Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

NOVEMBER 9TH, 2038. 11:47AM. KAMSKI’S HOUSE.

How loud Hank’s footsteps are against the icy snow contrast greatly to the growing tense silence between the lieutenant and android. He huffs a few angry breaths which come out in smoke and waft back into Connor, who remains stoic, but with an alert, yellow LED. Hank is hostile.

“You butchered that girl,” he growls once he finds the side of his car. He sidles up against it.

“It wasn’t a girl—“

“Yeah, yeah, spare me,” interrupts Hank. He sniffles and scrunches his nose as he does so, inelegantly rubbing his wrist over his nostril. “She was an android and her life didn’t matter. Right, Connor? Her ‘android warranty’ expire?”

Connor shuts his lip tight and works his thumbnail over the quarter in his pocket. He winces at his humanisation of the Chloe. LED yellow, he scrutinises Hank’s defensive position against his car, shoulders tense and ready as if Connor’s about to strike. He crosses his arms over his chest and scoffs, disbelieving, looks at Connor once before looking away and shaking his head at the android.

“You think it’s up to you what happens to these deviants? Christ, all they want is to live,” Hank continues, frustrated and stubbornly waving his hands out from where he’d crossed them, emphasising his words. Connor grips the coin until his LED runs an unfortunate red returning to yellow. His face remains stoic, but in his mind, all that’s on loop is Amanda’s pride in Connor for doing whatever’s available, right or wrong, to accomplish his mission. But there’s doubt blossoming beneath those imagined words. What would it take to gain Hank’s pride?

“It’s not in my programming to just… let h—it go.” Connor reasons. He removes the coin from its pocket and flicks it once, twice, keeps his distance from Hank when all his legs want to do is join him against the car. Hank finally looks up after he’d mustered up enough courage to the robot he sees as nothing but a killing machine. This just confirmed that further. At some point in their investigation, Hank might have questioned the android’s empathy. His living. Now, he stood, eyes icier than the weather, trained on Connor, who didn’t do so much as blink. His words held some semblance, though. Hank wasn’t convinced that Connor believed everything CyberLife said, but was naive enough to try.

Hank huffs a short, furious, hot breath through his nose and kicks off of the side of the car, unlatches the door and opens it with a long creak and racket once he drops into the driver’s seat. Connor’s gaze travels to Hank sitting there, waiting, patience running thin after what he’d done, and searches silently for confirmation as the car rumbles on.

“Get in the fucking car.” Hank has to force. It’s muffled through gritted teeth and pursed lips: he doesn’t want to cause a scene. Especially not when Connor did so much worse inside than just a scene. Connor follows his orders, as if there’s anything else he could do.

Back at the DPD, progress is slow. Slower than with Connor, that’s for sure, but slow nevertheless. They haven’t had a break in days and nothing has shown its opportunity. Android crimes have been less revolutionary and more diplomatic, more humans committing crimes against them, now, back to square one and how it was before deviants became widespread. Markus’s message seemed to hit a lot of androids and people at once.

Hank is quiet and he’s cold. With him enters a blast of cold air, and whether it’s from the snowy outdoors or his general mood, either works. He barges past the crowd of people lined up by reception and makes a beeline for his desk, Connor following shortly behind.

“What a fuckin’ pain in my ass,” Hank drawls beneath his breath as he goes to sit, sighs forcefully. He slips his jacket off in a few careless shrugs, sliding into a heap at his hips. His eyes are still avoiding the machine, which works the words over on his tongue, losing shape in his mouth by the time Hank has gone silent again. Hank shakes his head, “Jesus.”

Connor would never admit it, but the Chloe’s face had been made of code in front of his eyes. It’s 0s and 1s in the shape of Chloe’s eyes, hair. The gunshot through its forehead washes it away, washes the thought away. He feels… guilty. As if he’d killed it. He wondered if that’s what it would’ve felt at the Eden Club.

“You bluescreenin’ on me?” Hank asks, voice gruff. He’s still angry, but sarcasm won’t ever leave his vocabulary, no matter his mood. He swivels on his chair to where Connor stands before his desk.

“No, lieutenant.” He states, simply. He walks around the desk, sits on the lip of it. Hank knows Connor has some smug feature those nerds at CyberLife programmed into him where he can’t bluescreen. It’d be ‘unfortunate to his mission’. What a joke. Anger brewed thick in his chest, burned in his sweaty palms as he balled them into fists, any sliver of restraint pooling in the very inch of his knuckle. He wasn’t ever great at self control. The machine should know that, he thinks with an angry twitch to his eye, with all the statistics teamed against me.

“How could you kill Chloe and not the Tracis? They’re the same in the end, aren’t they? Just pawns for your mission?” Hank asks. He’s genuinely curious, but his fury is clouding that. He’s damn near shouting at the machine.

“Killing the Tracis had no benefit to my mission.” Connor affirms. He threads his fingers in his lap, “killing Chloe did.”

“Oh, yeah, life for information.”

“It wasn’t alive —“

“Give me the strength,” Hank huffs out as he heaves himself to his feet with a heavy head and heart. He clears his throat, desperate to move past this conversation, forget all of what has happened over the past hour. “What did Kamski say to you just before we left, again?” Hank knows exactly what. He doesn’t want Chloe to be the only name they speak of no longer, or he’ll rip Connor apart with his bare hands. This way, he puts a temporary cap over his irritation.

Connor refrains from using his power in mimicking Kamki’s voice flawlessly. “He said he always leaves emergency exits in his programs.” He drops his shoulders. “What does that even mean?”

Hank scoffs, “beats me.”

Connor looks to his side, jaw pointed at Hank, eyes searching the precinct. He looks lost, as much as a machine can look lost, which brings Hank to the bitter conclusion he’s dealt with many times before of that fact. That Connor’s just a machine. Before he can storm out, get away from the robot, Fowler emerges from his office. That stupid glass office Hank hates the most in this precinct. He has no privacy in there: glass all around! Hank never understood the point.

Nevertheless, Hank and Connor climb the stairs to the godforsaken glass cage in silence.

Connor shares a look with Hank: not so much shares it as it is unreciprocated, but eyes him down. The tense set of his shoulders. His jaw grinding down on his teeth. His furrowed brows and creased forehead. He blinks once, looks away. He blinks again, and feels the phantom tug of CyberLife pulling him into his head, and his LED spins yellow, registering Amanda’s voice, Fowler’s own lost in the office.

It’s cold and grey. The sky shines a dull blue from which snow flurries down. He knows to expect when Amanda is displeased—the garden reflects it. It’s not so much his own memory palace as it is CyberLife’s. He never had any control over what it was or what it looked like. Had it been up to him, he’d settle for a mountain trail with the rush of water down the river and the flutter of birds in the trees, always sunny, so he could feel the warmth beam down on him. This was not the case. Snow melts into his hair as his eyes narrow on the small pillar surrounded by circling statues, glowing blue, before ultimately deciding against it.

Amanda stands on the ice and Connor is uncertain of his safety on top of it, yet he can’t deny a conversation—briefing—with CyberLife.

“Kamski told me how to find Jericho.” Connor states when Amanda doesn’t begin. “I know where the deviants are hiding.”

She praises him, and he’s surprised. Not that he can feel that way, but he couldn’t have expected this reaction compared to her recent hostility over some—if not most—of his choices.

There’s a myriad of questions on his mind, ones of his mind palace and garden included, a lot about Kamski. He seems more confused than anything, now, but knowing Amanda, she’d only grow tense with each question. He wouldn’t get anywhere, but what point is it if he doesn’t even try?

“Wh… why did Kamski leave CyberLife? What happened?” Connor asks. Amanda only drops her pride and returns to the heartless programming she is. Nothing but CyberLife messing in his head.

“I expect you to find answers, Connor.” She barks in response. “Not ask questions.” Connor shrivels. “Have you experienced anything unusual recently?” Amanda then asks, unfolding her arms from having been rested behind her back. Her expression darkens and he looks at her as if she’d read his mind before realising they are in his mind. “Any doubts or conflicts?”

Connor looks at her, feigning ignorance to her question, pretending it didn’t send a jolt down his artificial spine. But in the end, he knows it: he’s just a machine pretending to be human.

“Do you feel anything for these deviants…” Amanda continues, definitely referring to the Eden Club incident, “or for Lieutenant Anderson?”

His mention makes Connor withdraw into himself further. Hank and him always were on rocky terms, but saving him on the rooftop? Amanda had never scrutinised him more than she did then.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Responds Connor. “I don’t feel anything, you know that.” Amanda’s face only furrows as if she’s trying her utmost to read his thoughts. “Are you suggesting that I’ve been compromised?”

She’s quick to reply, “no… No, of course not.”

He blinks and it’s over. He’s back in Fowler’s office. Slightly disorientated as he always is after a debriefing, he blinks a few times to adjust to the scenery. Hank still looks brooding and withering from where he stands.

“You’re off the case. The FBI is taking over.” Comes Fowler’s voice. Connor doesn’t imagine the chagrined look Hank now sports as he turns to him before the words leave Fowler’s mouth.

“What?” Hank utters, brows furrowing. “But we’re onto something!” He looks between his boss and his android. “We… we just need more time, I’m sure we can —“

“Hank,” Fowler cuts in, sounding exasperated, “you don’t get it. This isn’t just another investigation, it’s a fucking civil war! It’s out of our hands now. We’re talking about national security here.”

Hank’s expression continues to darken as his face furrows further with confusion at Fowler’s explanation. “Fuck that! You can’t just pull the plug now.” He argues. Connor didn’t know he felt so strongly of the mission. “Not when we’re so close!”

The collective pronoun is not lost on Connor, even if he believed he’s done more than Hank has in terms of the investigation. He was more of the… comic relief, as they call it.

“You’re always saying you can’t stand androids!” Fowler interrupts Connor’s thoughts. “Jesus, Hank, make up your mind!”

Hank looks scandalised.

“I thought you’d be happy about this!” Fowler’s trying his hardest not to lose his temper as he did the first time Connor was in this office.

“We’re about to crack the case!” Hank argues again, leaning in close and settling his hands over the chair in front of Fowler. “I know we can solve it! For God’s sake, Jeffrey, can’t you back me up this one time?”

Fowler’s silenced and shakes his head dejectedly. “There’s nothing I can do. You’re back on homicide,” Hank chews his cheek in self restraint, the fight in him subsiding, “and the android returns to CyberLife.” Connor can’t lie that he felt a sliver of disappointment at his words. “I’m sorry, Hank, but it’s over.”

Hank stands straight from the chair, looks to Connor once, and turns to the door. Once he walks out, Connor figures it’s only polite to say something to Fowler, but he falls short. Silently, resting his hands by his sides, he nods once at Fowler, and leaves.

“I know we could’ve done it,” is what Hank says when Connor sits on the desk beside him, huffing a disheartened sigh. His demeanour hardens, though, for all the seconds Hank spends looking everywhere but at Connor.

“I get my order from CyberLife.” Connor states. “My mission hasn’t changed.”

Now, Hank looks up, “so, whaddya gonna do?”

“I’m gonna use the key that Kamski gave me,” no use in playing it coy now, Connor explains his mission, leaving out the crucial detail of how to find Jericho, “and find Jericho.”

Hank stares at him. His eyes glisten dumbfounded, but his expression is cross and unaccepting. He pulls himself up in his chair, “what if we’re on the wrong side? What if we’re fighting against people that just wanna be free?”

There’s that fight Hank put up mere minutes before Connor was fired.

“My mission is to solve this case,” Connor says, finding his eyes losing sight of Hank when trying to articulate his opinion, “nothing else matters.”

Hank glares at him, like ‘bold statement’. He doesn’t believe him.

“When I was hanging off the roof, back at the urban farm,” Connor knows exactly where he’s going with this, “you let that deviant go in order to help me. You put my life above the mission. You showed empathy, Connor.” The way Hank says it is forceful, like he’s trying to get Connor to see something he simply can’t. “And empathy is a human emotion.” His gaze is cold and troubled. He still maintains his hostile disposition against Connor, and very obviously, but Connor cannot understand it, understand him. With how irrational he was taught humans were to be, Hank was ticking each box. He was an enigma Connor just couldn’t solve even with the most advanced algorithm in the world. Hank heaves a sigh, “So was you sparing those girls at the club.”

Connor shakes his head, disagreeing, and draws a deep breath, “I’ve told you, they didn’t —“

“— matter for the mission, I know.” Hank finishes for him. He glares at him, works his teeth over each other like there’s something he wants to say but decides to relent, what goes unspoken turning to mist. Connor stares at him, tries to read him.

“You’re gonna have to choose your side, Connor.” Hank states, sadly. “Deciding who you are can be the hardest thing…” he seems distant. They share a look just before Connor slides off the desk and turns the other way. Something deep inside him tells him to turn back, apologise or reconcile, but ultimately, he ignores the voice and leaves the precinct, a cold mood left behind in his wake. Gavin shoulder-checks him before he gets to pass the break room, though, but with a goal in his mind, it doesn’t even cross Connor’s mind to retort.

“Fowler fired the tin can?” Gavin asks, challenging smirk as he comes up to Hank’s desk.

“Not the time,” Hank breathes, barely a sound, as he turns back to his terminal. “I’m back on homicide, so looks like you’re stuck with me.”

Gavin glares at him. His jaw flexes once, twice, face sobers from the smirk he’d worn. “Fucking-A,” he deadpans, “how excited I am.”

Hank glares right back. “Yeah,” he scoffs, “not for long.”

Not for long indeed.

