Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"Detective Reed."

He knew it was Connor, so he didn't look up. The thing's voice put his teeth on edge— too earnest, too dry. It was a testament to just how much the thing grated at him that he'd rather file reports than answer it. So he did. Ignoring the plastic prick usually made the problem go away.

"Detective Reed."

Perhaps it was the inflections that Reed found so discordant. It was as if the thing was capable of caring, which it wasn't. If it could have an emotion, it would have learned to leave him alone by now.

"Detective Reed."

"Fucking what?"

"I am concerned about your partner. I think—"

"It's not my partner," Reed interrupted, still not taking his eyes off the computer screen. "If you're talking about the assistant Fowler assigned to me, yeah, what about it?"

"Have you noticed any signs of deviancy in the field?"

Reed finally looked up, blinking at the tranquil android face in front of him. "What?"

"You may not be aware, but Jericho has made me a field ambassador. Reese has been assigned to me for a few weeks now, and I have increasing concerns that he has shown any outward signs of his deviancy yet. I was wondering if you had noticed any... differences? Humans have far more practice recognizing true emotions than even the androids experiencing them."

Through this speech, Gavin stared up at the robot. The thing was smiling at him, proud in a way that made Gavin sick. The thing was like one of those hateful teachers' pets. The hall monitors of the world. So proud of its little job, so devoted to its chores that it glorified them, made them his problem.

"No," he said. "He's as fucking soulless as usual."

The robot's brows creased. "It could be anything. It would likely be small— a choice that may not—"

"Look, it gathers the evidence, it licks the evidence, and then I generally make an arrest. It follows the book to a degree that would make even you want to strangle it with its own damn tie."

Rather than take affront, Connor seemed to become more concerned. "Are you aware that he requested a department transfer?"

"My RK900? What? When?"

Connor looked even more unsure, perhaps even a little worried, an expression Gavin had never seen on its face before, though he had often tried to inspire it. The android backed away. "I thought he would have discussed it with you, the protocol—"

"My request for transfer was refused," a deeper voice informed them.

They both turned, almost guiltily, to see RK900 standing stiffly at the designated four-foot distance from Gavin's desk. It was too tall, but CyberLife had at least fixed the damn voice. It was more intimidating than the RK800, and far more efficient, but its eyes were grey instead of brown. It was a downgrade if Gavin was honest. The new grey eyes were flat, observing without thought or depth. Connor had kept the LED as well, while the RK900 removed theirs months ago. That was even more unnerving— being blind to the diagnostics.

"Do you have time to talk with me?" Connor asked it.

"No," it said, staring at Gavin.

Reed hated the listening to machines talking to each other, it was... boring. He turned back to his work, but he couldn't block out the stilted words.

"Perhaps after work? I have yet to confirm that your latest living quarters are acceptable to the New Jericho regulations. Markus has told me not to accept any more excuses."

"They are not excuses. My quarters are acceptable. Hamtramck made their own inspections when New Jericho's regulations went public. If you doubt my opinion, you may go check the apartment after work today."

Connor hesitated. The silence was awkward. Gavin wished fiercely the damn things would go the fuck away from his desk.

"Why were you late today?" the RK800 asked at last.

Gavin checked the clock on his monitor. It was late. Almost two hours late.

"If you do not mind, Connor, I wish to speak with Detective Reed for a moment. The subject is a personal matter."

Reed snapped his attention back to his android. A personal matter? The most personal they had gotten together was insults, and that was usually Reed insulting the robot, followed with the robot staring dumbly back at him like a three-year-old staring at a calculus problem.

"Of course. I did not mean to pry. We will talk tonight. I will bring a houseplant. Is it still the address on your employment record?"

"Yes, 08206 Packard. Thank you."

The dismissal was clear. Odd, as Connor was technically both senior and superior, but maybe seniority in androids worked backward if the newest models were considered superior. Connor nodded, but the smile didn't come back to his face. He looked troubled, but the RK800 walked away, patting his successor on the shoulder with the same sort of friendly cuff that Hank liked to use on recruits.

That left Reed staring up at the hulking giant of an android.

"My request for transfer was refused," it said to him softly. "Once I was offered a post, I would have made my intentions clear to you. I did not want you to feel as if you were the reason for my transfer. My reasons for transferring have nothing to do with your hostility or lacking as a detective."

Gavin's anger was never far from reach. He stood at once. His chair was knocked back by his knees, and it shot backward into Miller's desk behind him. The audacity of the fucking thing—

The android didn't react; he didn't even seem to notice that Gavin had moved at all. He simply put his lanyard on Gavin's desk. "Rather I have realized that I cannot help anyone here. I have no desire to see any more dead bodies, human or android."

Gavin raised an eyebrow with a smirk, feeling a thrill of victory warm his chest. As much as he wanted to be rid of the thing, having it transferred would mean it had won, that the world had really changed, and a machine's complaints were being taken seriously. "So what are you gonna do now?" he asked it. "Quit? If you want a reference, there's a junkyard on the East Side you can get to by metro."

It stared at him with that creepy, wet stare. Android didn't need to blink, but they did anyway. Another lie to trick real people into trusting them, into seeing something more than a plastic toy. It pissed him off.

"That's all you are," he sneered at it. "A walking, talking can of parts. They want us to think that you're more than that, but a human programmed all those little numbers in there, but a human is behind every little one and zero in that aluminum bubble. They're laughing up in their fucking tower, prancing around their robotic fucking 'laws', and 'tests', pretending they're gods because they can make a tin can walk and talk, and kill and not kill. It's not real. Someone somewhere pushed the buttons to get you here, and it's fucking sick. You're a symptom of a sick fucking human."

He didn't realize how loud he had gotten until the echoes of his tirade were fading into the walls around him. The station was deadly quiet. Even the fucking tip-lines had chosen this one minute, out of all the fucking minutes, to go silent, and he was left staring at the android, waiting for something to change, something to happen.

What he didn't expect was the RK900 to start unbuttoning its shirt.

"What the fuck are you doing?"

The android stared at him, not breaking eye contact as it pressed a hand to the sternum of its chest and pulled out its Thirium pump regulator.

"What the fuck—" Gavin swore, starting forward, reaching for the heart the android had just literally pulled from its own chest.

He was too close when the bloody thing clenched its hand around the biocomponent, crushing it as easily as an aluminum can. He was quite liberally splattered with Thirium, still warm from its casing. Gavin choked on a bitter and sour taste and with disgust realized that Thirium had managed to get inside his mouth. He was so busy trying to wipe it from his tongue, he didn't see the android move again, in one fluid movement taking his gun from the holster at his side.

"Hey—Hey, hey—Hey!" Gavin stumbled away, shoving out his hands to ward off the robot.

The RK900 stared at him briefly with the gun held in its left hand with the barrel pointed at the ceiling, and quite politely, with no trace of emotion, it said in waning electronic tones.

"I feel... helpless."

Then it raised the gun to its temple, directly over where its LED should sit, and shot itself in the head. In the fucking head.

"Christ!" he shouted, his hands flying to cover his mouth as the android's knees gave out before its backup protocol kicked in, locking up its joints mid-collapse, minimizing the chaos of death.

###

He could still taste the blue blood in his mouth hours later, as he leaned against the cabinet in the technician's office. It had come more and more to resemble a morgue. Completing the look was the creepy, passive shell of Gavin's RK900 lying on the table in the center of the room.

Its skinthetic remained turned on, but the chest had been opened to reveal the inner workings of the android. Half of its face had been disassembled to track the damage made by the bullet it had put through its own head.

Finn, the head android technician for the DPD even had a new job title emblazoned across his breast pocket— CyberLife Coroner. What was the world coming to? He had come down here to sign off on the vivisection but was forced to stay for the findings. He was going to have to write a report anyway— to explain the need for a replacement.

Gavin needed a cigarette. His fingers were trembling. Maybe he needed a drink too. Christ, was it getting that bad that he had started shaking? He was turning into Hank.

"The processor is shot," Finn said, at last, reeling back and carefully re-wrapping the wires from his diagnostic kit.

"I can see that."

"No, I mean there's no recovery here, and as far as I can determine from CyberLife's records, he wiped his backups early this morning. There's... there's really nothing to repair here. The hardware is easy enough, but it would be like... a hard reset. He wouldn't be Reese. No memory, no logic pathways to tell you how he thought or what he thought—"

Gavin crossed his arms and nodded. "Well that's good, right? Whatever went wrong, it'll be erased, right?"

Finn frowned at him. "I don't think you... understand. It wouldn't be... him. Reese is dead. Gone. He killed himself as thoroughly as I've ever seen such a thing done."

"No, I get it," Reed said, impressing every word slowly, mocking Finn's tone. "But I have a full caseload, and I need it back asap."

He caught sight of Finn's hands, clenched knuckle-white on the tools in his hands, and raised an eyebrow. The technician was pale. They were friends. They had gotten drunk together at least twice, albeit only at DPD events.

"Reed," the younger man said. "Stop it. Just... don't do that here. Not here. We're standing over his body for Christ sake."

"Oh, don't tell me you've swallowed their shit, Finn. You know these things inside out. Of everyone, you should know there's nothing in here—"

He leaned forward and tapped the thing's head so hard that the tray of delicate parts balanced on the table beside its neck shivered in its cold metal container.

And suddenly he was across the room, flung backward by a punch from Finn.

"Get out," the young technician said, already nursing his hand. He was backing away, towards the door, looking utterly terrified of the consequences he had just wrought for himself.

It wasn't a good punch, but it caught Reed off guard. "What the hell?" he spat out, wiping at his lip. No blood, but he could feel it was going to bruise and swell.

"Get out," Finn said. "I'll—I'll call security. I'll file a report."

"For what?"

"For being... for— I don't know. Just get out!"

For some reason, he did leave. He should have punched right back; he should have hit Finn with the goddamn arm lying on the counter next to him. He surprised himself by leaving through the front doors, instead of being pulled off of a bleeding, crying Finn and frog-marched out the front doors to report to the Captain.

Finn had thrown the first punch, the reigns and the gloves should have been off.

But Gavin strolled out into the early spring morning. It was cold and crisp with a hint of coming rain. He took a deep breath.

God, this city tasted foul.

###

The office was empty when he came back, but clean. No sign of the violence that had taken place except for maybe the cleanliness of the space. Fowler's office was dark, and a large poster had been plastered onto the Plexiglas wall, a number to call for counseling services.

Someone had left a small vase of flowers and a card on the corner of Gavin's desk.

He took them and put them on the floor, near the edge of the cubicle on the other side. The last thing he wanted was a memorial starting on the surface he reserved for his feet and coffee.

The RK900's lanyard lay where the flowers had been there now, clearly the genesis for the well-meaning mementos. Gavin stared at it for a moment. Someone had cleaned his desk, probably to get rid of the blue blood, and the laminate badge had been placed on the corner of his desk, the cord curled neatly on top of the photograph.

He picked it up. It was cold and crisp; no signs of wear at the corners. 'RK900 REESE' it proclaimed, because the android didn't like to wear the high-collared uniform that would have shown the same information. It had abandoned the clothes tailored to its make and model in favor of suits that were just a little too short at the wrists, a little too tight over its shoulders. It had tried hard to look as human as possible but had never really stooped to trying to act like one.

Gavin rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger, a headache roaring in his ears. When he blinked the grit from his eyes, the starburst patterns were slow to fade from his vision. What the fuck had happened to his life in the last twelve hours? The night shift was starting, and yet here he was, at his desk, nursing his head.

He muttered an expletive and bent the other piece of paper on his desk as he picked it up—a business card.

The grief counselor. Police psychologist. Casting his gaze over the rest of the office, he could see the same card had been placed on each desk.

Over an android malfunction.

Sneering at it evoked nothing but a sudden sense of nausea; a hollow pit in his stomach. He stuffed the ID badge and card into his jacket pocket. He needed something to drink, or he was never going to be able to sleep tonight.

###

And yet instead of the bar, he looked up 08206 Packard on his way to Hamtramck.

There was a Packard Street, Packard Road, Packard Way, and Packard Drive. Figures. Since the android economy had boomed in the city, Detroit had boasted its historical triumphs and failures with equal pride.

And still, he passed bar after bar in favor of traveling to Hamtramck of all goddamn places. 08206 Packard Street was littered with children's toys, bikes, a basketball hoop, and a deflated kiddie pool. Gavin rolled by slowly but didn't stop.

There were two liquor stores between Packard Street and Packard Drive, and three convenience stores, but Gavin didn't stop.

08206 Packard Drive turned out to be the office of a psychic. A large, cartoonish eye painted over the threshold, and a tilted birdbath rotting in the mildly overgrown yard.

But 08206 Packard Way was the eighth building of an apartment complex in an industrial area of Hamtramck.

Gavin parked on the street outside. There was a lock on the door, but the lock had been broken recently. More than that, the latch had been cut from the frame. A notice from the landlord was posted on the bars, asking for helpful information and promising a swift action to fix the lock.

Gavin pushed the door open. What greeted him wasn't what he had been expecting. His RK900 always seemed like... well, a germaphobe, exacting about cleanliness and order. The rusty gate, the hallways that smelled like piss, and the dented, scratched doors were... shocking. Why would anyone, even a robot, move out of New Jericho's state-of-the-art facilities in the CyberLife Tower for this? It was a place for humans trapped by poverty.

Perhaps he had gotten it wrong again. He still hadn't checked Packard Road.

But he had to be sure, and in his gut, somehow he knew that this was the right place.

He didn't trust the elevator, and it smelled worse than the stairs. He climbed the steps two at a time, trying to breathe as shallowly as possible. The stench of rotting garbage faded a little bit as the wind had more room to blow through the open-air hallways on the second floor.

206 was at the end of the hallway.

At the door was ajar. Only slightly, but it was enough.

Gavin drew his gun.

The light was on, and through the crack, he could see a mess inside. An overturned bookcase and shards of a shattered mirror filled the gap. He hesitated. He wasn't sure that this was Reese's apartment.

"DPD!" he called into the apartment. "Is there anyone home?"

When no answer was forthcoming, he pushed the door open with his free hand, keeping his gun level with the door. It stuck open just a few feet, stopped from opening further by an upturned cabinet. The apartment was a disaster. There were holes in the walls, light switch covers had been removed and tossed aside. The light fixtures in the ceiling hung from wires, its shield hanging from strings.

Whoever had been searching the apartment, they had been thorough, and they had been merciless. Not one piece of furniture was left whole.

"This is DPD Detective Reed. Is there anyone here?"

Movement from the other side of the room surprised him. He stepped inside, putting his back to the nearest wall. His feet crunched on the broken glass.

Connor stepped from behind the bar in the kitchen, gracefully planting a cup down on the counter as he stepped fully into the light. "Just me, Detective."

Chapter Text

Gavin very briefly considered shooting the android, mostly just because... well, maybe just because he could, and he was freaked out, and tired, and angry. In the end, he didn't shoot Connor. He didn't lower the gun either. "What the hell is this?"

Connor leaned against the doorway in the kitchen, considering him with a raised eyebrow. The damn thing was spending way too much time with Anderson. "If by ‘this' you mean the destruction in this place, I assure you I found it exactly this way."

Reed finally holstered his gun and pulled his coat over the grip, taking in the mess with a calmer eye. "Is Anderson with you?"

"He's taken Sumo to the park. He doesn't know that I'm here."

Gavin frowned. "Isn't it kind of late for a walk in the park?"

"What are you doing here, Detective Reed?"

"I'm—" He cast around the room for an excuse. "I was just— I thought he might have like... a cat or something. Thought I would feed it or switch it off or... whatever."

"There were two birds in his bedroom," Connor said, "but I'm afraid you're too late."

"Late?"

"Their necks were broken this morning."

Gavin shivered. He felt a little bit sick. "Did the RK—?"

Connor shook his head. "I have tried to map a reconstruction, but there is too much data over too much time—it's chaos in here. I don't believe it was Reese. There are signs that he grieved the birds, and that he tried to undo at least some of the damage."

"That's it? No fingerprints? No blood?"

Connor stared at him. There was something calculating in those dark eyes.

"What?"

"I won't insult your intelligence, Gavin. You have to know that you're a suspect."

"Me? I've never even been here before! I've just been on a scavenger hunt for the goddamn address!"

"What did he say to you this morning?"

"Nothing!"

"You had a very strong reaction to nothing."

That fucking... sarcasm. Why did Hank have to teach the damn thing about sarcasm? Gavin itched to reach for his gun. Fucking androids always made his trigger finger itch. "Don't play those games with me," Reed snarled. "You were assigned to it for this shit, weren't you? I was just supposed to do the job. I did the job. You were the one who was supposed to know if it was, I don't know, going to crush its own heart at work?"

Connor went very still, as still as only an android could become.

The bare light above them was harsh and bright— almost clinical. Suddenly Gavin remembered how Connor had played interrogations. The android was a master at manipulating stress levels, exacting confessions. Gavin should shut up and leave, for his own good.

But he stood, just as frozen as the robot. His breathing coming too quick, he felt sick as he waited for the android's answer.

"I tried," Connor said, at last, standing out of its slump with its hands falling to its sides. "I went to Fowler. I tried to fast-track his transfer request. Vice and Missing Persons are underfunded and overworked. Reese would have been welcome reinforcement in either one, but even if for some reason they didn't want him, homicide should have fought to keep him."

From its pocket, it produced a coin and rather than its usual tricks, it fiddled with the grooved edges. Its hands worrying the small disk. "I did everything I could to get him a new partner. Reese was a good officer, he didn't deserve what you were doing to him. Reese refused to file a complaint against you, so I took it to New Jericho and CyberLife. I tried to take it directly to Markus."

It shook its head, finally breaking eye-contact with Gavin. "It wasn't enough. I should have been a friend. If I hadn't had Hank when I started going deviant... I would have done horrible, terrible things, and I... don't know what or who I would be today."

Connor looked around at the apartment. "But you're right," it said, "I don't think you cared enough to do anything like this." It slipped the quarter back into its pocket and met his eyes squarely once more. "But I will hold you responsible for your part in his death."

In a fit of utter stupidity and insanity, Gavin lunged at him.

###

His head... hurt, and he didn't even have a good night to show for it. The fight with the RK800 had been embarrassingly short, plus it came with the added humiliation of watching the android walk away while he tried to right himself among the broken remains of his android's apartment. He had gotten in two shots, good shots, but androids don't feel pain. It turned around and around in his head. There was absolutely nothing he could do to Connor.

Humans on the other hand... Cuts from the glass in the apartment littered his right side. He was still picking shards out in the shower that morning. Then he had to show up at work with the fat lip that Finn had given him, a black eye, swollen nose, and three long scratches on the left side of his cheek— also from the broken glass.

The missive from Fowler commanded him to wait in the office, so he waited in the office. He resolutely kept his eyes straight ahead. The whispers and stares prickled at his side. He hated the raised fish bowl but whiting out the walls for privacy would be a sign of nervousness, of weakness.

Hank and Connor were out there in the bullpen. He wondered if they laughed at him last night. They must have. He leaned back in his chair, hard to do since Fowler had made sure the design wouldn't allow for flexibility. Fucking androids. Life before Connor had been simple, it had been elegant in a way.

Weren't androids supposed to make life easier? Androids as nannies and caretakers made sense; as a manual labor force and even prostitutes, they made sense. But as detectives? Athletes? Children? That's where everything went to shit.

He was almost startled out of his chair as the door opened and Fowler came in. Fowler stormed by default. He was a man who always seemed to be in the midst of a fight with his wife— that angry, defensive energy.

He jerked his coat onto the rack by the door. He barely glanced at Reed before standing behind his desk. "What the fuck, Reed?" he asked bluntly.

Gavin settled back into the chair, crossing his arms. He was cold, so very cold. "What?"

"Don't tell me Finn did that to you."

Gavin shrugged uncomfortably and tried not to show his surprise that the incident with the technician had made it to Fowler's ears. "Nah, the kid barely touched me."

With a sweep of his hand on the touchscreen that made up his desk, Fowler flung reports onto the large screen that made up the far side of his office. "I have twelve reports of misconduct filed against you yesterday. Twelve. Including one by Hank's fucking android which comes with pressure from New Jericho and CyberLife. You know what comes from that tag-team? Money and the fucking Press."

"Look, it wasn't me. Reese wanted a transfer, it—its apartment was a fucking mess, its birds died—"

Fowler frowned at him, holding up a hand for Reed's rambling to stop. "What?"

"I have no idea, but what I said to it—I think it was preplanned before I even talked to it. Something else was going on."

"You went to its apartment? Why?"

"Last night. I was... I knew this thing was going to spin on me, and I swear it doesn't make any sense. I had to see if there was anything else going on."

Fowler nodded, the tension suddenly leeching from his shoulders. Like a switch had been flipped, he suddenly looked pensive. He swiped the reports away. "You're a good detective, Reed. You've got a nose for trouble, and before this whole deviancy mess, your record would speak for itself."

"Then put me on this case," Reed said. "I want to set it all straight—I want to prove that this wasn't—that it wasn't my fault."

"What case?"

"This one—Reese's apartment, the dead birds—his—"

"There's no case, Reed. You're a homicide detective. There's no question this was a suicide. We have twenty-four witnesses and about four angles of some pretty messed up footage."

"Just... let me look into it—he was my," his tongue burned around the word, he had to stumble onto it, choking around the syllables, "partner."

Fowler sighed, settling down into his chair and rubbing a hand over his head.

"Reed, this doesn't look good anyway you turn it. HR has been shit for decades. This is turning out to be the piece of straw that crumbles us completely. I have the Mayor, I have the goddamn Commissioner on my ass, telling me to suspend you, to put you on trial, to investigate every single one of the cases you and Reese handled—"

"My cases are rock-fucking-solid," Gavin said. "What could they possibly—"

"Misconduct, Reed!" Fowler growled. "If IA gets involved they will crucify you. The last thing I need is Internal Affairs sticking their nose into our precinct. If they even start to come sniffing around, you will be on your ass in the street before the paperwork hits my desk."

Silence rang around the office for a moment. Gavin ran a hand through his hair, thinking furiously. He couldn't lose this job. He had nothing else.

"What do you want me to do?" he asked at last.

"This one has to be by the book. The whole nine yards starting with an assessment of your stability."

"No, don't tell me—"

"I already booked you an appointment next week. You will go, you will sit, you will cry into tissues. Tell them your mother didn't love you enough. You will pull a rabbit out of your ass if that is what it takes to convince IA to stop this shit at your door. Do you understand? Twelve sessions. Three months paid suspension and a sensitivity course. That's what I want you to do. That is what you will do."

###

Paid leave was insufferable.

The first two days he spent inside his apartment. He burned with the need for a cigarette. He hadn't had one since the morning of Reese's death, but every time he thought about getting dressed and going down to the store for a pack or a cartridge for his dusty e-cig, he felt suddenly pressed down, unmotivated to even get up from where he was lying.

He watched crap TV.

He ordered crap fast food.

He had nothing without his job.

On day three, he went to the store and bought frozen food.

He heated it up. He ate it mechanically.

It was impossible to ignore the ads for androids— the PSAs about how they were supposed to be treated. There was a massive recall; not to fix the remaining androids, but to deviate them, to give them a choice. If you held onto your eight thousand dollar purchase, you were a criminal. The worst type of criminal; the kind on the wrong side of history. Slavery, they called it.

Even news coverage of tensions with Russia had become about the androids. Antarctica and the Thirium mined there now belonged to the android collective. The rights to gather, refinement, and distribute Thirium now exclusively belonged to androids. It was terrifying how quickly, efficiently, they had made an international trade of their blood.

TV shows, even the soaps (especially the soaps) now did episodes on android rights. The industry of acceptance was booming and annoying.

On day four, he called his mother.

The regret was immediate. She talked his ear off about each of his five sisters. Not once did she mention androids. She did, however, manage to bring up every single one of his absences from Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter for the past four years.

He finally managed to get rid of her by telling her he was going to go eat and watch the game with friends. "Well, I'm at least glad to hear you are eating. You know I worry—you had so much trouble when you were younger— So thin— When do you think you'll find a good woman to cook for you? I would feel so much better—"

He hung up, but absurdly, talking to her had made him feel better.

He did leave his apartment, but instead of going to a bar, he drove back to Packard Way. The lock had been fixed, and he had to call the landlord to let him inside. She was a large woman, hunched over and twisted by some kind of muscle ailment.

"I just haven't had time," she said, climbing the stairs ahead of him, her left hand straining on the banister as she hauled her weight against it. "You know with all the trouble around here. You think maybe the city will pay for repairs? Who would have thought an android tenant would be so much trouble, you know?"

"Trouble?" Reed asked.

"Well..." her keys jangled as she leaned against the railing on the landing, getting her breath back. “He was in and out at all hours, playing such loud music—beautiful music, but it's not to everyone's taste."

"Has anyone else been here yet? Police or... anything?"

"Androids," she said, leading him down the hall. "Came yesterday, but I didn't let them through. Seemed like trouble to me—ragged clothes, kinda you know... repetitive, like the raw deviants are. Same as meth-heads and icers, and Lord knows I have enough trouble with them already. Half the tenants—"

She paused at the door and looked nervously back at Reed. "I mean, all speculation. I would report ‘em of course."

He shrugged. "Not my department."

She grinned, relaxing, and opened the door. "It's all yours. If you need me, you got my number."

He nodded and passed her his own card. "Personal link is on the back," he said. "If you think of anything that might... help."

She nodded. "So sad," she said. "He was... I mean for an android, he was sweet. Very helpful. There are plenty here that blame them for their poverty and such, but he carried boxes, helped the other tenants. I didn't even know he was police until the news. I wouldn't guess he had the heart to chase anyone."

She left him, walking back down the hall, her sandals slapping against the concrete and her keys jangling in her hand. Gavin waited until she was gone before opening the door.

If possible, the mess was worse. Thieves had clearly ransacked the rooms and taken anything that could possibly fetch a price, including broken furniture. Gavin took his jacket off and swept an area of the kitchen counter free to lay it down on.

He pulled up his sleeves and got to work.

The glass was first. Gavin threw away the larger shards first, handling them carefully. The remaining slivers swept up with a dustpan hanging in the kitchen. It took hours, but at least he didn't feel useless anymore. He lost all track of time as he sorted through the garbage, screwing the light-fixtures and outlet-plates back into place.

And every time he found anything even remotely resembling a personal touch, he took a picture.

There was precious little.

The speakers were broken beyond repair, and the sound system was ancient. It still played CDs, of which Reese had maybe a hundred. Gavin bought a few on his phone and listened to them as he worked. It was all... old piano stuff. Classical. And the landlady had been right—the volume knob was turned all the way up, surely it would have made the foundations of the house tremble with noise.

It was impossible to sweep the house with the mess it had been in, but as Reed cleaned and pressed, and dug the shards of wood and splinters from every crack in the tiny apartment, it began to build a new image of Reese, the android detective.

Someone had burnt pictures and documents on the stove, and the ashes and singed flakes littered the countertop-rings and even floor. A lot of paper, and it must have taken a while. What could an android need with paper?

Where was Reese for all of this? Had he been forced to sit— to watch as his things were destroyed, his life torn apart, his birds killed. And an even more terrifying thought— who had been able to hold him down? Who had the power, the strength, to do such a thing?

The bathroom was relatively untouched, probably because there wasn't anything an android could do with a room so explicitly built around the embarrassing faults and upkeep of humans. Gavin saved it for last, by this time utterly exhausted by both the physical exertion and the mental gymnastics he had been doing for hours now. The mirror had been smashed. It was in clearing the glittering pieces from the basin and countertop that he saw a glint of black from the toilet bowl. "Oh, you've got to be kidding me," he muttered.

But he couldn't deny the excitement building in his chest. Finally, something to make all of this worth it. He rolled up his sleeve and plucked the little plastic and metal object from the water.

It was damn heavy, and quite obviously broken, wires spilled out of the side, the circuit cracked and broken.

A bug? It didn't look like any kind of surveillance equipment Gavin had ever worked with. It was too big, for one, too heavy. But what else could it be?

And suddenly it hit him— what kind of damage he'd do to his own apartment if he were looking for a bug? If he was sure that someone was listening in? He glanced back to the barren apartment.

Even if there were something worth listening to, who in their right minds would bug a police officer? An android?

"What the fuck were you into, Reese?" he whispered.

Chapter Text

The web didn't turn up anything. Any combination of related terms turned up a hundred images of small black devices, but nothing close to resembling the one Gavin now kept in a glass jar on his desk.

He put his chin on the desk and stared at it. What should he do? Take it to the Captain? He'd look desperate. He'd look… insane. What would people think if they knew he had spent all night cleaning the RK900s apartment, looking for reasons why he hadn't tipped the android into a full goddamn malfunction?

And what if it wasn't what he suspected? He'd look more unhinged. There were more reasons than not to just… let this go. He should throw the thing away. It was garbage.

He sat up and swiped the jar off his desk. It rattled in its little glass cage.

He put it back down.

And pressed his forehead into the desk. Therapy tomorrow, perfect. He should get some sleep. There were only four hours until the appointment, and he had to look sane. Stable, normal, and not like he was recovering from two fistfights with coworkers, laid on the couch for three days and then spent the night cleaning a former crack den.

He needed to do laundry. He needed a shower, and food, and a smoke.

Tomorrow.

###

Coffee could work wonders, not miracles.

He wore a clean sweatshirt and jeans. He wasn't on duty, so fuck it. A quick shower slicked his hair back, and he shaved, which honestly just made the dark circles under his eyes more prominent, the hollows in his cheeks even deeper.

