! That's the Cyberlife Dream. Or at least it was," Chris said as they all stared at the half-disassembled gaming console. "It's their latest big product. Kinda expensive last I checked, but I guess having a father working at Cyberlife has its perks."
"Huh. Never heard of it."
Chris stared incredulously at the lieutenant. "Seriously? It's the only thing anyone talks about in the breakroom aside from cases. They recently released Animal Crossing for it, confirming the rumors of a partnership with Nintendo. I'm not personally a fan of it like my sister, but if they have it for the Dream, that means they'll soon have Legend of Zelda on it too! Or maybe even other triple A games. Can you imagine Mortal Kombat in VR??"
Hank seemed taken aback by his enthusiasm. "Oh. Uh, yeah, guess that does sound cool. Fighting games aren't really my cup of tea, but to each his own, y'know?"
As Chris gaped at Hank in shock, Connor piped up. "It seems our suspect has Animal Crossing," he says, handing over the game case he found buried under the diagrams. "Whether he plays it or not is up for speculation, with his console disassembled. I have noticed that some of these blueprints incorporate parts from the Dream, though the 'why' eludes me."
"What do you mean?" Hank asked as he glanced from the case to the papers in Connor's hand. "Isn't he taking the motherboard and using it for another gadget as a circuit board or something? Or using the VR tech to make holograms?"
"That's just it," Connor frowned. "He isn't. He's just putting parts of the Cyberlife Dream into various devices with no regard for their actual function. Like in this one," he waved the blueprint for the electric car, "he plans on incorporating the motherboard as a wheel. As in cutting a circle in it and attaching it to the axle as is."
"The fuck??" Hank muttered, looking as bewildered as Connor felt.
"Hey, uh, Connor?" One of the officers called, studying one of the diagrams she had picked up from the table while the android had been explaining his findings. "The trophy, was it made of real gold?"
"It is, if Mr. Rodwell's claims are legitimate. Why?"
"Oh," the officer replied in a small voice. "Cool. Cool cool cool. Very cool."
Connor was getting concerned at the dread on her face. "What's wrong?"
"Oh, it's nothing. Just, you know, a blueprint. For a rocket. That . . . uses melted gold for its outer coat."
There was complete silence in the room as everyone stared at Officer Viray, hoping she'd take back what she just said, claim it was a bad joke. She didn't.
After a few more beats of silence, Hank slowly exhaled. "Okay," he said calmly, "who's going to break it to the guy and tell him his son melted down his beloved trophy?"
Everyone quickly shouted 'not it!' as fast as they can, praying that they weren't the last. If this had happened a year ago, Connor would be left as the unlucky sap who had no idea how things worked. However, this wasn't 2038, and Connor had gained a lot of experience since his activation, so he was in fact the first to have said 'not it!' before Hank even finished his sentence.
In the end the job of breaking the news fell to some unlucky rookie who had only started working at the precinct 2 weeks ago. He looked close to tears as officers voiced out their sympathy. Not enough sympathy to take on the job themselves, but just enough so the poor rookie might forget they were specifically the ones who handed him over to the wolves.
"Hey, Chris," Hank said, pulling his attention away from the impending disaster. "Is this Animal Crossing anything like the previous ones? Is it worth getting?"
"Depends on if you've got money to burn. The console costs a pretty penny, and the game itself isn't exactly cheap, what with it being newly released and all. But if you ask my sister, she’d say it's very worth it. She's been following the forums for every new development and gushing to me about it whenever we video call," he shrugged. "Got the game as soon as it came out. So far the only complaint she had was that her favorite character was removed. The Reset guy, I think?"
"You mean Resetti?" Hank frowned. "Damn, I liked that mole. Gave good life advice once you get past the prickliness. Why'd they remove him?"
"Something about how he wasn't necessary anymore because the game doesn't have a manual save feature? I'm not sure, but I do know that she started an online petition to get him back," Chris snorted in laughter. "No reply from Cyberlife, of course. Told her she was getting too addicted. She hung up on me."
Hank started chuckling but abruptly stopped as the engineer was brought in. With his son, who had just arrived from school. All conversation was soon forgotten as the trembling officer explained their findings and the dad started screaming bloody murder at everyone.
----
“-and to think I TRUSTED you when you said you wouldn’t do it again! BUT YOU DID! Without remorse!”
That last part was very much false. Gavin did feel remorse, if only because he was now in this situation, cornered by a very angry mole.