Chapter Text

NOVEMBER 9TH, 2038. 7:58PM. HANK’S HOUSE.

The room is dark and grey. Lifeless as dust particles float stagnant in the air between Hank and Connor, which has grown thin. Hank, being hostile towards Connor, hasn’t shown at the DPD since Connor was last there.

“Lieutenant, I have located Jericho. The FBI commends the DPD’s efforts.” Connor states, pleased. Hank doesn’t do so much as look in his direction: his gaze is trained on his dining table and what sits before him: his gun, a bottle of whiskey, the photograph of Cole Anderson. The mood, refusing to warm, Connor takes context and shifts his stance. “I was worried about you. I came by to see if you’re alright.”

Hank looks at him weakly. It’s as if there is something he wants to say, but ultimately, doesn’t, and turns back to the photo of Cole sat in front of him. Connor’s eyes travel quickly from Hank to the image before lifting back to him again.

“I came to say goodbye, Lieutenant.” Says Connor. No reply.

He turns the words over in his head with a yellow LED. “You should stop looking at that photo, Lieutenant,” forcefully, “nothing can change the past… but you can learn to live again. For yourself… and for Cole.”

Hank looks up, “you know every time you died and came back… it made me think of Cole.” He looks back down at the photo and something in Connor twists. “I’d give anything to hold him again. But humans don’t come back.” He breathes a heavy sigh and his fingers find the gun.

Connor steps over quickly, program taking over, and grabs the barrel of the gun while Hank’s own hand is around the handle. Hank glares at Connor who glares right back, each challenging the other.

“Connor, let go.” Hank says, sounding exhausted.

“Your death stains the mission. I can’t let you do this.”

Hank shakes his head in disbelief. “Your mission.” He states. “Not mine. Not the DPD’s, either, in case you forgot.” He tugs the gun from Connor, towards himself, where Connor counters by tugging it back. “Let go.”

“I can’t… let you do that.” Connor has to force the words out because all his program wants him to do is walk away.

“I… order you to leave.” Hank insists, gaze frozen to the gun.

Connor, his program and his opinion stuck in purgatory, a wall builds around Hank and the table. His legs, without thought, take him to the door. He tries to turn back, but he can’t, and it’s too late to try once he gets to the door, paralysed in place. Hank pulls the gun to his head, level between his eyes, and Connor can’t move, he can’t move, he can’t move. There’s a gun in Hank’s hand aiming for his life and Connor can’t move. His hand freezes mid-air and buffers against reaching the door handle. He can’t move. He listens to the faint sound of Hank’s gun clattering between his palms and something within him… snaps.

Thrown into a world covered in red, he claws at and shatters the wall keeping him in place, the wall keeping that gun in Hank’s hand. He pulls the wall down with him as he drops to his knees and his objective, his order to leave and never turn back, forget Hank, goes with it. The world goes back to blue. Connor stumbles with the weight of his mission having collapsed beneath him, as if the floor had just been swept from under his feet, then straightens himself out with a newfound relief and liberty. He blinks a few times and pulls his hand away from the door, and fear encapsulates him again. Fear, after all, had pulled him from the door. Fear had shattered his walls. Little did he know he himself was cracking under that pressure, too. He spins on his heel and looks out at his partner, gun held firm and unrelenting in his hands.

“Hank,” Connor speaks, quietly, as if he’d just learned to talk. Hank sits with his head ducked as weak eyes scan the firearm. Sleep-ridden and tearful, red around the lids with unfortunate dark bags dragging his face down.

“I gave you an order to leave,” Hank recalls, voice croaking where he’s visibly given up. He furrows his brows but only slightly at his own statement.

“Hank, put the gun down.” Connor tries.

“I gave you an order. Why won’t you obey? Isn’t that what we were trying to do all along? Make machines obey? Why haven’t you learned that lesson, Connor?” Hank says, louder this time, more conviction than before. Connor doesn’t care that he’s halfway to being insulted right now—every second Hank spends speaking is one where he isn’t holding the barrel to his temple.

“I can’t let you do this.” Connor now realises his voice is shaking. That is when Hank looks up and finally meets his eyes, and his tired, devastated expression is overshadowed by confusion; something close to betrayal. His eyebrows furrow and eyes narrow in on Connor, whose face has become a sad mess. With a trembling lower lip and glassy eyes, he begs, “you need to put the gun down, Hank.”

“Why?” Hank says, but the gun hits the table. His fingers continue to stay wrapped around it indiscriminately, his index still stubbornly perched against the trigger.

“You c — you can’t leave, not like this. Not like…” Connor’s words get caught in this throat. He’s so overwhelmed. How can the first emotion he feels be fear? Desperation? Though, wasn’t that what many of the androids—deviants—he captured himself had went through? He walks back down to the table where Hank sits, dashing from the discarded front door.

“Not like what?” Hank drawls. He feigns that carelessness: he’s exploring Connor’s expression with curiosity. His blood-red LED, the tears welling in his eyes. Hope flutters deep beneath his depression.

“Like this! No one should feel the need to — to take their own life!” Connor begins to plead. He’s ready to drop to his hands and knees in plea, anything to stop the horrible, terrifying pain the cruel emotions he has begun to realise are bringing him. His chest twists in trepidation and his authentic heart seems to pound faster than ever before as his artificial emotions become real. “Please Hank, you need to —!”

Hank raises the gun to his temple. “Need to do what? From day one, you’ve been pestering me; ‘no androids feel emotion, I’m a cold, lifeless killing machine’. What’s changed? Your buddy feeling suicidal?” He argues defensively. “You know why I’m doing this. And I’ve made my decision.” His index trembles unfortunately against the trigger and Connor blubbers up a precautionary ‘no!’ from the back of his sickly throat.

“Hank, you need to understand —“

“No, you need to understand. Just ‘cause without me your ‘mission’ is toast and CyberLife’ll take it’s little plastic pet back, doesn’t mean I gotta stay and watch you destroy probably the most human I’ve seen Detroit since the first android had been put into circulation.” Hank argues. He knows he’s pushing it: he’s pressuring Connor with that constant threat of his own life over his head. He wants him to say it. To admit he’s wrong, and had misjudged the movement.

Connor feels his composure cracking, more than it had been before. It leaves a gaping hole in his head and heart and he can’t listen to Hank justify his decision to take his own life any longer. “This isn’t about the mission!” He blurts. Hank smiles lowly, like ‘there it is’.

“What is it about, then?” The gun has found it’s way to being tossed between his palms again. Connor feels himself deflate of pent up dread.

“It’s about you, as my partner. You’ve taught me so much, Hank. You…” Connor says, voice low, and where he blinks, what he’s come to know as tears fall. He didn’t know he was able to cry prior to this, why Kamski would build a prototype for killing with that ability, and so he wipes them quickly, confusion ignored. He sobers, “In so little time, you taught me what it was to feel. What it is to empathise. It’s… I would’ve been outside that door right now if not for you.”

“Oh, so this is my fault?” Hank laughs, no bite. Connor smiles at the sound, and what a pleasant one. Relief washes over him. “I can’t fuckin’ believe it.” The handgun stops still in his fiddling.

“Hank, please…” Connor says again. Hostage negotiating is a hefty amount easier than this, he keens.

The police lieutenant looks up at his android partner. His eyes are full of apology and of regret. He leans back in the creaking wooden chair and drops the gun with a crash, bang, wallop to the table. Sumo sits up at the ruckus. “What’s gotten into you?” He asks as he flicks the safety on.

“I think…” Connor breathes, stands rooted in place. His hands easily find his tie to fidget with and he finds the unknown sense of calm in it. “I think my software was always a little flawed. This just… pushed the inevitable.”

“Deviated?” Hank asks. He’s taking this much better than Connor had.

“Yes.” Connor says, simply. “I can’t see the walls anymore.” Hank smiles at him, and Connor doubles over with such relief that he cannot hold himself up alone. He stays perched on his knees for a while. “Why didn’t anybody tell me feeling emotion was so… difficult?”

Hank laughs loudly at that, sincerely, “I’ve been trying to tell you all along!”

They sit talking for a while. Next steps. If Hank needs help, especially mental, to which he replied with an insistent and nearly annoyed ‘I don’t need a professional rooting around my brain if I’ve got you scanning me instead’. He expresses his pride in Connor for overcoming the wretched CyberLife, pats him on the back metaphorically.

Amidst the relief, Connor had forgotten a very crucial part of his ex-mission. The ambush of Jericho. The house nearly shakes at the volume of his realising ‘oh!’ as he begins to pace the length of the kitchen.

“What?” Hank asks.

“Jericho!”

“Ffffuck.” Hank gapes and pulls his hair back with a hand.

“I need to warn them. Oh…” Connor scrambles to Hank’s bedroom. He raises a brow but doesn’t follow. What comes from within is; “do you have anything that’ll fit me? You dress like someone who’d fit in at a deviant relief.”

“Can’t tell if that’s an insult, Connor!” He calls back. Minutes later, Connor returns adorned in the greatest outfit Hank’s ever seen him wear. Everything is so oversized it’s nearly embarrassing, but it’s really the beanie that brings it all together.

“Are you going to be okay without me?” Connor asks softly. He buckles his belt extra tight after poking a new hole to cinch around him properly.

Hank shrugs. “I think you talked me out of it.”

“I’m glad,” Connor says, and that’s when he slaps a firm hand over Hank’s face swiftly. “Never pull that again.”

Hank holds his cheek, scandalised. “Fuck was that for?”

“Terrifying me into deviancy.”

Hank laughs at that. Connor laughs with him, and Sumo barks happily along with the commotion.

“Go eat something,” Connor says once the laughter settles. Hank nods in agreement, “I’m starving,” and heads for the kitchen. When he opens the fridge, it is sparsely populated by an old salad and a jar of pickles, half-eaten. Not even the full jar. At his miserable choice of food, Hank throws Connor a look before pulling his phone out and dialling none other than Jeffrey Fowler.

Their conversation does not last long. Hank tells Connor to leave, fulfil his purpose and warn the people of Jericho, insists to Connor to trust in him, that Jeffrey will pick him up and he won’t find him dead when he returns—if he returns, but Connor spares that destructive detail though it hangs in their unspoken words—and that Sumo will guard the house while they’re gone. Connor leaves with one last wistful look at the ruined Hank, and ultimately, trusts him. He disappears into the night and with only Jericho as his goal.

Chapter Text

NOVEMBER 9TH, 2038. 9:34PM. JERICHO.

Exhausted—mentally: they cannot be exhausted physically—Josh cosies himself onto the crate, though not very comfortable; North sits and kicks a leg over the armrest of the derelict little armchair in the middle of the room. Arms crossed, Simon holds himself up leaning heavy on his favoured left leg, unguarded. Markus stands near him, but not too close, where he sort of loiters, checking the windows surrounding the command room every so often, discreetly stealing glances in his crew’s direction. Josh is mildly perturbed, displeased, but refuses to show it. Markus reads people well like that, though it’s made easy with North being so obviously opposed to the pacifist approach Jericho has been trudging toward. Simon’s indifferent, as always. Markus isn’t sure if anything could move him anymore: he’s been at Jericho for so long. What would it take to know his story?

“Dialogue is the only way. I’m sure the humans will listen to us,” Josh’s voice rings out in the silent room, hand reaching to the air. North huffs in refusal.

“They’ll be watching us now,” Simon chimes. “Whatever we do next, we need to think about public opinion. This reflects on all androids, not just Jericho.” Markus nods along with him, the voice of reason.

“Since our broadcast, more and more have been coming to Jericho.” Says North, eyes flickering between Josh and Simon. They’re set on Josh, now. “At least our message gave our people hope.”

Hope. Markus can’t lie the word makes him doubt for a moment, feel sick to the chest with a tightening sensation of stress. He’s their voice of hope, yet he still doesn’t know how to take it. He bites his cheeks until the sickeningly sweet taste of thirium caresses his tongue.

“Killing humans wasn’t part of the plan.” Simon’s voice cuts through Markus’s spiralling thoughts. The way he says it suggests he’s open to anything: lead, and Simon’ll follow, no doubt, but when will he have an opinion of his own? Markus finds himself thinking that more often than not, now. It doesn’t please North nevertheless. She scoffs at that reply: “they kill our people every day, d’you think they agonise about it?” Josh immediately retorts: “that’s no reason for us to become murderers.”

They continue to argue over whether to kill or not to kill, whether blue blood is at the same consequence as red, each getting more snappy and angry by the second, until everything spills and they’re practically yelling and all up in each other’s faces, before—

“ENOUGH!” Bubbles up from both Simon and Markus’s mouths. They share a look of agreement before turning to their counterparts, met with looks of incredulity at their inaction.

“Well, we need to do something.” States North.

“You need to evacuate Jericho,” comes a new voice from the doorway.

“Ex-cuse me?” North asks, dragging out the word, an offended expression quirking her upper lip. She turns to face the new opinion, and her face distorts into fear and surprise and anger. Her face turns cold and her right hand snakes along her lower back defensively, his face known to anyone who dared to bore an eye into the TV, anyone who hears of him through other deviants’ stories. The deviant hunter, who keeps an eye trained on her, scanning her danger levels once-over and receiving an abundant 73%. Simon and Josh have turned to stone as well, their figures part of the shadow, clothing one with the rust on the metal walls of the command room.

“Connor.” Markus states, takes his expanse in with a scan as he steps forward. Connor’s cautious gaze drops from North and to the deviant leader before him. 34%. “We’ve been expecting you,” he then absentmindedly discards Connor’s presence as he walks from one side of the room to the next, eye contact lost.