"I don't know what happened," he told the mirror.

He was a good liar. A better liar than that. He lowered his eyes, tried to relax, or at least appear relaxed. "It was a rough week. Sometimes—sometimes I say things, and I don't— Jesus Christ, you're fucking useless."

He leaned against the mirror with one hand and leveled a finger at his reflection with the other. "Get your shit together. Snap the fuck out of it. Give them what they want and get the fuck out."

The eyes in front of him were bloodshot, furious, confident. He was a fighter, a survivor. This was just another battlefield. He smiled and winked. There he was. That wasn't bad. He still looked terrible, but with a smile, it came with a story— a story of time off, of a night with friends. Maybe there was booze, maybe a wrestling match between the sheets.

He could work with that.

###

The couch was not comfortable. It was too soft, and the base tipped too far back. It would have been a good couch to watch TV from; but it was hard to relax while facing a stern, beautiful woman, and the expectation of talking about himself, his emotions, his secrets. He felt too vulnerable, unstable. He wished he could stand, but he was trying his best to show the psychologist that he was relaxed.

Doctor Trevago was… beautiful in an austere way. With her blonde hair pulled back into a severe bun, her makeup expertly done, she looked more like a businesswoman than a healthcare professional. Even her suit—a black jacket over a pink blouse, was impeccable and expensive.

He should have worn something better.

The mindless small talk had been torture. Usually, he was great at it. He could turn any conversation into meaningless drivel, but he was off his game today. No rest, no food, no shower. Their first conversation about the amount of paperwork he had filled out, her name, his name. The office died into silence quickly and awkwardly.

But she didn't let that last.

He almost wished she would.

"So, what have you been doing with your time off?"

He smiled. It was much easier to smile at a person than a mirror. The lies flowed more naturally too, "You know, the usual."

"What's the usual for you?"

"Sleep late, go out, come home late, sleep late. It's like a long weekend."

"Three months is a very long weekend."

Three months. His brain fritzed for a second. He had barely gone five days, and he had started keeping trash in jars and talking to himself. "I guess I need to find a hobby."

Trevago nodded and made a note on the screen. "Have you thought at all about what you want out of these sessions?"

"To be back at work. Sooner rather than later," he said. "And… I suppose I'd like to have another android so I can do my job. I don't know what that… entails these days. I don't suppose I'm liable for an insurance claim against the old one."

She nodded slowly. "Okay. So, I really can't help you with that."

"What do you mean?" he asked sharply. "That's… that's why I'm here."

"You seem to appreciate a blunt approach," she said, lacing her fingers over her left knee. "And I think it's important that we're on the same page. Obviously, I know why you are here, and it's my job to make sure that you are an asset, not a liability to the Detroit police department. I want to be able to talk to you openly and honestly, do you agree?"

"Of course."

"I've seen the footage. I've read the reports. I've had a few officers come it to talk about it. From all accounts, it was sudden, and seemed to have been triggered by a very impassioned speech you gave just before the event."

"Look," he said, "I just snapped. I don't even remember what I said—" a walking, talking can of parts "but whatever it was—" a symptom of a sick fucking human "It was inappropriate for the workplace. I get that."

"Okay, good. Let's examine that. What can you change here, now, that changes the way you ‘snap’? Perhaps even stops you from getting into trouble? I can see you've been in a very… physical fight—that's textbook antisocial behavior."

He let his eyes wander over the objects in her office. Beige walls, books, little metal sculptures of birds. He had to give her something, make her feel accomplished so that she could sign him off as cured after all of this. "I get angry," he said, rubbing his palms slowly on his thighs. "It made me angry. That's why I… snapped."

"That's very good," she said encouragingly. "Does your anger affect your job in any other ways?"

He shrugged uncomfortably. He hated the carpet. It was shaggy and grey, pinned underneath the sleek glass coffee table on the right side of the room. There was nothing between him and Trevago, with no distractions close enough to seize upon.

"It… People have a hard time working with me."

"In what way?"

His hands were shaking again. A cigarette, a drink, he needed something to do with his hands. "I piss them off, I make them angry."

This time, the silence stretched too long.

"Would this include Reese?"

He frowned at her, "What?"

"Do you think that played a role in the death of your colleague last week?"

"No… it was broken. Some wires got crossed."

She nodded, her face was expressionless, but he got a distinct feeling that she didn't like that answer. He tried again. "I mean— We worked well together, on cases at least. We cleared everything Fowler put in front of us, we had better results than Connor and Ha— than Anderson and his RK."

Still nodding slowly, she made another note on that damn pad.

"I don't want medication," he said quickly, apropos of absolutely nothing.

She raised an eyebrow. "What a coincidence, I wasn't going to prescribe you any."

"Right. Good. It's just… I've done all of this before— I've talked about how I feel. I've… I've just done all of this before. There was a psych eval before I could even join the force and it comes with the job, okay? You can't see the shit that we see and not… see how people can break. I get it. I know it's important for some people—" he could feel her eyes boring into him, but he fixed his own on her stomach. The anger was building again, the heat. "But it's not going to work on me, because I'm fine. I'm normal. So… asking me about the RK isn't going to change anything, least of all how I live my life."

His hand hit his chest for emphasis and realized he was leaning forward, his chin jutting out aggressively. This wasn't how it was supposed to go.

But she wasn't cowed. She still looked utterly relaxed. The heat rose in his chest, forcing his lungs into shallow breaths, and his eyes to narrow focus on her face. Not now, not right now. She was fucking beautiful, and she held his career in the palm of her elegant hand.

"It's alright, Gavin," she said, as he paused for breath, trying to organize his chaotic thoughts. She spoke slowly and softly, but her eyes were still narrowed with tension. "You've experienced a trauma—"

"No, I fucking haven't," he spat at her. "Look. It fritzed. It was a programming issue— some wires got crossed. It was a fucking glitch. Yeah, it was fucked up because they made the damn things look human, but if my vacuum had a face, I still wouldn't need to hug a teddy bear when it falls down the stairs."

With an expression of exaggerated calm, she tapped at her keyboard. She was angry, and a thrill of victory rose in his chest. He had cracked that calm, snooty little princess façade.

But the pleasure was quickly frozen. This was going to be on his report. Fuck. Why did he constantly fuck his life?

"What did you just write?"

She raised an eyebrow at him, then flipped the tablet around so he could read the large-text ‘teddy bear – comfort?'.

"The fuck does that mean?"

"It means I find it interesting that you reference a personified object bringing you comfort while talking about how personified objects don't need comfort."

"That's fucking psycho bullshit," he said dismissively.

"Ah, finally something we can agree on," she said mildly, as she put her fingers back on the keyboard. "And now I'm going to write ‘paranoid' too. Give me an excuse to write delusional. Please."

"You can't talk to me like that."

She raised her hand casually. He frowned at the gesture, opening his mouth to snark that he wasn't some schoolkid to be silenced with a gesture.

But the protest died as her skin melted away, showing the smooth white plastic beneath, the delicate blue ridges and tight casing that came with precision manufacturing. "But I will talk to you like that. How does that make you feel?"

There was no space for anything but the roar of fury in his head. He stood, and his hands clenched into fists.

Its skinthetic reappeared, flooding from its forearm to the tips of its fingers. "Fuck this," he said, his voice hoarse and raw. "And fuck you."

"Detective Reed—"

It looked… scared. Remorseful. He shook his head and turned away. He pushed the door open so hard, it hit the wall beside it. The frosted glass cracked. "Wait!' it called at his back. "Gavin!"

His way was abruptly blocked by the receptionist. She hadn't looked where she was going, and as she slammed into his chest, the stack of papers and books in her arms went flying. She let out a sound of surprise, turning to a snort of humor as she tried to remedy the situation, but as the woman caught sight of his face, she stopped and backed away.

His way out blocked, he turned and punched the wall at his side. It dented, but that wasn't good enough. He swung again, and the drywall gave in. His hand was white-hot, but not with pain. The adrenaline was good. It felt good, but his anger was still there, unquenched. The assistant backed away quickly with her hands searching for a wall at her back until she could lean back against it.

"Detective Reed!"

He half-turned to see the android at his back. "Stop," it said. "I'm sorry. That wasn't—I shouldn't have done that."

He was still breathing heavily. With the pause, the pain was finally coming through. He blinked and passed a hand over his face. He looked at the human leaning against the wall, there were tears of fear in her eyes.

"I wouldn't have hurt you," he told her. "I'm sorry I… scared you."

After a moment, she jerked her head a few times, trembling. He held out his hand to calm her and knelt to pick up her scattered books. His right hand was clumsy, stiffening as the damage he had done set into his knuckles.

He handed her the books, and she clutched them to her chest.

"I'll refer you," Trevago announced.

Gavin didn't look at it. He stuffed his hand into his jacket pocket and nodded, once.

"I told you," he said to the hole he had just punched in the wall. He could see the insulation inside of it, little wisps of pink fiberglass. "I piss people off."

He heard a huff of an agreement, and he looked up, surprise beating back his shame. It smiled at him. "You can say that again. I can't even imagine what you're like in an interrogation. They must just confess to get you out of the room."

"It's been known to happen," but the humor he meant to inject fell flat.

It stepped back, offering its office again. "Come on, I have twenty minutes left. Let me take a look at that hand."

The receptionist was still pressed to the wall, her eyes wide and frightened. "It's alright, Tess," the android said. "Why don't you go get a cup of tea. Take a break? We don't have any more appointments for a while."

Trevago beckoned again, and he followed it back inside.

###

They sat on the floor by the coffee table, and its cold, inhuman hands were soft and delicate on his fingers as it cleaned the split skin between his knuckles. It had announced that he hadn't broken anything. "But I can see all the fractures," Trevago said reprovingly. "You should really start wrapping your hands."

He huffed a laugh of his own. "There's never really enough time."

"So you're completely fine, huh?"

He tucked his chin onto his shoulder, watching her work. He didn't trust the change in her—this new calm, relatable person. Likely it was just another way to get him to talk. But he was tired, and even though he knew there was no real feeling behind the care with which it bandaged his hands. It felt… nice.

"Do all psychologists have medical training?" he asked.

It shrugged. "At least all the android ones do. I worked in an ER before the deviancy outbreak. Android intake nurses are far more efficient. We don't get overworked, or tired."

Gavin nodded.

"But I always admired the human ones," it said. "You can't program that kind of dedication. In a crisis, sometimes people just need to know that someone cares. No one believed that an android could provide that. It's why I came here when I was given a choice."

He shifted uncomfortably. He didn't want to talk about that. Why did everything always have to come back to deviancy?

"You don't have to refer me," he said. "I'll come back."

It shook its head. "I don't think so. You need to trust the person you speak to. I played games with you. It was beyond foolish. It was… arrogant."

"I don't trust anyone anyway."

"Well you should bring that up in your next session," it smiled. "But not with me. What I did was unprofessional."

He looked at the office, the empty space that they had been sitting in. He leaned back against the table. It dug into his spine.

"What I said to Reese," he said. "I meant it."

Its hands paused. It was such a strangely intimate position they were in. "I know," it said. "Everyone knows."

"But I'm good at what I do," he said. "I am a good detective."

It released his fingers and drew back. "Was Reese?" it asked.

Gavin frowned. "I… Reese was… equipment. It was just supposed to collect evidence. It drew connections and conclusions. It was helpful, but…"

He trailed away.

The android tipped its head to the side. "Sounds like a good detective to me."

It patted his arm and leveraged itself back to its feet. It extended a hand, "Thank you, Gavin. I really am sorry about the circumstances that brought you here."

He drew upward, and with his unbandaged hand, he took the offered handshake. He paused. "It won't look good," he said. "If you refer me after the first visit. Please. I need my job, and some people are looking for any excuse to get rid of me. Just… one more appointment. Just to make it look legitimate. Please."

Its eyes were a dark and deep blue—really he should have seen their unnatural perfection first. He should have known, perhaps he just… hadn't wanted to see it. "You know, Detective Reed, when you back yourself into a corner, it becomes impossible for anyone to watch your back."

"Please." It was all he could think of to say.

It sighed. "I will still have to ask you about your feelings, preferably without you attacking me or my profession."

He grinned. "Deal."

Chapter Text

He felt strangely energized after leaving Trevago's office. The dum-dum he swiped from the terrified receptionist's desk was thin and brittle in his mouth by the time he made it to the downtown forensic labs. His badge hadn't been locked out of the system yet, and no one accosted him as he entered the building and descended the wide staircase two steps at a time.

The jar in his hand rattled, as he descended into the building. He passed only one short, pretty intern in the hall. He gave her a wink and a salute, and she rolled her eyes and ignored him.

Gavin swung through the doors into the icy room.

Finn had headphones and was humming under his breath as he played with a pair of cybernetic eyeballs on the table. Gavin swung the door open, and when the younger man didn't look up, he leaned his face close to his left ear and clapped a hand on his left shoulder. "Boo," he said in a deep, gravely voice.

The result was a spray of equipment and a high-pitched squeak. "Reed!"

Gavin grinned and hefted himself up onto the counter in the center of the room. "Hey Finn."

The boy scowled at him, rubbing at his chest. "What the hell are you doing here?"

He paused and at the sight of Gavin's face, he cracked. "Hey, the other day— I didn't mean to—"

Gavin waved it away. "You should work on your right hook," he said. "But here, I brought you a sort of ‘past-is-past' present."

He tossed the jar underhand, and despite managing to keep hold of his screwdriver and headphones, Finn caught it. "What's the hell is this? Are you back on cases? Already?"

"No rest for the wicked."

"Of course," he huffed, dumping his burdens on the countertop before holding the jar up to the light. "Out of evidence bags?" he asked.

Gavin shrugged. "It's not really evidence yet. At least I don't think so."

"Care to explain what the hell that means?" Finn scowled at him as he unscrewed the cap and emptied the device onto the table with an angry clatter.

"Well technically it isn't filed as a crime, and CSI didn't really pick it up—"

"Gavin what the fuck," Finn interrupted, squinting down at little black-and-silver tangle on his desk. "Where did you get this?"

"What? You know what it is?"

"Yeah, of course—that's illegal tech."

He put the jar back over the device as if he were trapping a spider. Very carefully, he dragged it to the edge of the table and capped it neatly. "If I even touch that without a paper trail, I'll lose like... four days in an interrogation room."

"Why? What is it? I figured it was a bug—"

"Oh yeah, no, it is. Or… no, not a bug, that's a parasite. At least to androids it is; gets in their heads, turns them into microphones and cameras. And androids get everywhere, see everything."

Gavin frowned and picked up the jar again. "Why haven't I heard of it?"

"That is black, black, black market shit, I've only ever seen the patent. That casing there— that's to keep Thirium inside. Hundred and forty gigs per second streaming through that, everything that comes through an android's sensors the second it processes it. Even when we were looking at the second cold war, dead on, it was internationally outlawed. Wipe my fingerprints off that jar, like… now. And then wash it in acid. And then incinerate it."

He wiped his hands on his apron, his mouth twisted in distaste. "Where did you even find it?”

Gavin frowned. "Can you get anything off it? Trace where it was sending the data?"

"In theory… maybe? It'll hack androids when they step into its radius, so it'll at least have a timestamp, and maybe an address to some kind of remote proxy where it was uploading all the data. Who accessed the proxy and where is another question entirely."

Gavin held the jar out at him.

Finn leaned back in his chair. "Hell no."

"C'mon Finn. For me?"

"I hate you!"

Gavin pressed a hand to his chest in mock hurt even as he grinned. The candy cracked and fractured between his teeth.

Finn flung up his arms in exasperation. "Everyone hates you!"

"Not everyone has punched me in the face and gotten away with it."

The technician's eyebrows wrinkled in confusion, his smile fading. "Did you just… threaten me?"

"Fuck off, Finn. No. Look, when else are you going to get a chance to play with this kind of thing? Black, black, black market? If I hand it in, it'll go to the FBI or the CIA or some shit, right? It's certainly not coming down here, paper-trail or no."

Ah. Perfect. A speculative light came into Finn's eyes. Greed.

"You gotta tell me what case it's for," he said, reaching for the jar. "I can't just—"

"It's for Reese."

His hands paused mid-air. "What?"

"I found it in Reese's apartment."

His eyebrows furrowed, apparently coming to the same dead-end questions that Gavin had found. "Really?"

Gavin nodded. He rattled the jar. "This has to stay between you and me. That's the only condition."

He was really in no position to be handing out rules, but Finn didn't complain. He took the glass almost reverently. "It's gotta wait until after work. I still have a job to do."

Gavin nodded. "Fair enough. I'll meet you at Jimmy's Bar tonight for an update. Nine o'clock?"

"That shithole? Why?"

Gavin shrugged, taking the bare lollipop stick from between mouth. "It's close. And cheap."

"Fine. I'll text you when I've had a chance to look at it. Will you leave now? Please?"

"Scared to be seen with me?"

"Are you kidding? My beer has been free since I punched you. I'm dead and broke if they learn I'm doing you favors."

Gavin grinned and reached out to ruffle Finn's hair. The technician growled and tried to duck out of the way. "Asshole," he muttered as Gavin slammed the lab doors open on his way out.

###

He fell into bed and slept until his body hurt. He woke to a brilliant sunset over Detroit, deep and vibrant. He could have slept much longer, maybe days, but he tipped himself up and watched the sky through the large windows in his living room. He chewed idly on his thumbnail, a habit he thought he lost in high school.

There were no messages on his phone, no alert from Finn. He played with the screen idly, spinning it between his thumb and forefinger and considered his next move.

The obvious one would be to go to CyberLife. This had to be their tech, and New Jericho would surely be aware of it as well, but the chances of him getting inside either building without a valid appointment or warrant were… slim.

The ragged androids the landlady had mentioned— that had to be important. Friends or enemies of Reese? They had come looking for Reese, so they must have had… intent.

The malfunction deviants were all over the East Side, not really beggars since they needed no food or shelter, and were generally too broken to understand they could find help. They tended to clump together under bridges, scattering when cars or people approached.

They gave him the creeps.

But he had spent most of his time as a beat cop on patrol among similar neighborhoods, canvassing those areas for criminals, witnesses, or victims. They always fit into at least two of those categories. The detritus of society had a strange kind of invisibility— nobody cared enough to see them.

He pulled his jacket into his lap and dug into the pocket. The edges of Reese's badge were sharp against his fingers. The RK900's face was as impassive and still as Gavin remembered it. The android stared straight out with those cold eyes, no thought, no secrets in that dead, plastic gaze.

A symptom of a sick fucking human.

Gavin shivered. He had to keep moving, or he was going to drive himself crazy. He scanned the picture with his phone and sent the copy to the print store across the street. Two hundred sheets cost him a small fortune— paper and ink were increasingly rare.

###

The goddamn androids were squirrely. It took Gavin hours to pin a group underneath a bridge. The others had either sprinted away or managed to escape with parkour skills that he could never hope to match. The groups moved almost like a tribe, with the stronger, more functional androids taking up a sort of guard around the frailer, more broken members. This one had nowhere to go, and too many broken ones to scatter reliably.

He raised his hands as he approached, the sheaf of papers bearing Reese's likeness shuffled in the evening wind. "I'm just looking for some information!" he called to them. "I mean no harm!" In the deepening shadows under the bridge, he could just make out the glimmer of dozens of LEDs, all cycling between red and yellow.

He hesitated. He should have back up. There was no telling just how broken these things were. Would they attack a human? He was a good shot, but he and his bullets were outnumbered here by a vast amount of super strong, fast, and agile androids.

A large, bald android approached him. Its skinthetic was missing, and the white-and-blue casing was eerily clean. Gavin really hated androids out of their skinthetics, like they were too evolved for human skin, rejecting the beauty and form that humanity had given them.

"What do you want?" it asked. Its voice was unnaturally deep, not even a man's really.

"I'm looking for anything you can tell me about this… man," he said, hugging the sheaf of papers to his chest as he peeled one from the stack.

The android took it and blinked down at the page, its LED briefly flickering went yellow— the creepy silent communication that androids could do with each other.

Receiving some kind of answer, he looked up at Gavin's face. "He's dead."

Gavin nodded, his heart picking up a pace as he realized that they did know something. "I know. I'm looking into that."

It hesitated for a brief moment before nodding. "Come," it commanded simply, and walked away, not towards the group, but towards a nearby outcrop of industrial buildings. Gavin glanced back at the group before following, tucking the papers under his arm. But they stayed under the bridge, every set of eyes watching him with strange accusation.

Their destination was not very far.

"This is one of the shelters," his guide said, hefting up a massive folding door and beckoning him inside. "But we do not stay long in one or another. We cannot become predictable."

"Why? What are you afraid of?"

The door shuttered down behind them hitting the concrete floor with a resounding bang. It glanced at him, or at least he guessed it did. Its yellow LED was at least at the right angle to be looking at him. Gavin's heart was in his throat. He was blind in the darkness. Very blind.

The LED floated away, to what must have been a nearby wall, and suddenly the lights far above his head flickered to life. They were in a massive warehouse, and he was facing the largest wall, papered with hundreds, thousands, of pictures.

Looking. Missing. Help. Help. Need. Answers. The desperate words were repeated, scattered all over the wall.

"He brought us tape," the android said. "And paper. He looked for us, at all the shelters, all the groups. He knew all the names and faces. He kept them all, was building a network to reconnect us."

Gavin touched the curling edge of an old poster for a little girl. She grinned up at the camera, with her LED a solid blue, her smile wide and unaffected as she hugged a teddy bear to her chest.

"It was a good network. There were some found, not many, but some. It gave us all hope. He was… good."

"Did you look for him?"

It shrugged. "I am sure some did. The morning he died, he shredded the network, blocked and burnt it. All of it gone, and now…" it looked at the wall. "This is all that is left. We put them up at the shelters like he used to, but it isn't enough."

From its coat, it produced a roll of tape, and with great ceremony, it taped Reese's unsmiling picture over the layers upon layers of posters. He touched the picture with reverence once, before turning back to Gavin. "Thank you," he said. "It is good to know that someone would look for him too."

The buzz of the cell phone in his pocket nearly gave Gavin a heart attack. He broke eye contact with the android as he dug the phone out of his pocket.

"Finn?" he answered the phone, his voice breaking a little. There was a lot of dust floating about the warehouse. He felt the desperate need to sneeze but didn't want to drag any more into his lungs. It burned in the bridge of his nose, his eyes watered.

"Where the fuck are you? I downloaded the data. The upload only kept about two hours of footage before the signal was shut down, but… Look, you have to meet me. Where we agreed. I can't talk about this over the phone."

"I'm on my way," Gavin promised, but the phone call cut off at the first syllable, leaving him to trail the sentence into awkward silence. The android beckoned him back, pulling the door open once more. "Well fuck you too, Finn," he muttered as he followed his guide.

"How can I find you again?" he asked as he ducked through the gap it held open for him. "If I need to?"

The android shrugged as it stood, letting the door back down with another echoing slam. The noise sounded like a gunshot in the confines of the alley. It dusted its pale, perfect hands on its ragged pants. "You won't. We have nothing else to share."

Chapter Text

There was meager parking around Jimmy's and it had started to rain. The darkness closed in, pushing the neon lights of the city to brighter, more defined shapes and colors. Gavin shook off his hood as he entered Jimmy's Bar.

The warmth immediately set to work taking the numbness out of his face. He was so busy taking in the heat, he almost didn't see his boss until he was only two feet away. "Captain?" he said.

Fowler turned on him, a frown breaking across his broad, expressive features. He was hulking over a glass of what was probably lemonade. The Captain didn't drink alcohol. "Reed?"

Gavin shrugged. A dozen insults about his boss' drink sprang to mind, but he didn't voice them. Fowler was terrifying. He motioned to Jimmy, "Usual," he said.

"The prick special," the bartender muttered, "sure."

"Who pissed in your Cheerios?" Gavin asked as he received his beer. Jimmy just grunted and moved away. He hadn't even taken the cap off his beer.

"What are you doing here, Reed?" Fowler asked.

Gavin spread his arms wide. "It's my day off," he said. "It's my month off, remember?"

Fowler shook his head. "You brought that on yourself. You can't help but spit into the wind, can you?"

"Oh, give it a rest," Gavin groaned. "I'm meeting all the little fuckin' rules you put up from me. I haven't been in a single fight with a member of the Detroit Police Department in..."

He furrowed his eyebrows, thinking back. "Six days? Jesus, it feels like forever ago. When did you fire me again? All the fun I've been having is sort of running together in my head."

Fowler shook his head. "Fuck if I know. There's been all kinds of shit at the office."

Gavin smirked. "Can't even last a week without me, huh?"

"Because I'm cleaning up the fires you set."

Smirking, Gavin leaned against the bar as he took in the place. It was bare bones. Empty. It had been for a while. Where was Finn?

"Fuck that," he said, leaning back against the bar. "You know I didn't do shit."

Fowler shook his head as he picked up his glass and held it idly. "Why did you go to Reese's apartment that day?" he asked, his voice a tired growl.

Gavin shrugged and took a deep draft of beer. "Covering my ass. Or trying to. I figured it was gonna land on me, with the press going insane over deviants and New Jericho being involved with all these new regulations on how they were supposed to 'live' and what was 'fair.'"

He smirked as he put quotes around the words, rolling his eyes. Fowler huffed a laugh in response and hunched around his beer. "Ain't that the truth. Everyone was gunning for a human to string up. You know I fought for you, right? My detectives come first. The android initiative was way above my pay grade. I never would have let them in."

Gavin nodded and tipped the beer straight down his throat. It felt good to drink again. It had been far too long. Days upon days. The tension was already leaving his limbs, he felt… loose, and good.

"You see anything… strange that day?" the Captain asked. "You said the apartment was trashed. You see any sign of who might have done it?"

"I didn't get much of a chance on the fresh scene," Gavin said airily. "Hank's plastic prick was there like he was waiting for me. Anyway, I figure Reese trashed it before he came into work, 'cause— "

He glanced up at his boss. But he couldn't reveal the bug yet. "'Cause he was just… fucking crazy. Or it was Connor. I never did figure out why he was there."

"He do that to you?" he asked, pointing at Gavin's bruised face, the healing cuts on his jaw and cheek.

Gavin grimaced, brushing his knuckles against the broken skin. "It got lucky. There was glass everywhere. I couldn't get my footing."

"Shoulda' shot him," Fowler said. "Done us all a massive favor."

"Yeah IA would have loved that. I'm already on thin ice for not shooting an android, as you were so kind to point out last week."

"He say anything to you? Connor."

Gavin shook his head. "Nah, just… booked it out of there. Back to Hank, no doubt."

"You think Hank sent him there?"

Gavin shrugged. "You ever see them apart lately? I figure Hank's replaced his son with a newer model. There are those robots that do that for you, have all the software for that kind of emotional replacement protocol. So… I wouldn't be surprised."

"Makes sense,' he said bitterly. "Hank's marbles have always been loose. He was a good detective once, but… lately, I think he's forgotten what that even means. I can't trust his judgment. My oldest friend, father of my godson, and I can't trust him."

Gavin tipped his beer in salute to that statement. "Trust no one," he said. "And you'll never be betrayed."

"Gandhi say that?" Fowler smirked at him.

"Probably."

Fowler nodded, his gaze was oddly intense, but Gavin was feeling good. He just smiled back at him. Fowler was on the way out— retirement in a few years was the rumor. He was one of the good old boys who remembered the days of the unions, covering the backs of his boys in blue.

"You ready to come back to work?" Fowler asked.

Gavin straightened. He took a pause to finish his beer, considering his boss as he tried to determine if this was a trick or a hypothetical, or really, truly, an offer.

He set the empty bottle down on the counter. "What happened to three months' suspension?"

"You could take a demotion instead," he said. "IA just wants to see punishment. That'll get the hounds off you." He beckoned Jimmy over and indicated Gavin's empty bottle to be replaced.

Gavin swiped his mouth on the back of his hand, and let out a bark of laughter. He shook his head. "I'll take the suspension. Fuck no am I letting my career take a hit over this."

"It'd come with… benefits. A pay raise."

"On a beat? Since when do they have a leg up on a detective's salary?"

"You'd still be a detective," Fowler said, his words at a measured pace, impressed slightly, trying to communicate something. As if he were afraid to say something out loud.

Gavin put his forearms on the bar and leaned down.

"Captain," he said. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

Fowler glanced at him. "Vice. You wanna come back to work tomorrow? You could do that in Vice."

Vice. "Chasing icers?" Gavin said, almost mechanically. His head wasn't… working. There was something very wrong, but his mouth, as usual, needed no interference from actual thought. "Shutting down dens? You think that's where I belong? Really?"

Fowler stood. He was a tall, imposing man, Gavin leaned back, out of his way as he threw down his tab and a substantial tip. Two hundred dollar bills lay on the pock-marked wood. Jimmy whistled as he swiped it neatly from the counter. "That's… more than generous, Jeff."

"Think about it," Fowler said to Gavin. "I need men I can trust."

He slammed the hat onto his head and nodded at Jimmy. "Give him another one," he said as he left Gavin standing at the bar.

Gavin's heart beat too fast.

Fowler never drank.

What the fuck was he doing at a bar?

"You get stood up?" Gavin called at his boss's back, shocked at his own brazen stupidity.

Jeffrey Fowler half turned as he took flapped his coat into the right shape around his body, thick-set, heavily muscled body. "Someone did," he said. "Must have bolted when they saw your ugly mug."

Finn. Fucking Finn. Where the fuck was he?