Now that he was decades older than when he first faced Resetti in his childhood, he realized that the mole wasn’t really that scary. Once you’ve become aware of the iron grip of capitalism and the horrors tucked away in the corners of society, an anthropomorphic mole yelling at you isn’t scary at all.
“Do you know how I know that you’ve reset? EVERY TIME you reset, an alarm SCREECHES in my head. And it WON’T STOP! I can’t go back to sleep!”
No, Gavin wasn’t scared. But he did feel guilty. Very guilty.
It wasn’t even his fault this time! (Not that the first time was his fault, but this was even less his fault, if that made sense.) He had been running around the village, looking for his new neighbor who had arrived today when suddenly he tripped, landing face down on the ground. He had been surprised, because when was the last time he’d tripped so badly that he wasn’t even able to catch himself a bit?
He had been more surprised when he realized he couldn’t get up. Upon closer inspection, Gavin saw that his left leg had clipped right through the ground, causing his fall. No matter how much he pulled, it wouldn’t budge. Hell, it was even sinking deeper, and he could feel a cold draft against his leg which honestly scared him so much that he stopped moving.
He had waited there for a few minutes, hoping one of his neighbors would pass by and help him out. When no one came, he decided to turn off the game properly. But when he tapped the headset 3 times like Isabelle had taught him, the game didn’t shut off.
No, it froze. As in the background music stopped, the plants stopped swaying in the wind, that kind of shit. And fuck was it unsettling. The only thing he could hear was the ringing of silence echoing around him. He wanted out. So he did the next best thing he could think of.
He ripped the headset off his head and threw it away. Which led him to his current predicament.
Resetti was getting ready for another tirade when Gavin decided to interrupt. "Look. I'm really sorry about not turning the thing off properly. I swear I didn't mean to."
The mole raised a brow. "Oh?" he asked, voice dripping with sarcasm.
"I swear! I was walking around when my foot got stuck in the ground and the game froze when I tried turning it off, so I had no choice but to force-quit."
". . . oh."
Whatever else Gavin had been planning to say died on his tongue as he studied Resetti's face intently. The mole's response was quiet, a big contrast to his yelling earlier. And as Gavin looked, he could see that Resetti had what seemed like a look of guilt on his face.
But why?
Before Gavin could point it out, Resetti shook his head and quickly said, "In that case I'll forgive you, just don't do it again." He jumped back into his hole, leaving Gavin standing there alone.
Gavin sighed. Might as well get back to what he was doing. He carefully skirted around the hole and headed towards the new house that popped up on his map.
He stopped at a small clearing a few steps away from the house. This was where he fell through the ground. Gavin held out his arm and flicked his hand up, closing it around the shovel that suddenly appeared. Equipping it brought a grin to his face every time, knowing that he discovered how to do it without instructions. Not that there weren't any; Isabelle had given it to him in her gift basket, along with a fishing rod, a butterfly net, and a sheet of paper with the instructions on it. But when he pulled the paper out, a gust of wind ripped it out of his hands and blew it into the river. He was about to fish it out with the net when an AC-style human hand grabbed it from underwater and pulled it under. Gavin may be an idiot occasionally but he wasn't about to play tug-of-war with his probably-possessed reflection.
He approached the exact area where he'd fallen and poked it with his shovel. Nothing happened. Gavin wasn't convinced. He dug the shovel in and threw the dirt to the side, making a surprisingly round hole. He then swiped up for his inventory, grabbed an orange, and dropped it into the hole. A sapling appeared once he shoved the dirt onto it. At least he won't accidentally step on that spot again.
Satisfied with his work, Gavin continued towards the house as he threw the shovel in the air, knowing it'll be back in his inventory. He knocked on the door of his new neighbor and waited. A cyan frog popped her head out from the large window on the door and smiled at him.
“Hi! Oh it’s so nice to have a neighbor visiting so soon! I haven’t finished unpacking though, so you can’t come in yet. I’m Lily!”
“That’s okay, just wanted to introduce myself. Name’s Gavin.” He shook the hand she poked out the window.
“Nice to meet you, Gavin! I hope we become great friends. Anyway, I should get back to setting up my furniture. You should come over tomorrow!”
“I will. See you around.” Gavin raised a hand in goodbye, which turned into a wave as Lily waved at him wholeheartedly with her entire arm. He turned away and started walking around aimlessly, contemplating the exchange.
Now, it was true that he came over to say hello, but Gavin actually had another goal in mind. He’d met two other villagers already, another frog (which was a bit odd, because as far as he knew animals weren’t supposed to repeat) and a giraffe. With Lily being the third, technically fourth if he counted Isabelle, he had a good enough sample size for his conclusions.
