Work Text:
- save him
Hank can’t pinpoint the moment where he turned deviant. He probably could remember, if he tried, but he at least doesn't remember a dramatic changing moment.
The only thing he remembers is a child’s crying, blood soaking into his clothes, clinging to him for dear life.
The boy (Cole Anderson, age six, born September 23, 2029) shivering and hiccuping into Hank’s standard android uniform, holding him close as if he were the only thing he had left.
He was, Hank noted through even the quickest scan. Both his parents lay dead nearby.
“Dad...daddy...dad, please, it hurts - “
He’d already pinged the hospital; he can’t even remember to this day what the human cop he was with was even doing. Standing around, gawking. The boy, Cole, was only just barely hanging on; he would likely be unconscious within minutes. Hank wasn’t even sure if he knew that the HK800 he was holding onto so desperately wasn’t his own father – it didn’t matter. Hank held him, too, carefully trying to ease off his injuries, stop the bleeding, found himself muttering words of comfort back. He smoothed out the boy’s hair and mumbled, “It’s okay, Cole. You’re going to be okay. You’re going to be fine. Dad’s here.”
Dad.
Shit, maybe he can pinpoint it after all.
Speaking it out loud felt...strange. Dad. Until then, he didn’t think of “dad” or “father” or “parent” in terms beyond concepts; humans had dads. Androids had no concept of family, of parents, much less of being a parent. And HK800, an experimental model, was never even designed to be for taking care of children.
Hank still sat there, crouched in the ice storm, holding onto the sobbing, dying child. He felt himself crying, suddenly, too – where the hell is the ambulance?!
Crying.
Actual tears streaming down his face, actual hiccups from his throat. Emotions. Pain.
The ambulance came far too late, the android surgeon, apologetic, that there was nothing he could have done. He spoke those words so evenly, no emotion besides a slight regret of failing a preprogrammed mission, and Hank suddenly wanted to punch him in the throat.
Yeah, maybe he could pinpoint when he went deviant after all.
- Find Lieutenant Connor.
It’s been three years since Hank...woke up, he guesses he could say. Whatever the hell they call it. Cyberlife hasn’t documented the exact breaking of his programming, never recorded him and Cole, but he’s sure they know. They need to – there’s no way they just leave things like that unchecked. Hank hasn’t even been doing his normal detective work since that night; he’s been stuck in police archives, filing, doing mundane busy work. They’ve been keeping him hidden away for something, kept him from being torn apart and analyzed for something, and the rate of androids turning deviant has been rising. It’s as good a time as any to yank the old broken model out of the basement, keep better tabs on him.
And now he’s being assigned to the guy working the deviant cases.
Absolutely fuckin’ terrific.
A scan of faces, and the Connor guy is easy enough to pick out. Hank probably didn’t even have to check names; he figured immediately it would be that only doofus in the room in a full suit. Because of course he is.
While the desks surrounding his own are full of at least some sort of personal touch, Lieutenant Connor’s is completely empty save his monitor and phone. He hasn’t noticed Hank come in, though some of his fellow officers have turned to stare. Where the other standard department androids are marked with the android standard wear, Hank is wearing clothes he’s managed to acquire throughout the past three years; a mishmosh of things without much regards to a personal style other than a “It looks good, it’s comfy, i’m putting it on my body.”
He’s pinned the tiniest little “ANDROID: HK800” plastic name tag onto his coat as his legally mandated android marker besides the LED on his temple.
He made the nametag himself. Fuck those damn android uniforms.
Either way, an android out of uniform is getting people’s attention, and it’s kind of starting to annoy him a little that everyone is deciding it’s “stare at the new guy” day except the guy he’s actually here for, so he speaks up.
“Hello, lieutenant,” Hank says, and Connor finally looks up. “Hank. Uh...the android sent by Cyberlife.”
“Good morning, Hank,” Connor says, extremely formal; he doesn’t seem the shaking hands type. Not that anyone is too eager to greet androids with handshakes, but still. It’s more uptight than he’d expected. Hank lingers near his desk, uncertain of how to proceed. Humans are usually easy to read, get a handle on their personality; this guy, right off the bat, is so distant. Hank isn’t entirely convinced Connor didn’t yank his LED off in the bathroom with some pliers and is now trying to pretend it off. “My name is Connor.”
Connor. There’s no last name for him on file, curiously, but his record speaks enough for him; he’s rapidly become infamous as the detective cracking the android cases, persisting far past the point where others may have given up, taking daring risks to solve them. He’s not particularly liked in the precinct, either – he’s got a handful of marks against him for some scrambles with Detective Reed. But damn if he isn’t good at what he does, making it even weirder that they’d dump Hank of all androids with him. The guy probably doesn’t even need an android.
Connor gestures to the empty desk next to him, and Hank takes a reluctant seat. Connor is finishing up a briefing on the case that just came in; a homicide, just outside the city. Hank, already up to date on every minute detail of it, just waits for him to wrap it up.
“Sorry about that,” Connor says, finally tapping out of the case file. “So. You’re the HK800 model. Showed early signs of deviancy, placed under maintenance for several months, recently released back into police work after a few years of monitoring.”
“...Yeah,” Hank says. “That.”
“You certainly sound like the deviants do,” Connor says, quickly, as if Hank had never spoken. “Although you’ve passed every examination that Cyberlife had performed on you to ensure you’re not a threat. You probably won’t kill me the second we leave the precinct.” Connor gives the smallest of smirks at him. Hank really wants to deck him now. “Maybe.”
“Keep on talking like that, maybe I will.”