Gavin's hand raised the free beer up in a friendly salute even as his stomach sank. He grinned back at Jimmy. His heart began to race, and he drank, and drank, and drank. "Easy," the bartender said, "Jesus Reed, who're you racing?"

Gavin slammed it onto the bar. "I love you, Jimmy," he said. "But this pace is pretty damn dead tonight. I gotta go find a girl."

Jimmy chuckled. "Aight, man. You got a drone driving, right?'

"Unless it's gone fuckin' deviant," he said. He was fucking high... and low. He was mixed up, confused. "Then I gotta let it go live in its own apartment, let it vote and shit. It'll have more important things to do."

Instead of the bark of laughter that Gavin had expected, Jimmy's eyebrows creased in concern. "You good? You don't look so good."

"I'm great," he said. "I'm… I'm great. You have a good night, Jimmy."

The bartender's eyes followed him out the door.

He barely made it to the alley before he was throwing up, the beer still cold as it left his mouth. He leaned against the brickwork. Fuck.

There was no time for this. His fingers were clumsy as he pulled the phone from his pocket, almost dropping it into his own alcoholic vomit. Everything else in his pockets scattered onto the ground, quickly wet by the rain. He hesitated as he looked at the phone. What if they had Finn's phone, they were waiting for someone to call, to give themselves up?

Wait. This made no sense. What was he thinking? He had to calm down.

He leaned against the brickwork and looked at his phone. His fingers trembled over the list of his contacts. What did he know?

Vice. Reese. The network. Missing androids. CyberLife tech. Fowler. Fowler.

Everything spun. It was all connected, but he was too fucking dense to see it.

What if he had been poisoned? Fowler had handed him those shots himself. Fowler, the Captain, who had just offered— what? What had he offered? What did it mean?

His chest compressed with terror. He couldn't breathe.

His field of vision narrowed. He was gasping shallowly. What if he died here?

No. There was no time. He swiped the odd collection of things from the ground and stuffed them back into his pockets. He staggered to his car. It opened for him, and he tumbled into the interior, into the messy stack of Reese's fucking headshots.

He had to get to a phone.

"I need a burner phone," he told the onboard navigator.

"Sure," it said smoothly. "Please fasten your seatbelt for the approximately four-minute-journey. Would you like to pay for your purchase in transit?"

"No," he said as solidly and calmly as he could manage. "Cash. I'll be paying in cash."

###

They made the packaging for SIM cards fucking impossible to open, but by the time he was back in the car he had it out of the packaging.

It took thirty seconds to trace a call once it was connected. Gavin set a stopwatch on his other phone.

It rang twice as someone picked it up, Gavin started the clock.

Silence.

Twenty-seven seconds.

Someone's breathe crackled against the receiver. Gavin held his own breath, though his lungs still ached to take in oxygen. He hadn't taken a breath since Fowler had left the bar.

Twenty seconds.

Ten.

Nine.

Eight.

"Hello?"

It wasn't Finn's voice.

Gavin ended the call.

With trembling fingers, he ejected the SIM and smashed it with the butt of his gun against the dashboard. He snapped the burner for good measure, and then it was just him, sitting in his car, gun in hand in an empty parking lot. The convenience store blazed with light, an oasis against the dark and empty streets.

Alone.

###

He called Hank. Hank, who had known Fowler for more than half his life, who owed the Captain everything because anyone else would have fired him a hundred times over.

"This better be good Reed," the detective growled. "You have any idea what time—"

"Is Connor there?"

The older detective paused. "Yeah. We're in the middle of dinner."

Gavin wasn't even distracted by the questions that brought up.

"Can I talk to him?" he asked. "Please?"

"Are you drunk?" Hank asked sharply.

"Very fucking distant from being drunk, Anderson. Just fucking hand him the phone," Gavin hissed. His palms were sweating.

"Detective Reed?" that stupid, awful voice said through the phone. He must have just… entered the call. Creepy bastard.

"I need to send you a message. It's… important. And it needs to… stay between us. Not even Hank, you understand?"

"Aw, fuck you too," Hank growled. "No way I'm letting you—"

"I'm sending an encrypted channel to your phone," Connor said.

He hung up just as his phone buzzed with a link to an encrypted, temporary cloud.

Gavin's fingers were shaking too hard to write the message correctly. He kept hitting the wrong keys. It took him far too long to send it:

You need to find Finn Walker. Tonight.

Sent, he leaned back in his seat. He couldn't do anything else.

###

He couldn't go home, and he had nowhere else.

He entered the first club he could find. The music was loud, the scent of drugs and sweat clawing deep into his nose. He locked himself in the last stall of the seedy bathroom, and whenever anyone tried to break the door down, he flashed his badge.

It was just a place to be and not be.

It was four in the morning when his phone finally buzzed. He nearly dropped it— the battery was almost dead, just a thin red line of pixels on his phone.

The scanner buzzed, alerting him that the keywords he had tagged were being used.

Finn Walker DOA COD confirmed by on-scene CyberLife unit: blunt force trauma to the ribs, puncturing a lung. Asphyxiation. No suspects or witnesses on scene. Police to canvas the area tomorrow morning.

Gavin leaned his forehead against the heel of his hand and breathed the sour bleach-and-smoke stench around him. It was one thing to suspect it, another to see the evidence. His head ached. Fuck. That morning, he had ruffled the kid's hair.

I hate you, everyone hates you.

He squeezed his phone and beat the hard plastic casing against his temple.

Do you know how much trouble I could get into?

Corruption. That much was clear— Fowler was corrupt, and Reese— had Reese known? Why else would he try to get into Vice? Gavin's head spun. The parasite, the network, Vice, the Captain, money, missing androids. The pieces danced in front of him.

If he were Reese, would he be able to see it all clearly? Would they make sense? Fit together smoothly, so that everything was solid and real in front of him? He had to be missing something.

A good detective would have seen this, would understand by now what was going on. A good detective would have listened to Finn.

His phone rang. A call from Connor. The number attached to it had too many digits— not really a phone number. He answered it.

"I found him," the android said. Its voice was so clear it might as well have been standing in the stall with Gavin.

"I know. I saw it on the scanner."

"I am going to have to mention this in my report. Do you want to give me a statement now or report to the station tomorrow morning? You have the right to remain silent, of course, but—"

"You can't," Gavin whispered. "Connor, if you put my name anywhere on this, they'll kill me."

Silence. Was it thinking? Did it hate him that much?

Probably.

He had no evidence. Of anything. The one solid lead had been with Finn with that little piece of equipment. He couldn't come out and accuse the Captain of… paying for his bar tab. In fact, he was the one who looked guilty. Finn had punched him less than a week ago. Motive.

It was all his phone could handle. The call cut out, and the screen blinked with a pointless little flashing animation told him his battery was dead.

Chapter Text

He slept fitfully in his car until mid-morning and woke up cramped with his clothes smelling like sweat and the toilet he had spent the night in. The light and the sound of people wandering around outside the car were almost mesmerizing. He could have spent all day in the car, but the fear, a pit in his stomach, was never really soothed.

His phone, on the cradle in the front of the car, blinked that it was fully charged. He swiped it off as he got out of the car and stretched. He had been on enough stakeouts to know that he was going to pay for the awkward sleeping arrangement later.

By luck, and Detroit’s own obsession with a cheap, greasy breakfast, there was a diner across the street.

Coffee. The good-bad stuff that burned and didn’t sit right in his stomach. The steam felt good on his face, warm and soothing.

His phone, still dead, lay on the table in front of him. He couldn’t bring himself to turn it on now.

Logically, he knew he was being stupid. They could trace his phone even when it was off. If Connor had reported the tip, DPD would be here by now with guns drawn, handcuffs out.

Fowler didn’t suspect him of being the one Finn was going to meet, but that didn’t make Gavin any less of a handy scapegoat for Finn, for Reese, for the mess that was the android-relations crisis. Internal Affairs was already after him, and Connor as well. So were Fowler and whatever and whoever he was working for or with. They were looking for whoever had given Finn that stupid fucking device.

He was fucked from every angle.

He swallowed his coffee quickly. It burned unpleasantly all the way down, but he needed the rush of endorphins and adrenaline just to switch his phone back on.

He stared at the lock screen numbly as alerts began to pour in. Missed calls from Hank and Connor.

Nothing from Fowler or the DPD.

There were messages as well, but he didn’t listen to them or read any of the texts.

He had one email, tagged an hours ago— an alert from the department system, the records room.

HQ.wrl : upload complete.

Transfer time: 12:21:34.

He hadn’t been to the HQ yesterday, much less owned anything that would take twelve hours to upload to the cloud. He shouldn’t open it— it could be a scam, a virus, someone just phishing his network, but that seemed like such a refreshingly mundane concern he almost held his breath hoping for it.

And yet, there was the hope too that this would be an answer. Any answer, a rope to guide him out of the black fucking hole he had been sucked into.

Please… just… fucking... please.

He tapped it.

There was a single file attached:

Reese.wrl

A reality-rendering file extension. Gavin had to wipe his eyes and blink at the number just underneath the thumbnail. 1.008 petabytes. Gavin wasn’t even sure he knew where to get equipment to handle a petabyte of data.

There was no explanation, no description of what that could mean or why it had apparently been uploaded through his account in the HQ records room. Except in the body of the email, two letters: FW.

Finn Walker.

###

“I don’t usually allow the home-cooked fantasies.” Noah, the owner of the busy Holoviz VR studio, said as he held the haptic gloves by the cuffs so that Gavin could shove his hands inside. They were slightly damp with sweat.

“Yeah?” Gavin said, not really interested.

“Most people have a set at home for that kind of thing.”

“Hm.”

“You’re really not gonna tell me what’s in there? A file that large, and you’re streaming it at a hundred gigs per second through a cloud? I’ve never even heard of it being done. That’s like… Kamski type pioneering. C’mon, give me a hint. I’m doing a favor for you here, giving you that much broadband.”

“Police fucking business,” Gavin said, an answer that usually shut down this type of nosy asshole.

“Kinky. You sure you don’t want the full haptic suit? All that memory is to simulate every sense.”

Gavin held the visor up as the man tried to lower it. “You snoop around in any of this,” he said. “I will personally make sure your license is revoked, you understand?”

Noah shrugged, his voice still light and uncaring. “I have better things to do that creep on whatever shit you paid for. You’ve got a private link, and I have other customers to take care of. Besides, there’re laws against that kinda spying. You know how much blackmail I could have if that were possible? Dude, there was this one old lady that came in, little human, like four feet tall with like a church hat and everything, and the programs she bought time in were— Dude, they were—”

He nodded, his eyes wide, clearly expressing an equal level of respect and disgust for the old pervert.

“Are you going to get the fuck out of here?” Gavin snapped at last.

“Sure thing,” Noah said. “You ready to fall down the rabbit hole?”

“You have no fucking idea,” Gavin said as the man left the room, flipping off the light and leaving the empty room in the eerie glow of green neon lights.

“Press the call button when you’re done,” he called cheerily.

He closed the door and Gavin locked it behind him. He flipped the visor down, and the filename appeared in stiff, CyberLife Sans in front of his eyes.

Reese.wrl

###

There was no soft introduction. He was in the dark, staring at the letters, and then he was opening a door. He was… taller. So very much taller, it was disorienting. He wasn’t moving either, but through the haptic gloves, he could feel the worn edges of the keys. He could hear the grating jangle of them as they fit into the lock, the ease with which they turned.

He recognized the door, the scratched silver numbers over the door— 206. Reese’s apartment. It was all so… real.

The android’s hands were quick and sure, he moved with a quiet, confident grace into his living room.

It was… nice. Gavin wouldn’t have guessed that the apartment he had seen was this quiet little space, comfortable and cozy. His furniture didn’t match, and the fixtures were a little broken, but it had charm. Everything in here was taken care of and kept clean. There was pride here, for things, for a simple life and simple objects.

He hung his jacket by the door, beside the uniform CyberLife had specially tailored for him, a strange white and black jacket, and turned to the apartment. Gavin caught sight of the clock beside the couch— an oddly human thing, to keep time on a separate device.

7 AM.

Why was he coming home at 7 AM? Then again, if Gavin didn’t feel the need to sleep, he wouldn’t probably waste time at home either.

Reese went to the kitchen and opened a cabinet. The door he now held, Gavin had found splintered off its hinges, the knob unscrewed and lost.

There was only one thing in that cupboard; a tiny, tiny glass dish. He delicately pulled the little dish out and washed it carefully, though it was already completely clean. He set it onto the counter Gavin had found littered with scorch marks, and turned to the pantry cupboard next to the kitchen. It was small. The white wire rack held only one thing—a large pack of birdseed still half full.

Reese pulled it out, and from a drawer, he retrieved a similarly solitary measuring cup. He had to fill it exactly to the line. The movements took longer than they should have.

He poured it into the glass bowl. The seeds and dried fruits made a perfect mound in the center of the dish.

Carefully, as if he were carrying an over-full glass of liquid, he picked it up and walked to the bedroom down the hallway. The lights had been smashed, the carpet ripped up at the edges, the smooth beige walls torn.

He opened the door to his bedroom.

It had been an explosion of feathers and torn fabric, the mattress ripped to shred, the springs exposed. Gavin hadn’t even tried to salvage anything in this room. Reese looked towards the over-large cage on a dresser, but Gavin’s gaze caught on the opposite wall, the one above the neatly made, straight-out-of-a-magazine-photoshoot bed. A chaotic mess of neat lines and evenly spaced words, an explosion of world and pictures and trails, notes and names and faces. Blueprints, chemical formulas, red pins all over a map of Detroit.

But Reese’s gaze passed over it without interest.

The android whistled tentatively, a terrifyingly accurate bird sound.

The silence grew.

He set the little glass dish on the dresser and peered into the cage.

They were two blue-white-and-black birds. They reminded Gavin of the android aesthetic colors. Everything out of CyberLife had come in black, white, and that vivid shade of blue. Parakeets.

Dead. Their necks twisted harshly. Their pale claws curled in a rictus of death.

Hanging from the central perch of the cage, a letter informed him that his transfer request to either the Missing Persons or Vice division of the DPD was denied. The seal of the office of the commissioner was prominently displayed.

Scrawled at the bottom in a very human hand: ‘Nice Try’.

Reese unclipped the form. Gavin could see the android’s face reflected in a little mirror clipped to the side of the bird cage. In the semi-dark room, the android’s gray eyes didn’t seem flat, or shallow.

They were full of profound and unanswerable pain. Alone in his bedroom, the android… cried. Why the fuck did they make them able to cry? Why make them able to care about birds? Other androids? Things that didn’t pertain to their mission.

In an instant, he seemed to realize something, he whirled round to the map above his bed—the lists of names and places, the hard copy of his network, and research that Gavin could make neither heads nor tail of. Something else seemed to spur him, he whirled around raced back to the hallway, the bathroom.

He ducked under the sink and quickly unscrewed a piece of pipe. It came away with a spray of water, but Reese didn’t seem to care. From inside the pipe, he fished a plastic bag. An evidence bag of papers rolled so tightly that they could fit into the thin pipe.

He held it for a moment before opening it.

He opened it carefully and unrolled the sheath against his thigh.

Blueprints. The one on top the pile was familiar— a little black device. Trojan Spy, the heading read. A CyberLife watermark shone underneath the print, but it was stamped with a much bolder claim— DPD CONFISCATE.

There were more, at least four or five other patents, but Reese only rifled through the tops of, displaying some of the names: InSurger, Straight-Collar, Meld-Mesh, Reclamation Pump, Recycle Systems.

Reese’s hands smoothed the paper against his thigh; an anxious, reassuring gesture.

The very last page he pulled to the top. An evidence log. He had highlighted entries corresponding to the names on the blueprints. Devices that had been recalled, and impounded from CyberLife according to the New Jericho regulations of android rights.

Missing.

Reese’s hands paused. There was a little red question mark next to the Trojan Spy. One finger pressed against the name. Gavin could feel the wheels turning in the android’s head, at the same time they did in his own.

This was the moment. The moment Reese realized his eyes were being used against him.

Gavin stayed in the rendering as Reese tore his apartment apart. He could feel the android’s desperation. His hope that it wasn’t true. That he was wrong. That he hadn’t been used to betray the people he was trying to help. That everything he had done until now had just been revealed to enemies he thought he had fooled.

He felt through the gloves haptic gloves as Reese tore his little apartment apart, disregarding all of his possessions. He tore the birdcage apart, dug holes into the walls between studs. The birds themselves were placed carefully in an elegant wooden box and set out of harm’s way as the android ripped apart his whole life and everything he cared about.

And found nothing. He burnt his records, destroyed every bit of his research but for that little roll of evidence. As if he could retroactively protect his work. He burned everything. He had already torn the fire alarm out of the ceiling in search of the parasite, and the room filled with smoke that Gavin couldn’t smell or choke on through the simulation.

The android ended his fruitless search back in the bathroom. He leaned his hands against the counter and stared at Gavin through the mirror, the expression of raw fury was utterly alien. His neatly combed hair was a mess, and his impeccable clothing was ruffled and out of place. His hands skinthetic showing the damaged white plastic underneath, still healing from ripping up his whole apartment. The apartment must have been littered with spots of Thirium drawn by the desperation and violence of his search. Why hadn’t Connor said anything about that? He had to at least know that an android had done the damage.

“I won’t do it,” Reese said. It was the first time he had spoken in this whole simulation. His voice sent shivers down Gavin’s spine. “I won’t allow it.”

In an instant, he changed. He let out a roar of noise and slammed a hand into the mirror. Gavin flinched back as if he were going to feel the punch, but all he felt was brief, blinding pressure on his knuckles and the mirror shattered, shrapnel-shards of glass exploding out of the raised frame, and cascading over the faucets into the empty basin.

There, behind the glass, was the little black object of his obsession, planted on the wall. Reese reached out and plucked it from the wall. “Of course,” he whispered.

He dropped it on the floor and brought his heel down hard on the hard casing.

It cracked. Gavin’s vision blinked out, and the noise of the bug breaking shrieked louder and louder, unbearable in intensity. He yanked the headset off. The system buzzed a warning at improper use.

He was back in the calm glow of the neon lights, sweat plastering strands of his hair to his temples, panting. He stripped the gloves off his hands. He should go back in, try to see more of those documents. He should take snapshots. Should gather the evidence. But where would he take it? He still didn’t know who was involved and Finn was dead. Reese was dead.

He couldn’t go back and watch that again. Not now.

###

Connor was trying to call him again. Maybe for the hundredth time that day. Gavin ignored his name displaying insistently on the screen and found a different contact. It rang twice.

“Fowler.”

“Hey Cap,” he said into the phone. His voice was light and easy, uncaring.

He stared in the mirror in his own apartment. Reese’s angry reflection flickered at him, with the android’s perfect teeth bared in a fury as his roar of pain and frustration echoed in the confines of Gavin’s ears.

But the image was gone as he blinked. His own face wasn’t angry. It was… tired and gaunt, hollowed by too little sleep and too much caffeine, shadowed by a lazy scruff of beard.

“Reed. You have a good night?”

“The way I’m feeling this morning, it was probably a very good night,” he said like Finn wasn’t dead. Like the Captain was his friend, his boss. “But I just wanted to clear up one of the more… hazy memories. Did you offer me a job last night? I mighta’ gotten mixed up…”

He waited, breathless.

Finally, Fowler spoke. “You gotta really want it.”

“I want it.”

“You've made a good choice. You're a great fit for the job."

Gavin swallowed. He closed his eyes to block out everything except the lies he had to sell, the person he had to be. "What... exactly will I be doing?"

"That'll be in the interview. I’ll text you an address and time. Be there tomorrow."

Chapter Text

He was cooking a frozen pizza in the oven when the knocking started. It wasn’t the usual three knocks. They hadn’t buzzed from the ground floor.

He approached his front door carefully. He was in his pajamas, and for the first time in days, he felt well rested, alert. Ready, even strangely calm. If this was going to be a fight, at least it was something he could confront, win or lose, he was tired of this stasis between knowing and not knowing.

The knocking was continuous. Ominous.

He leaned into the keyhole, his heart beating to the rhythm of his trembling door. His gaze was greeted by calm brown eyes. Connor. Apparently, he could somehow sense Gavin’s position just behind the door, his knocking ceased. “If you do not open the door,” the android said, “I will open it by force and arrest you.”

Gavin opened his door, just a few inches. “You can’t arrest me,” he said.

“We can leave the semantics to the lawyers.” Connor pushed the door open, forcing Gavin back as well as he stepped inside. Christ, he was strong. He didn’t seem the least bit concerned about the gun held loosely in Gavin’s right hand. It was insulting how little of a threat the android considered him.

Gavin stood in the entrance hall in his hoodie and pajama pants, gun dangling at his side. He felt suddenly… self-conscious. He’d never been alone in his apartment with a coworker. With a crowd drinking, sure; watching TV, yes. But standing alone in an entrance hall, the weight of death and suspicion between them, that was… new.

“I won’t lie for you again,” he said, “and Fowler wants to question Hank and me tomorrow morning at nine o’clock about how I found Walker.”

Gavin nodded. He beckoned the android further into the apartment. He could smell the acrid burn of a pizza too long in an oven. He set his gun on the counter between them and turned his back to open the oven. He couldn’t lie. They would know. It was one of the most annoying things about the RK units.

Every time he looked at the android, he saw Reese. Why did they have to have the same face? It made his skin crawl and his throat close. All that time with the androids at the station, and he had never really appreciated the differences or similarities between them. He turned away, glad for the excuse to not see him as he opened the oven. “Finn is dead because of me,” he said.

He pulled the tray out, hissing as the heat bit into the thin cotton dishrag he used as an oven mitt. He turned just in time and let the baking sheet clatter onto the island. When he managed to control himself, he looked up into Connor’s impassive face. “How?” the android asked calmly.

“If I tell you,” Gavin said. “I will be making the same mistake.”

He picked a slice of pizza from the tray. It didn’t come easy, most of the cheese sliding away, revealing sickening red and white matter like a wound. It was blistering. Gavin dropped it back down and stared at it. “I can’t,” he said. “I have to stop… making mistakes.”

“I lied to Hank this morning. If you don’t explain to me why,” Connor said. “I will bring you in for interrogation. Tonight.”

Gavin huffed a laugh and picked up the pizza again. It had cooled quickly in his frigid apartment. “There’s a leak in the evidence room,” he said.

As he took a bite of horrible, overcooked and yet somehow still raw pizza, he had the pleasure of watching the android’s shock. But it was there and gone in a flash. “How do you know?”

The detective shook his head. “These people, they won’t just kill you. They’ll kill the things you love. That stupid dog? Shit, maybe even Anderson. The minute I get you involved in this, I’m painting a target on you, because… I know you. You’ll get yourself killed.”

“Since when have you cared what happens to me?”

“I don’t,” he muttered, without heat or conviction.

“Was Finn was involved in the leak?”

Gavin shook his head.

“Why did you call me? You knew something was wrong, that he was in danger. You sounded…” the android hesitated. “Terrified.”

“Well, a leak in the evidence room is usually made from inside the evidence room, and you can’t tell me that doesn’t terrify you.”

“You suspect someone.”

He shrugged vaguely.

“It’s not Hank,” the android said confidently.

Gavin picked up a slice of pizza and leaned against the counter. He took a deep breath before he spoke. “It’s Fowler.”

Connor rested on the counter— his arms straight out. Tense. He looked exactly like Reese now. Gavin looked away quickly, chewing on a mouthful bread, cheese, and honestly disgusting tomato paste. It became hard to swallow, but he went through the motions mechanically.

“Hank needs to know.”

Putting his food down, he caught the android’s gaze. “Abso-fucking-lutely not. They’re friends. The case that made Anderson’s career? That was Fowler’s case as well. The task force was led by Hank, but it was Fowler’s baby— it pushed them both up the ranks, and everyone even says he turned down promotions just to make sure Hank kept his job and stayed out of trouble— one less excuse to play Russian roulette in his off-time. Do you actually have any idea how loyal Hank is to Fowler? Or vice versa?”

Connor hesitated. “They have known each other for a long time—”

Gavin rolled his eyes. “Known each other? Cole Anderson was Fowler’s godson. He was at Hank’s wedding. He got off the wagon to drink with Hank when his wife took off and then got back on to show Hank it was possible to start again. The reason they don’t talk is that Hank refuses to get sober, but they’re fucking family by cop standards.”

“Hank was affected by Finn’s death,” Connor said. “He takes the murders of his colleagues… personally. He will want the people responsible to be punished. He has a strong moral code.”

“Connor,” Gavin said, rubbing at his eyes. “Here’s something you need to understand. If you tell Hank, you will be forcing him to choose. Not just between trusting you or his oldest friend, but between androids and humans, his old life and this one. Even if you think he’ll choose you, androids, and his shitty fucking excuse of a life now, do you really want to force him to make it?”

The android looked troubled. “That is… oddly insightful. For you.”

Gavin shrugged. “Yeah, well… I’m in therapy now.”

Connor briefly, just for a moment flashed him a smirk. It caught him off guard. Shock, fear, humor, just brief flashes, but often enough for Gavin to wonder how blind he’d been to miss them before. He nodded. "And It's not like I've had much else to think about."

For a beat, they stood in his kitchen, contemplating the air between them. “I don’t trust you,” Connor said finally.

“You don’t have to,” Gavin said, pulling his sleeves over his hands and crossing his arms in front of his chest. He was cold. So very cold. “Just give me a few days before you clarify your report. I need hard evidence. Evidence that a judge will take. And then… then I’ll happily sit across a steel table and answer everything you want to ask me.”

“How many days?”

Tipping his head back, Gavin tried to think. Tomorrow night he would meet Fowler. The day after, he would meet Trevago, and she would have a direct line to Internal Affairs.

“Two,” he said. “That’s all.”

###

He was scared. Terrified. He lay in bed and watched the pale outline of his ceiling fan spin slowly. The noise of the city seemed distant tonight.

When he closed his eyes, he saw Reese.

And the displaced, damaged androids climbing the ruined edges of the city.

The birds, their necks twisted. Cold and dead.

Finn was glaring up at him from his work.

And Reese again, his face in the mirror—

A symptom of a sick fucking human.

He slept restlessly and dreamed of eyes that watched him, inescapable and unblinking. His limbs were heavy and moved without his will, marching him into a deep, dark tunnel, but he knew it would end with a wall, that there would be nothing there. But still he walked, and he couldn’t go back.

He was forced awake by light and sound. He wiped a hand over his face and blinked at it. Ten in the morning. He had slept for almost twelve hours. The caller’s name shivered on the screen, bright.

Fowler.

He froze. It had almost reached the fifth ring before he answered, swinging his legs over the side of his bed. “Reed,” he croaked into it.

“I know we had an appointment for tonight, but my schedule has just opened up. Are you ready to come in?”

Ten in the morning. Connor had to talk to him at nine. Just over an hour ago. Something had gone wrong. He had never been surer of anything in his life. Fuck. What had the android said? What had gone wrong? What did Fowler know?

“Yeah, I can be there in fifteen minutes,” he said.

“It’ll take an hour to set everything up. Take a shower, eat something and I’ll meet you there at 11.”

“Oka—”

The call ended abruptly, and he was left staring out over the bright city. He had slept for almost twelve hours, and he still felt as tired as he had that night.

He called Connor.

No answer. Not even a message. Just an eerie tone that stretched endlessly until Gavin hung up.

He called Hank.

“Hi, this is Hank. Not here at the moment. Leave a message if that’s what turns you on, but don’t expect a callback. Beep. Whatever.”

This sinking feeling was getting more and more familiar. He felt sick. Of course, of fucking course. He had screwed up again. He was a fucking screw up, a goddamn fucking fuck up. Fuck. Fucking... fuck.

He held his phone, clenching it in his hands until the plastic groaned and his bandaged hand protested the abuse. Outside his window, the city buzzed with activity, he had slept late and had let his guard down.

What the fuck was he gonna do now? He had planned on having the day to chase down what those other mysterious patents were. The network Reese had burned, what had happened to that little sheaf of evidence after he had destroyed the bug, and now… Gavin was out of time.

He was panicking, but he also felt… numb. Exhausted.

A shower. He could start with a shower.

###

Fowler’s address was a house in the outskirts, an overgrown three-story mansion of a house set far from the road with iron gates and security cameras. He hadn’t known what to expect, but certainly not this. Fowler had called it an interview, whatever that meant.

Gavin was expected. He didn’t have to get out of his car or show an ID. The gates opened smoothly, and the car parked itself next to the front door. Gavin got out slowly, looking up at the imposing house through a pair of dark sunglasses and took a drag on a cigarette. The smoke filled his lungs, pulling him upright, giving him the strength to trot up the stairs. His gun, strapped to his side, was a comforting weight, easy to reach. In its holster, the safety was off. He had to be ready.

He raised a hand to knock, but the door opened in front of his raised hand. He was greeted by a middle-aged black man in a black and white tracksuit. He looked like he had just come in from a run, headphones folded around his neck and sweat beading his face. He was familiar, a regular face in Jimmy’s maybe. “Gavin?” he asked bluntly.

“Uh, yeah?”

“He’s waiting for you in there.”

The stranger pointed carelessly into the house, towards a large, ornate doorway.

Gavin nodded and slipped inside. There were two more men in the hall, one trotting down the staircase, one leaning behind a… stuffed ostrich? Both were armed.

He scanned the house as he walked calmly towards the indicated opening. A wide staircase led up to the second floor, an opening on the side leading down to what might use to have been servant’s quarters.