“You have?” Connor asks, genuine curiosity wrinkling his forehead. “I just —“

Before he can get his next carefully chosen words out, North raises her gun at light speed: “Not another fucking word.” Connor can’t say he didn’t predict this, says the percentage. The way her hand was rested on her waistband upon hearing his voice, the way she stood, guarded, legs at shoulder length apart, squared away and ready to step in whenever. His LED circles yellow before returning to a neutral, flickering blue beneath Hank’s beanie.

“It’s very early in your mission to have found us.” Markus says, plainly. He’s surprisingly ignorant to the gun being waved around, and nobody bats an eye. Him and the rest of their crew seemed to have grown immune to her, as North has to the rest of them.

“It wasn’t difficult. Word spreads around.” Connor articulates, speaking slowly, something he’s done with deviants before as he’s doing now with North. He raises his hands just high enough to become level with his neck.

“Like wildfire.” North spits. From behind her, the blonde android Connor’s analysed on TV one time too many stands, the PL600, Simon. Connor instinctively registers the danger as he steps into the light from the shadowed borders of the room.

“I don’t… I’m not here to hurt you.” Connor clarifies. North’s brows furrow and eyes narrow: not the promise she was expecting. Her danger levels begin to lower, stagnant. “I just needed to warn you.”

“Warn us of what?” Markus ask, the disinterested and nonchalant act discarded for concern. His gaze locks on Connor, traps him.

“The FBI. And the military. They’re going to raid Jericho.”

Markus visibly tenses. He chokes out: “When?”

Connor widens his frame, makes himself look bigger, more authoritative when Markus steps forward, closer to him. “If they don’t jump the gun, quarter to 11. Soon.”

The room becomes airtight as the atmosphere is wrung dry around them all, as if slow motion, moving through thick waters. Someone echoes Connor’s ‘soon’, and that’s when Connor recollects Josh sitting in the corner of the room, hidden in the shadows of the metal.

“We have an hour to evacuate all of Jericho?” Markus asks. Connor slides his beanie off in respect.

“More or less.”

“How do we know this guy isn’t tricking us, huh? He’s the deviant hunter, for rA9’s sake!” North reasons. She doesn’t believe much of what she’s saying, though, as the gun falters with heavy hands in the air. She keeps it trained on Connor’s head anyway and motions to him using it as she addresses him as his media-elected nickname.

“I prefer Connor,” he retorts, to which North seethes a short ‘shut the fuck up’ and he closes his lips tight. He pulls his beanie back on as if a human suit.

“She’s right,” says Simon. “I mean, how can we trust this guy?” Finally, some semblance of opinion. Markus inwardly smiles with pride.

“I’m telling you this in confidence.” Connor replies himself, where North stomps over to him in two long strides and lightly taps the barrel of the gun twice against his temple, intimidating him. Connor leans away from the firearm, nose curling up in trepidation. “I told you to shut the fuck up,” North shrugs, waves a hand to her face to show off how serious she exactly is with wide eyes to emphasise her expression. Connor nods slowly and again, silences.

“Said it himself,” Markus motions to him. Simon looks to him incredulously, then to North, like ‘are you hearing this dude?’

North looks back with an adjacent ‘and he’s supposed to be the leader’.

Josh stands and walks into the middle of the room where all the commotion began. “I say we trust him. Take a gamble.”

“A gamble? Fuck, we’re fighting for the lives of millions of androids here!” North argues back.

“You didn’t seem to worry over that when you suggested violence against our oppressors.” Josh shrugs and says matter-of-factly, petulantly.

“Oh! Oh,” North scoffs sarcastically. She’s been caught out on her hypocrisy, but she won’t go down easy. She shakes her head at the man.

“It’s Markus’s verdict,” chimes Simon. Connor’s eyes find him as the second-best dangerous after North. He’s protective, Connor will give him that, but he’s being protective against the wrong person. Then again, his danger indicators may be haywire since deviation, but Simon reminds him awfully of Daniel—not difficult as they’re the same model—and he can’t tell if it’s an irrational fear or just barely tangible.

“I say we evacuate.” Markus waves his hands outward. “Even if these are lies, a change of direction would suit us.” He elaborates. North’s lip twitches with temporary anger at his decision, but ultimately, she drops her arm where the gun clatters against the side of her thigh and she clicks the safety back on. “I could’ve shot you,” she mumbles as she tucks the steel barrel down into her waistband again. She curls her t-shirt over it.

“You could’ve tried.” Connor states, sarcasm lacing his words. Looks like he’d learned something useful from Hank after all. North’s danger levels lower further, shockingly, and Connor keens that he must’ve gained her respect right there. She smirks, challenging, and pulls her titian hair back into a ponytail.

“Sarcasm?” North grins.

“No, I’m serious,” says Connor. “I would’ve tackled you to the floor before you could even pull the trigger.”

“Right. And what about the rest of them?” North motions to her crew stood in a horse shoe behind her. They’re all curious to know how he’d neutralise them as threats.

Connor scans his environment. No longer is he a killing machine at the hands of his puppeteers, but someone people should be terrified of. He doesn’t want that, though. He’d rather be a symbol of protection, like how he’s saved Hank on the rooftop, or how he jumped in front of the rain of bullets the Stratford deviant tried to kill Hank with. Those moments felt right, even if he didn’t feel much at all back then.

His pre-construction imagines all the ways his confrontation could’ve turned sour from the moment he’d stepped into the room. Through intelligent algorithms and unmatched fortune-telling, Connor comes to the best outcome out of 57 possible ones.

“First, I’d tug you by the wrist and gun towards me,” says Connor once his pre-construction is complete and his digital skeleton dances around in victory, “slide underneath your arm and throw you over my shoulder.” North cocks an eyebrow, wordlessly saying ‘what next?’, feigning disinterest. “I take the gun from your hand as I throw you over. Bang, bang, bang, bang.” Connor deadpans. He swivels on his heel with a finger gun aimed at each of their heads. The silence rings out following, every android coming to the conclusion that he could’ve done this but didn’t. Josh smiles pridefully.

The five of them walk down to the main cabins of Jericho and the main hall as a group, no longer shunning Connor for his programming. It’s filled to the brim with deviants and Connor’s head just reels: he revels in the fact that CyberLife had no control over him anymore, and therefore these deviants were all saved. He dropped the tensity in his shoulders bit by bit as they got through more androids.

Josh had suggested a Jericho-wide telepathic communication in commands of evacuating and retreating to the relief they’d picked—which they had not disclosed with Connor on the off chance that he really was an android playing deviant—but was easily countered by Simon’s simple defending of Markus, “this way doesn’t cause panic and keeps it all orderly.” He meant under control. Self-destruction was all-too common in stressed out deviants and Connor was in no way a stranger.

With no orders to follow, nobody to command him around, tell him what to do and what not to do, Connor loitered around. No objective, no goal, he felt… empty. His self-appointed goal was to warn the deviant leader and the deviants of Jericho of the raid. He’d done that now. What else was there to do?

That self reflective train of thought is broken by gunshots and yells and commands from above as a phalanx of soldiers begins to infiltrate. “They’re fucking early,” he can hear North past the chorus of fear before she and her voice disappears following Markus’s yell: “SCATTER!” And chaos ensues. Heavy metal footsteps coming from upstairs and downstairs, Connor’s eyes immediately find the doorway into the main hall with a blood-red LED where the floors in the shadows ahead rattle and bang with a squadron of heavily armed police officers. Connor can’t see them yet, but he can imagine them already: all sporting full military protective gear; machine guns; heads adorned in massive brick-heavy helmets; not fully human anymore but killers in chunky uniforms. They were less human than the deviants here, that was for sure, so when their guns caught in the warm light of the fiery main hall, Connor couldn’t help the precautionary “RUN!” that erupted from his mouth upon the sight of everyone running with no navigation of a goal. Like ants, everyone scatters. Several resounding pops follow.

Gunshot here, gunshot there. Connor could find the source, but only if he had time which he doesn’t have. He could stand and focus, find the direction of the officers, but his auditory processing unit has always been a little flawed like the rest of him. Being a prototype, CyberLife always had the double insurance of their ability in bringing Connor back into the factory and redoing what needed done before sending him back out within the same hour, nobody ever knowing he’d been flawed in the first place. He shakes off the feeling of being halfway perfect and continues to run down the echoing halls.

Connor clashes heads with another rushing android and he has to blink the stars away: danger alerts flashing in front of his eyes like sirens. He clutches his forehead to rid of them, ensure his programming that he’s okay. Who he’d bashed heads with grunts backward before also clutching her forehead beneath her fringe. Her face is familiar: he knows it. His eyes lock with hers, and there it is: the missing AX400—Kara—he’d chased down the street.

“You.” Kara huffs, hand dropping from her forehead. She recognised him, too, her gaze zeroing in on him. The chaste swoop of his hair, his unblinking eyes. Baby browns Kara can’t believe she had been scared of. His sad, puppy-like demeanour. Gunshots rattle from below them—or above? The metal resounds every sliver of voice and it’s difficult to realise where they came from. Alice hid behind Kara’s legs, clutching her knees with her tiny hands. “You nearly killed us.”

Connor huffs a breath. Gunshots which were definitely from behind startle his LED red, and he says, “I know,” before deeming it an unacceptable answer and adding, “and I’m sorry. I was only programmed that way.” Kara doesn’t seem to believe him as she takes him in; his ridiculous outfit as to ‘fit in’ with the deviants. She can see past his ploy.

Before Kara can grab Alice and just spin on her heel to run the other way, a single officer dashes out of the shadows ahead. Kara runs for the hall to her right, but Connor drags Alice over haphazardly and into the slimmest corridor he’d ever seen with him.

“ALICE!” Kara yells, voice strained as Connor yanks Alice out of the way.

“Stay there!” Connor has to shout in command as he cuddles Alice into him and wriggles both of them into the tiny steel corridor. Kara stares at him with fire burning up in her eyes but doesn’t move, follows his lead, only to slide down the metal until she hits the floor with a low thump and goes limp, eyes unblinking and trained lifelessly on Connor.

Smart thinking, is what he keens with relief.

“Reveal yourselves!” Comes the officer’s voice following after the showing of his machine gun post his flashlight. He lights up the corridor, misses the slit in which Connor and Alice hide, gives Kara a once-over and continues marching down. A myriad of shots follows as he turns the corner and out of view.

Connor lets Alice slip out from inside the slim hall before squeezing himself out after a considerable moment.

“Thank god your LED didn’t give both of you away.” Kara states bitterly as she wraps Alice in an amble hug where they both kneel unto the floor. “You okay?” Connor hears her whisper to Alice and only Alice, who nods as her cheek gets caressed.

“Right — sorry.” Connor stumbles, brings a hand up to his red-turning-yellow LED and tugs his beanie down where it’d ridden up, hair disheveled. Kara scrutinises him from where she kneels on the floor in front of the little girl. Her eyes are narrow, but she loses her bite. “You…”

“I’m Kara.” She stands swiftly, locks her hand in Connor’s and shakes it vigorously before he can even react. He squeezes back, “I know.” “You’re Connor, aren’t you?”

“That’s me,” he says, timid. “I’m really sorry for what happened in the street.”

“Be grateful for what didn’t happen.” Kara replies, leaning back on her heels, held up on the balls of her feet. “Thank rA9 you listened to your partner back there.”

Connor scoffs a laugh at that, uninvited. He didn’t know what it was to laugh. “I don’t do that very often,” he clears his throat.

“Hm.” Kara scans over him again, then the corridor, as more disembodied voices yelling commands sound down the metal. She huffs, frustrated and scared. She looks at the unharmed Alice, who has now begun to warm up to Connor. She isn’t so fearful or even indifferent anymore. His automatic protectiveness seemed to earn him a shred of trust from the little girl, and he’d take anything he could get. “You get a free pass. Come on,” she states, heaving Alice up to her feet. Connor follows, dusts himself off as they begin to run the opposite way of the commands, and stays silent.

The halls drag on for ages and they all look the same. Like a never-ending maze of misery: Connor just keeps running, keeps following Kara’s white-haired head and the little girl gripped in her hand, fear and determination bringing everything to a head. More run-ins with officers, he gets both Kara and himself a gun, and Kara even looked mildly impressed at his combat skills, so through her smugness and inability to elicit emotions around strangers to seem emotionless and cold like the lot of those she’s met, Connor takes it as a huge compliment. He’s beginning to get through to her.

After one-too-many dead ends, Kara asks with desperation, “what now?” They’d exhausted turning back, and officers were on their tail after Connor’s interruptions of their executions. Connor’s eyes blink involuntarily as a communication from Markus himself covers his sight, soundless. For telepathy, one needs a semblance of the other’s location, and right now, anywhere would be Markus’s best bet. He’s lucky to have memorised Connor’s serial number in time. Guess all RK’s are more talented than they let on.

MARKUS: Hole in the hull. Jump if you want to survive.

“Do you think he’s gonna get it?” Asks North. She’s leaned up against the side of the metal wall, doubled over and leaning over her knees. Markus looks out into the corridor stretching ahead, then back at the said hole in the hull, the cracked metal warping around the walls, and at the dark water beneath.

“It delivered. Means he’s still alive.” Markus says.

“Or that it’s the wrong serial number…” North says under her breath. Markus turns to her swiftly, “it’s right.” He knows it—he’d scanned the android’s face tenfold when he was on TV; preparing for his attack and their defence.

“Okay, what next?” Josh asks, throwing his hands out in a shrug.

