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North kisses his cheek before he leaves. Her lips are cold, and she withdraws stiffly.
“Be careful,” she says. There’s weight to it, and a warning in her eyes: If it comes down to you or her, pick you. Come back to me.
He can’t agree to that, so he doesn’t. “I’m always careful,” he says, which doesn’t mean I’ll come home safe. It means I’ve already made my choice, and you know it.
She looks angry. But she doesn’t say anything; she just turns away.
He wants to reach out to her. His fingers twitch at his sides. He wants to say, This meant something to me. He wants to say, You’re enough for me. But he’s not a liar anymore, so he just goes.
He meets up with a woman near a dilapidated train station outside the ruins of Detroit, defunct now in the wreckage of the failed android revolution. Her hair is darker than he remembers, brown now instead of platinum blonde; he guesses that she must’ve dyed it in an effort to make herself less recognizable. She wears sunglasses and an ash-gray peacoat, a black umbrella keeping the snow off of her chestnut hair and slender shoulders.
“Thank you for coming,” she says.
That doesn’t merit a response. She knew he would come. “Do you have a plan?”
“Of course.”
She tells him the plan. He’s not impressed.
“This isn’t a good idea,” he tells her. “You should let me go alone.”
“Lottie is my responsibility.” She shifts slightly, Connor’s reflection in her sunglasses wavering with the motion. “I told her I’d come back for her.”
There’s no more arguing with her. He nods. “I’ll try to get you both home safe.” He tries not to think about how he couldn’t make any such promise to North.
“I have faith in you,” she says, with a hint of something not quite amusement, not quite disillusionment.