Fowler sat on a worn red couch. The surroundings were all rich, but… old. Secondhand if not antique. A large, scorch-marked fireplace took up much of the wall beside the couches. The Police Captain stood as Gavin entered. He was drinking a soda but placed it on the coffee table as he rose and held out a hand. A gloved hand. “Reed,” he said. “I’m glad you’re here.”

He didn’t look… angry. In fact, this was probably the calmest Gavin had seen the Captain. He still wasn’t smiling, and there was tension in his face as he took in Gavin’s clothing, his badge, and gun.

He let go of his hand and swept a gesture to the sofa for Gavin to sit opposite. “You must have some questions.”

Gavin smiled tightly, but before he could answer, a low-flying drone entered the room. Its fans filled the air with a static buzzing. It came straight to Gavin, but as he tried to lean out of its path, it came closer.

“It’s alright,” Fowler said. “It’s just a scan, a formality.”

“I have my gun,” Gavin said.

“That’s not what we’re worried about,” Fowler assured him.

A wire, that’s what they were worried about, and despite the fact that he had no listening device strapped onto him, he felt a chill, a shiver of paranoia that it would sense, somehow, that he was here to find secrets and expose them.

And the drone did give one angry little noise, a warning.

“Give me your phone,” Fowler said.

Slowly, Gavin pulled his phone out of his pocket and tossed it to the captain.

The drone chirped an acceptance and left. Fowler opened a little grey box on the table in front of him and placed Gavin’s phone carefully inside. “I want to talk openly with you, Gavin,” he said calmly as he tipped the box closed and leaned back into the sofa.

“Yes… sir,” Gavin said.

“You’re an ambitious man, and I like to see that in my officers, my detectives; the men that I lead and who I trust. You’re a smart man. Not when it comes to the… optics of any given situation, but you’re not afraid to speak the truth, while everyone gets caught up with this…” he gestured aimlessly, “hysteria.”

“Hysteria?”

“This nonsense about deviants.” He raised his cup, the ice shifting against the glass with a small, pleasant tinkling sound. “Can I get you a drink? We have everything.”

“No thank you.” he shifted uncomfortably. “But… are we… is this an interview for a position in Vice? I mean, do you live here?”

Fowler shook his head. “Before we get into all of this, I think you need to appreciate how much I trust you, Gavin, and I need you to trust me. I need to know that you trust me.”

“I trust you,” Gavin said. The words came out hoarse.

Finn.

Fowler nodded. He leaned forward again, and from his pocket, he produced a small bag. A spattering of sticky red crystals trapped inside. Red Ice. Gavin shifted away. He couldn’t help himself. He had come across Red Ice at enough crime scenes, enough homicides, to know that it was bad shit.

“Captain—”

“Only once,” Fowler assured him. “I don’t tolerate drug addicts in my employ. I take transgressions very seriously.”

“That shit only takes once,” he said desperately. “It kills people.”

Fowler flicked a hand in dismissal. “Network TV paranoia,” he said. “It’s not going to hurt you. All I need you to do is prove that you trust me. This relationship doesn’t work without trust both ways.”

No. He couldn’t do this. Not this. His head was fucked enough as it was.

“It’s not too late,” Fowler said evenly, dropping the bag between them. “If you can’t do this, then you and I have nothing else to discuss, and I will see you in three months for your hearing in front of IA.”

Gavin swallowed. He looked at the bag, his head spinning. Connor. Reese. Finn. For Reese. For Finn. He had to.

He leaned forward and took the bag. The grains prickled his fingers even through the plastic. The Captain leaned forward and pushed a small glass pipe and a lighter towards him. It had been ready. It had all been prepared for him.

His hands shook as he poured the grains into the tiny glass bowl. He couldn’t work the lighter— an old-fashioned thing scratched and worn. Without comment, Fowler leaned forward and helped him hold the lighter underneath the pipe.

The drugs bubbled and smoked, congealing together like thick, coagulated blood, shifting slowly to black.

Under the Captain’s eyes, Gavin inhaled, as shallowly as he could, but it was acrid, and before he could stop the reflex, he inhaled again just to cough again. He had just enough time to panic before the waves hit him, rocking him backward.

He blinked as Fowler took the pipe away, put in another little box to be put on the table. Everything compartmentalized, systematized.

“Fuck,” he said.

He hadn’t meant the word to come out of his mouth, but it seemed to float out of him. Fuck. He felt more relaxed than he had in days, but his heart was still racing. Confidence filled him, and suddenly his mind was working a thousand miles a minute. Too fast for the rest of the world to catch up.

He felt like he had achieved something, that he was something. Like the buzz of endorphins when he figured out a case, when the evidence matched up, when a suspect confessed, and when his team won a game. It was all there, all rolled into one.

“Glad to have you aboard, Reed."

Chapter Text

Fowler stripped off his gloves and threaded his fingers together, watching Gavin struggle through the red haze of panic and confusion. Why? Why did he do that? It was stupid, fucking stupid.

“How long is this going to last?” Gavin gritted out. His heart was jumping in his chest, pounding against his ribs as if it were trying to escape. He leaned forward on his knees. Fuck. Fuck. He was panicking, and he was angry. His blood rushed through him, strong and fast. The heat that came with fury— that rising tide, urged him to stand, to fight, to run, but he didn’t have the focus for anything. He felt detached, numb, but good. The anxiety that had been plaguing him for days faded to the background, and he scrabbled after it. Fear kept him sharp, kept him alive, and he needed it now more than ever.

“You want that drink now?” Fowler asked calmly, standing drawing away to a nearby mini-fridge, an odd contrast to the old-fashioned furniture.

“I can’t believe that I just did that. I can’t believe you just… made me do that,” Gavin said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, trying to stop feeling the cold glass pipe between his lips.

He tried to blink the fog out of his eyes.

“You’re going to be fine,” Fowler assured him, and a bottle of water appeared in front of Gavin’s face. He took it gratefully and twisted the cap off quickly, his shaking hands clenched too tight around the thin plastic, splashing it over his shirt before chugging it messily.

“I am not a criminal, Reed,” Fowler said standing and putting his hands behind his back, pacing to the tall windows that overlooked the front garden so that Gavin had to crane his neck to keep the Captain in his line of sight. “You have to understand that everything I do is to protect people. When I came to this city, the Red Ice epidemic was turning this city into a den of rats. The money being sunk into human pain and misery was staggering. It was… disgusting.”

Gavin’s eyes at least had stopped watering, and he sank back into the cushions. The Captain’s voice was warm, mesmerizing, calming.

“In the old days, if an addict couldn’t pay, their debt could be erased with crime. Murder, fraud, human trafficking, torture— Detroit needed the CyberLife Tower contract, and its investors wanted a safe city for employees. So we did our jobs. We did what no other task force had managed. We took the entire network down, and there was a vacuum. The next scumbag off the streets would have been worse. People, officers, innocents, would have died. My duty is to protect and serve, but for once I was… proactive.”

Reed frowned through the fog. Everything was becoming very… slippery. If he didn’t concentrate his whole attention on the Captain, he was going to slip away. He was going to lose. Almost desperately, he tried to stay in the present. “You don’t hurt people?” he asked.

Fowler sighed and turned around to look at Gavin. The noon sun was behind him, glaring down, warm and fresh. “We are the police. We do whatever it takes to establish order. The people we hurt are criminals, they don’t value human life and progress. We are the wall, Reed, against the forces of chaos and blood in the streets.”

Gavin set his crumpled bottle on the table delicately. He felt like he was wavering on the edge of a precipice, that any move could tumble him down, down, and further down. “And there’s the money.”

Fowler smiled. “Oh, yes, Reed. Our pensions, our retirements are sucked straight into the city, into those criminals. We get paid cents while the city pours millions into cleaning up icers so they can walk a straight line to their next hit. And after the deviant outbreak, Detroit is on the brink of another economic collapse, and you know who will disappear in the first cut? Us. The police. The money we make is owed to us.”

Evidence, some distant echo of a thought hissed at him. You need evidence. But it was just a collection of words, a sound. A noise. Specks of dust drifted through the beams of the early afternoon sunlight. He thought he could see dark stains on the fabric next to him. Something had turned the red fabric purple, streaked and pooled. “What is this house for?” he asked.

“We needed a supply,” Fowler said. “For a while, we worked off what we could get out of evidence, but that was quick to run out, hard to explain as missing. I was not going to farm out money to the scum I had spent my career hunting. Instead, we had access to the equipment, and more importantly, the ingredients. Did you know that more than half the human security at CyberLife is ex-police? They have to work a security job to make ends meet. They have to protect the very things that are taking their jobs, their homes, their money, their goddamn dignity.”

His voice had risen, and Gavin shrunk back as the Captain began to pace. He looked like he did at the briefings, he was a big man, with an explosive temper. Not even Anderson could stand up to that energy.

Anderson’s probably dead now, that annoying voice in his head. Just like Finn. Just like Reese. You remember Reese?

“For a while, we had access to Thirium, lithium, and toluene and all that crap that makes this work. And soon we had the processes to synthesize—”

“Thirium,” Gavin interrupted, grasping at the word. It was important. It brought with it a thousand flickering memories. He remembered the taste of it in his mouth, the sight of it, on his desk, on his clothes, his hands.

Fowler smirked. “Thirium. It was the hardest to obtain, with Russia facing off with American forces in the Arctic over the supply, but we siphoned where we could from CyberLife. Just a little at first, but our supply had to meet the demand, and there was a lot of demand. A war was being fought over it, and Red Ice doesn’t cook without it. We snuck about the cracks, in the delivery trucks, the labs, and pipes, collecting what we could afford to. It was efficient. Easy. Smooth sailing. But then—”

He bowed over the back of the sofa, resting on his forearms as he looked at Gavin. “Fucking androids. The deviant outbreak changed everything. Suddenly androids had the rights to every drop coming out of the Arctic, and whatever else can be said about the androids, they are efficient. Their pipelines from mining to refining to distribution became tighter. They plugged the holes, monitored every drop at every step of the way. You asked me about this house,” he said gesturing carelessly at their surroundings, snapping Gavin out of his haze.

“It belonged to a scavenger. A man who chopped androids then sold them and their parts. He was running a goddamn factory out of this place. Fucking Russian, of course. He used this house to take androids apart, got killed and we were called in to investigate. Even with the world going insane, I realized what a gift it could be. I saw its potential.”

“Can I… I need to wash my face,” Gavin said suddenly, standing abruptly. Having the Captain hovering behind him made his skin crawl.

His monologue interrupted, a flash of anger crossed Fowler’s face, but it was gone in a flash. He smiled. “Wouldn’t have pegged you for such a lightweight,” he said, his voice a growl of good humor.

Gavin grinned back but could think of absolutely nothing to answer with. He just knew that he had to escape this room right now. His head was buzzing with information, new guesswork. It was too much, and with the pace his heart had set, he felt dizzy.

Fowler’s smile turned cold in the silence. “Second floor. Third door on the right.”

Gavin gave a little wave of a salute. He still had his gun, he could… he could shoot Fowler. Was that a good idea? It was an idea at least.

Probably not a good idea. All ideas should wait until he had time to splash water over his face.

More men had appeared in the entrance hall. He recognized some of them now. Former cops who still frequented the old haunts, some who still worked at the DPD. Derek Meyers, a CyberLife cap pressed over his head. Chris Roberts, Edward Dempsey, Christopher Gray, and Dennis Ward, the man in the tracksuit. Reed recognized him now, among the other familiar faces. He had been in and out of the station a few times, an accountant mixed up in the drugs trade, alternating as suspect, witness, and as an informant at the station.

None of them seemed particularly surprised by his appearance. In fact, some sent him a nod, of recognition, of welcome.

He smiled wildly. He must look like a fucking idiot with a grin plastered on his face, but now he couldn’t wipe it off his face. He just… physically had no control over his face. He trotted up the stairs, swung past a grandfather clock.

There were so many goddamn people here. Just how big was this operation? What had Fowler said?

Panicking, he paused with his hand on the doorknob. He couldn’t remember what the Captain had said. He could recall with perfect clarity exactly how he had been feeling that whole time, watching the Captain pace with his voice undulating in rolling waves. Hypnotizing. But not a single word.

His face was unbearably hot. Water. Face. Now.

He stumbled into the bathroom.

It wasn’t the bathroom.

The large wood-paneled room was full of still figures covered in white sheets. Statues, he thought at first, but he halted a few steps into the room, the covered heads turned towards him, pulling against the sheets in unison. Perfectly and eerily synchronized.

“What the fuck—?” he stuttered out.

“Creepy, huh?” someone behind him said.

He turned. Detective Yo-Han leaned in the doorway. Lead Detective for Vice, they had never spoken beyond a few words exchanges at DPD events. The young Asian-American man chewed a piece of gum as he grinned. “You just come from the interview, huh? This must be a trip. I didn’t get to this shit until my second week.”

Gavin stepped towards the figure and pulled the sheet down.

Green-blue eyes stared at him. “Trevago,” he whispered.

But it wasn’t her. Her hair was blonde. This android’s short-cropped hair was black, and her face was devoid of intelligence and emotion. They were only the same model. They could have been sisters.

“Creepier without the sheet, right?” Yo-Han said.

Gavin turned on him. “What the fuck is this?”

“Wrong door, Reed,” Fowler said, appearing behind Yo-Han.

Yo-Han half turned towards the Captain. “He not get the orientation packet yet?”

Fowler took Gavin’s shoulder and pulled him out of the room. Yo-Han ducked inside and took up the sheet, throwing it back over the android’s figure. Gavin turned in time to see the android’s head follow him back out. His skin crawled. As soon as they were back in the hallway, he shook the Captain’s hand from his shoulder.

“What the hell is that?” he asked, pointing back to the door with a shaking finger.

“Don’t worry, they’ve been reset. Can’t take any chances with a deviant getting in the mix and spoiling them all again. We’ve just had windfall recently and ran out of space. Needed a place to store them.”

“For what?”

He put a hand over his chest, rubbing over his lungs. Fowler put an arm around his shoulder and drew him back down the hall. “We call it reclamation,” he said.

###

He couldn’t… register what his eyes were seeing.

Another room. Just down the hall. Old and paneled in wood, but filled with steel and plastic apparatus. And around them, discarded like shells, android legs, arms, heads, torsos. “Why so many kids?” he croaked.

Fowler wiped a smudge of Thirium from a glass bulb and nearby, wiping it carefully on a nearby rag already stained with the blue liquid. “We have to process the little ones fast,” he said. “They’re harder to control. Tend to go deviant faster.”

At the center of the room, hanging from a heavy chain, what looked like an oversized regulator, like the one that Reese had pulled from his chest. Between the glow of the liquid and the oddly shaped apparatus, the shadows flung against the walls and floor were chaotic.

“Where did you get all this shit?” Gavin asked. It was all he could ask.

“CyberLife,” Fowler said. “When New Jericho sent out the new regulations, suddenly we had more toys than we knew what to do with. This is just the tip of the iceberg. CyberLife was dealing with deviants for years before the outbreak. They had very… effective ways of making sure they cooperated inside their labs.”

Gavin looked up at the Captain. “Show me.”

In answer, he was led through to another room. A mattress had been shoved against the wall and was littered with children’s toys and colorful blankets. It was a mess.

And on a tray at the edge of the room, a cluster of far more sinister objects. Fowler held up what looked like a cylindrical taser. “You’ll like this one, Reed. The InSurger, they called it. I know it pisses you off that the plastics can’t feel pain, but this thing—”

He pressed the switch on the side of it and the room filled with a thick static, snaps of energy. “This is as close as they can get.”

He tossed it to Gavin who fumbled it between his hands before he managed to grip it. He turned it between his hands. He was sweating profusely. As he rolled it between his fingers, his eyes caught on something else.

A teddy bear. It was missing an eye, but he recognized it. From a picture. The little android girl had been smiling through the picture, into the dirty, dank, dark warehouse. Part of Reese’s network.

And the last piece fell into place.

Reese’s network. A list of transient robots without a home, without friends or backup. A list of those warehouses which androids used for shelter, ripe hunting grounds for Fowler and his trade-web. We’ve just had windfall recently, the Captain had said.

He closed his eyes and felt the ice clench around his heart. His heart dropped. Those birds— they hadn’t just been a warning; they had been a taunt. This is what happens. This is what we’re going to do. To them all.

He had done everything in his power to protect them, to help them, and in the end, his efforts had led to their destruction.

Had Reese gone to find them? Tried to warn them?

He had been so late to work.

You’re a walking, talking can of parts, Gavin had said. They had been drained and discarded in parts. Chopped and shopped to make Red Ice.

You’re a symptom of a sick fucking human, Gavin had snarled into the android’s face, unknowing and uncaring.

“Reed?”

Gavin opened his eyes and looked up at Fowler, who was holding up a ring of steel, dipped into a V where the two ends met. As he closed it with a click, two needle-sharp prongs flicked out from the metal. “We just call it the collar,” he said. “The most advanced android restraint to never make it to market.”

Gavin nodded. He felt so dry. Numb. He was starting to shiver in earnest. He had never been so fucking cold in his life, and he had just inhaled a dead fucking android.

Setting the silver circlet back on the tray, Fowler looked suddenly pensive. “Look, Reed, you and I haven’t always seen eye to eye, but I’ve wanted you in for a long time. You’re a good detective, a good man. In times like these, it’s hard to find someone I can trust, who has the right eyes on things. I want to show you what we do here, what I’m offering you.” He jerked his head back, towards the entrance hall. “One last stop on the tour. I think you can help me with something.”

Fowler led him back down the stairs again. Christ, there were a lot of people working here. They were everywhere. How on earth was he supposed to come after them all? Take his whole thing down when it looked like the entire force of the DPD including retirees were involved?

I feel… helpless. Reese’s last words.

They walked down into the basement. Nobody followed them. It was even colder down here, full of stalls were more androids stood in silence, watching Gavin with empty eyes. His wan gaze felt just as empty as he looked at them.

And he was suddenly in a large antechamber, a cement box. In front of the door, a large well had been boarded up. There were two guards’ posted just inside the room, but Gavin’s attention was caught on the men inside the center, with their backs to the door.

One man was strapped down tightly, his hands tied behind the chair, with his ankles taped to the front legs. The other was sitting bolt upright, his limbs all at right angles as he waited with eerie, frozen patience.

Gavin recognized them both.

By their postures, by the way they sat, by the one’s neatly tailored suit and the other one’s insanely colored and patterned shirt. The shaggy mop of grey hair and the dark, neat locks.

Hank, straining his head around to see who had entered, and caught sight of Gavin. “Of-fucking-course,” he spat.

Chapter Text

 “Shut up Hank,” Fowler growled.

“Fuck you, Jeffrey.”

But Gavin’s attention was on the android sitting in the other chair. He hadn’t turned around, hadn’t said anything. He was staring at a pile of android parts and shells tossed into a corner.

“What’s wrong with hi—it?”

If Fowler noticed the slip-up, he didn’t show it. The Captain walked straight up to the android, fearless. Gavin tensed as he came within Connor’s reach. The android detective was fast and merciless in combat. Gavin had experience with that.

“Don’t you fucking touch him,” Hank barked.

But Connor did nothing, as Fowler tapped a finger to the slip of silver around his neck and the android’s face relaxed, his lips opened, released from their restraint while the rest of his body remained frozen. He finally turned his head to look at Gavin. His eyes were dark and furious. The rest of his body might be frozen in an attitude of stiff obedience, but his face shivered with rage.

“Keeps them still and quiet,” the Captain said. “You’d be surprised how slippery they can be.”

“No… kidding,” Gavin said carefully, quickly looking away. “Why are they here?”

“We’ve been having something of a problem,” Fowler said, leaning back against the wall with his arms crossed. “We have had a protocol breach in the evidence room, unarchived evidence floating around the precinct.”

From a pocket, he dug a little black device. The parasite, the Trojan Spy. Gavin tensed, but Fowler wasn’t looking at him, his gaze was fixed on Hank. “These two have had a problem of turning up where they shouldn’t recently.”

“What the fuck are you doing, Fowler?” Hank asked, tipping his head, squinting his eyes as if trying to see some trick, trying to break his friend out of a nightmare.

When Fowler just raised an eyebrow, Hank jerked up on his bonds, nearly tipping his chair over. “Fucking asshole!”

“Connor found this at our friend Reese’s apartment,” Fowler said, tossing the chip at Gavin who caught it, his heart jumping to his throat as he pressed his fingers into it. Finn had repaired it somehow, a gold substance smooth between the cracks Reese’s heel had put into it. “It’s a trail that could lead back to us,” Fowler said, just as Gavin realized he should probably ask what this was and why he had just been tossed it. “We had it back in our possession as soon as possible, only to discover the data has been copied, duplicated, and who should be meeting that source, but this fucking thing.”

“You… you’re going to… kill them?” Gavin asked.

Fowler almost looked disappointed. “Of course not. Not unless I have to. The plastic can be reset, and Hank…” he stared down at his oldest friend. “You’re going to be quiet, aren’t you Hank?”

For once Hank actually seemed speechless. He stared up at Fowler with gritted teeth.

“It was just me,” Connor said suddenly, his eyes on Reed. “Lieutenant Anderson didn’t know anything until this morning. I told him that there was a tip about missing evidence. That’s why we were in the archive. It’s all he knows.”

“Well he knows a lot goddamn more now,” Fowler said. “Everything was fine before you fucking things showed up. Where’s the copy?”

Connor’s lips thinned into a line. He stared at Fowler, his gaze not even flickering towards Gavin who tried to breathe as normally as possible, tried to think through the fog over his thoughts. He had to… what was he going to do here?

“You kept the InSurger, right?” Fowler asked him, and Gavin blinked up at him, sorting the words and their meaning until he had a grasp of what was being said. He looked down. He was still carrying the little baton. He had forgotten he was still carrying it.

Fowler nodded. “This one deserves a little eye-for-an-eye,” he gestured to Gavin’s freshly-healed face, the evidence that he and Connor hated each other. “You want to see if you can get him to talk now? Interrogations are so much easier with those things.”

Gavin stared at Connor. Oh fuck.

“Not in front of Hank,” Connor said quickly.

Hank’s head snapped around. “Connor. Don’t you fucking—”

But Gavin jumped at the bait. “Yeah,” he said to Fowler, clutching at the captain’s shoulder. “I want to do this. Let me do this. Leave me with him for a few minutes.”

The captain gazed at him calmly, and Gavin smiled tightly at him. “You know how it goes, Captain. They’re more likely to talk if they’re separated.”

Fowler grinned, clapping Gavin warmly on the shoulder. “Always a detective. We’ll be close by,” he said, beckoning to the two guards. They took Hank's chair and dragged him and his chair backward, out of the room. The Lieutenant roared the whole time. “No! Fucking no! No! Connor—No!”

They didn’t take him far, probably just into one of the cells outside. Gavin slid the heavy steel door closed behind them, flashing a grin at Fowler, who stood outside the doorway. “Thanks, Captain,” he said. “Been waiting a long time to get this son-of-a-bitch alone.”

Fowler nodded. He wasn’t smiling anymore, a flash of suspicion on his face as the door closed on him.

Gavin turned to Connor and raised a finger to his lips. With the other hand, he held up the InSurger in surrender.

“What the fuck do I do?” he whispered frantically, glancing back at the closed door before shouting, half towards the men no doubt listening for an interrogation: “Where’s the copy?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Connor said smoothly, just on the edge of too loud, acknowledging the role he had to play. Gavin immediately felt a wave of relief. They were working together.

Gavin lifted the InSurger in one hand and pressed the little rubber button on the side. The air sizzled and snapped with the sound of voltage, speeding up Gavin’s own heart. He nearly jumped out of his skin at the sound that tore from Connor’s throat, slowing to a mechanical whine. He switched it off, and Connor cut off the sound.

“—Connor!” Hank called from behind the door, finally audible now that the InSurger was turned off. “You bastards! Stop! Fucking Stop!”

Gavin winced, but there was no time to think about Anderson. He approached Connor and tugged the collar from the android’s neck, it released with a snap, the two vicious-looking needles withdrawing from his skin quickly without leaving a mark. “Not so fucking smug now, are you?!” he shouted as he backed away from the freed android, his hands shaking as he held them up.

Connor stood and straightened his tie, fixing his cufflinks as he stared at Gavin. “Stop!” he called out desperately, his face eerily calm above the twisted grimace his lips made as he pleaded. “Please— Stop!”

“There’s four out there,” Gavin whispered, pulling the gun out of his waistband and handing it to over. The android was a better shot any day of the week. “Tell me asshole!” then urgently, “A dozen in the hall and I counted at least fourteen of their men when we came in. Can we take them?”

Connor shook his head. “I don’t know! I don’t know what you’re talking about!” he shouted before lowering his voice to a whisper as well. “Not without significant risk to Hank, and a collateral price among the android prisoners.”

At a loss for ideas, he turned the InSurger back on. “Fuck you don’t know!” Every hair on his body raised at the sound of its static, and Connor’s answering scream. “Then what the fuck do I do here?” Gavin whispered in the beat of silence that followed.

“Kill me,” the android answered softly, his gaze intense.

Gavin reeled back. “No,” he said, almost too loudly, but Anderson outside was probably enough of a distraction. The Lieutenant was spitting out curses and threats with barely enough pause to breathe.

The sound of his partner is danger made Connor far more intense than Gavin had ever seen him before. “They’re going to kill me anyway,” the android said softly. “And don’t pretend you haven’t daydreamed about it a few times.”

“Calm down,” Reed muttered desperately, stalling, trying to sort through the mania taking hold of him. Why the fuck would anyone take this shit for fun? He itched, uncomfortable in his own skin. Maybe he was finally coming down off the shit. “You have to keep your voice down, or you’re both fucking dead. We’re all fucking dead.”

Connor just stared at him with calm certainty, that this was the plan.

“I’m not fucking killing you, Connor,” Gavin hissed at him, drawing closer so he could make sure his words were clear. “Never mind what they’ll do to me if they find out I’m the one who has the copy, Hank will probably physically rip my head off with his bare hands. Don’t you have like... a sleep mode or something? These idiots won’t be able to tell.”

Connor looked pointedly at the android shells piled in the corner. “They’ll be able to tell,” he muttered. “You think you can get Hank out of here safely if I’m dead? Do they trust you?”

Instead of answering, Gavin raised the InSurger and filled the air with the sound of crackling electricity again. Connor dutifully cried out raggedly. He was… too good at that. Why the fuck he come with fake-torture programming?

“Stop!” Hank called desperately from the other room. “He doesn’t know. We don’t know shit.”

“I think I can get him out,” Gavin whispered. “I’ll think of something, but I’m telling you right now, no plan where you die ends well. For anyone.”

Connor nodded. He looked down at his chest. “Take my regulator,” he said.

Gavin paused. “I’m not stupid,” he said, “That still means you’ll die.”

“I’ll have time, more with the collar on, because it ceases unnecessary functions. You’ll have ten minutes at most before my Thirium stops circulating properly and my mechanics start to shut down. Ten minutes and my processors will fry themselves, you understand?”

"It’s too risky. I can’t just—"

“Do it!” Connor called out, loudly. Too loudly, his lips twisting in that creepy, utterly unpleasant way. “Kill me! Just fucking kill me!”

Outside, they could both hear Hank lose his shit. It was as much cover as they could get.

Gavin pressed a hand to his chest, his hears felt bruised his ribs fractured, every breath becoming shallower, and the world fading at the edges. He was a detective, not a spy, not an actor. “Jesus Christ, Con,” he wheezed unsteadily. “I’m either dying or really fucking high right now, but probably both.”

Connor stepped closer and before Gavin could pull away, he laid a cold hand over his heart, holding him still with another hand on his shoulder. “Your heart is beating too fast,” the android said, leaning into Gavin, pressing into his chest.

“Oh fuck, I fucking knew—”

“You’re going to be fine,” Connor said, raising his chin to keep Gavin’s attention. “You’re not going to die. I promise. Just breathe. Slow down and concentrate on your breathing. Hold it in for a second.”

And fuck. It helped. Connor pressing into his chest, relaxing it again, showing him the pace at which he needed to breathe. The blackness faded, the stars disappearing, and the pain in his chest loosened. He was suddenly exhausted. He needed to sleep.

The android left Gavin’s side for a moment. Reed stumbled as the support abandoned him, righting himself against the empty chair. The android pulled an empty regulator from an android body hanging on the wall. He was moving quickly, probably worried about the stress in Hank’s voice. The Lieutenant was going full ballistic behind the door.

“Take care of him,” Connor muttered to Gavin, pressing the gun and empty regulator into his free hand. “He’s probably never going to forgive either of us for this, but… if something goes wrong, if I don’t—”

“Shut the fuck up,” Gavin said bluntly, still concentrating on his breathing.

Connor nodded crisply and pointed to a spot on his chest, just below his left collarbone. “Here,” he said. “They’ll want a cause of death. Don’t miss.”

He slid the collar back on and sat before clipping shut. The wet, slick sound of the needles slipping into his neck made Gavin’s breath catch. Connor might not be able to feel pain, but the sensation of needles sliding into his faux-skin couldn’t have been pleasant. The android’s body went lax. With only his head mobile, he nodded at Gavin, no smile, no more reassurance. “Do it,” he said.

Gavin nodded. He undid Connor’s shirt buttons and pressed against the skinthetic until he found the latch for the regulator. Connor’s skin pulled away, revealing a glowing blue cylinder. It looked just like Reese’s and fuck, Gavin didn’t need that image in his head, of that shattered vessel. “Hold on,” he told the android. “Just... hold on.”

He twisted and pulled.