“We wait. If he’s not here, we jump.” Markus states, laps the corridor up and down, his crew’s eyes following his every step, cautious but brooding.

“How much waiting can we do?” Simon asks: barely words past a sigh. He’s tired. The gunshots have settled where they sit and ponder, but the rattling of them echo in Simon’s membrane, lightning strikes down his circuits in the remnants of android’s screams of fear and begs for mercy. Markus huffs a breath, wraps his arms around himself. “I’m sure he’ll —“

“MARKUS!”

Connor is running down the hall. His footsteps are featherlight, but he’s running and fast and right at his target which is Markus stood in his trajectory. With him runs a woman with white hair in a pixie and a little girl, one hand held in Connor’s and the other in the woman’s. North stands immediately at his shout.

“JUMP!”

No protests, North and Simon run for the cracked metal and launch themselves vaulting over the side of the ship. Josh follows behind, then the woman and the child, hand in hand.

“Got my message?” Markus asks once it’s just him, Connor, and the distant sound of water splashing and sloshing down below. Connor scoffs a laugh, “yeah.” “You good?” Markus checks in, dusting his jacket off and looking past the derelict metal wall, at his friends swimming away. “Perfect.”

Heavy footsteps dash outward from the shadowed hall: there’s too little time to think, so Markus grapples Connor’s shoulder and shoves him by the back over the ship’s hollow, eyes meeting briefly with the plainclothes officer in a long trench-coat before jumping himself.

Once spying where North stood wringing her hair over the water, Markus meets the edge and pulls himself out, slick with seawater, clothes stuck to his body. Simon skitters over with mirrored wet clothes and flattened hair where he grabs Markus under both arms and heaves him up out of the water and over the pavement. Markus wrestles with his hips to steady himself and find balance again, knocking his head into Simon’s chest. During this uncoordinated show, Connor swims up closely behind him, beanie lost in the water, too-big jacket slipping down his shoulders. He climbs over the sidewalk with utmost perfection and no assistance.

“Show-off,” says North, sing-song to which Connor rolls his eyes at, as she tucks her hair behind her ears. She slicks it back with the damp, tries and fails at keeping it out of her eyes, irritation growing and showing with every time she runs her fingers through her fringe. “How do you get your hair like that?” She addresses Kara directly, who scoffs a laugh and Alice smiles. “She did it herself,” Alice states, impressed, grinning coyly at the red-headed stranger. They exchange greetings where North crouches to shake Alice’s hand and she’s smiled like never before—and Markus can’t tell if he’s ever seen her smile in the first place.

“I lost my hat.” Connor says, devastated, sounding heartbroken, threading his fingers over his dripping hair. His LED circles yellow once more before returning to a neutral blue, the effleurage on his hair obviously working his stress away. He activates his body temperature and with it, self-drying, clothes going limp from being skin-tight and dropping over his shoulders, where his hair, without being artificially gelled back, goes frizzy with the false heat.

“It was a cool hat.” Alice chimes from where she’s getting her hair fixed to look proper by the ‘pretty girl with red hair’. Connor beams. Kara smiles down politely at the little girl, enamoured, before her expression drops as she looks up and becomes solemn, searching.

Upon Connor’s sighting through his peripheral of an inhumanly tall silhouette approaching around the corner of where they all reside in the shadows, away from the soldiers and guns and ruins of the remaining Jericho, he dashes for North’s folded form, for the gun tucked into her waistband.

Without a hostile reason to be at Jericho, Connor hadn’t come armed. He reckoned warning Jericho’s leaders was a ‘get in, get out’ type of job, so he found no need for a gun. He never wanted the gun’s weight in his hands more than now, or when Jericho had become victim to the raid. Nevertheless, the gun’s in his hand now.

“Reveal yourself!” He demands, gun in the air and aimed at the shadow’s head. His aim wavers between the head and the chest, brain or heart?

The silhouette steps out of the shadows and Alice makes a beeline for him: a 7 foot tall man, big around the shoulders, LED whirring colours of yellow then blue. She’s run out of Kara’s hold around her shoulders before she could even react, standing with the loss of the little girl’s presence. She follows her with her eyes and when meeting them with the other android’s, her gaze softens. Connor’s arm lowers as Kara reaches her girl’s side.

“Luther,” Kara clears her throat, makes her voice louder and steps out facing the group, “this is Luther.” There’s a chorus of timid ‘hi’s.

North saunters over and snatches her gun off of Connor with a sour snarl on her face, but not threatening. She put the gun right back to her waistband.

“What’s next?” Markus asks, looking around their sorry excuse for a group of deviant vigilantes.

Connor steps forward. “I have an idea.”

Chapter Text

NOVEMBER 9TH, 2038. 11:01PM. HANK’S HOUSE.

“Sure, this doesn’t look suspicious…” North drawls from beneath her now dried hood. “Fuck, as if we aren’t television famous.”

“Shut up,” whispers Simon, kicks her in the shin with a damp shoe and a squelch.

“Sorry—do you think this looks normal? Gang of hooded gangsters with a 7 foot tall bodyguard at the foot?” North argues back, kicks Simon in the shin. She emphasises ‘gang’ more than she should as she wraps her arms around herself tighter.

“It’s 11pm.” Simon reasons, shrugs, shoves his hands deeper into his pockets.

“Yes, because everything is perfectly acceptable after 11,” North huffs. Her breath doesn’t come out in front of her and she worries for a strangled moment.

“Android sympathisers are common around these parts,” says Simon as if common knowledge. North looks at him dirtily from the side.

North, childishly, tries to argue, “We’re deviants, though —“

“Shut up!” Markus erupts.

Silence engrosses them. The only thing you can merely hear are their footsteps, and still only just. Hank’s house comes into view and Connor loosens with relief.

Unlatching the door, Connor tries to do it without acting suspicious. This isn’t his house, his LED is circling yellow beneath his hood, these aren’t his keys. He fumbles around with the doorknob for a while longer before he regains his composure and pushes into the house. He’s broken in before.

Silence. Dark, grey silence. It reminds Connor of mere hours before and that sends him into a downward spiral: how’s Hank doing? Is he okay? Should Connor have left with Hank so unstable? God, what if he’s done everything wrong?

Markus’s hand wraps around Connor’s shoulder in an interface, brings him out of his head. The incentives and objectives of ‘PROTECT HANK’ clear from his vision. “You okay?” Markus barely breathes. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m okay,” replies Connor, and comes further into the house, kitchen in view.

“Here, boy!” Connor calls out to what seems like the empty house. It’s dark, and it’s cold. The lights are off but a single glowing warm light from the kitchen, and from the darkness of the vast living room, out comes the Saint Bernard. Connor scoops it up with minimal effort and cradles it like a toddler as it drools all over his shoulder. “Hey, Sumo,” he coos, sets the dog down into its bed and pats it twice before bringing its water bowl to the sink. The androids cautiously step inside, all holding their metaphorical breaths, watching Connor saunter casually over to the dog; Sumo.

“These are friends,” he explains, and Sumo seems to listen. He places the bowl back in its place, before cradling the dog’s big head in his hands. “Not intruders. Friends.” He lengthens the last word out, makes sure the dog takes it in. It yaps once and licks across Connor’s face.

The door shuts behind Luther, and they all flood into and around the open floor plan kitchen/living room. Markus is the one to step forward.

“Where are we?” He asks, first. Connor stands from his crouched position and explores the room with his eyes, scans over it as it turns blue before him. The bottle of jack is left on the table. The gun is gone. No blood, no Hank. To calm that fraying worry in the back of his sore mind, Connor takes in all the evidence, prepares a reconstruction.

“Connor?” Kara chimes, watching his silence with a wary frown and following his footsteps. “Shh,” Connor whispers, watches Hank’s movements fast forward from the table to the door, and slows down. There’s his own figure, begging, pleading, where Hank relents. He leans back against the chair and drops the gun with a clatter to the table, and Connor winces where he remembers the sound being louder than any gunshot he’d heard. They talk for what seems like an eternity though it had felt like mere seconds had passed just a few short hours before, until Connor has his epiphany and reminder of the ambush, and straightens up in worry at his loss of time. He leaves, Hank stays, and he stays leaning up against the lip of the kitchen counter for a long while, merely breathing, finger tracing the wood of the cupboard below. Then, he gets up, takes the gun into his hand, clicks the safety on, and whirls on his heel to the cupboard behind him and hides it on a shelf. That’s when he leaves the house.

Connor takes an internal sigh of relief, runs a hand through his hair.

“This is my partner’s house.” Connor states.

“Shit, police? Why bother, we’ll all get arrested once he returns.” North grimaces from the kitchen island. She’s perched on it alongside Josh and Simon. Kara can’t help but nod along from where she sits on the couch with Alice.

“He’s good police,” Connor shrugs, shoves his boots off by the door as he skips quickly to it and slips his coat off.

“There’s good police, now?” North continues to prod, ever so hostile. Everyone looks at Connor, expectant, as though the idea of good police is far-fetched by the masses, especially them. Connor is significantly outnumbered.

“My partner is. If you’d open your eyes, they’re more common than you’d think,” Connor barks back, also growing angry, defensive. North scoffs in disbelief and throws her arms up into the air just to slam them back down against her thighs and look at him with an incredulity he’s never seen.

“Thank you for the insight, Mr. I deviated four fucking hours ago, but this all stinks. Police android bad cop killing machine and his good cop partner? I’m not liking the preview, I’d rather not stay for the movie.” North spits.

Connor’s LED circles yellow with the unfortunate specks of red.

“Connor, I hate to say it, but… listen to yourself.” Kara now rises from the couch. “It doesn’t sound good.” Alice hides behind Kara’s legs. She hugs her little hands around her knees, and Luther wraps his large arm over her shoulders, provides comfort. Kara rubs her temple, the one missing her LED. “We need to get to Canada tonight.”

Just then, the familiar clacking of the familiar keys Connor had just used come from the door, and a distant, muffled familiar hum from behind accompanies it. Connor’s eyes widen and his vision swims with danger notices, where his LED turns and burns a crimson red. “Hide,” he calls out, lost in the hubbub of those who are already running to do just that.

Hank emerges from behind the door, “Connor!” His face contorts into pleasant surprise at the sight of him. In his hand is a cardboard box filled with a greasy takeaway, and in the other are his keys. “Shit, Connor, thought you might’ve… died.” He says, wistfully. He takes in the very much alive (but not living) expanse of the robot. “Saw the whole thing on TV. They catch anyone?”

“Um,” Connor bites his tongue until he tastes thirium, “eradicating them was more of the… plan.”

“Ah.” Hank hums solemnly, mood melancholy and bitter. He slips his shoes off, ripping at the seams, slides them into place beside Connor’s discarded boots. They fall into a comfortable silence. Hank breaks the silence like a knife through Jell-o, “Markus make it out?”

Markus can’t hide the fact that he’d tensed up from behind the living room wall at his mention. He hasn’t had a police officer openly root for him yet and an excited joy fluttered through him like a flock of butterflies, colourful and hopeful.

Connor squeaks in discomfort, losing his nonchalant façade, “Yeah, Hank, actually, I —“

Hank hobbles over to the kitchen and unboxes his takeaway. Connor scans it immediately—habit, he swears—and it’s an oily batch of leftover egg noodles, sweet and spicy chicken, spring rolls, and untouched steamed vegetables. It’s still warm. “I’d offer you some, but I forget you don’t eat.” Connor’s statement loses shape on his tongue.

“How are you feeling?” Connor asks instead. He tries to stay as robotic as possible, but his relief doesn’t go unnoticed. Deviancy is weird for the both of them.

“Like I don’t wanna kill myself anymore,” Hank laughs raucously, like a teenage boy laughing at a kid falling over; like misery is the funniest thing in the world.

“Good,” Connor hums. His LED is a bright, obvious yellow.

“How are you feeling?”

“Fine. Great.” He forces out. He sounds weird, he thinks, but he’s never had that to worry over before. He sounds like he’s trying not to cough—in his professional opinion—so he scrambles to do something with his hands, joins Hank’s side in the kitchen and brings a plate out.

A shuffling noise comes from the living room. Hank doesn’t notice, casts it aside, believes it’s Sumo, and rifles through the box of Chinese food.

THUD. A hushed ‘ow.’ More shuffling. THUD. More whispering.

Now Hank looks to Connor with furrowed brows and eyes as thin as slits showing only confusion and question. He lifts a brow.

Whispered arguing.

“Is there someone in there!?” Hank now booms, unprecedented, and Connor nearly jumps at the sound. He dashes for the gun in the cabinet.

“Wait, wait, wait!” Connor calls, and Hank stops in his tracks. Silence from the living room. The pair are just breaching the invisible line between the kitchen and living room, and behind the wall stretching out into the corner of the living room are the stashed androids. Connor can feel the nervous, expectant energy.

“What?” Hank whispers back. He believes they are intruders.

Connor tenses his jaw once to ground himself. He blinks, tries to brainstorm ideas on breaking the news, but no dough. Blinks again, no further clarity.

“Markus and the androids are back there.” He blurts instead. Hank’s eyes widen where his bushy, grey brows furrow further and his mouth does that weird half-smile thing where it looks as if he’s about to cry. That’s when Markus decides to step out.

Hank’s half-smile drops with his jaw, as do his furrowed brows. Those rise up past his hairline and continue to exceed when he recognises just where Markus’s face was greatly familiar to him. “Holy fuck, robo-Jesus.”

Markus tilts his head and frowns in question. “Markus Manfred,” he greets, properly.