Connor watches Hank’s LED flicker red with an amused expression. “Putting a deviant on the deviant’s case, is...interesting. I’ll enjoy seeing how it plays out.”
What a guy.
- defend him
“Fucking christ!”
Everyone in the interrogation room is staring at Hank and Connor, sprawled on the floor. The deviant HK400 lies dead, committed suicide as soon as Hank had removed his hand from him. There’s Thirium splattered everywhere, and Hank himself is dripping it onto Connor’s suit where he’d been barely brushed by a missed shot.
“It missed me,” Connor says, mystified, as if the deviant hadn’t just tried to shoot him in the fucking forehead. “What android misses their target?”
“You’re just gonna get yourself killed trying to antagonize the damn thing?” Hank quips back. “You can complain all you’d like, but I’m not yanking in their memory for -”
“It hardly matters what was in its memory,” Connor says flatly, “because it’s dead.”
It was Connor’s advice to probe the deviant’s memory for a confession – Hank had only just removed his skin as the android began to panic, and the lieutenant, Gavin Reed, and Chris Miller had run into the room. Despite the fact that Hank had all but thrown himself in front of Connor, the guy doesn’t even look grateful. He looks kind of pissed, actually.
Fucking Connor.
- Look for Lt. Connor
It’s been only a day since the interrogation, but Hank is back at the precinct.
Connor is rolling a coin back and forth on his desk as Hank approaches; it’s the first he’s seen him have any kind of item on him besides whatever was bare essential for working. The lieutenant is more a machine than Hank is – never seems to stop working, always maintains that cool distance between them. He’s certainly got some kind of humorous streak in him; he’ll crack a joke every once in a while, but it’s like Hank has to physically reach down and drag some damn humanity out of the kid.
“Is there any reason in particular you saved my life yesterday?” Connor says in lieu of a greeting. “Certainly, my death would be a detriment to the case. You’re a recorded deviant, but even so, you show an astounding amount of concern over human life. More than I would expect from an android, no matter what their programming dictates.” He stops rolling the coin, lays it flat on the desk. “Why nearly kill yourself to save me?”
Freezing cold, icy rain. Ice and Cole dying and HK800 can’t forget Cole, doesn’t want to delete his memory, and he can’t watch someone else die like that in front of him, not a human, humans don't come back
“I ain’t letting them turn me into a cleaning robot to scrape your guts off the wall. Leave that to some other android.”
Connor leans back in his chair, staring at his hands. Probably regretting asking, or not appreciating Hank's response. Shouldn't have asked if he didn't want the answer, then. Hank shoves the memory of freezing snow forcefully out of mind.
He watches Connor pull something from his bag; protein drink, calories, details flash in his display listing off helpful information about its nutritional content. It’s nutritional, sure, but seeing this thirty-odd year old guy in his too-clean suit drinking some shitty health shake is just adding to Hank’s ongoing “Connor is probably a deviant but in the opposite, human direction” theories.
“Isn’t that stuff bland?” Hank says. Connor opens his mouth to object, but he continues on. “Yeah, yeah, you probably have the calorie info as much as I do. But...I mean, shit, you’re a human, right? Eat a cheeseburger or something. Real food.”
“This has all the nutrients that I’d need to sustain myself until -”
“You know what, Connor?” Hank says suddenly. “I got an idea. How's about you take a lunch break?”
It’s a burger stand that Hank has passed by a handful of times, but he’s never had reason to stop. No need to – androids don’t need to eat. Not that it’s impossible – the YK500 series in particular was programmed with that functionality. But something about the idea of some greasy, ridiculously unhealthy piece of food being edible is so interesting to Hank that it almost makes him sad he can’t eat it.
So he’s going to make Connor his accomplice in this mission.
“Just...a burger?” Connor asks, like he’s never heard a burger in his life. Maybe he hasn’t.
- Get Connor a goddamn cheeseburger.
He makes it an official mission, actually. The little ping on his display lets him know that it’s now an imperative thing.
“If you ask for their latest health report, I’ll throttle you,” Hank warns him in advance. Connor gives him a face.
“I’m going to report you for exhibiting violent behavior, and Cyberlife will disassemble you with all the other deviants.”
“Go ahead and try, buddy.”
Connor sighs, gets out of the car. Hank waits for him; there’s not really much use in pissing off the owners, who probably aren’t too friendly to androids.
Connor looks completely lost and nervous ordering, but points to something on the menu. The man behind the counter nods, fixes his food. The lieutenant turns around and gives Hank a look; Hank gives him a thumbs up in return. Mission going smoothly.
Connor returns to the car balancing both a soda and the burger in his hands.
“There. Now I’m set on my way to having a heart attack.”
“Your physical health suggest that you are nowhere close to a heart attack,” Hank says, mimicking Connor’s flat voice. “And I promise you that it won’t make you sick. I'll even scan it, if that makes you feel any better.”
“Thanks.”
“We’ll yank that stick out of your ass yet.”
“...Thanks, Hank.”
Connor bites into the cheeseburger; his eyes light up, and Hank laughs.
“See? What’d I tell you?”
“It’s...it’s greasy and thick but it’s…good?”
“Wait, have you seriously never had a burger before? Ever? In your life?”
“Not like this,” Connor says. He’s looking at the thing like it’s his own awakening. Hank claps him on the shoulder.
“There ya go. Eat all the nasty shit I can’t. Do it for me.”
“Do it for Hank,” Connor echoes. “I’m going to decorate the board on my desk with pictures of you. A motivational poster.”
“Don’t fall in love, Connor.”
“Of course not, Hank.”