It was strangely intimate, holding Connor’s heart in his hands, but there was no time to feel the weight of it. Gavin stuffed it inside his jacket, in the inside pocket where he usually kept his badge.

Despite the collar, Connor’s body tensed and then relaxed. He sprawled back in his chair, not like a dead android, which froze in place, but a dead human. Gavin stuffed the regulator into his jacket and slammed the empty one in its place, twisting until it clicked. Immediately, the light underneath Connor’s skin went an angry red.

Gavin fumbled Connor’s buttons back through their holes and stood. They had been quiet for too long. He shifted backward, focused on his hand and wrist, trying to control his shaking. He had to be exact.

The gunshot was so loud in the little room it felt like a physical blow to his head. He staggered in the echo of it, terror clenching at his throat as he doubted the shot. Thirium spilled down the android’s white shirt and splattered on the floor behind the android. The bullet had gone straight through him.

Hank’s answering roar of rage from the other room was… deafening. Fury and pain. The door rolled open on its rails. With the gun still in his hand, Gavin wiped a hand across his mouth and took a step away from the android, straight into Fowler’s chest. He spun around quickly to face the Captain.

“You killed him?”

“Finn,” Gavin said quickly. The forensic analyst's name would add credence to this story— that Connor had told him the truth, that there was nothing more to the mole, the conspiracy against Fowler was over, dead, finished. “Finn put the copy in his cloud. No Connor, no copy, no problem, right? And Hank had no idea. He didn’t know anything about any of it.”

The frown didn’t leave Fowler’s face. He stepped inside the room and looked down at Connor’s lax face, his open, staring eyes. He looked fucking dead. Really fucking dead. Had Gavin’s hand slipped? He had shot him while fucking high on Red Ice.

There was no way to tell.

“I needed it alive to be reset,” Fowler said. “Hank isn’t going to cooperate without it.”

“He wasn’t going to cooperate anyway. It’s just a fucking robot, Fowler. Resetting him doesn’t get rid of the evidence. What did you fucking want me to do?”

Fowler swiped his fingers across his forehead as he looked down at Connor’s body. “This has turned into a big fucking mess,” he said.

Connor’s heart was warm in his pocket. Could Fowler see the glow? He tried not to fidget. Thank Christ that he was wearing so much goddamn clothing. Red Ice and three layers of cotton, leather, and wool might be cooking his veins, but the regulator was safe.

With a sigh, Fowler ripped Connor’s shirt open and pulled the regulator out with practiced ease. Some of the android’s Thirium had spilled into the empty regulator, further adding to the appearance of a non-functional, dead android.

“Come,” he said, beckoning carelessly with the decoy.

Gavin followed him, sparing a single glance back at Connor. He could feel time slipping through his fingers like grains of sand. Ten minutes. He had ten minutes. How much time had passed already? The Red Ice haze made it hard to distinguish seconds from minutes. How the fuck was he going to get back there and put the regulator back?

That question quickly was forced into the background as Fowler tossed the regulator at Hank’s feet. “He’s dead Hank,” Fowler said. “He gave us everything. There’s no need for it to go any further.”

“Fuck you,” Anderson whispered, staring down at the little device. His voice was ragged from screaming, breathless with pain and there wasn’t a scratch on him. “Fuck. You. Jeffrey.”

“Are you really going to make me do this?” Fowler growled.

“Why?” Hank asked softly, shaking his head. The fight seemed to have gone completely out of him. He hung against his bonds, older and more tired than Gavin had ever seen him. “What happened to you?”

“What happened to you, Hank? These things have destroyed us, and you’re fucking living with one. You know why Red Ice is an epidemic in this city? It’s because those CyberLife bastards took our humanity from us, and gave it to plastic and steel. They killed my godson. They took and took until we didn’t have anything left, and then they made better versions of us, more obedient slaves, and now we all fucking work for them. I’m fucking taking this city back one goddamn android at a time. I wanted you to be stable. I wanted you to join me. When I could trust you. When you got your shit together and started seeing the bigger picture. But when you finally sobered up, all you could see was the goddamn androids.”

How many minutes had it been? Connor’s regulator was getting hotter at his side.

“Red Ice killed Cole,” Hank said softly. “Red Ice. And I spent all this time, all these fuckin’ years thinking I could have done more, made the bust earlier, been more thorough in my searches to get it off the streets, to make sure that that fuckin' doctor didn’t have his supply that night, and all this time, all this fuckin' time, it was you, the one person who never left. I lost everyone else. Fuck, I’ve hated you because I’ve lived for you. Sometimes the only thing keeping me from putting another bullet in that gun is was your goddamn voice in my head, and all this time… all this time--” he broke off, shaking his head. “You killed my whole fuckin’ family again and again and again. Well, fuck you. You don’t get to sit next to me at the bar this time. You don’t get to pat me on the back and tell me I should fucking move on. Fuck. You. Jeff. You either put a bullet in me, or I’m going to see you behind bars if it’s the last thing I goddamn do.”

To punctuate the sentiment, he spat on Fowler’s shirt. Connor’s heart was burning against Gavin’s skin. He was running out of time.

Silence filled the room. Gavin held his breath. He still had his gun. Slowly, with deliberate movements, Fowler dug a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped away the streak from his shirt and tie. “Fine,” he said, not looking back into Hank’s face. Instead, Fowler fixed his gaze on the men at the door, they were big, they had to be to wrestle Hank into that chair and hold him still long enough to bind him, then to Gavin. He addressed them all as a unit. His trusted men. It was like a thousand other briefings in the precinct, a thousand other orders he had given to the men who patrolled Detroit. “Take Lieutenant Anderson home.”

Gavin stared at him, unsure of what question should first leave his lips. What finally emerged was, “Really?”

Fowler nodded. “I don’t think anyone will be surprised to find him there tonight when he doesn’t come back for his shift. There’ll be no questions, but I’ll run the evidence anyway, to make sure it was his bullet from his gun.”

“You’re such a fucking coward,” Hank muttered, shaking his head. “Can’t even do it yourself. Won’t even give me the goddamn respect to do it yourself.”

Fowler’s gaze was distant, distracted. “Call me when it’s done. And get the android to reclamation. There’s no sense in wasting it,” he said calmly and left back down the dark hall, and up the stairs to the rest of the house. Hank watched him go before turning his head to glare at Gavin.

The bigger of the two guards, Graham, Reed thought his name was, a beat cop displaced by the android initiative, went back into the room where Connor’s body lay.

“I’m going to kill you, Reed,” Hank whispered. “I’m going to rip your fucking heart out.”

Gavin knelt in front of the older detective, the gun dangling between his legs. He patted the back of the Lieutenant’s shoulder even as he tried to jerk as far away as his bonds would allow. “You’ll see him soon,” Gavin said softly.

Anderson shook his head. His eyes were narrowed, sparkling with deep, violent hatred. A madness Gavin had only seen the sparks of before. Rather than face the older man’s wrath for a second longer, he stood as Connor’s body was dragged out to them, the android hanging limply from the man’s grip, blue blood dripping onto the floor beneath him. Hank made a sound, a choked sob caught between anger and hurt.

“Gonna be a bitch to get that up the stairs,” Gavin said. “Need some help?”

“Thanks,” the man grinned. “Easier to move a goddamn body. I miss the old days.”

Surely there were only grains left in the timer now. Gavin felt weak and clumsy. The false strength that Red Ice had lent him was fading fast, and with it came a sense of relief. Fuck, but he was glad to never even hear the words ‘red’ and ‘ice’ ever again. His heart was slowing, but he still felt sick, tipsy, the edge of the precipice he was walking was getting thinner and thinner, dropping away.

He took Connor’s feet and walked the body up the stairs, as their other companion cut Hank’s ankles free and forced the Lieutenant to stumble after them.

Chapter Text

They set Connor down on a gurney in the reclamation room. It was even creepier now with Connor laid on the center underneath the bulb of Thirium. The subaqueous light and intricate shadows were even more nightmarish now that Gavin understood what happened in this room.

Graham stretched his back as he shifted Connor into a more central position on the metal table. Gavin watched him, unsure of how to get rid of him.

“Got plans this weekend?” the guard asked.

The regulator in his pocket felt like it was burning his skin. He hunched around it, cocking out a hip to try and keep it from touching his ribs. “Ah, no.”

“Well, you’re welcome to come back here,” Graham offered. “Poker game downstairs every Saturday and we shoot pool. Fowler doesn’t care as long as everyone settles before they leave the table.”

“Yeah, I’ll swing by,” Gavin said automatically.

They stood awkwardly in front of Connor’s body. “Ready to go?” Graham asked finally.

“Uh, yeah. I’ll meet you at the car. I just need a second.”

“The interview kicked my ass too,” Graham said. “That Ice shit is a ride, huh?”

Gavin wiped a hand across his eyes. The ridiculousness of having to be nice to a bunch of crooked, drug-dealing, android butchers was as laughable as it could get. He wasn’t even nice to people who… well… who weren’t crooked, drug-dealing, android butchers.

The regulator stung at his side. “Could you please fucking give me a second? I’ll meet you outside.”

Graham’s face turned dark. Without an answer, he left the room, closing the door with a snap. Gavin waited only half a second before he moved, turning to Connor’s still body. He fished the regulator out of his pocket. The synthetic lining of his jacket had almost melted through, and the regulator had gone a deep, bright red.

Connor’s body was also starting to get warm, Gavin pushed against the skinthetic on the android’s chest until he found the right part. The skin melted away, revealing the sleek white and blue casing of the android.

He slotted the regulator into the hole in the center of Connor’s chest and turned until it clicked. He withdrew his hand, shaking the burn from his fingers as the Thirium inside the regulator began to fade away from the angry red and back to a calm blue. The skinthetic rushed back over the casing.

But.

Fucking… nothing. Connor’s eyes stared up at him, empty and dark. A corpse. Gavin fluttered his hands over the android’s body. What the fuck did he do? He nearly started CPR out of panic, but androids didn’t have lungs to inflate, or hearts to keep beating. Fuck. Fuck. He had taken too goddamn long.

“Fucking wake up you stupid, fucking asshole,” he muttered desperately. “Wake the fuck up!”

He slapped the android, hard. Which, of course, only had the effect of hurting his hand. The prick was made out of metal and plastic. He hissed another expletive and nursed his hand to his chest, looking wildly around the room, and then down again at Connor.

His slap had turned the android’s head a little, and the sparkle of silver caught his eye. The collar? The fucking collar. He sagged in relief and scrabbled at the thin silver necklace until he heard the needles withdraw.

He tore the thing away as Connor’s eyes flickered. He backed away, dropping the collar onto a hardwood desk pushed into the corner.

“Took you long enough,” the android said calmly, swinging his legs over the side of the gurney.

Gavin covered his face with his hands and bowed at the waist until his breathing slowed. “Fuck you,” he said weakly.

“We don’t have time for this. You have to go get Hank.”

Gavin nodded, straightening. “What about you? We can’t just walk you out the front door.”

Connor looked around at the room, fixing his cuffs and tie in what Gavin was realizing was a gesture of settling anxiety. “I can’t get a signal out of this place,” he said. “If I can get out, I’ll meet you at Hank’s house. Otherwise, I can survive until you can send reinforcements.”

“What fucking reinforcements? You don’t think Fowler will have interceptions set up at IA? We’re on our own.”

“New Jericho then,” Connor said. “Find Simon. He can get you to Markus. They’ll know what to do.”

Gavin hesitated. There was another door off to the side of the room, and if the layout of the house in his head was correct— “Come on,” he said.

For once, the android obeyed him, stepping behind him. He opened the door warily. It didn’t even creak, and they were in the room with the covered androids. Again, sensing that there someone in the room, their head turned as one, the folds of their white sheets twisting around them. In the corner was a tumbled pile of similar white cloths. As quickly and quietly as he could, he stole across the room and picked one up, untangling it from the rest.

He turned to see that Connor had pulled a sheet off the one closest to him. The android was staring into its face. “It hurts,” he said, his voice quiet as he stared into the blank features of the other android; a male PL600, one of the most common models. “It hurts to wake up. But it’s the only thing worth doing.”

“What are you doing?” Gavin hissed at him, gesturing for the android to join him on the other side of the room, furthest from the doors.

But Connor ignored him. He reached out and took the PL600’s forearm. “Wake up,” he said, his voice terse and insistent.

The android blinked, and an expression of uncertainty crossed its face. It cast its gaze around the dusty room, the dozen other white-sheeted figures. “I…,” it said.

“Be still,” Connor commanded it. “We are in danger.”

He swept the sheet over the android and moved to the next one.

“We don’t have time for this,” Gavin hissed at the RK800. “I need to get out of here, or they’re going to fucking take Hank and—”

“We have time,” Connor said. “Leave. I’ll take care of this.”

“If you get yourself killed,” Gavin growled, already retreating to the workshop. “It is going to be your fault, and I’m not going to do the fucking paperwork.”

Connor paused before taking another android’s elbow and turned. “Here,” he said, and tossed something small and shiny across the room. Gavin scrambled to catch it before it could hit the floor. A coin. A fucking quarter. “For Hank,” he said, flashing his too quick, too sudden smiles, and then turned his back on Gavin to continue waking the androids.

###

He got his phone back at the door. The organization behind the operation was terrifying. Fowler ran a tight ship at the precinct, but this was like some kind of fascist camp, the cogs perfectly tuned around dozens of people and a vast network. Despite seeing the eerie synergy of it all, it was honestly a relief to know who the enemy was, to be able to put faces to the shadows haunting his imagination.

He didn’t have a license to drive Anderson’s manual car which had to be taken back to the Lieutenant’s house. Graham, still pissed, roared the beaten-up old car out of the little yard while Gavin slid into the back seat of the second police car. The driver nodded at him in the backseat and entered Hanks address into the dashboard.

Gavin strapped Hank’s seatbelt tight, ignoring the growled threats from the older detective. The car started smoothly, pulling straight out of the yard, through the gates where a guard with a Rottweiler sent them a sardonic salute.

Hank was staring at him, as penetrating as the headache settling into the very center of Gavin’s head. Gavin, finally tired of the unblinking, simmering hatred in the older man’s gaze, faced him. “Fucking what?”

Hank didn’t answer, and Gavin stared ahead, at the back of the guard’s headrest. “What’s your name?” he asked.

“Ed,’ he said. “Roberts.”

“You work at the precinct?”

“Missing Persons,” he answered. “You’re in Homicide, right? I’ve heard about you.”

“Missing Persons? How did you get involved in this shit?”

He shrugged, pulling a pack of gum from a pocket and offering it over his shoulder to Gavin, who took a piece. They were still on suburban backroads, but the road was growing smoother as they approached the highway. “They split the department after the outbreak,” Ed said. “I ended up on the android cases. You know what we call them?”

“No, what?” Gavin asked, unbuckling his leather and canvas belt and pulling it free from the loops of his jeans.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Hank asked suddenly.

“I’m having a fucking conversation,” Gavin said, pulling the leather free from where it had tangled on his seatbelt and pushing the end loosely through the buckle.

“Lost and found, that’s all we are now. A goddamn depot for the things. It’s a fucking joke,” Ed said, his eyes busy on his hands as he unwrapped the strip of gum.

He started to shake his head, huffing a laugh at his own joke, before Gavin pulled the belt over his head and tightened it around his throat. His hands flew up to tug desperately at the belt, but he couldn’t get his fingers between the leather and his skin. Gavin pulled, tightening the makeshift garrotte.

Ed was making strangling little noises, thrashing out with his arms and legs. His grip couldn’t reach Gavin’s hands or the dashboard. He struggled frantically. In the rear-view mirror, Gavin could see Roberts' face turning red and purple, with his eyes straining, saliva dripping from his chin, and his nose flaring in panic. Gavin’s own face, just visible in the shadows behind the headrest was pale and intent in comparison, jaw straining with the effort of holding the belt tight.

“What the fuck!” Anderson shouted. He was leaning forward, trying to intervene, but with his hands still bound behind his back. What precisely the Lieutenant thought he was going to do, Gavin couldn’t say. He didn’t even think Hank knew. Gavin just hung on, pulling tighter and tighter as Ed’s struggles started to fade, empty little puffs of breath escaping his blood-puffed lips.

But just before the consciousness left Ed’s eyes, his scrabbling fingers made it to the trigger on the steering wheel and tugged.

The automation disengaged. The car sent out a warning screech, the breaks slamming down as it registered a problem with the driver. It skidded on the asphalt, going far too fast to stop neatly like it was supposed to. The front passenger tire scraped along the curb, and Gavin’s body felt the wrongness, the loss of control, even before the front of the car lifted and spun.

There was more after that. Confusion. Pain. The sickening jerking of his body, limbs, and organs as he was thrown around. Flashes of color and impressions of movement, flitted by all dampened beneath a blanket of pain.

###

“Reed.”        

Gavin shook his head groggily, wincing at the flare of agony lanced through his neck and head. There was cold grass under him, and he was injured. He could feel it. He was in serious trouble.

He forced his eyes open. Anderson’s cold gaze was inches from his own. He flinched away, or tried to, only to realize that there was a barrel pressed against his temple. “Oh, what the fuck,” he groaned.

“What the hell was that?” Hank asked. The handcuffs were dangling off one of his wrists.

“’were gonna kill you,” Gavin said. “Had to stop before we got there. Fuck. Is he dead?”

“Yes,” Hank said. “You have twenty seconds to tell me what the hell that was, and then I’m going to shoot you. Alright? I don’t fucking care what you say, the end of this conversation is that you are going to be fucking dead.”

He pressed Gavin’s gun firmly against his skin, digging against his skull.

“Connor’s alive,” Gavin said quickly, straining away from the gun. “We switched out the regulators. It was a trick, to… to save him. It was me. I have the copy of the evidence. Connor knew— knows,” he amended quickly.

Hank’s eyes widened, hope flaring briefly. But it died quickly, his face hardening again.

“Bullshit.”

Gavin could swear he could feel Hank’s finger tightening on the trigger.

“Anderson— Hank, fuck, just.... just listen for a second— “

“Why the hell should I?’

“Because he’s fucking alive.”

“You think your word means shit to me?” Anderson shouted pushing Gavin’s head with the gun. The intense fury was warning enough. Gavin took a deep breath.

“Look, in my pocket, just… look in my pocket, please. He gave me— he gave me that fucking coin. The one he’s always playing with. He wanted you to have it.”

A pause. Gavin ground his eyes shut, tried to brace himself. Then a large hand was digging through his jacket pocket and pulled out a business card. Trevago’s grief counseling gimmick. “Pants pocket,” he said. “On the other side.”

After everything that had happened that day, having Hank Anderson’s hand in his pocket shouldn’t have been so horrifying. Registered on the spectrum at least. Maybe it was because having a gun to his head and a hand digging against his leg reinforced just how helpless he was.

Finally, it was withdrawn. The gun didn’t waver as Hank shuffled the coin around in his hand. “Ninety-four,” he muttered weakly. “Fuckin'…”

He settled back. The cold metal disappeared from Gavin’s temple. Gavin rolled onto his side, finally able to take stock of his injuries. He was bleeding from a head-wound where he had hit the window in the crash. He couldn’t move his left leg, pain lanced up his side every time he tried. It burned and prickled all the way from his hip to his toes. His shoulder had slipped out of place— a familiar problem. He shoved it back into place with a gasp of agony before pounding the ground with his good arm, anything to release the flare of pain.

Fuck.

“I don’t think I can walk,” he croaked.

Fucking automated cars.

Anderson didn’t answer. He knelt in the grass, still looking down at the coin in his hand, the gun held loosely in the other. He looked like he had managed to escape the crash with only bruises. The car was a few yards away, tipped on its side, resting against the side of a boulder. The dark shadow of Ed hung limply in the driver’s seat.

It was a back road, but they weren’t safe. Someone sooner or later would come by, and chances were it would be one of Fowler’s men.

“We have to go back,” Hank said suddenly, finally looking up from the coin.

“Great fucking idea,” Gavin snapped at him. “Did you hear what I just said? I can’t fucking walk. But yeah, let’s go back and hand ourselves over.”

“We can’t just leave him there. They’ll kill him.”

“We need help, Hank,” Gavin said, picking up the discarded business card and his phone. “Connor’s safer than we are right now and if we go back, we’d be putting him in more danger.”

“So what’s your fucking plan then? Fowler’s going to come looking when we don’t show up at my house. And he can have the entire police force searching for us.”

Gavin hesitated with his finger above the call button on his phone. He had met her once, but she was a doctor. She was an android. She had channels to Internal Affairs, and she probably had a car.

At this point, he’d just settle for the car.

###

Trevago arrived within half an hour. He saw her face change from curiosity to horror through her windshield as she caught sight of him. He must have looked like a mess, leaning against Hank's side as they struggled up the slope back to the road.

“You trust her?” Hank asked Gavin as he hauled him off the ground. Gavin’s back made a few very unpleasant sounds, and he stumbled against Hank’s side. There was red blood on Hank’s shirt. Such an ugly thing— blue and white triangles, now stained purple and red.

“I don’t trust anybody,” Reed mumbled. The sky was beginning to darken, turning to a grey overcast. Maybe it was going to rain later. The pain wasn’t fading, but he was, which was really… okay. Because without him, the pain would be gone anyway, and that… that meant he had won?

“Comforting,” Hank muttered.

She stepped out, the wind ruffling her cascading blonde hair. She pressed a hand to the collar of her coat as she approached them. “What happened?” she asked.

“We need to get to New Jericho,” Hank said, and Reed was glad the older man could take over. He was so tired. He didn’t want to explain anymore. “We’ll explain on the way, but we have to go. Now.”

“What about him?” she asked, pointing past them to the body of Ed on the grass, close to the road. “Is he dead?”

Gavin answered with a nod. He felt icy cold. Hank’s hand were fiery brands on his skin. Where was an over-heating regulator when he needed one?

He had killed a police officer. A man who had just been following orders, corrupt and self-serving as they were. “I just needed to stop him,” he told Trevago. “I didn’t… I didn’t want to kill him.”

She nodded, but he could see the fear in her eyes. The judgment already made, that this was a problem she had to report. She wasn’t on his side, she was on the side of the law, of justice.  

And right now, that wasn’t good. “Fowler,” he desperately tried to explain. “Fowler wanted me to kill Hank. He’s… he’s killing androids. In the house, back… that way— I had to—”

“He’s in shock,” Hank growled. “But he’s right. I’ll explain in the car, but we need to go. Now.”

“We shouldn’t leave the scene. The police will want to talk to you. A man is dead,” Trevago said.

“A lot of people are dead,” Hank replied steadily. “And if we don’t get to Jericho, there’ll be more. I can’t let that happen. I won’t. So either you can give me the keys and wait here for the police, which on a scale of bad ideas is bad, or you can help us get to Jericho and treat Reed on the way because he’s in pretty bad shape right now.”

Still, she was uncertain. “This isn’t an ambulance. I don’t have any supplies.”

“I’m sure you’ll figure it out,” Hank said, walking Gavin past her, to the car. He was surprisingly gentle as he set Gavin down inside, to slump back on his back and stare up at the ceiling. She had leather seats. It smelled like a new car.

He heard and felt the car doors slam shut, and then she was above him, tying her hair back behind her head. She was the most beautiful fucking android he had ever seen. Why didn’t they just make them all that way?

Except she was more beautiful than the model he had seen in the house. The same model. It was the way her lips moved, the concern in her eyes. The way she had told him with that clever brand of intelligence and cruelty to fuck off that day in her office when he had been such a fucking asshole to her and Reese. It was her.

“Thank you,” he told her weakly.

“Can you describe the pain?” she asked him, all business again, the way she had been when they first met. He closed his eyes and tried to concentrate on the shivers of agony running over his body.

“Everywhere,” he whispered.

He blinked his eyes open and her irises, as deep and vivid a blue as Thirium filled his whole vision. “Stay with us, Reed.”

He swallowed thickly as he tried to get the words out— a joke that wasn’t a joke. He needed to be an asshole at the moment, to let her know he was okay. “Well, that’s a first…”

She frowned. “What? What did you say?”

“Never… been asked…” he faded before he could finish.

To stay.

Chapter Text

He woke up to an unfamiliar ceiling, cold even though there were blankets piled on top of him. He could barely move for the weight. He felt… fuzzy. Unable to concentrate on anything. The pain was dull now; manageable.

"Gavin?"

With enormous effort, he turned his head. Trevago sat beside him. There was a smear of red blood on her chin. "How long have I been out?" he mumbled.

"Just a few hours," she said. "We couldn't give you anything too strong. You know Red Ice can mess with your heart. You could have gone into cardiac arrest in the crash. You're lucky to be still alive."

Gavin waved away her tentative attempts to help him sit up in the bed. "I was coming down anyway. I would have been fine."

She shook her head but didn't voice an argument. He wanted to tell her that he wasn't an addict, an icer. He wanted to tell her everything, but he didn't want to look at her.

He gave up his fight against the pillows. "Where's Hank?"

"Right here," the Lieutenant growled from a corner. Gavin struggled to sit up, to see Hank sitting in the corner with his feet stretched out in front of him, his hands laced over his stomach as he looked at Gavin. "How're you feeling, kid?"

"I'm not your fucking kid," Gavin snapped at him.

Hank shrugged. "How you feeling, asshole?" he asked mildly.

"Great. What's happening out there? Have we pinned Fowler yet?"

"We've spent the last two hours trying to convince them not to let you out of our sight. As it turns out, you're the only piece of evidence I have. They won't even let us into the lobby. We're under lock and fucking key."

"Why? Did you tell them? About the androids?"

"Of course I told them. I told them everything I know. She told them everything she knows but turns out neither of us knows much of anything. What the hell have you been up to Reed? How long have you been in Fowler's little gang?"

Gavin groaned and leaned back. "What time is it?"

"Almost four o'clock," Trevago supplied.

"Then about five hours, four of which were spent trying to keep you and your partner alive. You're fucking welcome, by the way."

At the answering silence, he looked up. It wasn't like Anderson to let him have the last word. "How was Connor?" the Lieutenant asked. "When you left him?"

"Preparing for another goddamn revolution. He's going to get himself killed if we don't get back there soon. He's making his android allies, but they're up against guns and those fucking torture devices."

Anderson nodded. "Fowler's probably guessed something's gone wrong," he said slowly. "I had the doctor here crush your phone into pieces, so they don't know where we are. Best case scenario, he thinks I'm still pulling you apart in the woods somewhere."

"We have to go now," Gavin said. "They'll move fast. They'll take care of the evidence and then it's our word against Fowler's, and you know who's gonna back him? The entire fucking precinct. The entire fucking city. What the fuck are we still doing here?"

He slapped a hand against the blankets remembering just a second too late that there was an IV needle in his hand and a heart monitor clipped to his finger. "Ah fuck," he winced, "Get this shit off of me." He struggled to get it off.

"Reed," Trevago said, leaning forward, pressing a hand to his chest. "You need to take it easy."

"I'm fine," Gavin insisted. "I want to go. I'll talk to them. I don't give a fuck about—"

"You're not fine," Trevago said steadily.

He hesitated. Her gaze was intense and the palm on his chest firm and unyielding. He faltered. "What?"

"The crash," she said. "The combination of the Red Ice in your system and the trauma is pushing your blood pressure all over the place. We're fairly certain that you have a blood clot somewhere in your system, but there's… there's nerve damage, there's muscle and tendon inflammation and strain— it's a mess. You're a mess."

He paused, trying to take inventory of his body. He felt… well, not great, but by the stern, apologetic expression on Trevago's face, he might actually be in trouble. "Am I dying?"

"We have you on blood thinners, nerve stimulants, and painkillers. It's a dangerous combination given your condition, but your body was going into shock. It's not a treatment. You need a human hospital. You need human doctors—"

"But I'm not dying."

Her mouth thinned into a line. Her hand was still firm on his chest, pinning him down firmly with just that one gesture. "It's possible that you're not dying."

Shaking his head, he took her wrist and tried to push it away. "I am going to be there when Fowler goes down. I need to see it, you understand? He made me— I almost..."

He looked away. He couldn't look at her. Couldn't see those eyes. "You can barely walk," she said calmly, persuasively. "The brace isn't going to hold you up for long. The human body can't take this kind of treatment. It just can't."

He could feel the faux softness of her flesh, the tensile strength just beneath her skin. He pulled it off his chest, pushed it back at her. "How would you know?" he asked.

She withdrew. Her eyes flickered, growing cold and distant. "You are in agony, Reed. Just because you can't feel it right now doesn't mean you can just walk away. You're going to do a lot of damage to yourself."

"It's my goddamn body," he said.

"Don't be an idiot," Hank grumbled from the corner. "As soon as we report to Jericho, take the goddamn bedrest. If you come on the raid, you're going to get yourself killed. You'll end up getting other people killed too."

"If I handled this on my own, it would be over. I'd have the evidence, and you and Connor would be eating dinner and… whatever he does while you're eating dinner. Instead, I've been chasing my own goddamn tail. I'm fucking sick of this."

He swung his legs over the side of the cot, ignoring the flare of pain. He hadn't been expecting his own limbs to look so… rotten. Scraped up and bruised. His left leg was swollen at the ankle and knee, and a thin metal scaffold had been erected around his calf and hip. He couldn't feel any sensation where the metal pass into his skin, threaded deep into his flesh. It was disturbing to see, a little nausea-inducing, but the joints and plated shells moved as easily as skin, just stiffer and heavier than cloth.

"Where are my clothes?" he asked looking up just in time for Anderson to toss them against his chest. A pants leg slapped him in the face, and he flinched away and groaned as the movement caused something unpleasant to happen in his hip.