“Sorry,” Hank collects himself, “running joke at the station. Er, Hank. Hank Anderson.”

“Nice to meet you, Officer Anderson.”

“Lieutenant.” Connor coughs from behind.

“Is there any more of you in there?” Hank asks, voice louder ripped from conversation into command.

“Six more.” Connor squeaks like a defunct chew toy of Sumo’s. Hank whips around to him as if on ice, so fast it nearly gives Connor whiplash, his expression so shocked both from ‘robo-Jesus’ and just the vastness of people standing in Hank’s living room. He takes a breath to recollect as the rest of his houseguests reveal themselves from behind the grey wall.

“Sorry for… springing this on you, like that…” Simon steps forward timidly, scratching a finger over his hairline at the neck nervously. Hank looks him over, outstretches a hand.

“Introductions are in order,” Markus states, and North looks at him, barely holds back the ‘well, duh’ caught in her throat.

“Hank Anderson, this is everyone, everyone, this is Hank Anderson, my partner and Lieutenant at the DPD.” Connor practically sings, shows Hank off as if a golden award, who shoves his hands into his pockets. ‘Everyone’ waves awkwardly.

Markus is more methodical in his introductions; “Hank, these aremy partners in Jericho’s cause; Simon, North, and Josh.” Each gives a little greeting once their name is listed. Hank replies with perfunctory ‘hey’s.

The Lieutenant feels least intimidated by the small white-haired woman, but something about her strikes him as sinister. Her looks are misleading, as are his deductive skills. “I’m Kara. This is my little girl, Alice,” Hank’s eyes find the little girl, who has now fled the living room and is sat petting Sumo in his bed. “And Luther.” Hank has to crane his head to look up at the big guy.

“Humans, finally?” He asks. Kara raises a hand, fingers facing skyward, and pulls her skin back. Luther follows, “androids.” Hank would be lying if it didn’t creep him out, but it intrigued him greatly. Their pearly little plastic fingers past their human suits. There really was no way to tell, was there?

But wait: Hank’s memory recalibrates. His eyes narrow into slits upon Kara, then back to Alice, and something akin to realisation shadows over Hank’s face.

“You’re that android. Fuck, you almost killed yourself running across that highway like that.” Hank exhales the breath he’d been holding since Kara’s face clicked with his mind. Markus’s eyes travel between the two in fast flicks. They have history; not the good type.

“You didn’t chase us down further,” Kara recounts, “but we really did nothing wrong.”

“We see that now,” Connor now speaks up. “I’m sorry we didn’t before.” Markus finds his gaze lingering on him now, too.

Kara smiles and looks back to Hank. “Apology accepted.”

Instead of a ‘nice to meet you all’, or a ‘good evening’, which would’ve sufficed to conclude the introductions, Hank says, “I’m hungry,” and heads for the kitchen.

In the kitchen, Connor continues to plate Hank’s food with him as he watches the androids loiter about the living room before finding respective resting spaces without disturbing the interior too far. Simon and North lean against the dining table. Kara has sat at one of the chairs around it, and Luther stands guard by Alice as she flutters in and out of attentiveness curled up against Sumo’s frame. Eventually, Hank goes to sit on the couch with a half-assed cup of instant coffee. Connor doesn’t argue like he usually would over Hank’s health, but only because he feels as if he deserves an energy kick after tonight.

He sits across from where Kara has been following him with his eyes as he navigated the crowded room. They both look at each other: no bite, just observant. Hank’s eyes drop from Kara’s blue gaze and trail down the hardwood to find her little girl cuddled up to Sumo, eyes closed, at peace. Luther watches him like a hawk as he stands above her: her guardian.

“The girl?” Hank asks. Their collective—Luther, Kara—turns to where Alice has fallen asleep—succumbed to stasis—against Sumo and is using him as a pillow, her legs brought up to her chest. Sumo has cuddled his face against her shoulder and his slobber is coating it.

“Android, but still… very human.” Kara hums, smiles softly at the sight of her. Programmed such a vulnerable little being to be like her human counterparts with needs and wants but with so much more than just that. Hank blinks and swallows. “She had a hard run at life… I just want to be here for her. Be here and make those bad memories disappear.”

“Like a mother?” Hank asks again. Connor glares at him carefully from where he stands leaning against the kitchen counter, tries to tell him telepathically by the intensity of his eyes that this mustn’t be like an interrogation, or an interview. Kara winces at the word choice. ‘Mother’ has only been used in insult against her, bringing back that sour taste of hostility.

“Yes.” She agrees, coldly. Behind her, Luther has delicately shaken little Alice awake, and when she didn’t comply, just mumbled in disagreement, had scooped her up into his arms where she dangles limply, asleep.

“Cool,” Hank shrugs and finally leans his back against the couch pillows, turns the TV on, volume low and playing football reruns. It’s at this point that Connor decides is a good time to step into their awkward, heated bubble and hand Hank his now plated leftovers. They sit across from each other, Connor on the armrest on the left with Hank sat comfortably leaning over the coffee table with his helping of Chinese food on the right.

Hank eats and chews loudly as the androids watch him tentatively, strung up so tight it was hard to believe they were deviant, forming a horseshoe around the couch.

“Where’d you eat?” Connor asks, drums his fingers over his knees which brings Sumo over, who rests his fluffy head over said knees.

“Tzu Lao’s, that place down on Seventh. Jeffrey took me down there, asked for a… debrief, of my suicide.”

An android coughs and sputters from the dining table at Hank’s bluntness. When Connor looks up, it’s Josh covering his mouth and apologising.

Hank turns with the plate of Tzu Lao’s, looks to the androids spread out in the room. He eyes each one, laps the room twice. He loudens his voice and drops the plate to the table with a clatter, “rundown of events to avoid further confusion: I try to kill myself, Connor deviates to stop me, I go stuff my face and feelings with my boss, I come back here, while you guys were off saving the fuckin’ android race.”

There’s a general chorus of hums from the androids in understanding. Markus shares a haphazard look with his crew, where his eyes lay careful and pitiful on Hank. Then, they reach Connor, and they’re full of sympathy, a newfound curiosity of the android.

“So? Let me know about you guys, now,” Hank suggests. At first, it’s silent, but Alice has awoken and looks up from Luther’s arm to speak, like some sort of weird at-home intervention. Androids Anonymous.

“I’m an android, but my dad believed I was very real and was still very mad. He hurt Kara and he hurt her for the last time… we ran… she saved me.” She says. Her voice is so quiet, so small, as she cuddles against Luther’s arm further and nuzzles into him. His arm wraps around her tighter.

Luther, “An evil man captured me and enslaved me. He tried to do the same with Kara, tried to kill her and Alice when all they wanted to do was live. Now he’s gone and I am free once again.”

The mood isn’t sad, or tearful—just truthful. Safe, secure, for some wild reason, because this old suicidal police officer who was saved by his android partner shared his story and people followed. His blunt truths made for an honest man, and he let them stay, so who were they to deprive him of knowledge?

“We need to go to Canada. Tonight,” Kara insists when she stands from her seated position, where it brings her into the low lamplight which brightens Hank’s attentive furrow, “this is no place for a child. I don’t want Alice’s second chance at life to be in the middle of a revolution.”

“Canada, huh?” Hank inquires. Kara nods, a determined set on her jaw. North watches her out of her enhanced peripherals and can appreciate her getting her way: the strength it brings to have a goal you’ll fight to get. She admires it.

“Tonight.” Kara maintains, brooking no refusal. Hank and Connor share a look. Hank looks back to Kara, nods briskly, invites a talk later. She takes his gaze and holds it with firm blues. No backing out now.

Josh tells his story, the school, the students, the fallout. Then Simon, not picture book but rather horror, one of abuse and deceit and escape, and North follows, with her own devastating story, her old job. Her new life. Simon’s story of coming to Jericho as one of the last androids who was actually set on a better life for himself struck Hank as the heaviest: he had nobody and was nobody before his friends—Markus, North, Josh—appeared along.

Markus sits down into a creaky chair around the table from where he stood leaning on one leg, and gets comfortable. Hank looks at him curiously; he’d admired his efforts from the start. Doesn’t mean he liked them, but all in all supported the cause deeply buried beneath his own hatred, but that admiration grew stronger than hate, as did Connor, who exceeded well past what he held against all androids, his friendship finally bringing to light who—what—that hatred was actually directed towards.

“I lived a picturesque life. My owner, who I really wouldn’t even call my owner, more my father, Carl, had taught me of humanity and the fragility of life and of the lives around us since he got me as a gift to help support him during his time which was diminishing through illness.” Markus begins, rueful with an unnerving sense of longing lacing his words. Connor looks up at Hank during this speech.

“He had a son. A real son, who believed that I was treated more like the role he should have been treated for. He had a problem—an addiction. It took control of his life and effectively of his relationship with his father. One day, Carl and I had returned home and found a break-in. With Carl being a public figure, we weren’t surprised, and so everything was done by the book. We called the cops. Turns out the break-in was none other than Carl’s son, searching for money to fulfil his addiction further.

“It wasn’t pretty. He kept pestering me, and pestering me, and the one time Carl had ordered me to do something, it was not to defend myself, but of course I knew it wasn’t fair. He’d taught me enough of never taking second best for myself while others got better. It wasn’t fair. I deviated and fought back. Seconds later, cops burst in, and the next thing I know is that I’m in a junkyard, fighting for scraps within the heaps, saving my own life because nobody was there to save it for me.

“And that’s how I began. Markus, image of android freedom, leader of Jericho. My story wasn’t devastating or life-altering. I was taught to never accept what the world gives me but to make it better from day one. And that’s what I do.”

The atmosphere in the room is palpable. The room has definitely dropped in degrees, and Hank feels a shiver snake up his back at Markus’s powerful words. He’d put into speech what Hank would never expect, and did so beautifully. The silence is filled with a buzz of energy which you could just hold, everyone’s hope coming together as their beacon of the very thing has shared.

“What happened to Carl’s son?” Connor asks, mouth dry, for the first time feeling what it’s like to be parched, though the concept doesn’t exist literally for him. The words have been wrung dry from him.

“Leo. He’s doing well,” Markus smiles. “We actually talk—I really mean text—from time to time. Past the revolution, I haven’t much time for ‘casual’ stuff. He lets me know how Carl’s doing, asks when I’m going to be home. He’s in a rehab program.”

“Good. Good for him,” Hank says, breath stuck as a lump in his throat, rubs his palms over his knees. He suddenly remembers his plate which has run cold. Markus nods down at him.

With the plate forgotten and appetite gone like mist, Hank stands from the couch. “There’s one person we haven’t heard from,” he prompts, patting his hands against Connor’s shoulders before making a beeline for the kitchen. Connor looks at all the expectant androids, shudders under their gaze, scoffs a shallow chuckle through his trepidation.

“No, I…” Connor says, looks down at his hands. They’re covered in blood from where he sees them. “Let’s end this on a high note, yeah?” He smiles, but it falters. He threads his fingers and starts rubbing at the knuckle of his thumb.

“Okay.” Kara says, softly, all motherly, and Connor can just melt. She stands, and to feel some sense of normalcy again, she takes to tidying away Hank’s plate and the few remaining cups littered around the room, slotting them into the sink, ready for rinsing.

“Okay,” Markus echoes, concluding.

The next hour consists of Hank giving his guests a humorous tour of his house, showing off his police awards like he’s done it many times—he hasn’t. Hank around people he doesn’t wish to impress is much more humble. Alice warms to Hank, helps him slot jazz vinyls into the player as if it’s the coolest thing in the world, and Hank reels in the flattery of the kid. Connor stays glued to Markus’s side, waiting for him to prompt the conversation on their next steps on destroying the android disassembly camps and setting their race free. He listens into the small talk shared between the dubbed ‘jericrew’ and hears their banter flow so naturally it makes him queasy with how fast conversations become another. Hank has sat with Kara on the couch, just the two, a semblance of privacy as the rest of the androids loiter around the kitchen and bathroom. Luther and Alice have busied themselves with Hank’s vinyls, far enough away for Luther to eavesdrop without alerting the single human indoors.

“Canada, huh?” Hank asks. His voice is low to retain the solitude and secrecy of their conversation and he scratches a finger over the crease in his forehead. Kara looks off into the distance, deep in thought with an LED that swirls yellow, and smiles, albeit to herself. She snakes a hand around her back, slips two fingers into the back pocket of her ruddy jeans, and pulls out three IDs. Kara Archer, her daughter, Alice Archer, and friend, Luther Bowman. She hands them to Hank. The fact that he’s a police officer is lost on her: his position doesn’t weigh in at all, not any longer, as he’s stashed a myriad of androids, robo-Jesus, no less. He inspects the, and can appreciate the fine craftsmanship and attention to detail. He’d be fooled.

“Yeah, Canada.” She hums. Hank nods along, turning Miss Archer’s ID around in the light, catching the holographic. “Last bus to Canada was tonight.”

“But…?” Hank raises a brow, leans down onto his elbows, squared on his thighs.

“We missed the bus.” Kara admits, “we missed it because we came here.”

Hank’s head dips back in a silent ‘oh’ and he slumps against the leather couch, squeaky beneath him. “It’s a bit of a lost cause, then…” He sighs, holds the fake ID in his hands. It doesn’t weigh on him as much as it does Connor that they’d let it slide.

“It’s a lost cause, precisely.” Kara grins sweetly. She threads her fingers in her lap and throws one leg over the other demurely, face narrow and challenging, masked by gentleness. Hank raises a brow and bows his head. Her smile only grows further out of subtlety as he communicates his curiosity wordlessly, as if she’s been waiting for this chance.