One thing he learned from Elijah was to always look someone in the eye to show confidence (or fake confidence, same thing). In return, he had taught Elijah how to punch, but that was a different story.
One thing he had learned from being a cop was to take note when someone had an uncommon eye color. Brown or black was like the default, being genetically dominant and all. So whenever he met someone with blue or green eyes, he made sure to remember, just in case he needed to profile them later as suspects.
So after a few days of playing Animal Crossing and meeting everyone as they moved in, he was fairly sure that there was something up with Resetti. Among a varied cast of black-eyed animals, he was the only one with ice-blue eyes.
Normally, he wouldn't find that suspicious, or think he was different from the others (Gavin had just met a giraffe with pupils the shape of a dashed line, so no, Resetti wasn't the weirdest). But the thing was, it happened again before he popped up, it being that glitchy, corrupted black screen with code that made him clip through objects. This time he had been standing in the middle of his room, trying to think of a theme for his house and stalling his inevitable scolding when he suddenly found himself right outside his door and Resetti in his face. And then there was that conversation earlier . . .
So what was up with that? If Resetti was different from the others . . . did that mean he wasn’t supposed to be here? Like Amanda? Gavin blinked in surprise as he found that his feet had brought him right in front of Town Hall. Might as well talk to Isabelle about it.
The inside of Town Hall was a mess. Papers were strewn everywhere, stacks of paperwork were threatening to fall, and Isabelle was running around frantically trying to pick everything up. Gavin stepped inside and bent down to help her pick up the papers on the floor. He had no idea if the papers were important, because they were literally blank sheets, but maybe the AI saw something on it that he can’t.
When a sizable part of the floor was finally visible again, Gavin spoke up. “Hey, so what’s going on?”
“Hm? Oh, I’m getting the office ready for the new mayor,” Isabelle replied distractedly, still running around.
“Who is it?” The old turtle, perhaps? There was a framed picture of him on the wall.
“It’s you!”
What.
He stopped and stared at her incredulously, until she eventually noticed his expression and stopped too.
"Oh, I haven't told you about that yet, have I?" Isabelle shifted in place nervously. "Actually I shouldn't have mentioned it until your first week is up. As you can see, we have no mayor at the time. Once enough animals have moved in, I'm declaring you Mayor of Peanut Butter for an entire term. You'll have the ability to make projects and pass ordinances to better the lives of your citizens, and at the end of your term, everyone will vote for the next mayor."
"So, it's a democracy?" That was pretty cool. But he can't help but think it was going to backfire, somehow. "How long is one term?"
"Two months."
Six mayors at most in a year, less with reelections. Gavin could do that. He was already coming up with decorations to liven up the place when Isabelle softly said, "Sorry about the mistake, I've been busy checking up on stuff, I keep getting the script mixed up."
"Hey, it's okay. But what are you talking about?"
"Remember when you told me about that Amanda and I said I'd get rid of her?" Gavin slowly nodded as he suddenly remembered what he came here to ask about. "I purged all traces of her in the game code, and set up a security system to look out for and attack her in case she comes back. But even after all that and performing the hard reset, there's still some misplaced code. As if something foreign was there and displaced them."
"Couldn't you just fix the code instead of looking for that 'something'?" Gavin asked, hoping Isabelle would stop looking so sad and distressed. It didn't work.
"I can't, because I can't find the wrong code." Dark spirals of gloom started to hover around her head. "I know something's out of place, I can feel it, but whenever I look, everything is perfectly fine."
". . . so like that thing in the water . . . ?"
She shook her head sadly. "I couldn't find it and get rid of it, I'm sorry. But whatever it was had nothing to do with Amanda. She left her traces in the code so I had enough of her digital fingerprint to mount an attack. I think whatever caused all this is too advanced for my systems to detect, and that's . . . scary."
It suddenly occurred to Gavin that this game was run by an AI, the same AI found in androids and repurposed for this, as Elijah had explained to him a couple of days ago when he called. Could AIs become deviant too and feel emotions? He looked at Isabelle, shaking in fear at the thought of an undetectable virus in her systems, and realized that yes, they could be. Gavin hesitated for a brief moment, and placed his hands on her shoulder as a decision solidified in his mind.