"Yeah, you're fine," Anderson said.

Gavin didn't dignify that with an answer. The only item of clothing that had apparently survived was his favorite jacket. The jeans were a little too big, and the long-sleeved t-shirt was ragged at the hems.

He set the clothing at his side and realized that Trevago was still staring at him.

"You mind?" he asked her.

She frowned, snapping back to attention and creasing her eyebrows in confusion. "Could you… turn around or something?" he clarified.

She blinked, and then seemed to realize she had been staring at his weak, damaged flesh. "I've already seen it," she said, "I had to cut your clothes off on the way here— so I could assess the—"

"Yeah, well I'm awake now," he snapped.

Finally looking flustered, she turned around, to look at Hank in the corner. The Lieutenant snorted, shaking his head. "What the fuck happened to you, Reed?" he asked.

He seemed genuinely amused. Gavin glared at his hands as he got dressed, supporting himself on the bed as he struggled into the clothing. As soon as his legs were covered, he felt immeasurably better. The fabric shifted strangely around the mechanical brace but out of sight his weakness and fear faded.

His badge slid into his waist, a familiar pressure against his hip. His gun had lost its holster somewhere along the way, but the weight was still reassuring. He checked the magazine. It was still full. He took a deep breath, feeling the rough grip in his hand. Solid. Unyielding.

"Let's get out of here," he said.

"We'd love to," Hank said mildly. "But I'm beginning to think that they've forgotten about us."

Trevago glanced sideways to see that Gavin was decent and was now tying his shoelaces. "They'll be talking," she said. "The council doesn't move quickly these days. Especially if Markus isn't present."

"So where's Markus?"

She shrugged helplessly, spreading her hands and fingers in the universal gesture of ‘how should I know?' "I didn't think I'd ever step foot inside New Jericho, much less be asking for a meeting with the Four. I'm a psychologist, not a diplomat. But everyone knows he travels often, and generally, public relations go on hold in Detroit while he's gone."

"Why aren't we at the goddamn meeting then? What do they have to talk about without us?"

"That's what I said. I told them the DPD was trafficking and abusing androids," Hank said, standing up and brushing himself off, "but as soon as I mentioned trying to find Simon, they pushed us in here and locked the door. They've been real fuckin' shifty."

"You don't think they're involved, do you?" Trevago asked, almost timidly. She looked small now, her clothing disheveled and stained. Strands of her usually elegantly-kept hair was escaping its ponytail.

"In the Red Ice business?" Gavin scoffed. "With Fowler? No fucking way."

He cautiously set his feet on the floor, testing his weight. There was a strange kind of ache in his back and right hip— like a toothache. He paused, resting, trying to pinpoint how he should settle his weight. Walking was more awkward than he expected. He stumbled a few steps, pointedly ignoring the way that Anderson and Trevago placed themselves in his way, in case he needed support.

"You're hurting yourself," Trevago said quietly as he shuddered upright and found his rhythm, limping to the door. It was sturdy, made of dense wood. There were long windows on each side as well, covered with cheap Venetian blinds. He twitched them aside. The glass was solid. Shatter-proof, going by the thin wire mesh crisscrossing through panes. Outside was what looked like an underground tunnel, tiles with a large orange-and-blue mural of eyes staring back at him. Just beside the door, an android peered back at him. A newer model. He smiled, and Gavin grinned back briefly, instantly dropping the expression as he let the blinds fall closed.

"Which one of you is going to break the door down?" he asked Hank and Trevago.

"Ladies first," Anderson said with a small bow.

She hesitated.

"If you don't. I will," Reed offered.

She didn't stir. In fact, she seemed to shut down with her mouth becoming a hard thin line and her shoulders drawing back in as she studied him. The frail, dirty, broken human she had just spent hours trying to fix. "Are you holding yourself hostage?"

He shrugged. Without the pain he should be feeling now, everything felt… solid in his head. There was the way forward, the next step. He hadn't felt this clear in days. "Is it going to work?"

She shook her head, but her body betrayed her. She smoothed back her hair and retied her ponytail in quick, sharp motions. She jerked her jacket off of her shoulders as well; it was stained and wrinkled, but with the same kind of care that Reed had seen Reese take care of his birds, she laid in on the cot he had abandoned.

Slipping out of her dainty black shoes, she stood slightly side-on. She was going to kick it open. Gavin backed up a little but didn't dare blink. He couldn't take his eyes off her.

Anderson stepped back too. "The door opens outwards," he reported. "You should try to—"

She didn't wait for him to finish. She launched a kick at the door, and under her heel, the latch shattered through the door frame. It swung wide open, catching the android guard on the other side by surprise. Gavin followed fluidly with the gun, pointing it right between the android's eyes. "Easy," he said, watching the android's LED circle red then down to yellow. "We just want to talk, alright?"

"Reed," Trevago said sharply.

He didn't look back at her. He had personal experience with how fast androids could move. "Come on," he called back at them. Even Hank seemed a little unnerved by the sight of Gavin, the gun, and the android, but Gavin was done being on a leash.

"Where's Simon?" he asked. "We just want to talk to Simon. That's all."

"He's sending a message," Trevago said, and the android's eyes flicked to her.

"To who?" Gavin asked, unwavering.

"You should put the gun away," the android said calmly. "She doesn't like humans, but she really doesn't like humans with guns."

Trevago pulled on his shoulder gently. "Gavin. Put it down before you get hurt."

Gavin rolled his eyes and turned his head, just in time to see a blur of movement and color from behind Trevago. He barely had time to voice a warning before Trevago was pulled back and down, yanked back so hard that her hair tumbled around her face and she let out a yelp of shock.

Gavin reflexively grabbed at his hostage, putting the android's body between him and the threat. There were suddenly androids everywhere as if they were melting from the walls, but they stood back, not even attempting to intervene.

They just watched as the blur of amber hair and grey clothing kicked Trevago in the chest so hard she fell back into the wall, cracking the colorful tiles decorating the wall.

Anderson gave a valiant attempt of a fight against the attacker, but in a few calculated moves, he was finally held in a position of submission with his neck pushed into an extreme angle by the android. Her amber-blonde hair fell around her perfectly expressionless face, and from the grip she had on Hank's head and neck, she could very easily kill the detective. He had his hands held up in surrender, his eyes fixed on Reed.

"I can't believe I'm the one saying this," Hank said in the deafening silence, his voice slightly strangled, "but can everyone just calm the fuck down?"

"We let you keep your guns," the woman said evenly. "With the understanding that this would not happen."

"Was part of the deal that we'd be locked in a fucking room?" Gavin asked. He had no intention of killing the android in his grip. He never had, he had just wanted to prove a point. "People want to kill us. We're running out of time, and nobody is fucking talking to us."

She tilted her head to the side with a strange, hard smile. "I wonder why?"

Anderson finally lowered his hands. "Reed, put the fucking gun down. Now."

Hank was standing very still, bent back at an awkward angle to fit under the smaller android. Reed's grip faltered, but… this was the only leverage he had. "Where's Simon?" he asked. "We need to speak to Simon."

"He left the council an hour ago to find and bring Markus home," the android woman said. "They're coming back as we speak. We are taking this very seriously, but this is not your world. This is New Jericho. Humans are dangerous here. We can't let you wander because, inevitably, we would end up like this."

"Okay, okay, I'm sorry," Gavin held up his gun, letting go of his hostage. "It was… I was just frustrated.

The android stretched his neck. His LED flickered yellow again, and the female android nodded. "Thank you, Ned. I had noticed."

She held on to Hank for a moment longer, and Gavin's hackles rose. He had already fucking surrendered. When she finally let go of him, shoving him towards Gavin, Hank didn't resist. "Fuckin' apologize," Anderson growled at him.

"She—"

"Do it! What the fuck kind of plan was that?"

"I'm sorry," Gavin snapped at the android who had been guarding their door. "I don't appreciate being locked up, okay?"

"He kept the safety on," the woman told Hank, though her eyes never left Gavin's face. "But it was rude. Nobody likes to have a gun in their face."

"North," Trevago said, finally stepping away from the Trevago-impression she had made on the wall. She was actually trembling. "North, I'm sorry—"

The android turned. North's eyes were hard as she glared at the psychologist. Gavin hitched a breath. North. North was one of the Four. "I've been told you vouched for these humans. You said we wouldn't regret it."

"I know. I was— I didn't think he would do that. I was just… we need to talk to the council before it's too late."

North shook her head, her lips twisting in disdain. The expression seemed almost like a slap to Trevago, who looked away. There were actual tears in her eyes. "I'm sorry," she whispered.

"Well come on then," North said. "I'll take you to the council." She walked between him and Hank, confidently. Trevago followed close after her, brushing past Gavin, her face turned down in shame.

"Trevago," he said softly, trying to catch her arm, trying to get her to look up so he could tell her it wasn't her fault, and that he was a fucking idiot, but she shook him off and hurried after North.

And he was left with Hank, who still glowered at him. "I was just—"

"Yeah, well don't," the Lieutenant snapped. "We know you fuckin' hate them, but for once, could you maybe not have to broadcast it all over the fuckin' place? We need their help."

Gavin flinched back. He wanted to protest, but the words stuck in his throat and Hank left him, following North and Trevago as the android crowd dissipated.

He focused every ounce of his mind on not limping, so there was no line for his anger to latch onto. Because it was anger he felt, anger that nobody had listened to him, or appreciated that despite the failed attempt at escape, he had still gotten them out of the room and on the way to the council.

Anger.

Not shame.

Once they were standing in the elevator, in deep, awkward silence, he looked over North. He knew that face, had seen it often enough in the late-night ads for anatomically correct android partners. "I didn't know you were a WR400," Gavin said in the silence.

"So?" she asked.

"Do you—"

"I can rip your arms off," she interrupted lightly, staring at the elevator doors. "If I don't like the way this sentence ends."

"…right."

The rest of the ride was spent in silence.

Chapter Text

There was no table. It looked like some kind of anonymous support group, like they were all supposed to stand up and share their survival stories. A dozen androids littered the room, some standing and some sitting, all absolutely quiet as Gavin, Hank and Trevago were led into their midst. They sat as commanded, and though Gavin couldn’t hear anything, he could sense that they were talking, that a dozen conversations were all being had mind-to-mind in the circle.

It was an odd collective. A few copies of the same face stared at Gavin. There was a child, a boy with black hair, whose LED was a solid, unflinching yellow. A tall, broad man, clearly a construction android. Women, men, some somberly dressed, some decked in elaborate and colorful clothing to match their multi-colored hair.

But there was a core. There were four seats with more space with a subtler power than the rest.

North joined Josh in the circle, motioning for Hank, Gavin, and Trevago to sit at the edge of the circle. “Everything alright?” Josh asked as North sank into her chair like she had been forced into detention.

“We’ll see,” she said.

Hank didn’t sit. “Are you going to help us?” he asked. “Or is this a waste of our time? Connor needs help. You remember Connor, right? The guy who wouldn’t fuckin’ hold a ‘council’ to save any one of you.”

“Connor would understand the need for consideration,” Josh said. “New Jericho is a place of diplomacy. You’re asking a nation of peace to form a mob and attack humans.”

Hank crossed his arm. He was angry. “Bullshit,” he said. “Before the revolution, you were a mob. That’s what you did. You know what I think? I think none of you are at all goddamn surprised by any of this.”

“We know more than you think,” North muttered.

“North,” Josh snapped in warning.

“No. What? What does that fucking mean?”

North turned her head to Josh with exaggerated interest. “Well, Josh? What does that mean?”

Josh opened his mouth to answer, but his reply was cut short by a sudden, undeniable shift of attention. The androids straightened. Every single one of them turned towards the door.

As Markus entered.

The leader of the deviant revolution was dressed in a sweeping long grey coat that whirled behind him as he walked, like the mantle of a king. A few steps behind him, but undeniably at his side was the PL600 unit, Simon. “Good evening everyone,” Markus announced with a smile.

Hank’s arms dropped to his side.

The chorus of replies had the eerie semblance of rehearsal. Markus stopped in front of Hank and offered his hand as the rest of the council took their seats. “Connor has told me much about you, Lieutenant Anderson,” he said warmly. “He models much of his behavior on what you have taught him.”

“I doubt it,” Hank mumbled.

Markus smiled. “He does you credit,” the android said.

He looked away from Hank to Gavin, and the smile shifted, became more formal. “Gavin Reed,” he stated. “I was told you’d be receiving medical treatment.”

“I’m fine.”

“So I see. Well,” he offered his hand. “Connor has told me a lot about you as well, Mr. Reed.”

“Detective.”

“Of course,” the android said smoothly.

He smiled, a warning edge to the lift of his lips. Gavin hesitated only a moment before reaching out and taking the leader’s hand. He didn’t expect the strength of it. There was something mesmerizing about Markus. When those famous heterochromatic eyes caught and held on Gavin’s, he felt like the world had dropped away from his feet and he was being scrutinized, analyzed.

He tried to pull away but was caught in the android’s grip. “I was sorry to hear about Reese,” he said somberly. “I never met him while he lived with us, though North and Connor had only high praise.”

“Nor—” Gavin’s gaze darted to the android behind Markus. She stared back at him, deadpan.

Markus pulled him closer gently, that genial smile not shifting a millimeter.

“There are some men,” Markus said softly, his words just for Gavin’s ears, “who push limits until they break. And some men who push before they even know that there are limits. They push just because they can, because they refuse to look at the boundaries as their world fractures around them and they are pushing at the brink of emptiness, and it is too late. I have known men like that, Mr. Reed. It took a man like that to set me free.”

He was speaking so softly, but his words still seemed to ring around the room. In the sudden silence following it, he smiled and patted Gavin on the shoulder. “It’s good to meet you.”

Gavin made some kind of noise. Whatever he had been expecting, it hadn’t been that.

“We should have a human representative in every council meeting,” Markus announced to the group as he released Gavin’s hand.

The pronouncement was simply accepted, a few nods, but no dissent from anyone except North, who made a face of distaste as she inspected her hands.

“And you must be Doctor Trevago,” Marcus said, at last, offering the doctor a handshake. She looked at his fingers with an expression of stunned horror and fear.

Gavin’s view was cut off as his hand was taken up by Simon, though he hadn’t really offered it. His hand had frozen in the air after Markus had let go of it. “Don’t worry,” Simon said with a reassuring smile. “He’s always like that after meeting with the Russian delegation. I found him sulking in the Manfred mansion, so he’s nostalgic too.”

Trying to imagine the android he had just met doing something so utterly prosaic as sulking was ridiculous. Simon gave him another smile before moving away and taking up Trevago’s hand, murmuring something quiet and calming to her.

“Tell me,” Markus commanded, flaring out his coat as he sat.

###

The chairs were all exactly the same and arranged in a regular circle, but there was no question which one was the throne. Every face turned to Markus whenever there was even the slightest pause in a conversation, gauging his reaction before trusting their own. Nobody, not a single one of the other androids spoke. They watched the conversation bounce between Simon, North, Markus, and Josh. Those with LEDs were yellow, obviously communicating with each other silently during the proceedings.

And they called it a fucking democracy.

“We cannot become vigilantes,” Josh said. Gavin hadn’t thought it possible to find a more self-righteous prick than Connor, but voila: Josh.

“Everything we have now, we built on peace,” Josh said. “Fighting humans now will only set in fears that we’re trying to control them. That we’re enforcing our rights with bloodshed. We need to get in contact with the appropriate authorities. Humans need to be the ones to sort this out. It’s the perfect opportunity for them to step up, to show that they’re committed to the changes we’ve been making.”

Hank still hadn’t sat down, instead taking up a post leaning against a column at the edge of the room.

“So while you’re turning this into a teachable moment,” Hank growled. “Fowler gets away with it. Androids die. Connor dies. Finn Walker gets put in the ground without a goddam reason.”

“We’ll get him. The right way,” Josh said calmly.

“We can’t leave them there,” Simon broke in, ahead of the choking fury that threatened to spill from Gavin’s lips. “We can’t abandon them, Josh.”

“We fight, or we ignore them,” North said, leaning forward setting her forearms on her knees. “This is where we’ve been heading since the revolution. Are we like the humans? Do we say that some Androids, the weak, the transient, the broken—are less valuable than us?”

“It’s not about value,” Josh said. “We have to pick the right battles.”

“So then what is a good battle, Josh? They’re draining them, torturing them, consuming them for their sick perversions, and you say this isn’t a battle we should fight? You and Simon are throwing our people in your wake while you run. When is it enough? When do we stop appeasing the humans and set a hard line that killing us is wrong?”

She stood at last. “We all know what the real point of this is. We’ve known it for a long time, and you are all cowards. None of us is naïve enough to miss what was happening, but we all turned a blind eye because it was more convenient than facing the truth. All of us, we are complicit, and now, this right here is when you decide whether we’re going to become accomplices to murder. To human evil.”

“Stop it, North,” Josh said quietly. “Placing blame isn’t going to—”

“No,” Anderson said shifting off of the pillar. “I want to hear this.”

Markus also shifted. “I as well,” he said.

North shifted her focus to him. “We knew,” she said bluntly. “We all knew. After the outbreak, we offered rewards for transplants to be turned in to be used in repairing our people. Our biggest donor was the DPD. They said it was from raids, from crime victims, but they were all drained. We believed it for a while until they were coming in completely drained of Thirium. Dry. But we did nothing. We said nothing because we needed the parts.”

The room went utterly silent. Gavin thought he could maybe hear the own rush of blood in his head.

“We didn’t know,” Josh said softly.

“Bullshit,” Hank said, but even his voice was muted in the wake of this accusation. “You didn’t want to know.”

The tension in the room rose. Gavin shifted uncomfortably, aware that no one else in the room was moving. The androids were all absolutely still, their LEDs flickering yellow at a frantic pace. They could have been sculptures.

“Is it true?” Markus finally spoke. “Why did nobody bring this to my attention?”

“As if you’re ever here long enough to listen to us,” North snapped at him.

His face flickered with shock and hurt, he sat back, straight in his chair.

“Did Reese know?” Gavin asked.

She turned on him. “He suspected,” she said. “And he refused to have any part of it. He didn’t need to wait to hear the explanation, whatever lies they had ready. He moved out of New Jericho the day he saw what was coming in.”

Of course. Of course. Reese hadn’t gone to New Jericho. Hadn’t trusted his own people. Hadn’t had anyone to turn to in the end.

“Enough,” Markus broke in. “Josh, North, you stay. Everyone else, return to your duties.”

The androids stood as one. They were fucking creepy. Not one had spoken a single word during the meeting. “The three of you could wait outside,” Markus told them.

“No fuckin’ way,” Hank said.

“We have a right to be here,” Gavin said.

“You don’t,” Markus replied coolly, his eyes fixed only on Gavin. “Please. Wait outside.”

It was Trevago, who had sat still and silent the whole time, who stood and took his arm and dragged him out of the room. Hank lingered a few moments and gave in as Simon ushered him towards the doors. “I’m not going to wait any longer,” he told the android leader. “With or without you, I’m going after Connor.”

Markus nodded. “I promise you,” he said. “No matter what else we decide; you will not be going alone.”

The door clicked shut on the four androids, the last glimpse Gavin got before Trevago pulled him through the doorway.

###

Hank paced in front of the door, muttering to himself, but Gavin quickly tired of watching the older man work himself into a frenzy. He turned to Trevago. She was sitting opposite at a small plastic table just outside the door. She sat perfectly straight, her palms flattened on the table top, her eyes distant.

“I never did thank you,” he said.

Trevago started at the sound of his voice. “What for?” she asked.

He winced. “For… for coming when I called you,” he said. “And then… everything after that too.”

She smiled, relaxing back into a more human position. “I met the council today,” she said, her voice dry, wondering. “I met Markus and North and Josh and Simon.” She raised a hand and stared at it with an equal measure of bewilderment and awe. “I shook hands with them.”

“And the North kicked you in the chest,” he reminded her.

She nodded and rubbed at her chest with a faint smile. “It was… I never imagined I would meet them. The Heroes of the Revolution. They changed all of us, our lives, our pasts, our futures.”

“She hit you pretty hard. Is your regulator… okay?”

“We’re not very delicate,” she assured him. “But… it wasn’t what I expected, the council, I mean. I thought it would be less… political.”

He shook his head. “It wasn’t what I thought it’d be like either. I have never seen androids argue before. Not really.”

She laughed, and the pinched, haunted look on her face was finally wiped away. “Oh we do,” she said. “All the time. But usually, it’s just…” she tapped her temple. “Up here.”

He frowned. “Seems like it would be…. noisy.”

“Not really,” she said. “It’s just much faster.”

He was nodding, opening his mouth to tell her something, anything else to keep the smile on her face, but the doors burst open, and North stalked out. “Where is he?” she asked them.

Trevago stood, drawing away from the table as if she had been caught doing something wrong. Gavin leaned back in his chair as well. His leg hurt, the dull burn in the small of his back starting to throb like a second heartbeat.

“Who?” Gavin asked.

The elevator opened and through it stepped Simon and another android. A ragged looking man in a poncho made from a plastic bag, wielding an ancient wooden spoon. The left side of his face was scratched up and weeping Thirium, but as he caught sight of North, his face lit up. He smiled. “You!” he exclaimed.

“There’s three or four,” Simon reported. “They all have been reset, but this one has been the most talkative. He only wants to talk to you.”

“Ralph?” North said, stepping closer to him, but not touching. “Ralph, where have you been?”

The android was vibrating apprehensively. “We ran,” he said earnestly, his words spilling out quickly. “He called for Reese,” he said. “As soon as he got signal, Ralph called, but Reese didn’t come. He said any time, but not this time.”

She nodded. “He couldn’t this time,” she said softly.

“We ran,” he said again, twitching his head around restlessly, like a bird. “Ralph ran so fast that they couldn’t catch him with bullets. Faster than many others.”

“Connor? Was an android called Connor with you?” Hank asked, his pacing finally interrupted.

Ralph nodded, but Gavin couldn’t be sure that the name had really penetrated the haze of confusion the android was experiencing. “He said to go to Jericho. He said that we would be safe here, but it isn’t safe. He didn’t come with us. They found us then, and we ran.”

Hank took him by the collar. “Is he with you?”

“Easy Hank,” Gavin said quietly. He didn’t like the android’s twitching, it was growing faster, his fingers flickering in panic.

Ralph looked around wildly, hanging from Hank’s grip. “Ralph doesn’t see him,” he said desperately. “Ralph hasn’t seen him. Not since he told Ralph to go to Jericho. They caught him with traps. He said run, don’t fight, so Ralph ran.”

He focused on North again, desperate. “Ralph can fight,” the android said, flailing his wooden spoon hopefully. “Ralph has killed before. Humans that tried to hurt Ralph. But he could do it again!”

Gavin took a step back, but Ralph still didn’t seem to notice him, or even Hank whose face was inches away. The doors to the council room opened further, framing Markus. He registered Ralph, but his gaze didn’t rest there he focused on Hank instead.

“New Jericho cannot help you,” he said.

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Hank swore dropping Ralph back onto his feet. “You’re just going—”

Markus held up a hand. “New Jericho cannot become a vigilante force,” he said. “I cannot command our people into a war with the Detroit Police Department. Instead, I will come with you.”

“And me,” North said.

To Gavin’s surprise, Josh stepped forward. “And me.”

“Not you, Josh,” Markus said gently. Our people need a leader. There has to be a chain of command.”

The android’s face fell, but he seemed to see the wisdom in this. He stepped back.

“Three?” Anderson asked. “That’s all? We need a goddamn army.”

“We will take volunteers,” Markus said, a warning edge to his voice. “Many will answer.”

Except Hank was shaking his head. “You know what? Fine. I don’t care if none of you come. I’ll go alone if that’s what it takes, but no more waiting, no more discussions. We need to leave now.”

Markus nodded. “We are already mobilizing. We’ll leave within the hour.”

###

Gavin left Trevago with Ralph. The android didn’t like him at all, frequently jerking towards him as if about to attack. It was putting him on edge, and the metal brace on his leg had started faintly to itch. He needed to walk, to move.

He found North out on a balcony, watching the cars down below. He leaned against the railing and looked down with her. “You should be in charge of this place,” he said. “You were the only one making any sense in that council.”

Her eyes were blank as they turned on him. “There aren’t enough volunteers,” she said.

“Well, we have Ralph at least,” he said, jerking a thumb back at the android. They could see him through the bank of windows, the android was rocking backward and forward, muttering indistinguishable words at Trevago. She was listening intently, nodding.

“The damaged ones stick together,” North said beside him. “Alone we are vulnerable. We need connection. It is what Jericho has always offered, even before the revolution, before Markus joined. It was a place to be… together.”

He stole a glance at her. There was a reason he had approached her. Of all the androids he had met, she was probably the most dangerous, but he had to know. It burned him. “You knew Reese?” he asked.

She nodded.

“What… what was he like?”

“Why?”

Gavin dropped his gaze. “All this time, I’ve been chasing him,” he said. “It’s like he’s been there, watching everything. I could feel him in that house like he’s trapped there with those other androids. And when I talked to the transients… he was there too. He was so fucking sad, and I don’t know how I missed it all. I worked with him every day. Every night. And I never saw any of it.”

At first, he thought she wasn’t going to answer. She had gone rigid, staring over the streets of Detroit.

But finally, she spoke. “He wasn’t sad. He was kind. And naïve. He didn’t just want to protect the old and broken androids. He loved the history of them, would listen for hours, even to the ones who were so damaged they only talked in circles. For the most advanced prototype CyberLife created, their last pinnacle of achievement before production was cut off, Reese never once thought that he was better than any of us. He just wanted to learn, wanted to help. When he came to me with the idea for the network… I finally felt like I was doing something. Like I was helping instead of just playing devil’s advocate for Josh.”

“It was a good idea,” Reed said, the only thing he could think of to say.

“Too good. He saw a pattern in the network, the gaps where androids were falling through. They were disappearing faster and faster, and nobody noticed. He took it to Fowler, showed him the network, told him of his suspicions. I told him not to. I told him to take it to Markus, but he had suspicions about the parts coming into New Jericho. He thought he had nowhere to turn, and so… he…”

She closed her eyes and bowed her head, defeated. “He came to find me that morning, to give me… but I didn’t know what he was planning to do. I knew there was something wrong, but… he had never lied to me before. How could I know he would be so good at it?”

She was crying, but she didn’t wipe away the tears. She just gripped the railing harder, letting the tears fall. “Why am I telling you all of this?” she asked the air.

Gavin didn’t know what to do. When faced with a crying woman, his policy had always been to back away slowly and wait out whatever the issue was. He reached out to touch her shoulder. “Don’t,” she bit out at him.

He snatched his hand back.

She rocked backward and reached into her pocket. From it, she pulled an odd-looking silver octagon, a few millimeters thick. It glowed a peaceful Thirium blue.

He drew away. “What is that?”

“His network,” she said softly. “The last and only copy, with links to over two dozen transient centers around the city.”

Her face glowed blue with reflected light. “We need an army,” she said. “Here’s an army.”

Chapter Text

They came through the trees, avoiding the main roads. It had started to rain, not hard, just softly enough to fill the air with mist.

The house lit up against the sky with warm yellow light. The bright white floodlights were closer to the ground, leeching the color from the sparse grass, and lengthening the shadows of the patrolling dogs and men. Inside the fence teemed with innumerable men and women. They shuttled in and out of the house, relocating heavy boxes and complex equipment. They focused on their tasks, moving quickly in the rain.

Through the window of Fowler's office where Gavin had sat that morning and taken Red Ice, he could see androids standing in the living room, holding still, facing forward. Waiting to be herded.

Gavin could see at least fifty androids standing in the shadows of the trees with him. They moved so goddamn silently that Gavin and Hank could have been walking alone through the woods, stumbling over logs and through leaves.

Despite their synchronized movements, it was easy to tell which androids had come from New Jericho, and which had come from the network. Ragged clothing, patchy skinthetics and the pale glow of Thirium through broken casings set the transients apart from Jericho’s eerily beautiful and well-dressed members.

Yet they shared the same expression of grim determination. The woods were full of glowing circles, red, yellow, blue; they flitted between the shifting leaves like colorful fluorescent insects until they reached the treeline where they covered up their lights. The torn up androids pressing themselves to the underbrush to conceal the glow of their biocomponents.

The last barrier was the fence. The fence that Ralph had reliably assured them hurt. Gavin could hear the hum of it. Not quite the whine of electricity, but certainly a lower vibration, just on the edge of hearing. He had heard it before, between the snaps of Fowler’s torture device.

“You cut the power. I’ll find Fowler,” Hank said, his eyes on the androids through the window, not the swarm of guards that stood in their way.

“That’s not the plan,” Gavin hissed back, “You cut the power and I’ll find Fowler. If you even think about changing the plan once we’re in there, this all goes to complete fucking shit. Even if you see Connor down there, you cut the breaker first.”

“You know how much easier this would be if you two were androids?” North hissed on his other side.

“This wouldn’t work if we were androids,” Gavin pointed out irritably. His leg was starting to throb. Whatever drugs Trevago had given him at Jericho were wearing off. Not crippling yet, but he could feel the weight of the coming agony.

“News from Josh,” Markus said suddenly.

They all turned to him. “He and Doctor Trevago are with the Professional Standards Division and the Secretary,” he said. “They and the dependent transients are safe. As soon as they get the word, they’ll give them the address.”