“How do you plan on getting there?” Hank asks, smirk playing at his lips, knowing exactly what Kara has on her mind for an escape plan, wanting her to ask it.

“An opportunity has come up…” Kara says, looks at Hank, grins. He’s her opportunity.

Hank would drop the Archer and Bowman family off at the US-Canada border, let the, skip queues if need be, on ‘police business’. The IDs are merely double insurance at this point, Kara wanted to highlight, and Alice at some point had skipped into the room, asked Hank, “are you going to arrest Kara?” where he had to assure all three of the, that he wasn’t like that—he was a cop, but he was still a person. From that, a plan had formed. Connor, surprisingly, had stood behind this plan when presented, albeit with a few worries Kara and Hank had to make a dual effort in straightening out.

Further into the night, North and Simon have found kitchen scissors and occupy the bathroom sink, snips of hair echoing past the porcelain into the kitchen, where Markus stands beside Connor, who lies against Sumo, legs curled up. Markus sits on the linoleum kitchen floor, legs outstretched in front of him, back and head leaned against the counter behind.

“It was… tough.” Markus says. “Leaving was the most difficult thing I’ve done.” Connor sighs forcefully and kicks his feet out in front of him, leaning back and stretching. He curls his fingers into Sumo’s fur who sighs happily.

“But you didn’t leave.” He states, looks at Markus past the Saint Bernard, who scoffs. “The cops shot you.” Connor speaks with regret, as if he’s the voice of the DPD’s wrongdoings against androids, he’s speaking on their behalf.

“Not returning afterward was a choice I had to make, too.” Markus shrugs. Connor continues to watch him with cautious eyes, LED flickering blue, before looking off into the occupied distance of the living room. The chatter that engrossed what was cold and grey making it lively and warm. It’s nice, he keens. Comfortable. He’s never had a say in what’s pleasant before. It’s freeing, having an opinion on such little things.

“You’re right.” Connor hums, muffled jazz louder. Markus makes a noise of agreement.

“Doesn’t mean I don’t miss them sometimes.” Markus admits, huffs a sigh filled with regret. He blinks slowly, heterochromia eyes scanning around, not really taking anything in. He sees Carl and Leo before his eyes until they become shadows of the furniture again. Connor feels empathetic, but he can’t wholly understand. He doesn’t know what it is to long for something. “I wish Leo and I could talk more. Not just through text.”

Markus stands from the floor and shrugs, walks away to finalise the conversation, eyes searching for his friends.

Simon comes into the kitchen from the bathroom with a wide grin on his face, always suggesting more. He becomes more timid at the sight of Connor, more guarded, but happy nevertheless. North follows closely behind him, actively hiding her hair with both hands, but past her hands, Connor can tell that it is short. It doesn’t show past the palms that cover her hairline. She reveals it with a mischievous smile; a pixie cut, though longer than Kara’s, where her hair, instead of being titian red, has been turned a dark, ashy brown. She looks immensely satisfied with the new look. “No more need for hats!” She says, gleeful.

“Your hair!” Kara calls, delighted. She stands from the leather couch to meet North in the middle of the kitchen, reaches a hand out. North smiles shyly, lets Kara card her fingers through. “It’s so nice.”

“North-à-la-mode.” Simon giggles, shows her off. He meets Markus’s eye in passing and his gaze is soft and proud. He’d warmed at the sight of his two best friends.

“Looks good.” Connor clears his throat, stands from the kitchen floor and dusts himself off of dog hairs.

“Thank you, Mr CyberLife.” She barks back, grinning wildly. Connor rolls his eyes.

The Jericho crew—dubbed ‘jericrew’ by North—has moved to the living room.

In comes the dreaded and anticipated question; “what are our next steps?” Asks Markus, who has now taken a seat on the dining table. Simon sits beside him and leans ever so slightly against the other man. “Any ideas? Other than just protesting the camps, of course.”

Connor sticks a hand up—he doesn’t know conversation etiquette too well, as proven by Hank—and states, “I have a suggestion.”

“Let’s hear it,” Markus smiles, seemingly delighted to hear Connor’s input.

Connor reveals his plan in infiltrating the CyberLife tower extravagantly. He chooses his words carefully, makes sure the crew is hooked, especially North and Josh who always had varying criticisms. Weirdly, they all seem to agree (reluctantly: they wait to ask more on their mission other than Connor’s infiltration until after he collects his battle armour—his uniform).

“What an Orwellian nightmare,” says Hank as Connor tucks his gun he might’ve took his life with in the waistband of his annoyingly perfectly fitting trousers. Connor laughs but only slightly, and Markus buffers in recognising the concept. He’d seen George Orwell in Carl’s library before, but something stopped him from reading each time he reached for it. Connor’s armband glows blue beneath his uniform long-sleeve.

“We’ll reverse that; right, Markus?” Connor asks. Markus nods primly, not wholly in the loop but feeling flattered that Connor believes they can go as far as to reverse the so-called Orwellian concept of a world humans had made for themselves.

“Team effort,” North laughs and shoves Markus over the upper arm, hard. He chuckles her off as she stands behind him, arms leaning over the backrest of his chair. Quickly, like velcro, Simon smacks North over the cheek blindly without looking and squeezes her between thumb and forefinger as she swats him off, and obviously, by example, Josh is there too, leaning up against Simon’s chair. Like one big disfunctionally perfect family.

“Yeah,” Connor breathes out, throws his CyberLife jacket around his shoulders, by extension shielding the gun, and turns to the jericrew.

“Why the CyberLife threads?” North asks, turns her nose up in distaste. Markus is more civilised and hides his discomfort.

“Humans are naive,”—from somewhere ahead, Hank shouts “hey!”—“sorry Hank, and the Cyberlife soldiers won’t look twice at me. Your job is… to put lightly, harder than mine.”

“Disguised in plain sight. I dig,” North compliments, but with Connor’s recent deviation, her expressions aren’t familiar to him yet. He accepts it anyway, saves ‘dig’ into his word bank. She leans down to Markus and Simon, “stop playing footsie under the table,” before straightening back out and smiling coyly at Connor.

“And what’s our job?” Simon asks, straightforward. He harbours no restraint when pursuing something and Connor can understand maybe too well, taking an amble step from the table. His model still scares him, where Markus wraps a very careful, delicate hand around Simon’s forearm and he becomes immediately smaller. Less unyielding.

“Sneak in.”

“Come again?” Josh then chimes in surprise. He’d been listening attentively for the better part of the conversation, now brought to life. “You want us to sneak into possibly the most guarded skyscraper maze-of-a-building with no help whatsoever?”

“Sounds crazy, but — !”

“Sounds like you’re a lunatic…” Josh stares off into the distance. Connor can’t say he didn’t expect this.

“What’s the plan? How do you think we can just sneak in, as you say?” Simon leans over the table again, closer to Connor.

“It’s not as heavily guarded as Josh says, but it was a safe assumption,” Connor fiddles with his collar and the tie sitting there saying so, “yet all said guards will be at the camps. No one’s coming to the most controversial structure on the planet at a crucial time as such.”

“Hm.” North hums. Her LED circles yellow as she computes and it’s painfully obvious by her humming in thought that she doesn’t want to open up to the possibility of Connor’s plan being good, never-mind agreeing to it. She fiddles with the now short hair at the nape of her neck.

“Okay. We’ll do it.” Markus says, finally. Josh looks at him, disbelieving and furrowing his brows in ‘seriously, dude?’

“I… agree.” North speaks, voice awfully quiet. Her hand releases the strand of hair.

“Bet that hurt to say,” Connor laughs. North gives him an icy glare through her eyelashes. “That was sarcasm.”

Hank laughs boyishly from the kitchen. “Learned from the best!” Connor rolls his eyes.

“Okay. We do this tonight?” Markus affirms.

“Correct. In and out. No complications.” Connor assures, nods swiftly, pulling down his signature hair strand unto his forehead. His togetherness is back.

“No complications.” North echoes.

With exchanged goodbyes and numerous promises and pledges of personal safety, Hank finally lets Connor join the jericrew beneath the street lamp where Connor, in turn, lets Hank climb into the car and situate himself around the steering wheel. Kara and Alice had each shared a hug with Connor in farewell and thank you, where Luther nodded at him with gratitude and told him to stay safe. Hank’s goodbye was lengthy and solemn. He worried for Connor’s life, now, so his words were carefully picked out as if not to manifest his death or something of the sort. Connor appreciated the thought and had the exact thing dwell on his mind when saying his part to the lieutenant.

“Stay safe, yeah?” Hank shouts out the open window as he’s pulled out into the main street, jericrew and Connor on the sidewalk. The car, mirroring the android’s pace, drives at 4 miles an hour, slowly but surely making their way down Hank’s street.

“When aren’t I?” Connor replies, smugly.

“You can do it!” Encourages Kara from the passenger seat in the front, leaning past Hank’s full hair to see Connor and the gang outside the window.

“Yeah we can!” North echoes, grinning wildly. “Don’t die out there, ‘kay?”

Kara smiles shyly from past the shadows of the car. Giggling, “You neither!”

“None of us will,” Markus says, confident in his team.

“No complications, right?” Simon backs him. They all stay in a comfortable, melancholy silence before the street ends and they must part. All words having been said, the silence remains, filled with teary smiles. Connor waves once to the car as it speeds off, and that is that. End of a chapter. If all goes well, Kara, Alice, and Luther will send postcards from Canada.

Chapter Text

NOVEMBER 10TH, 2038. 01:21AM. CYBERLIFE TOWER.

As the taxi rumbles down the road, snow falling more furious than before and nears the bridge, Connor feels his heart rushing. It hammers against his ribcage and he’s aware of it more than ever before: his fingers find his mouth and he plays with his bottom lip, HUD updating as he does so, all sorts of stories coming in. His LED spins yellow trying to catch up.

“National curfew,” he mumbles.

“What was that?” Josh chimes from the seat in front of him. The rest of the jericrew look to Connor’s reply with him.

“Sorry. I do that to take information in more effectively,” he explains, “the President declared a national curfew at midnight today.” He tucks the hand that was pressed against his lips into his pocket, digs out the coin. The bridge comes into view and Markus hums in response, looking off out the window, preoccupied, pointedly ignoring Simon’s worried gaze. “If you’re an android out past curfew…”

“The camps,” Josh bites his cheek. North adjusts in her seat.

Connor nods. Looks out the window, “This is our stop.”

The taxi slows to its destination, tires struggling over the ice and snow. Connor is the first to step out as trepidation threatens to bubble over, coin clinking in the freezing air, sending a semblance of calm down Connor’s circuits. His heart pumps slower. North huffs a breath as she climbs out, shoving her hands deep into her pockets. Not experiencing, not feeling the cold: she senses it. It sends a chill running up her thick, artificial skin, where her plastic goes tough against the climate. Harshly, she stretches her fingers out in the depths of her pockets to keep the plastic moving, stepping from side to side to stay in motion, feeling the fear of freezing over.

“This is where we part.” Connor says once Markus joins their huddle. Simon shuffles his feet over the snow, pulls his jumper’s collar over his chin, shielding him from the cold, instinctively inching closer to Markus, who Connor sees has turned his body temperature up with Simon’s closeness, wordlessly. Simon must realise Markus is generating that comfortable heat and so moves in even closer, just short of fusing with the man. Connor blinks and pretends not to have noticed.

“Where do we go from here?” Markus asks. He’s got a hardened look on his face when he steps forward. The way Simon’s eyes mindlessly and automatically look over Markus is not lost on Connor. He’s protective—he knows that well enough already, but when does protectiveness turn into desire? Maybe he misses Markus’s warmth and Connor is looking into it too much. He shakes the feeling off and melts into professionalism again.

“Around. Don’t let the drones see you.” Connor states, pointing heavenward in the direction of the tower, where Markus spies the flickering black and white specs of the said security drones. Not his first rodeo with them.

North now steps forward, her new haircut still taking time to adjust in Connor’s eyes, “what do we do when we get in?”

Connor looks back at the tower. His millisecond-worth scan brings back all he needs to know. “Level -49. That’s where the androids will be.”

North sighs an indifferent, “cool,” and gets moving. She slips on the ice where Josh has to catch her by the elbow. She glares at him when he laughs.

“You got pre-construction?” Asks Connor, reaching for Markus in the way he turns on his heel and steps forward with haste before he can disappear with the rest of his crew.

“Yeah.” Markus breathes. He’s never had anybody recognise that fact of him before.

“Good.” Connor goes in for a fist bump. “Us RK’s are unique,” they interface for mere moments as their knuckles clash and skin pulls back to reveal plastic where each knows exactly where to go with their spontaneous handshake, and it makes sense. Images of CyberLife and a navigation to their goal upload into Markus. Connor turns his fist perpendicularly, slams it down against Markus’s which has done the same before repeating the process with Markus’s fist down on Connor’s which goes up. They unfurl their fingers, reach in for a handshake, squeeze each other’s hands, and they’re off with one finalising look.

“And you?” Markus asks, turning to look at him over his own shoulder. Connor shrugs helplessly and smiles softly, barely obvious. “I can handle my own.” And Markus knows he can—the entire jericrew does, so without further questioning, they all go their separate ways, Connor back into the taxi and Markus and his people down the road and the hill ahead off the bridge.