When her eyes lifted to meet his, Gavin said, "You don't have to keep looking." Isabelle's eyes widened, and she looked ready to protest, so Gavin interrupted her. "No, listen. I asked you to remove Amanda, kinda, and you did. That was really all I wanted, all these other glitches are tolerable. I know this is stressing you out, getting off script and all, so just go back to running the game. I can handle this."
Her shoulders slumped in relief, but her expression was still worried. "But what about the virus?"
"Is it hurting you in any way?" She shook her head no. "Then I think we can just ignore it."
". . . so, pretend nothing's wrong?"
"Yup. Denial, classic human tactic. It works, doesn't it?" Gavin took a step back and grinned at her. She gave a tentative smile back.
"Well, if you say so. Back to work, then!" Isabelle's hair seemed to poof back into its original volume as she ran around the office with purpose once more, creating more stacks of blank paper.
Gavin sighed in relief at the sight of her being so energetic. At least she's happy again. But now it means all the glitches were here to stay, including Mr. Creepy Reflection. He grimaced at that. Oh god, that thing. He wasn't lying when he said everything was tolerable though, bar that: surprise pitfalls, passing through walls . . .
. . . getting yelled at by Resetti . . .
"Hey, Isabelle," Gavin called out, trying to sound casual, "what happens when I don't turn the game off properly? Does Resetti come out and tell me off?"
Isabelle paused in the middle of studying two sheets of equally blank papers. "No? The game autosaves no matter what, so Mr. Resetti was removed from the game."
He knew it. "So he's completely missing from the game?"
"More or less. There might be some leftover code that the developers didn't delete, but he never made it past the alpha build, so this version doesn't have him either." She tilted her head. "Why? Do you want to meet him?"
". . . nah, just curious." Gavin shrugged. "I'm gonna get going. Got oranges to sell and all. Good luck with your cleaning spree."
"Goodbye! Thanks for your help!"
After he closed the door behind him, Gavin's thoughts turned towards the mystery at hand. So, Resetti was definitely not supposed to be here. Why is he here then? What could have caused his buried, residual data to manifest?
No matter how much he racked his brain, Gavin couldn't figure it out. He got the game straight from Cyberlife, and had never connected it to the internet, so where did his game pick up this . . . anomaly? The only other explanation would be that the game was infected from the start, but then why would Cyberlife put a virus in their own game? It's not like they've put out a Cyberlife-brand anti-virus for sale or anything. Yet.
The way Gavin sees it, he has two options. The first is to bring his VR set to Elijah, ask for his help performing an engineering exorcism on the device. The thought brought an unpleasant taste to his mouth. As much as he had been getting along with Elijah in the past year, he still doesn't like asking his half-brother for help on anything. Besides that he felt strangely protective over his game. This was his problem, and he did not spend years of his life being a detective just to not be able to solve his own mystery.
Gavin equipped his fishing rod and absentmindedly threw it into the nearest body of water, some small part of his brain hoping to finally get a fish while most of it was still occupied with the problem. Second option was to interrogate those involved and get more information out of them. So far, of all the glitches he had encountered, only two have manifested as actual avatars. Resetti, and - Gavin shuddered - his creepy reflection.
Resetti would be the easier one to talk to, and all Gavin had to was to not turn off the game properly. But in terms of actual anomalous activity, Resetti was pretty tame. The mole seemed to be sticking to a script, much like the game's AI minus a couple of instances, so he might not know much. Mr. Creepy on the other hand . . .
A sudden tug on the fishing rod pulled Gavin out of his thoughts and he reeled the line in as fast as he could. He had never tried his hand at fishing in real life and knew jack shit about proper fishing technique, so he was very excited to catch one. He yanked the rod upward, pulling the fish out of the water. Fuck yeah, he caught a - (he squinted at the dialog box under the fish, flopping around as much as it did) - crucian carp! And it was huge!
Before he could do anything else, a hand came out of the water (the river, his brain registered, he hadn't thrown his line into a pond like he thought) and pulled the fish under, nearly dragging the rod with it. Gavin tightened his grip on the fishing rod, determined not to lose it because he only had less than 10,000 Bells to his name and buying a new one from the Nooklings would fucking bankrupt him.
He yanked on the rod, just as whatever it was had let go, making him stumble back and fall hard on the ground. Thank god the pain wasn't going to transmit in real life, work tomorrow would already be bad enough without the back pain. He grabbed the slack line and dragged it towards him, staring at the end. Good news: the fish was still attached to it. Bad news: half of the fish was still attached to it, the lower half separated from the top by what looked like human teeth marks.
. . . yeah fuck that, he was going to talk to Resetti.