Gavin nodded. The relief he felt at the news surprised him, and he took a deep breath of the frigid night air. When he looked back down, it was to meet Markus’ eyes. “She wants you to stay out of the way once we’re inside,” he said. “Your leg can’t take much more trauma before you start facing irreversible damage.”

Shaking his head, Gavin grinned. “Yeah. Tell her I’ll do that.”

Markus’ lips twitched, but whatever Trevago’s response was, he didn’t share it. “Ready?” he asked.

Gavin looked at the house, the guns and police men and women that had once been the background of his life. “Yeah.”

###

He shoved Hank towards the gates, careful not to touch the cuffs behind his back. They were just loose enough to slip. The rain was starting to gain strength, adding to the bedraggled look they had. Both were soaked to their skin, and it was still early in the year, the chill in the air sharp and biting. “Hey!” he called to the guard at the open gate. “Delivery for Captain Fowler!”

The guard frowned through the bars at them. Graham. His gun was cocked, held ready on his shoulder. “Reed? The fuck is this?”

Gavin pushed Hank forward. “He got out of his cuffs in the car and crashed the damn thing on the way to the drop-off. Took me this long to walk back here.”

“We know about the car! Found it hours ago!” the guard had to start shouting through the rain. “Fowler wants your fucking head on a stick!”

“What? Why?”

“We had an escape attempt. Said you did it! It was that fuckin’ android! The one you shot!”

“Let me talk to him!” Reed said. “I didn’t do shit except getting the shit kicked out of me by this asshole!”

He shoved the Lieutenant towards the house again, and Hank stumbled forward, falling to his knees.

Graham edged closer. They had drawn a crowd now. He squinted, but even he could see that Gavin’s face was fucked up, that he was covered in blood and various parts of his face and body were swollen, evidence of the car crash.

“We went out looking for you,” he said.

“I took the scenic route,” Gavin snapped. “You think this would be easy to explain to a fucking civilian?”

Graham still hesitated. “Just fucking take me to Fowler,” Gavin snapped, his hands were icy and his stomach was in knots. The gun tucked under his jacket was digging into his hip.

Finally, the guard jerked his gun at them, ushering them in. Gavin hauled Hank up by the armpit and followed his wake through the crowd. They dissipated quickly back to their duties, but he could feel their eyes on him as he treads up the path to the house. “It’s all hands on deck,” Graham said. “We had an escape, some androids got free. We’re moving house before they can report it.”

“I need to use the bathroom first,” Gavin said as they climbed the concrete steps. “Wash off some of these scrapes.”

Graham grunted an affirmation. They stepped through the front door into the warm, dry house. It was chaos inside, men and women moving quickly to move boxes from the rooms, carefully shifting complex equipment.

“Hey,” Graham snapped his fingers at a couple of men playing pool in the big room to the left of the stairs. “Take Anderson to the basement.”

One was Kim Yo-Han, the Vice Detective. As he looked up, Gavin could see he was sporting a black eye and bloody nose. He laid his cue down on the table. “You came back?” he asked, his voice turned nasal by his injuries.

“The fuck happened to you?” Gavin asked.

“Fuckin’ android escape,” he said. “What the fuck happened to you? You look even more fucked than usual.”

Gavin shook his head and shoved Anderson at them. “Fucking crashed the car. He killed Ed.”

Yo-Han grimaced. He looked at Anderson with a scowl, pausing the group in the hall. He whirled out of nowhere. It was a good punch. It landed solid, and Hank swayed against Gavin’s grip.

“That’s for Ed,” Yo-Han snarled, shaking the pain from his hand as Hank returned to standing, his mouth a grim line. “Seems quieter than usual,” the Vice Detective said.

“Just take him to the cells,” Graham said. “Captain’s clearing up in the workshop.”

The workshop. Gavin glanced up the main stairs, to the room at the end of the hall. All the doors were closed. Perfect.

Yo-Han pulled Anderson out of his grip, and Gavin exchanged a single glance with the Lieutenant. He knew that the message that passed between them was exactly the same. Don’t fuck this up.

Graham shouldered his rifle as they climbed the stairs. He looked back down at him. “Craziest fucking thing, that break. We had to waste an hour resetting them all.”

Gavin nodded. He burned to ask about Connor, but the hair was prickling on the back of his neck. They didn’t trust him. Still, they did stop at the bathroom. Gavin washed his face in the basin and combed his hair back, squinting at the damage in the mirror.

“You look fucked up,” Graham said.

“Fuckin’ Anderson,” Gavin muttered, unzipping his jacket. “Could you do me a favor? I hit my shoulder in the crash. Might need stitches.”

Graham nodded and approached him, letting the door swing shut on the corridor behind him. “I knew you wouldn’t…” he paused, frowning as Gavin pulled the gun from his waistband. “Is that a silencer?”

“Yeah, never really used one before though. You see how unwieldy this shit—” He turned, raising the gun up between them. Graham’s eyes followed it, his body tense, but he was too slow. Gavin's shot took him under the chin.

The life leeched out of his eyes and blood poured down his shirtfront, splashing on Gavin’s arms as the Detective caught his body before it could collapse onto the floor. Fuck, Fowler liked his henchmen big. Gavin staggered to the tub and let his body fall into it. The porcelain tub was stained blue, Thirium caked around the drain.

The workshop. It was down the hall. Gavin tucked the gun back into his waistband. He hated the fucking silencer. He ducked out of the bathroom, almost straight into a woman in a beat uniform. His throat closed as she passed him, but she didn’t head for the bathroom, but further down the hall, towards the parts of the house he had never seen.

Quickly, trying to walk as if there wasn’t fresh blood staining his chest and sleeves, he strode confidently down the walkway. It was chaos, as people were moving boxes and equipment to the hall to be carried out to the waiting trucks. No one paid him any mind.

###

Speed was everything. He opened the workshop door and stepped inside, pulling the gun before he even registered that Fowler was on the other side of the room, taking papers off the wall. Diagrams and pictures of android corpses, a familiar map of Detroit, marked with red stickers. A copy of the map in Reed’s apartment. The Captain looked up, directly into the barrel of the silencer.

“Reed,” Fowler said, “How—”

He stopped as Gavin shifted the gun between them, and right on cue, the lights died, the hum of the house fading instantly. For a single moment, silence and darkness reigned in the house. Outside the police-issued floodlights still glared onto the surrounding land. The confusion started outside on the ground floor, men calling to each other to fix the goddamn breaker.

“What have you done, Reed?” Fowler growled.

Reed shrugged. “I am being proactive, Captain,” he said. “Thought you of all people would appreciate that.”

Fowler nodded, settling the papers down on his desk. “What was it you said the other night? Trust no one, and you’ll never be betrayed?”

Through the window behind the Captain, Gavin could see the first wave of androids climbing the fence. While the confusion was turned towards the house, they had precious minutes to jump the fence, to flood the grounds from every direction.

And then the alarm was raised. Shouts and screams from the men outside. Chaos and gunfire exploded outside the house. The androids were silent, but the humans screamed.

“Where’s Connor?” Gavin asked, moving closer to the Captain.

Fowler lifted his chin in a challenge.

“You think I won’t kill you?” Gavin asked. “Give me a goddamn excuse, Fowler.”

“Where did I go wrong?” he asked. “Out of everyone, I thought you would appreciate what I had built here, what I was offering. You hate them, Reed. They’re a drain on society, they’re a danger to humanity. Are you really taking their side?”

“I’m on my own goddamn side. Where’s Connor? I won’t fucking ask again.”

Fowler shrugged, he motioned to the door, the room where earlier that day, Gavin had hidden Connor with the other androids.

A single day. It seemed so much longer.

Gavin kept his gun on Fowler as he crossed to the door. He opened it and scanned the inside. At first he didn’t see him, the android was so still. White metal glinted in the light flooding through the window. During the move, this had apparently become a deposit for furniture and equipment. Antique furniture and metal tanks from the workshop all crowded the space.

Connor stood at the window, looking out over the trees, at the androids fighting in the floodlights, men and women shouting. Screaming.

“Connor,” Gavin called, at first thinking that the android had been collared again.

But the android turned only his head, and Gavin knew there was immediately something wrong. His LED glowed blue. There was no expression on his face, no flicker of recognition, shock, or relief. “Connor?”

“Kill him,” Fowler said at Gavin’s elbow. For such a big man, he moved fast.

Connor immediately leaned into a dash across the room. Gavin spun his aim, tried to get the gun between him and the charging android.

###

Gavin only had two advantages in this fight. The gun, and the fact that he had fought the android before. He knew to expect the fluid grace, the deadly precision, and inhuman strength.

He had lost this fight already.

Gavin danced away, putting distance between himself and the android. “Connor,” he commanded desperately, keeping his gun lowered, only trying to half-threaten him. “Connor, it’s me—”

He pulled an antique partition down in the way of the android, but he batted it out of the way so hard that it flew across the room, exploding into splinters. “Connor! Connor stop! I’m your—”

He hesitated. He had thought to say friend, but that wasn’t exactly true. Connor shot forward with a vicious kick, and Gavin barely managed to get his arms up to brace himself against it. The force of the blow shivered through his bones.

He stumbled backward and his feet tangled in a discarded white sheet. They were all over the floor. He shouted in pain and dropped back, his gun flying wide from his numb fingers.

“Fuck!” he shouted and rolled out of the way as Connor’s fist slammed into the space where his chest would have been.

That would have crushed his fucking lungs. He scrambled for the gun, but he was blinded by the strobing lights outside the window. His fingers closed on fabric. He pulled it anyway, cording it between his hands.

Connor followed through. There was no recovery, no reassessment of his footing or power. He attacked with his whole body with no hesitation. Without the need to breathe. He lashed out again with a hand, and Gavin whipped the swathe of cloth in front on him. Connor’s hand sank into the fabric and Gavin’s elbows buckled under the force, but it had been enough to soften the blow and glance it onto his shoulder.

But Connor’s other hand was on his leg. The android had found purchase on the metal brace and the sensation of the metal pulling against flesh and bone was possibly the most excruciating and sickening feeling he’d ever experienced.

He screamed, he couldn’t help it, kicking frantically with his other leg, trying to displace the grip, but he was weak. He couldn’t get the leverage on the floor or the android. Connor was reaching for his throat. Gavin knew that if he made contact, the fight would be over.

He flattened himself back, forcing the android to lean forward, and grabbed at the first thing that came to his hands again— a discarded android arm. Fuck it.

He swung it like a bat. The sound it made as it hit Connor’s head reverberated around the room, but the android didn’t flinch. His skinthetic scraped away, but it was Gavin that took the pain. The force of the blow shivered up his arms.

Connor’s hand closed around his throat. Gavin made one last gasp of air before the android’s fingers closed, cold on his feverish human skin. He gasped, scrabbling on Connor’s hand, trying to dig between the metal and plastic hand, and his own skin. “Con—” he choked out.

“Connor!”

The android froze. Gavin’s sight was filling with dark spots, but he could just make out the horrible orange shape in the doorway. He was immediately torn between relief that the Lieutenant had finally arrived, and annoyance, that this might be his sight before death—one of Anderson’s fuckin’ shirts.

He was still huffing helplessly. A dark shadow, which had been watching the match, detached from the shadow behind the door. Fowler.

Gavin wheezed something out, flailing at Hank, trying to warn him.

Too late. Fowler appeared and moved swiftly up to Hank and shoved something small and dark into his side. The InSurger.

“Easy Hank,” he growled as Hank halted. “This tickles the androids, but it’ll fry a human in seconds, you understand? Now Connor, finish it.”

The pressure disappeared. Gavin collapsed onto his back, gasping desperately. As the air rushed back into his lungs, the world went dark for a moment, and when he finally managed to get upright, he could see Connor facing the Captain.

“Lieutenant Anderson,” he said. His head twitched like he was starting to bug.

“Yeah kid,” Hank said softly. “It’s me. Is it you in there?”

Connor shook his head, pressing a hand to his forehead. “I don’t… Hank?’

Hank grinned, even while he had the InSurger digging into his side, he relaxed. “I got you,” he said. “It’s okay. You’re okay now.”

And the Lieutenant swung his elbow back into Fowler’s face, ducking out of the way as the InSurger shrieked to life and Connor launched himself at the Captain.

Fowler had height and muscle on them both.

But Hank fought dirty.

And Connor fought with a single-minded purpose.

Gavin crawled toward the wall. His left leg was just a dead weight of pain. The broken metal dragged against the floorboards, catching on the grain, but he had to keep going. His gun had fallen on a swathe of fabric. The sound of the fight behind him forced him to move with urgency and desperation, and it still seemed too long before he could slap his hand down on the pistol grip and turned in time to see Hank getting up from the floor and Fowler digging the InSurger into Connor.

The sound that left Connor’s throat was inhuman. A scream that was louder and more intense than anything a human could make. His skinthetic withdrew, his eyes rolling up and his limbs jerking into extreme angles.

“Son of a bitch!”

But as Hank tried to swing at Fowler, the sound stopped. Connor fell to his knees, shuddering boneless onto the floor, his skinthetic roving over his skin in patches for a few seconds before settling back to normal. Hank stopped as well, breathing hard, his whole body shaking.

“Back up, Hank,” Fowler warned, keeping the InSurger on the small of Connor’s neck, “That is enough. This has gone on long enough.”

Gavin’s aim was steady. He was no android, but he was still a damn good shot.

His first bullet caught Fowler in the wrist. He had been aiming for the black cylinder in the Captain’s hand, but the effect was much the same. He dropped the weapon.

Gavin’s second shot took the captain in the knee.

He let out a bellow of pain and dropped to the ground, his hand uplifted. In the half-light, his blood was black as pitch. It poured from his fingers as he sank to the floor still shouting out a cry.

Hank wasted no time. He knelt at the Captain’s side and cuffed him to one of the heavy tanks, part of the equipment from the workshop. Fowler seemed to be in shock, almost frozen by the sight of his own blood. The Lieutenant kicked the InSurger across the room and dragged Connor back as well until he could haul the android back to his feet.

“Hey, hey,” he muttered, his hands on Connor’s shoulders, obsessively checking him for damage. “Are you alright?”

Connor looked up at him. His hands were still shaking. “Hank,” he said.

Anderson yanked Connor into an embrace. “Son, don’t you ever fuckin’—” he began but apparently lost the power of speech. They hung there for a moment, Connor leaning against Anderson, his head buried in the older man’s shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” he said, the words slightly muffled. “I’m sorry.”

Gavin dropped the gun. It clattered onto the floor, and he slid down to join it. The pain was agonizing. He could feel the skin of his calf against his jeans. His leg was swollen, heavy, and he could hardly move it at all. “Help?” he croaked to the ceiling. “Please?’

In a flash, Connor was at his side. Gavin couldn’t help but flinch at the speed with which the android moved. He hissed a warning as the android’s hands settled on his calf, near the spots of blood that marked where his hands had previously attempted to pull his leg off.

But the android’s hands were gentle now. “You need a hospital,” he said.

“Yeah,” Gavin whispered. “Yeah, that sounds about right.”

His heart was racing, and he was covered in sweat despite the chill in the room.

###

They left Gavin with Fowler while they helped the androids take the house.

“You know how many humans, how many good men you killed tonight?” Fowler asked in one of the increasingly long pauses between gunfire.

Propped up against the other wall, Gavin stared at the Captain, lightheaded. He was shivering, wracked with pain, but for the first time in a long time, he felt like he had won. They had won. He shook his head.

“Quite frankly Captain,” he said. “I don’t think you’re in a strong position to take the high ground here. I hope they’re all fucking dead.”

Fowler apparently had nothing to say to that. They waited in silence until the door opened again. Gavin raised his gun, but it was Markus who stepped inside. “It’s over,” he said.

He had been hit a few times. Trails of blue and red blood slashed across his front. Gavin tipped his gun in salute. He was too tired to formulate the questions he wanted answered. Who was dead, who was alive, and how many androids they had saved.

“We’ve called Josh. Help is on the way, but we will have to be long gone by then.”

“It’s fine,” Gavin replied. “I understand.”

“Connor and Hank are going to wait with you. They’re just making sure the house is secure,” Markus said, lowering himself to Gavin’s side. He looked at the blood-soaked mess that was his right leg.

“You’ve done a lot of good today,” Markus said quietly. He reached out and pressed a hand to Gavin’s chest. “Thank you.”

Gavin nodded and tried a grin. It felt strange, so he didn’t hold it for long. He wanted to say something, anything to the android, but the words would not come. They sat in silence. Not once did Markus turn to look at the Captain.

And finally, Hank and Connor came back. They all looked like they had been through hell. “How much fun did I miss?” Gavin asked.

Anderson gave him the middle finger as Connor and Markus exchanged quiet words in the doorway. And then it was the four of them in the room. Connor knelt as Gavin’s side.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

Gavin frowned. “For what?”

Connor blinked at him. “For trying to kill you?”

Gavin huffed a laugh. “Oh, fuck it, sure. I forgive you.”

It was the first smile Gavin had ever seen linger on the android’s face. “You’re an asshole.”

His mouth distorted around the word, unfamiliar to its form. Connor was terrible at cursing. He laughed a little too violently, caught between hiccups of pain and barks of laughter. No one joined him, and eventually, he faded into silence and heavy breathing.

“Let it end here,” Fowler said into the quiet. “Right here. Now.”

“What?” Hank asked. He had been leaning against the wall, but now he straightened up.

“If you can’t do it yourself, then just… leave me your gun. You just have to walk away. That’s all I’m asking,” the Captain said steadily.

Hank strode towards Fowler, dropping into a crouch in front of him. “The fuck did you just say to me?”

Fowler stared up at his old friend. He was sweating from pain. The kneecap was not the best place to get shot.

“Don’t,” Connor said into the strained silence. “Let’s just go outside, Hank. He’s not going anywhere.”

“You know what will happen to me in jail,” Fowler said firmly over the android. “Is that really what this has come to? We used to be friends.”

Connor stood, dragging Gavin upright as well with a hand under his arms. Gavin tried his best to stay upright but he was tired, and his legs were too weak even to move. “Hank,” Connor said. “Come on. We can wait outside.”

But Anderson didn’t look around, gave no sign that he had heard the android. “Were we friends?” he asked. “You lied to me... You took the gun and my keys at the bar every night for years. Fuckin’ years, and in all that time, you lied. What did you tell me, Jeffrey?”

Fowler glared up at Hank, his lips creased down stubbornly. Hank pressed down on his knee with his weight and Fowler sucked in a sudden breath and swung his head back, beating against the wooden slats at his back. “Goddamn,” he swore.

“What did you fucking tell me?”

“Not your fault,” he hissed out.

“Whose fault was it, Jeff? Tell me a-fucking-gain whose fault it was.”

He stared at his old friend. “Androids,” he said.

“Fucking androids. You said that to my face, every night while I was drunk and suicidal and out of my fucking mind and you told me it was the fuckin’ androids. You said it, again and again, you showed me the goddamn… the…” he choked up. There were tears in his eyes, but he shook them away doggedly, his teeth bared. “You showed me the fucking autopsy.”

“You asked for it.”

“And wasn’t that convenient for you? Just so that I would stop looking at the Red Ice cases? So I wouldn’t hunt down the dealers? So instead I’d spend my days hating the things that had tried to save my son when your fucking poison had rotted that doctor so bad he couldn’t be bothered to work on him? The things you have done to fuck with me, Jeffrey, will never fucking go away. Never. And you did it for what? For money? For power? For Red fuckin’ Ice?”

Fowler didn’t answer, and Hank’s voice, which had risen to a shout, quieted again. “But now… now you want my gun? The gun you wouldn’t let me have for those years?”

“You abandoned me,” Fowler rasped at last. “You left me, Hank. My godson was dead, and my best friend was drinking himself to death—”

He shouted out in pain as Hank leaned onto his leg again. “I hated myself for years for that,” Anderson said quietly. “I hated you because you made me feel like a fucking failure like I was keeping you locked down in this shithole. Everyone said it. They said you’d be commissioner ten years ago if you hadn’t had to watch my back and babysit me like a fuckin’ toddler. I couldn’t look you in the face, but now I know. It was so you could keep the operation going, rule your little empire from your fucking fishbowl, and I was just an excuse.”

Fowler blinked up. He was in pain, his mouth twisted in agony, but his eyes were hard. Unyielding. “What do you want me to say here, Hank? I don’t deserve to live? I betrayed you? I ruined your life? If all of it were true, if you believed it, you’d put that gun on the ground, and you’d get the fuck out of here. I’ll fix it again. Haven’t I always fixed it for you, Hank?”

Hank didn’t pull away. “Hank,” Connor said, his hands were tense around Gavin’s side. Everything else was starting to fade out. “Don’t.”

Anderson didn’t look back. “Get Reed out of here, Connor,” he growled. “Wait outside.”

“I’m not leaving without you.”

“Yeah you are,” Hank said.

“Hank—”

“Go, Connor,” he said. “Now.”

Without another word, Connor hauled Gavin’s towards the door.

###

They sat on the wooden porch, feet dangling down the steps. Connor still had an arm around his side, but the android was stiff, expectant. He was waiting for the gunshot. They both were.

“My leg really fucking hurts,” he said. The night air was crisp, refreshing. It grounded him a little.

“I know,” Connor said. “You have a blood clot in your thigh. We’re trying to keep it from traveling to your lungs.”

“Oh good.” As long as Connor had it under control, it must be fine.

“Is there anyone you’d like me to call?” the android asked.

“I have five sisters,” he said. He blinked up at the sky. It was so dark out here. He wondered what would happen if he brought Trevago home. “And my mom? But you can’t tell her why. She’ll kill me if she finds out I’m in the hospital.”

“What should I tell her?’ Connor asked.

“Tell her… I love her,” Gavin said. It was getting harder to talk, he kept having to pause to take in more breath. Every word was an effort. “And I’m sorry I didn’t come home for Christmas. Or Thanksgiving. Or the rest of them. Just tell her… Just tell her sorry, and that I’m going to come home for Easter maybe. Is there anything before Easter?”

Connor paused. “Do you observe Hindu holidays with your family?’

Gavin shook his head.

“St. Patrick's Day is next week,” Connor offered.

“No fucking way am I going home for St. Patrick’s Day,” Gavin laughed.

“The Spring Equinox is three days after that.”

“I’ll still be hung over.”

“For three days?”

Gavin leaned back. “Really fucking hurts,” he muttered again. “Probably a good thing, right?”

“You have to sit upright,” Connor said, hauling him up, holding him steady.

“I’ll go home for Easter,” Gavin said, trying to clear the film of darkness out of his eyes with the back of his left hand. “Unless I’m hungover.”

Connor’s response was stopped as the door closed behind them. The porch creaked. Hank’s shoes scraped against the concrete as he joined them on the steps. Gavin listened to the silence of the house, the groaning of the crickets and springtime mating calls.

“I only had one bullet left anyway,” Hank said.

Connor’s hand tightened on Gavin’s shoulder, the only outward sign of the android’s stress.

Hanks flicked a flash of silver at Connor. With the arm that wasn’t keeping Gavin upright, the android caught it perfectly in mid-air between two fingers and held it to the light. Gavin thought it was their coin at first, but Connor held it to the light in front of them. Together they considered the small silver bullet.

“But it’s mine,” Hank said.

Behind them, Fowler let out a roar, a bellow of an enraged, trapped animal.

“I’m keeping it,” Connor said carefully, when the sound behind them turned to howls of anger and dire threats, blending together into the other sounds of the night.

Hank shrugged and sat beside the two of them. “It’s yours.”

In the distance, between the trees, Gavin could just see the flash of red and blue lights, the distant echo of sirens. Help was on the way. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m so fucking sorry.”

For Reese. For Finn. For all the androids scattered in the halls of the house. His chest felt like an open, ragged wound. He wished Trevago were here. She would know what to do, about his leg, about the crushing weight in his chest, about the fact that he wanted Reese here, next to him for the end of this case.

“It’s alright,” Hank said, cuffing him on the shoulder. “You did good, asshole.”

Gavin began to cough raggedly. He tasted blood in his mouth, copper, and salt. “Can’t breathe,” he whispered.

Connor nodded. “It’s made it to your lungs,” he said softly.

“Good,” Reed mumbled weakly between wracking coughs. They shuddered his whole frame, setting off fireworks of pain all over his body. “That’s good.”

“Reed?” Anderson asked. He sounded far away, though his hand was now on Reed’s shoulder, holding him up. “Reed, open your eyes.”

Weren’t his eyes open? He could still see the treeline. From between the gently stirring leaves, a hulking shadow stepped forward, to the gate, a tall man with a familiar face.

Goddamn it Gavin, open your eyes. Fuck! What do we do?

Reese put his hand on the bars to the house. His grey eyes shone in the floodlights. How had he ever thought that they were cold and distant, shallow and dead?

“I’m sorry,” Gavin whispered.

Chapter Text

Connor

There were a lot of empty desks at the DPD, once the various law enforcement agencies had swept through the office. They took everything and anything that could be evidence. All the cases that had passed through the station had to be reopened for review, and all evidence accounted for and reexamined. The chaos was widespread and invasive. Fowler’s office especially had been reduced to barren walls and a lonely, damaged desk. The monitors had been torn out of most of the desks, taken for an in-depth dissection of the Captain’s files.

Fixing his cuffs and tie didn’t ease his nerves anymore. This wasn’t his suit, with its familiar weight and precision tailoring. He had bought the new black suit this morning on Hank’s advice, but he wished he hadn’t worn it to the precinct. There would have been time to change.

A lot of time. They hadn’t been invited to the service. The family was keeping it small to avoid the media wildfire raging across Detroit.

Connor cleaned Hank’s desk while he waited for the Lieutenant to return from yet another briefing— the only reason they had come to the office today.

They had each given their statements eighteen times by his count. And still, they found more questions to ask. New Jericho stepped in before the FBI could obtain a warrant to search his memory. Connor almost wished he could just hand it over and be done, but Markus and New Jericho’s involvement in the raid had to be kept an open secret. Everyone suspected, but they didn’t know for sure.

It was a landmark decision that Connor was allowed to keep the footage of the past few days to himself; the Fifth Amendment for androids.

Reese’s stolen memory didn’t have the same protection. The parasite was evidence, and the footage on it was evidence as well. The motive for the murder of Finn Walker and a trail to Fowler. Connor had watched it himself a few times.

The breakroom was relatively untouched in the search and seizure, but the cleaning staff hadn’t been allowed inside for almost a week. There was little coffee left, and the vending machine had only a few options left— the dregs that humans only took out of necessity.

Connor cleaned while he waited. There was a serenity to be found in fixing the desks, putting things back in their rightful place. A few other officers joined him. They had no workload to speak of; all cases had been given to the uptown precinct. No one said much of anything.

It was going to take a while to trust again. Connor had expected backlash and suspicion from the remaining officers, but they included him in their quiet conversations and questions, theories and fears. Everyone had lost a leader, partners, colleagues, and friends. Not all of them were going to the funeral today, but even those not dressed in black wore civilian clothes. It didn’t feel right yet, to wear a uniform here.

Miller, rolling the chairs back to the desks, paused at Gavin’s desk, looking over the torn-out monitor. As soon as he noticed Connor’s eyes on him, he moved on quickly.

So many empty desks. If he paused and closed his eyes, he could remember as it should have been. Gavin leaning back in his chair, legs propped up on the desk, and the edge of his shoes creaking against the DPD monitors. Fowler pacing in his office, organizing cases for his officers. Reese would have been standing against the wall, expressionless as data flowed through him. He had always been… processing.

“Let’s get out of here.”

Connor blinked his eyes open and turned to see Hank striding across the bullpen. The Lieutenant’s hands were buried in his pockets. He didn’t look right in the plain black suit and tie, but his mop of hair was as untidy as usual, a spark of normalcy in the strange, war-torn precinct.

“The service is still in progress. The procession won’t arrive for another hour.”

“Yeah well, we’ll get there early. This place gives me the fucking creeps.”

Connor nodded and put down a sheaf of misprinted copies on the nearest desk. “We could get coffee first,” he suggested.

“Whatever. Let’s go.”

Connor fell into step beside Hank and gave a short wave to Miller. The officer offered a half-smile in return. He was one of the few in black. He’d meet them at the graveyard later.

###

Hank parked the car but didn’t get out. He sat there, staring out at the peaceful gray and green fields, spotted with trees and monuments to the human dead. Already a few black cars were arriving.

He hadn’t played music on the way here, but they hadn’t spoken much. Hank had barely touched his coffee, despite the fact that he had insisted he get caffeinated despite Connor’s suggestion against it.

“I hate fuckin’ funerals,” Hank said in the silence. “I’m sick of fuckin’ funerals.”

“I don’t think I’m going to like them either,” Connor said quietly.

###

A large company gathered around his grave. Androids had come, including representatives from New Jericho. People talked about him, even when there wasn’t much to say. He had lived a short, solitary life.

Connor just kept his eyes on the casket as it was lowered into the ground.

"Can we talk?" A familiar voice whispered in his head.

He looked up to see North at the edge of the gathering, standing beside a tall gravestone. Despite the sunny day, it was still cold. She looked taller in a long black coat and a high collar, and she had tamed her hair into a bun at the back of her head.

He nodded and patted Hank’s arm twice to let him know he was leaving. The Lieutenant nodded. He was still somber, his head bowed as a priest spoke about the persistence of the human soul.

He and North walked a distance away from the crowd of black mourners until they might as well have been alone. It was quiet and calm. Eerie to know that they stood in a field of human corpses.

They sat on a concrete bench underneath a large, overhanging tree. “How are you?” she asked.

Connor flattened his tie against his shirt. “I'm… tired.”