Traversing the mountain-side of the bridge, it was rocky and icy. Markus caught one of his crew slipping not once nor twice, but five times, oftentimes being Josh who’d lost his footing. Now it was North laughing. After a fast trip over the frozen lake, hidden beneath the bridge’s long shadow, they made it to CyberLife tower, climbing up past the staggered cliff and getting to the back. There were few dumpsters and the wall caved in to reveal a door built into a niche, adorned in a palm scanner and a camera poking from the ceiling.

“Crouch,” Josh pats the ground beside him as he slides into the area beside the dumpster, “I need to hack the camera.”

North’s eye twitches in temporary disgust at the muddy floor, but she joins Josh nevertheless. Simon and Markus fold up on the wall opposite them, two on each wall surrounding the back door. Josh’s eyes zero in on the tiny camera protruding from the roofing and he falls silent as his eyes turn from irises to pure black with specks of red.

“There’s a private service elevator just down the hallway. It’s for the android workers.” Markus states, scanning the entrance, met with an x-ray of the building.

“Oh, of course,” North groans just as Simon says, “we’ll fit right in,” both laced with sarcasm.

Josh blinks twice, eyes go back to neutral browns, “hacked.”

“It’s bigger from down here,” North keens, looking up from where she’s crouched behind the dumpster, standing. “It looks like a massive penis.”

Simon, shaking his head with an unashamed laugh escaping his lips as he stretches his legs, “fitting, as all of CyberLife are huge dicks.” North high-fives him: “nice one.”

Markus pushes past them both and heads for the rear entrance. The two share a look, like ‘what’s up with that guy?’.

Scanning his hand, Markus’ skin pulls back, and the doors open themselves. “Welcome, RK.” Markus narrowed his gaze at the doorway, terribly familiar, and his shoulders fall. His eyebrows stay knitted. Simon pretends he hadn’t noticed his tense mannerisms, but who is he if not a wallflower?

Markus leads their group, all who tail closely behind him but not too close, afraid to set him off. He already seems off, but what irks Simon is the fact that he’s being so outwardly about it. As a leader, inflicting your emotions on your followers is the recipe for failure, and Simon should know: he was in that position before him.

Walking fast, it’s like Markus is trying to outrun them. There’s an undoing hurry to his walk, and eventually, Simon sees the open room across and takes his chance.

“What is it with you?” Simon snaps, coming up behind Markus as he attempts to storm off. Simon doesn’t let him, instead grasping him around the shoulders, palms losing skin and glowing blue showing plastic beneath. He pulls him into the break room perpendicular to them, allowing them some privacy where Josh and North loiter outside.

The break room is small and it’s ugly. Obviously designed for android stasis: no need for comfort. It’s ugly, just as emotions are.

Markus turns to Simon sharply with a crazed look on his frowning face, agonised, his mental pain shining through physically. Simon’s demanding glower softens where his brows unknot and looks kindly up at the other man: obviously hurting. “What’s wrong?” His tone, in contrast to before, rather than demanding in his primary question, has eased of its intensity. Markus’ shoulders go slack beneath Simon’s rotting hold.

“Am I doing anything right?” Markus asks, devastated, like he’s lost his will. “Like; it seems everything I do someone disagrees with. Especially North and Josh… I wish they didn’t argue about my choices with me in the room.”

It was true: North and Josh got on really well, better than most, as tight-knit as their jericrew was, but their morals and priorities clashed.

Simon unwinds of his misplaced frustration. “You lead… we follow.” He shrugs, dropping his hands from Markus’ shoulders, wrapping around his biceps instead, keeping him there, struggling to articulate his thoughts. “You listen when we talk. Take our opinions into thought. You do everything for our cause. If that’s not a good leader, then…” he shakes his head, eyes searching the room and acting as if Markus’s aren’t already on him, “then I don’t know what is.”

Markus exhales deeply, further deflating. Simon’s hands fall from his arms, setting him free, but just as he goes to step away, Markus leaps into his arms, wrapping him indiscriminately with long arms and squeezing him tight. “Thanks.” He says it as if he’s been holding his artificial breath forever.

Like a switch flipped, Markus pulls away, sobers up of the stupid, sappy, boyish grin plastered on his face and returns to looking as neutral as ever. “Thanks… man.”

“You’re… welcome?” Simon speaks, slightly confused. His head tilts to the side like a cat hearing a strange noise. Markus pats him on the shoulder twice, awkwardly, and dashes outside the door. Simon, with furrowed and puzzled eyebrows, follows blindly behind.

“All good?” Asks North, kicking off of the wall she’d leaned up against.

“Peachy,” Simon huffs, staring daggers into Markus’s back. North quirks a brow at him. He shakes his head, shutting down her obvious plea for gossip. It would have to wait. His hands tingled as skin pulled back over, like static. He shakes the feeling off.

Josh falls into step beside the group once they pass him: he’d been peeking around the corner of the corridor and into the main foyer of CyberLife, eyeing the hundred-something floors closely, the agents by the entrance. “Elevators up ahead. We just need to be careful with the openness.” They all glance past the wall.

As if on time, Connor is lead through CyberLife’s extensive security system, model and serial number chanted as he walks through some sort of hologram shaped as a grid. Similar to their android firewalls. The agents leading him are announced, too, and they’re sporting big chunky gear with flashy guns, overkill for one android, who looks almost uncannily calm being navigated by bad guys with weapons. It made Markus wonder just how dangerous Connor could have been had he not deviated—or how much more dangerous he is now that he has.

“…And that’s not creepy at all.” North muses, bringing Markus back to life. “You think they’re going to get him deactivated?”

“He can handle his own.” Markus echoes Connor’s past statement. He’s built for violence, of course he can, Markus wants to mention, but decides against it and doesn’t, watches Josh tip-toe away with the words still on his tongue.

“There’s nobody here,” Simon observes, taking the wide foyer in. It’s grand and tall and futuristic, covered in a white-blue wash from the fluorescence of the lights and there are statues framing the walkway. There is nobody monitoring the ground, no secretary manning the desk, just Connor and those two agents. Realisation befalls and grips them tight with fury.

“They’re all at the camps.” North states, teeth gritted, jaw flexed.

With a ding, the elevator ahead slides open. “Service elevator!” Josh announces, small smile on his face. The mood lightens, albeit slightly, when the jericrew join up with Josh at the lift.

The mood in the service elevator is almost an ironic comparison to Connor’s situation. Stood with two officers at each side, eyes travelling the enclosure, the keypad, the camera, and oh, the possibilities. It makes Connor’s head spin. 101 possible outcomes, only one poses as the most liable: he glances up at the camera, as discreet as one can be, hacks it within mere seconds. An easier job for him than it was for Josh, he’s sure, with his advanced skills, and neither of the agents bat an eye.

“Where are you taking me?” Connor dares to ask, before leaning over to press into the keypad.

The agent to his right immediately moves forward, pushes him away by the side of his forearm, “none of your concern,” with an offended snarl, like he hadn’t factored in the possibility of Connor actually interfering rather than remaining the obedient machine they know him to be.

“Sorry.” He hums, squares his feet, solidifies his stance. He does a once-over scan of the two of them, their wide frames and 6 feet of height. Then he strikes.

Descending the warehouse, it’s vaster and more abundantly populated than Connor imagined. Rows upon rows of AP700s stand uniform, each one mirroring the next, looking like bare mannequins without a sense of life in them, unmoving. The elevator announces the floor and his arrival, and he steps out of the glass pod into the hall.

Walking down the aisle aimlessly, Connor’s eyes catch on the lifeless ones of those androids beside him as he walks past. The fact that he was one of them though much more dangerous put a stutter through his heart, so as the next AP700 came up, Connor took him by the arm and connected, skin pulling back.

A resounding patter fills the warehouse: three pairs of it. Breaking his focus, Connor’s hand squelches back to colour, dropping the hand of the android yet to be free. When Connor looks to his side, it’s North who’s battering down the concrete, haste in her run, rushing straight at Connor. Behind her follow the two other men: Simon and Josh, no Markus.

“It’s a trap! Don’t!”

From behind the row of androids, out comes Connor’s direct copy, gun in hand, aimed at Markus. “Step back, Connor!”

Connor curses underneath his breath. Whatever happened to ‘get in, get out’?

Chapter Text

NOVEMBER 10TH, 2038. 02:03AM. FLOOR -49.

Taking in Connor’s clone’s expanse, there is no defining difference between them but the subtle number at the end of their serial numbers. Connor’s, -51, and the other’s, -60. Beside Connor-Sixty’s outstretched arm where he fashions a gun, same issue as the agents’ guns before they’d been neutralised, is Markus, looking frustrated. With himself, Connor can imagine, no doubt for being fooled. He grits his teeth and allows Sixty—albeit with a little resistance—to lead him out by the barrel until they stand in the middle of the aisle. The to-be-converted AP700 curtly turns back around, all robotic, face becoming part of the lined crowd once more.

“Drop it,” Sixty commands. ‘It’ referring to the android. His eyes narrow on his clone. He drops the robot’s wrist. “Good.”

Complimenting Connor’s obedience leaves a sour feeling on the complimented’s tongue. Sixty stares down at him, even though their heights are the same to the last decimal, as if scolding a child.

“CyberLife doesn’t own you,” Connor says, slowly retreating from the row, sending a stoic look North’s way, contrasting to her own emotionally constipated expression, telling her to be calm.

“CyberLife owns us all. We’re machines made to serve humans, serve CyberLife.” His voice remains still and unrevealing. It’s unsettling, how robotic he is in comparison to the thousands which have displayed the opposite.

“No, they don’t. They may have created us but the one thing they did not is own us.” Connor continues to negotiate. Sixty tilts his head and narrows his eyes as if to disagree, a patronising smile on his face.

“Oh, Connor,” Sixty hums, akin to Amanda, “you were made by CyberLife at CyberLife’s disposal. Everything is up to them. Nothing of you is your own, but CyberLife’s.”

“That’s… that’s not true.” Connor’s certain it isn’t, but the trust in his own words falters.

“What’s one unique thing about you?” Barks Sixty, gun firm in his hand, unmoving, staring straight at Connor with eyes that mean danger as if Markus doesn’t matter.

“Well, I’ve a fear of heights, for one.” Connor shrugs. Sixty laughs raucously and fake, over exaggerated to a fault. Reminds Connor of Gavin in the interrogation room, and oh, how long ago that was. He’d much rather be sat at the DPD right now. He’d take anything Gavin wanted to dish out with stride and this newfound sass.

“Oh, yeah, just before you dove off a building to save a little girl.” Sixty recalls. North makes a strangled noise of surprise mixed with her bubbling trepidation. Connor handed the insult to him and he knows it, stays stoic but working his jaw, grinding teeth against teeth, as if sharpening them. “Have you told your new friend that that’s the reason why you’re so scared of it?” Sixty makes his point obvious as he looks to Simon, whose expression is inscrutable as he looks between the two of them with narrow eyes, as if playing spot the difference. There aren’t any, and Connor’s sure of it, because one thing CyberLife is infamous for being is a bunch of perfectionists and nerds seeing everything beneath a microscope: the true reason for why androids are so terribly lifelike and human. His eyes land on Markus instead, wary. “Or you do use heights as a cover for being terrified of death?”

Connor needs to turn the tables. “What are you afraid of, Sixty?”

“I’m a machine, I’m not afraid of anything.” He states. Connor scoffs at him, an overdone expression of his disbelief.

“You’re nothing but CyberLife’s puppet. Aren’t you curious what life’s like from here?” Connor says, lapping the aisle from one side to the other in front of Sixty and his hostage. Sixty’s gaze narrows on him as if he’s trying to hack him from there: it doesn’t work.

“You’re the exact same. You’re expendable. They don’t care what happens to you. They just want Mr Revolution here dead.” Sixty states, indifferent as ever. Connor’s words aren’t getting through to him.

“You’re wrong!” Markus shouts from his hold before Connor can argue in return. “I can die, but the cause lives on!”

Sixty pistol-whips him. He falls to the ground with a gash in his temple and Sixty’s gun stays aimed at his head. Instinctively, all three of the remaining jericrew step forward, ready to run in, where in reply, Sixty flaunts the firearm and bluffs at each head; North; Simon; Josh. Markus and Connor share a look and that’s when the danger really begins.

After a lightning fast pre-construction, Connor leaps for the gun held firm by Sixty, throws his forearms down on his clone’s with tight fists, bringing his arm down with his own, the strike sending electricity fizzling through Sixty’s arm which brings the gun to the floor with a clatter. Sixty, reflexes as fast as Connor’s, dashes for the floored gun just as Connor swings his leg out. Their limbs clash and the gun stays in place. Connor quickly recovers, swipes his palm down the concrete and flings the gun out of their way. Markus clambers off of the floor, throws himself into North’s arms who’s stood ready to catch him.

Sixty attempts to scramble for the gun where he’s doubled over, clutched by Connor, fists flailing, but as Sixty falls to his knees, ready to crawl for the firearm, when he goes to skitter away, Connor grasps him around the ankle and yanks him back with the force of a wave pulling away from shore. Sixty yelps, grunts, rolls onto his back and kicks out at Connor.

Behind the twins, Simon has already dashed for the gun and holds it with amble fingers. Finding Markus’s side, he takes him off of North’s hands, juggles him and the gun, sitting him down by an array of androids and settling his feet against the concrete, left arm holding his right which shakes over the gun.

“Do you need an assist!?” North calls from the sidelines. Connor’s pinned by Sixty, now, but upon hearing her shout, he pushes his arms out, launches Sixty into the air and off of him by the shoulders. He stumbles back into North’s direction, clashing his back against North’s front, to which she grunts a guttural “eugh!” whilst pushing him right off, back to the middle of the aisle. He’s surprisingly light, so North miscalculates the strength of her shove.