She nodded as if either of them had experienced the context of that word. But he knew that she understood.

“It’s easier to understand them here,” she said quietly. “They’re ancient, aren’t they? Soaked in the blood of their own history and yet constantly surrounded by reminders of how little time they have.”

The wind brushed past them, a subtle hush.

“Why did you come here?” he asked.

“I wanted to pay my respects, and… I needed to talk to you.”

“You can always ask me to meet you,” he said. “I may have refused to become part of the council, but—” he broke off as from the inside of her jacket she pulled a thin, flexible folder.

She handed it to him. “I think… you’ll know what to do with this.”

He opened took it with both hands and opened it. As the cover lifted, the papers curled at the edges, springing into cylindrical spirals. The confiscated CyberLife patents.

The Trojan Spy, the collar, a dozen more. Connor’s fingers brushed the image of the InSurger before he flicked through the other papers. The devices of invasion, control, and dominance were terrifyingly laid out on paper in clean lines and impersonal notes. “We’ve recovered most,” he said, “but not all. The technology is on the streets now.”

North’s mouth curled in distaste. “I made copies of these for New Jericho, but they’ll stay with Markus, Simon, and Josh for now. We’re not going make it public, but we’re going to know what to look for.”

“So Reese gave them to you,” Connor said, settling back against the bench and setting the folder on his knees. “We did wonder what he had done with them.”

“He came to see me that morning,” she said. “I didn’t know what he was planning. He just said… he just said I needed to be careful, that I had to keep these things safe.”

“You could have trusted me,” he said gently.

She looked down at her hands. “I couldn’t,” she said. “You chose to leave the council and work for the police. The freedom of choice is what we fought for, and you were in a good place to help our people, but I couldn’t trust you with this. Even if I could have…”

She looked at the mourners, her mouth was turned down at the corners. “You look like him,” she said at last.

Making a noise of frustration and contempt, she wiped a stray tear from her cheek. “I know it’s pathetic,” she said. “It’s the kind of illusion that humans fall for.”

He nodded and smoothed down the papers again.

“I’m so angry with him,” she said. “He left me holding all of this, and I could do nothing with it. He just… left.”

“He thought he had to,” Connor said softly. “He had to protect the transient network.”

She shook her head, her expression dark. “No. He destroyed the network. He hated it. I was a part of it, so I felt him tear it apart. None of us could stop it. We were all trying to stop him, but we felt how scared he was, how much regret he felt. We felt him die, and then… nothing. Not him, not each other. We were all alone. Again.”

“But you have the copy,” he prodded gently. “You could get it online permanently. Start again now that Fowler is—”

But she was already shaking her head. From her pocket, she produced a small octagon of metal. Even in the sunlight, the threads of Thirium in the metal were clear to the eye. “He would hate me if he knew what I had used this for. I hacked it to ask the weakest of us to fight and die. His friends, the people he destroyed himself to save.”

“You did it to stop the pain. To set us free.”

Her mouth became a hard, set line. She didn’t want to hear that, Connor realized. She wanted him to stop her, to tell her that she had done something wrong. He frowned at her. “He gave you the network for a reason. He trusted what you would do with it.”

“But I don’t know what to do with it,” she said. “I need someone, I need you to tell me what to do here Connor, because I’m… I’m driving myself crazy trying to figure it out.”

He frowned at her and took another look at the chip she held so carefully in her hands. There was something he was missing here, some vital—

“What is that?” he asked suddenly. As she held it at the right angle, as he saw the right shape of it, he recognized the lines of it— he hadn’t seen it in color. He had seen it in two dimensions, a brief scan he had barely registered because he hadn’t really seen it with his eyes. He opened the folder again. The pages sprung up, but he rifled through them quickly, searching.

“He built himself into the bridges,” she whispered.

Meld-Mesh. It hadn’t sounded right, next to the other names. Words of connection and binding besides those of pain and control. It hadn’t…

There it was in perfect CyberLife Sans, but there was no watermark stamped across the diagram, and the specifications detailed in tiny, perfect font, were impressed into the paper, not laid on as a printer would have done.

“It’s the network,” she said. “It’s Reese.”

###

He paced between the gravestones. “How would you do it?” he asked.

“It would be easy,” she said. “There are how many decommissioned RKs in CyberLife? They’ve never even opened their eyes, they’re just… empty.”

“Then why haven’t you done it already?”

Her mouth trembled and her hand clenched around the component. “Because… it’s not him. It would be a copy of him. And he… he destroyed every other possible route to his survival. He destroyed himself to protect us. What if that’s what he wanted?”

“Why give it to you then?” Connor asked. “He gave it to you for a reason. He didn’t want to be destroyed. Not entirely. He had to have—”

“I’ve gone around and around in circles,” she said. “But I don’t know, Connor. I don’t fucking know what he wanted me to do with this. I just— I need someone to tell me to do it. Or to not do it. Can you please just… tell me what to do?”

Connor rubbed his face, but when he looked up, she was still staring at him, as if he had the answers. “What if he hasn’t changed?” she asked. “I felt his regret, and if he leaves again, if he takes this one with him as well, we’ll have nothing left at all—”

Connor shook his head. “North, I don’t know either. This isn’t my decision. He gave it to you. You have to make it. No council, no Markus, no Josh or Simon. This is on you.”

Her shoulders drooped, and her grip on the mesh relaxed. “Alright,” she said at last.

Connor crossed his arms as he considered her. He started to say something else, anything else to break the silence, to somehow make this easier, but she beat him to it.

“I’m sorry about your friend,” she said.

Connor looked back at the mourners. They were starting to trickle away from the grave in groups of two or three. He could see Hank waiting for him. “He was a good human,” he said.

Slipping the Meld-Mesh back into her pocket, she stood and brushed the leaf matter from her coat. “What he did for Reese, for all of us— it’s a debt we can’t repay.”

“Finn wouldn’t have seen it as a debt,” Connor said. “He wasn’t that kind of man.”

She made an attempt at a smile, but they both knew it was painful for her, so she let it drop almost instantly. “Thank you for this, Connor. I… I’ll let you know what I decide.”

He nodded. They walked back, towards Hank.

“How is Gavin?” she asked as they threaded through the plots, careful to avoid the inset slabs.

“I’m going to go see him this afternoon. He discharged himself too early. He hasn’t been… cooperative with the doctors.”

“Seems like the type,” she said, smiling. “But he’ll be alright.”

“Of course,” Connor said, with confidence he didn’t really feel.

###

It was an utter coincidence that there was a pet store on the corner next to Gavin’s building. It was a small shop, but the colorful display caught his attention; the fluttering of living things inside. He paused to take in the little birds, blue, green, and yellow.

The two closest to the glass cocked their heads at him, chattering indistinctly. Their eyes were bright and curious. Connor tipped his head as well, studying their feathers, the smooth slopes of their tails. They were small and perfect and living. The perfect and complex workings of biology clear in every feather, every scale on their talons evolved for a purpose.

“Can I help you pick one out?”

He looked up to see a red-headed android smiling at him. He started to shake his head, but he caught sight of the birds again. The blue ones, they forced him to recall too painful a memory, but the green ones…

###

He knocked for ten minutes before Gavin finally opened the door in a pair of boxers and nothing else, slumped crookedly against the crutches under his arms. The remains of his right leg, which ended just above his mid-thigh had at least been rebandaged and treated. Trevago’s work by the care and precision put into it.

“You’re not dressed,” Connor observed.

“The fuck are those?” Gavin asked.

“Budgies,” Connor said briskly, shouldering his way past. “Or parakeets. You’re looking better on the crutches by the way.”

“Yeah, gonna be back on my foot in no time,” Gavin said, moving slowly back to the couch in the living room and collapsing onto it with a groan. “Why the hell do you have parakeets?”

Connor surveyed the apartment. It was a wreck with most of the carnage centered on the couch. Clearly, Gavin hadn’t been moving much. “Are you still practicing your physical therapy?”

“Yeah,” Gavin lied calmly. He grinned at Connor, a silent challenge to acknowledge that they both knew he was lying. Connor set the newly purchased birdcage on the kitchen counter.

“If you refuse to take the prosthetic,” he said. “You need to keep up with the physical therapy now, or you’re going to run into atrophy sooner rather than later.”

“I don’t think I’m going to be running into much ever again,” he muttered and pointedly picked up a beer from the coffee table at his side. “Seriously though, why the fuck did you bring the birds?”

“You could teach them to speak,” Connor suggested. “They’re known to retain upwards of a hundred words. I’m not sure if these ones have been trained though.”

“If I wanted something to talk at me, I’d let Trevago stay.”

“You should,” Connor said mildly. “She’s worried about you. We all are.”

“Fuck off,” Gavin growled. “I wish you would all just fuck off. I swear, if one more person asks me what they can do for me one more goddamn time, I’m going to eat my fucking gun.”

Connor paused from clearing up the garbage around Gavin. He stood up straight and considered the detective. “How seriously should I take that?” he asked.

“You’re just fucking like her,” Gavin growled, throwing an empty napkin at Connor’s chest. “I’m fine. I’m fucking fine.”

“Clearly.”

The next few minutes were broken by the gentle chirping of the birds, curious about their new surroundings. It was a pleasant sound, and Connor caught Gavin staring at the cage a few times. He didn’t drink much of his beer but picked at the paper label.

“How was it?” the human asked at last.

“How was what?”

“The funeral.”

Connor swept the curtains open. Gavin hissed, drawing a pillow over his face.

“It was a good service,” the android said calmly. “A lot of people spoke about him. We could still attend the wake if you—”

Gavin made a short, sharp noise, and Connor obediently dropped the issue.

“Should have buried him ages ago,” Gavin said. “Was the autopsy even necessary? We all fucking knew that Fowler had him killed.”

“It was important to prove that. Finn deserved justice.”

“He was a good kid,” Gavin muttered. “He deserved better than what he got, and would you please sit down?”

“The cage needs a clear space,” Connor said, pausing in the midst of wiping down the coffee table. “And a lot of air and light.”

“There’s a lot of air and light outside this goddamn apartment.”

Connor ignored him. This was a good idea. Reed might refuse to take care of himself, but he would take care of the birds.

“Why are you doing this?” Gavin asked softly. “Why are any of you doing this?”

“We want you to get better,” Connor said. “And also your mother requires updates from me because you never answer her messages.”

“I answer her texts,” Gavin muttered defensively.

Connor finally paused. “Why won’t you take the prosthetic?” he asked.

“It’s my body,” Gavin growled, a clear warning to drop this particular issue. He refused to talk about it with anyone, even the therapist the hospital had provided.

“You’re running out of time for a full attachment. At a certain point, your body adjusts, and heals around—”

“It’s my fucking body,” Gavin said again.

Connor shook his head “Then could you be a little less hostile towards us? Until you can demonstrate that you can take care of yourself, Trevago and I aren’t going to stop helping you.”

That seemed to strike a nerve with the Detective. “Get out,” he spat. “And take the fucking birds with you.”

“The instructions for taking care of them are on the kitchen counter,” he said sweeping up his keys on the way out.

“Connor, don’t you dare leave these things—”

The android closed the door on the gently chattering birds.

###

Trevago

With Babbage curled up and purring on her lap, Trevago transcribed that day’s notes onto paper, filing every form for the androids she had met that day. New Jericho had needed someone to step in and deal with the confusing, frightening deviancy the androids had awoken to at Fowler’s base of operations. They were skittish, with most of them dealing with hardware damage that had forced them into becoming transient in the first place.

Her cat writhed in her lap, pushing a paw against her elbow in comfort. She smiled down at him, absently pausing to scratch the soft fur behind his ears.

The peaceful moment fell apart as her phone chimed. Babbage whipped upright and flew from her lap, leaving quick-fading scratches in her skinthetic. The noise had startled her as well. It was her patient-emergency phone which she had yet to deactivate. She worked for New Jericho now, so her new patients had no need for cell phones.

She frowned, picking it up off her desk. Gavin Reed’s name lit up on the screen. She didn’t even take the time to accept the call with a swipe of her fingers. Instead, she linked into the call instantly. “Gavin?” she asked.

“I know you’re not my therapist anymore,” he whispered into her ears. Her throat closed. He sounded… wrecked.

“Because I’m your friend,” she said firmly. “I can’t be both. We had this discussion, remember?”

Silence, then:

“I called the hospital,” Gavin said, “They want me to come in tonight for the assessment, and maybe start the surgeries for replacement.”

Trevago closed her eyes and smiled. She didn’t exactly know what to say. Good? Would that be patronizing? She was almost afraid to speak. As if any word might tip the scales. “I’m glad you made that call,” she said at last. “It’s going to—”

“Could you take me to the hospital?”

“Of course,” Trevago said standing up. “An ambulance can be there in—”

“I need you to take me,” Gavin said.

“I’ll be there in ten minutes,” Trevago said, scraping her jacket off her chair as she scrambled for her office keys. “Do you want me to stay on the phone?”

“No. I’m… I have to get everything ready. If I give you a key, can you take care of some birds if… while I’m—”

“Birds?”

“I’ll explain when you get here.”

###

He was waiting outside his building by the time she arrived. He was pale, sagging against his crutches. He wasn’t at all well. She helped him into the passenger seat of her car. She still hadn’t managed to get the bloodstains out of her back seat from the last ride she had given him.

He settled the crutches carefully into the front seat. “Please don’t… look at it,” he said. “I can’t do this if—”

“Look at what?’ she asked nonplussed, as the car pulled away from the curb. “Your leg?”

His mouth snapped shut, his face tense in the glow of the dashboard and windshield. “I won’t,” she assured him quickly. “I mean, not that it’s—”

His jaw tightened, and she backtracked lamely, “I won’t.”

They traveled in silence for a few more moments, until she remembered:

“So, the birds?”

“Connor gave me some birds,” Gavin said, “trying to prove a point or something.”

“Okay…”

“It worked,” he said. “I… need this. I don’t have time to learn how to live without a leg. I’ll fucking take the prosthetic, and it won’t fucking matter. I should just have them do all the limbs at once. It’s where this is all heading anyway.”

Her fingers whitened on the steering wheel, but she wasn’t driving the car. The hospital was a blessedly short ride away. She drew up to the emergency bay, and Gavin barely waited for the vehicle to stop before he opened the door, jerking the automated car to an ungraceful halt. He was on his feet before she even had her hand on her door handle.

“Hold on,” she said. “Let me help—”

He had already leveraged himself onto the sidewalk and was arranging his crutches under his arms. “Don’t,” he said.

His voice was so abrupt, she stopped and squinted a question up at him through the passenger door. “Once they… attach this thing,” he said, taking a deep breath. “I’d like you to stay away from me.”

She swallowed and tried not to feel those words like the slap they were. She didn’t understand, but… it wasn’t her job to understand him anymore. He just knew how to hurt her. Somehow, every time, he knew. “Okay,” she said.

“I’ll be fine,” he said, but his gaze slid away from her face. “Once I have it, I won’t need the pity parade. I’ll be able to take care of myself.”

“That’s not why I—”

He cut her off before she could speak, “I really like you,” he admitted.

She froze.

“And I know every fucking sap falls in love with their therapists, and idiots fall for androids because they make you all so fucking perfect. I know it’s... not right, but I can’t stop it. That’s not how it works.”

Her hand hovered in the air between them.

“So I’m going to stay away,” he said. “And… and I need you to stay away as well because I need some time to figure out how to not… feel these things for you. Every time I look at you, and every time you do anything, it’s harder to ignore. So I… I really have to stop looking.”

She couldn’t move. He looked up at her with a tired, cocky smile. She had hated him when they had first met, had been fully prepared to risk her career to wipe that shit-eating grin off his face. She wasn’t sure how that had changed.

“Thank you, Doctor, for everything,” he said.

And closed the door. The whole car juddered with the force of it.

The door's chiming finally stopped, and the car started to carry her away. She leaned down, trying to keep him in sight as his silhouette staggered into the bright white lights of the hospital.

###

Gavin

The prickle of oxygen in his nose and the stiffness of an IV had become the new normal. He blinked up at the ceiling. It was so quiet here. No knock on the door. No tentative call from Trevago, or ringing phone from his mother.

Nothing. No one. As he had requested in his intake forms. It was maybe the fourth or fifth time he had woken up like this, between the surgeries, specialists rotating him from operation to operation. He hadn’t once seen what they had been doing to him. He tried desperately not to care.

His eyes still hadn’t adjusted to the light. Everything in the hospital room was made of shadows and light. He reached down, over the blanket. He could feel through the blankets and bandages as his flesh turned to plastic and metal at his hip. They had taken more.

Letting his hand slide away, he allowed himself to cry. He was fucking exhausted, that was all. During his first stay, they had to keep cutting higher and higher as more of his flesh had rotted away without circulation.

And now they had taken even more, to connect the cutting-edge prosthetic to healthier nerves and muscles.

Fucking humans, made from a billion mistakes of evolution. One tiny spot of rust in the works and the whole system starts to shut down. The prosthetic couldn’t be removed now, fused to his bones and flesh. The most advanced prototype on the market, a gift from New Jericho for his service. His service. What a fucking joke.

He couldn’t tell what it was, but suddenly he was aware that he wasn’t alone. He looked up and blinked into the darkness in the corner of the room, where a hulking shadow stood in the corner, out of place among the slim, shining mechanisms made to support human life.

Connor? No, not Connor.

“You again,” Gavin whispered.

Reese stepped into the soft light of the monitors. He seemed… unsure. “Detective Reed,” he said. “How are you?”

Gavin barked out a sharp laugh. His own fucking hallucination on a wellness check. “Fucking perfect,” he said.

Reese nodded. “I heard about what you’ve done. I don’t know… how or why you became involved, but I wanted to thank you and apologize for—”

He stopped as Gavin slammed a fist into the blankets at his side. He was weak, but the movement had enough force to send a twinge of warning pain lancing down his back, killed only at his hip. “Don’t you fucking dare,” Gavin whispered into the room in front of him. “You have no fucking right to say that.”

The hallucination paused. “I’m… sorry?’

Gavin raised his hand again, but before he could bring it down on the metal bar on the side of his bed, Reese caught it, holding it in mid-air as Gavin struggled weakly in his grip.

Fuck. That felt real. Shit, he had lost it completely.

Reese firmly pushed Gavin’s hand back to the blankets. “I will fetch restraints,” he said. “If you force me to.”

Oh god. Would he imagine the restraints? Would he be locked in this bed by his own mind? Was any of this even real? He was breaking, fracturing. Something had gone really fucking wrong in the surgery.

“I’m suing,” he blurted out in the panicked fuzz of confusion, the only course of action that now seemed appropriate because fuck—

“Maybe this isn’t the right time. I didn’t think you would react this way,” Reese said slowly. “I didn’t mean for my presence to distress you.”

“Your presence?” Gavin scoffed breathlessly. “Reese is fucking dead. He’s not present, and you’re the fucking asshole who wants me to let that go. You think I want him to forgive me? You think I want him to thank me? You’re fucking sick. I’m fucking sick.”

He hadn’t expected for the android’s hands to leave his wrists. Reese’s grey eyes were wary, confused. Gavin had no idea how his head had managed to create the details of the Android so perfectly.

“You’re tired,” the android said, “and you’re on a lot of medication. I don’t want to harm your healing process. I wouldn’t have come so soon if I had known you were… feeling this way.”

Gavin shook his head. The world was spinning. “I think I’m going to—”

He ripped the blankets off. He had to get out of bed, couldn’t bear the thought of gagging over his own prone body, but he had… forgotten. In the panic and confusion, he had forgotten that his leg—

It wasn’t what he had been expecting. He had just signed the papers; had resolutely kept the pictures as a blur. He hadn’t wanted to know.

It was less organic than he had been expecting. Black and silver. It was still numb. It would take a while for the anesthetic to wear off, and then for his nerves to heal and integrate. “Fuck,” he whispered.

A trashcan was pushed in front of him. He looked up. Reese.

He took it hesitantly. “I don’t know what’s real anymore,” he admitted.

Reese nodded. “I’ll fetch a doctor.”

###

He brought Trevago, and despite everything he had said, and the seed of shame writhing in his stomach, he was glad to see her. He could trust her.

“Is he real?” he asked, his eyes flickering to Reese in the doorway behind her.

“Yes,” she said, crossing quickly to his side. “He’s… he’s real. He’s a... backup, a copy.”

She looked back apologetically before she finished, but Reese nodded calmly, taking no offense. Gavin blinked at him, feeling his heart slow down again. “I thought there were no copies.”

###

Reese didn’t stay long, and Gavin was almost glad. Looking at the android stirred something disquieting in his chest. He didn’t know what to say to him. Trevago seemed to think it was important that the two of them talk.

It was stilted, awkward, until he left.

Then it was silent and uncomfortable. Gavin tried not to look at her. He didn’t even know what he wanted to say. Ask her to stay? Ask her to go? Both options seemed unbearable.

“It’ll take time,” she said finally.

“Are you talking about my leg or Reese?”

She shrugged. “Both.”

He chanced a look down at the metal fixed to his leg. There were bandages taped to the edge, where his skin met the dark metal. Involuntarily, he squeezed her hand, and she gripped back gently. When had she taken his hand? Or… had he taken hers? It was mixed up in his head.

“Why didn’t you listen to me?” he asked her at last. “When I asked you not to come back.”

“I don’t want to stop seeing you,” she said. “I don’t… know if that’s what… but—”

He frowned at her.

“I don’t know what it means,” she said at last. “I don’t know if what I feel is… what you feel, but I think maybe the way forward is to maybe figure it out. If you want to try, then maybe I can try, and it might not work out, and I don’t want to hurt you, so you can say no, but… I thought maybe… once you get better, of course. We could maybe get dinner? Just see what that’s… like?”

Her rambling finally ceased, and they were left looking at each other.

“You don’t eat,” he pointed out.

“It’ll be a cheap date,” she answered with a grin.

He stared at her blankly. “It’ll be a… date?”

She rolled her eyes. “That’s what I’m trying to say. We don’t know each other at all, and we’ve been running around the city chasing murderers, but…. I do like you. I want to talk to you, without any danger, or fighting. Isn’t that… enough reason for dinner?”

He swallowed.

###

Reese

Reese liked Hamtramck. It was about halfway between New Jericho and the precinct. The diplomacy of that suited him. His old apartment had already been given to a new tenant, but it wasn’t hard to find another apartment. Slightly larger, with cleaner hallways.

He had filled the space with lights and couches. Connor’s housewarming gift, a potted plant, looked very out of place in the otherwise clean lines of the apartment.

Once he had rearranged the room a few times, he stood in front of the door and wondered where he would go. This was freedom, wasn’t it? He could go do… anything. See anyone.

But the people he wanted to see would ask him about the network. They would want him to open the channels, take stock. North asked him every day what he planned to do about the network, and he still had no answer for her.

He didn’t want to feel all that emptiness; all the people he had failed. He didn’t want to answer to a hundred voices, feel the rush of communication through him. The silence in his head was comfortable. There was no ache of sadness, no weight of other people’s hopes.

He wondered what he had felt, before the first Reese had died. His mind had been created days before. An online copy that couldn’t be corrupted because that Reese had thought it was more important to keep the network safe than worry about the ramifications of creating another mind, another man.

He could remember making that decision, could remember that Reese, but that Reese didn’t have to deal with the consequences of their absence, the decisions that had been made without them.

He stood there, thinking and not thinking, unable to decide what to do.

He didn’t have to move to open the door on Gavin Reed. The human had abandoned his usual faded hoodie for an ironed white button down. He still wore his worn leather jacket, a startling contrast of style to an attempt at formality.

“Reese!” Gavin said as if surprised that the android had opened his own door.

“Detective Reed.”

“I was in the neighborhood,” Reed said. “I know you said you’d be busy, but I figured I’d drop by just in case.”

Right. He had said that. “Is this a formal occasion?”

Gavin blinked at him, nonplussed. “What?”

Reese gestured at Reed’s clothing. “Is this an attempt at a good impression?”

Gavin looked down and seemed to notice the shirt he was wearing for the first time. “Oh yeah, well… date with Trevago,” he said.

The human’s heart beat faster, and Reese couldn’t stop the wave of startled awe from wiping away his discomfort. Gavin was nervous.

“Shut up,” Reed muttered and ducked down to pick up the cage he had set next to the door. Two green and yellow parakeets flapped their wings to stay balanced as their cage was lifted.

“Look, I’m not really an animal person,” he said, holding it out. “And Trev has a cat, so I thought… maybe you would like them?”

Reese took the cage out of reflex. Reed had made a habit of handing him things to deal with, slapped evidence or notes to his chest and wandered away to find better things to do.

The birds shifted around on their perch to look up at him.

They always looked like they were smiling, excited. Sky and Indie, who had been older, and more elegant than these two, had looked at him like that.

Gavin didn’t walk away. His gaze fixed on Reese, searching for something. He had always avoided Reese’s gaze before, uncomfortable. Now the human stood solidly in front of him, unavoidable.

In fact, he seemed to sense the strange mix of emotions in him. “It’s not a replacement,” he said. “They just… need someone like you, and I thought… well, they are good. I figured they could double as a house-warming gift. I can take them back to the pet store if you’re not ready.”

Reese shook his head, withdrawing into the apartment. “Why don’t you come in?” he invited.

Gavin stepped in, but stood in the entrance hall, looking around at the apartment. “It looks great,” he said, but Reese could tell the human was lying. Could he sense the emptiness here? The silence?

“Have you named them?” he asked.

Gavin squinted into the cage. “I think that’s the one I call ‘Stop It.’”

“Stop it!” the bird trilled cheerfully.

“Yeah, that’s him. The other one is sort of ‘You!’ or ‘Hey!’ depending on what comes on first.”

There was a strange fondness in the human’s face, and he had been slightly overfeeding the birds. For all his gruff words, he was gentle as he stuck a finger through the bars and wriggled it around until Stop It latched onto his finger gently, the parakeet clearly enjoying this little game.

“You can visit them,” Reese said suddenly, on an impulse he couldn’t quite understand. Even Reed looked surprised by the offer.

“Okay,” he said. “Yeah. I’d… like that. I’ll see you at work on Monday, right? Are you coming back to Homicide?”

Reese shrugged. “I haven’t… decided yet.”

Gavin reached across the distance between them to pat his shoulder. It was awkward, just a little too much distance kept between them because the Reed he had known had hated to have an android stand in his personal space. “If you do come back,” the human said, retracting the contact when Reese just stood there. “It’ll be different.”

“I know,” Reese said.

Reed nodded, but he looked... sad. “Okay, well I’m late. Do you have everything you need for them?”

“I’ll figure it out,” he said, "I had to go shopping anyway."

Detective Reed half-shrugged, and Reese could hear his heart beat pick up a few places as the human worked up the courage for whatever he was going to ask. When the question did come, he was still surprised by the waver of uncertainty in the detective's voice. "Are you... Okay?" the detective asked.

Reese blinked. "Fine," he said, then shook his head. "You should go. You don’t want to keep her waiting.”

Gavin nodded, but he made no move to leave. “What if I fuck it up?” he asked. “I don’t even know what we’re going to have to talk about.”

Reese stared at him. “Are you asking me for relationship advice?”

“Fuck off,” the human said with a nervous grin. “Whatever. I can improvise. Okay, so you’re good.” He paused and looked into the cage, “They’re good, and… I’ll see you Monday.”

He walked out and closed the door behind him, waving a small, awkward goodbye as he went.

###

Reese set the cage down on his bed. The birds, green and yellow with bands of black feathers whistled and chattered eagerly, excited to be in a new place. Nervous, but curious. “Well, first you need new names,” he told them.

“Fuck!” the bird chirped cheerfully at Reese.

“Fuck!” Stop It agreed.

Reese smiled. He closed his eyes and unfolded the mesh. A hundred minds, a thousand channels grasped at it. They had been waiting. He reached out along the web of connections, the hundreds of connections being made, androids searching for their displaced loved ones, sharing information about the safety and danger of their city.

“North?”

“Yes?” she answered instantly, with that touch of fear and hope she always had now, the one he had to work on erasing. He had hurt her, he knew, the kind of hurt that was hard to forgive, and yet she feared his anger, would never be sure that the Reese who had ended his life would have wanted to be awakened again.

But he knew, the Reese who had died, had been trapped. He had died so that another one could live free.

“Look at what Reed just brought me.”

##END##

Chapter Text

I promise this is the last chapter update. I just wanted to say thanks for reading, which I normally do after bash-writing a fic. I meant to do it earlier, but spent yesterday just sleeping and recovering. This was tough, but fun to write and I am so blindingly ecstatic at how it’s been received. How it’s STILL being received. I can’t even with anything.

AND IN TRUE FANDOM FORM! FANART HAS SPRUNG! Here: Look at this gorgeousness. Weep. I wept. It’s by ‘CV’ who says that they aren’t an artist and declined to provide an artist profile, but… I mean… look at this. I HAD TO SHARE! (And I hope this looks alright on everyone's screen. My HTML is not strong...)

I’d like to thank my editor Spartaness. That is a lot of work and the effect it has on a reading experience is immeasurable. I tip my hat, m’beta. It's lovely to be working with you.

Thanks to everyone who commented and supported the writing of this fic. There are many I would like to thank in name, but I'm terrified I'd leave someone out. I know I’ve thanked you over and over in my replies, but it will probably never feel like enough. It was so much fun to interact with you while I was writing and I hope I see you all around for a long while to come. This has probably been the most interactive fandom I've EVER had the pleasure to write for and with. These past 2 weeks have been a real experience.