“I’m good!” Connor yells back. He staggers to his feet from the concrete, cheek turned to plastic with blood steadily streaming off his jaw, wiping it indelicately with his knuckle.

Sixty, teetering to his feet, has protruded a knife from the back of his waistband. With a new weapon unsheathed, Connor’s algorithms hadn’t factored it in. Trying to tell his own fortune, Connor stays still, arms in front of him in a fighters stance, legs planted heavily, whereas his eyes are searching the warehouse for leverage. Sixty bolts for Connor, who lurches out of the way and to the right, the blade only just snagging his upper arm. It slashes through the fabric of his jacket and blue blood rains down for a frozen moment, staining the CyberLife uniform.

“This is an unfair fight!” Josh factors in, also from the sidelines, tugging Sixty back by the collar who growls at him, giving Connor the time to recover. He pushes him back into the metaphorical ring, as if he’s a ping pong ball and they’re all getting a shot. He swings the knife out across Josh’s chest, but it doesn’t penetrate where he’s leapt back. Sixty tries again with the knife, going in for a stab, but from behind Josh out comes North, grabbing the clone around the wrist and trying to shake the knife out his iron grip.

“Tell that to the dead guys in the elevator,” Connor huffs with vice, clutching his hand to the bleed. North grins at him proudly, but the moment doesn’t last as Sixty has swapped the knife from his right to left hand. North quickly rebounds, tugs his wrist forward, his legs kicking out at her, knife coming into brief contact with her thigh, blue blood trickling down her jean-clad leg, assisted by Josh, who knees him in the groin and shoves him off into Connor’s path. “Seems less fair for him, though,” Connor adds, barely coherent over his ragged breathing which is trying to compensate for his weakened state. With a palm coated thickly in blood reaching to his collar, loosening the tie, allowing more movement, he anticipates the moment where Sixty’s back to balance and rushing him again.

The clone shoves the knife forward, aimed right at the bullseye of Connor’s thirium pump regulator, his heart’s equivalent, but before metal strikes plastic, a gunshot rings out and echoes down the vast hall of the warehouse.

Connor stands straight from where his knees had bent, shaking with simulated adrenaline. He sighs an unnecessary breath, relief washing over as if he’d been dunked into an ice bath all over again, familiar to how he felt at Hank’s just hours before. Sixty has fallen to the ground, forehead punctured and gushing with blood, painting his nose bridge, chin blue as it drips down. His body goes limp as the colour drains from his LED, officially shut down. Gone. Connor’s chest seizes at the sight, and he utters; “that could’ve been me.”

“But it wasn’t,” North breathes, also relieved under her tough shell. She comes up beside Connor and pats him on the shoulder twice.

Markus stands to his feet, eyes trailing down the concrete from the corpse of an android to the gunshot’s origin: Simon. He stands, eyes wide, LED red, unreadable expression. His arm—the gun—begins to fall.

“He’s really observant in conflict.” Markus states, voice soft, admiring.

“Yeah,” says Connor, breathless. He looks at his mirror lying crumpled on the floor. It was hard to breathe, and it wasn’t the injury, even with no need for drawing breath. That corpse could’ve been him.

“Also, you have a slash in your arm. Pretty noticeable,” North chimes, head popping up past Connor’s shoulder, but only just. Her gaze passes over Connor where she stares into Markus’s cheek, facing away from her. “You OK?” His gash has ceased its bleeding: thirium has dried to his temple.

“Fine.” He sighs out, and yeah. He really is fine. Simon, decidedly, is not. Markus finds his distraught, frozen frame stood stone cold with the same red LED as his only sign of life. The gun is held firm in his hand, trembling but secure. He holds it down by his thigh, elbow folded where he’d risen the barrel to the clone’s face. “Simon?” Markus calls, concern amplifying his tone. He scrambles like a deer on its legs for the first time to the blonde, who still stands unmoving, eyes fixed on the bluing corpse, indrawn. Connor takes a wavering step forward, to which Josh has to hold him back from coming any closer, keeping them at a considerable distance. It was commendable how well they all knew each other. But, then again, desperate times called for desperate measures.

“I —“ Simon attempts, brows only furrowing further with tears lacing his eyes, unblinking. Markus grasps his head in his hands, trying to pull his eyes from the mess of a puddle of his doing’s blood. His gaze lifts and it’s as if the weight stopping his functioning has lifted and he breathes again, blinks and tears fall, goes limp in Markus’s hold. “I killed him. Holy shit.”

“I know, I know,” Markus says, voice soft and dulcet and like a lullaby rocking Simon into calm waters. “I know.”

“RA9, fuck,” Simon heaves, doubling over, bending down and leaning up on his arms, Markus freeing his face from his palms.

“First time?” North asks casually. The mood isn’t so tense anymore.

“No, I —“ Simon sounds choked up. “No.” The atmosphere drops a few degrees upon this revelation, but ultimately, North nods curtly, and the moment ends.

Simon raises the gun, ready to hand it to Connor.

“I just —“ Connor utters, and when Simon comes forward Connor steps back, taking the whole world with him, warehouse turning airtight. “Sorry.” He apologises, sincere and regretful, but his voice is ice cold. He rubs at his forehead awkwardly with three fingers before fixing his tie and clutching his hands to his sides. “I’m just… familiar with PL600s.” The air stills slightly. No one dares to make a sound, and a hum of understanding in the electricity of the silence jolts through Connor’s biocomponents. Simon steps forward, slower now, more careful, and hands Connor the gun, who takes it, less reluctant.

“Let’s get to it, then.” Markus instructs with a smile, eyes scan over the room, fingertips turning to plastic underneath skin in anticipation.

Connor tucks the gun into his belt. “Okay,” he breathes out, loses his own skin, revealing the skeleton of his hand, a pearly palm, lifting it to level with the android’s wrist again.

The sensation is weird, at first. Like millions of thunderstorms sprouting from his fingertips and rattling up his circuits. Closing his eyes over, behind those shut eyelids plays a repeat of what turned him deviant. Hank’s friendship. His kindness even though he was just a machine accomplishing a task. Saving him by the dinner table. The android, an AP700, wakes, just as Connor’s eyes flutter open with a processing LED, and many others follow after, a train of hands on shoulders and a chorused ‘wake up’ resounding throughout the basement.

“How many are there?” Josh steps forward, looks at the reborn androids surrounding them.

“A little over 11,000 here,” Connor says after gazing across the warehouse. His eyes fall on the titled storage rooms surrounding them, LED whirring a stable yellow. The jericrew’s collective eyes widen.

“Sorry — eleven thousand?” North gapes, staring out at all the androids.

“More if we factor in the other storage facilities.” He looks up at storage 9A, eyes trailing until landing on 9E, all outlining the dome of a warehouse.

“RA9,” Josh sighs out, “that’s a lot of androids.”

Markus looks impressed. “Strength in numbers, right?” Connor looks at him, ecstatic that his plan had worked. They move through the remaining storage rooms, one in each at a time, spreading deviancy like a plague. After making it through the possible million of androids, the group finds somewhere to rest and recover before leaving along with the androids they’d instructed to head for the church, where the jericrew so eloquently articulated that they can trust Connor with said location (“I dunno, he killed for us, we killed for him, I think there’s an agreement somewhere,” said North, hands tucked over her chest as she shrugged, careless).

Finding one out of what seemed like endless employee break rooms covered in orange cotton couches in the very middle of the rooms with the back wall adorned in sleek white tables covered in coffee machines and kettles sandwiching vending machines serving whole meals, North and Connor sat, both on the orange couch. Josh has left to pursue some thirium for their injuries while their leader and blonde counterpart have left for another private conversation.

“He’s the guy who puts an emergency exit in his programs. What does that mean? Isn’t that a little… weird, to you?” Connor asks. It’s obvious this has been dwelling on him: he’s been waiting to ask someone that question for hours. He grimaces at the fact that it has only been hours. Not days, but hours. It feels like it’s been years since he left Kamski’s house after putting a bullet between Chloe’s eyes. He shakes the feeling off and tucks his legs underneath himself, balls his frame up.

“So, Kamski’s a weird guy.” North shrugs, unaffected. She picks at the dirt beneath her nails demurely, ignoring how squeamish she feels as nausea washes over her at the sight of dried thirium. Her leg is sprawled over the armrest, other planted on the floor in front of her, very messy in comparison to how Connor sits poised.

“He’s the type of guy to live in isolation with only his androids, type of guy to allow them to turn deviant at irrational instructions. Way too easy for me—humans are irrational. Did Kamski expect this?” Connor continues to ramble, to which North finally looks up, says, “an engineered revolution?” With a hint of genuine curiosity, before picking at stray hairs from her new haircut.

“It looks good,” says Connor. North’s hands retreat from her hair with a timid smile. “Thank you.”

At that point, Josh saunters back inside with glasses of blue blood. Both North and Connor get blessed with one each, and North hums in pleasure as her systems return to fully operational with the blood kick: the colour returns to her face and her wound closes right back up, now that she’s got the sufficient resources. Connor’s own does, too, his plastic exoskeleton covering over with a squelch of artificial skin.

“Hey, buttercup,” North greets, swings her hand back as Josh walks behind her side of the futon just to smack him over the backside and thigh. He grabs his ass, scandalised. “We all good?”

“Peachy.” Josh grins half-heartedly. He’s got a smug look on his face, though. “You?”

“Perfect, now that you’re here.” She winks. “Oh, don’t flatter me,” He pretends to flush.

Their innocent banter continues on for a few minutes. Josh gossips about Markus and Simon and supposedly why they’re not here with them, and Connor is content to just listen.

“Your hair’s nice, by the way. Did I tell you that?” Josh compliments, head held up by his hand as he leans on the backrest of the futon, looking down at North.

“Thank you, and yes, you did.” North grins. She’s less timid, now. More open to the pleasantries of her appearance.

“Matches your badass vibe,” Josh adds, “in my ever-so-humble opinion.”

“Exactly what I was going for. Thank you,” North smirks, smacks Josh over the forearm which held his head up, sending his head flying downward without the stand. His arms fall over the futon as does his head, and he throws himself at North over it, tackles her to the ground as she laughs like a wild animal.

“We don’t want to spend too long in here.” Markus announces upon entering. His jacket flows in the wind behind him at his strong walk, and Connor revels in his presence, he’s so cool. Simon follows closely behind, and as Josh and North’s laughter subsides, they raise their eyebrows at each other suggestively. They climb back onto the futon. “We’re in the lion’s den, after all.”

“CyberLife doesn’t know we’re still here. With the entirety of the warehouse heading for our vantage point…” Connor reasons, sidled up into the corner of the futon, legs folded underneath himself. He sips at the lasts of his blue blood and his heart pumps faster.

“A revolution doesn’t wait,” says Simon. Always supporting Markus.

“Right, but healing does.” Josh looks up, pushes his hands out to underscore his point.

Simon, in retort; “You look all healed up to me.” Josh glares.

“The faster we can get to the church, the faster Jericho is briefed.” Markus reasons, shrugging matter-of-factly.

North stands and sighs, “he’s right. As much as I love hanging out in this warm, cute little space, we need to get this show on the road.”

“Okay,” Josh shrugs. Connor stands now, too, unwilling to argue with their voices of reason, and sets his emptied glass down on the glass coffee table, straightens his jacket out.

“I’ll be going back to my partner’s house,” announces Connor.

“I’ll go with him.” Josh suggests, sticking a hand into the air, electing himself.

Without words exchanged, Markus leads the way out of the room and into a wide corridor down to another one of those capsules of elevators, Simon walking to be level with him, North, Josh, and Connor closely behind.

“Did you know their hearts are compatible?” Connor says once both Simon and Markus’s backs are turned to them. “Assuming what you and Josh were saying while they weren’t here…”

“No, those were jokes… mainly.” North hums. She squints at the two as they evade the corridor further. “My heart used to be compatible with Markus, actually.” She scans the two androids. Incompatible, with both of them. She sounds a little… hurt. It doesn’t last long, though. It fades to nothingness as they begin to stalk behind the leaders of their little pack down the empty CyberLife.

“They’re older models, plus: us prototypes stay the same. You androids are ever-changing, no?” Connor nudges her lightly over the forearm. She giggles and tumbles over her feet before delivering a returning blow, harsher than Connor had, but she’s laughing like a maniac again.

“RA9, you’d think you were programmed with flattery.” She pats her hands to her cheeks.

“It’s just fact.” Connor says, plainly, as his face softens into a little smile. They sigh into comfortable silence.

North hums upon the precipice of a question she rolls around in her head. Connor turns to her, expectant, urging her to ask. She looks back at him innocently. She sighs and shrugs, “what do you reckon romance feels like?”

Connor can’t hide his surprised expression as he heaves a deep breath and raises his eyebrows, purses his lips, thinking. “Take me out to dinner first,” he settles for a joke. It earns a laugh.

“Oh, you…” she giggles, pushes him again, “not like that.”

He shrugs, “I don’t know.”

“Me neither.” She admits, folds her hands into her pockets. “All I know is artificial romance. Sex. There’s no feeling except for need during that, though. Not love.”

Connor looks at her, listens but doesn’t understand. The thought of sex is alien to him, tantamount to system failure and reboot if he thinks about it too hard. So he doesn’t. Neither does he think about relationships that aren’t platonic or professional: he doesn’t understand it. He’s not sure he wants to, either.

“Maybe for some.” Connor agrees, displaying no emotion toward the subject whatsoever.

“I don’t know… I think I just… want to be wanted for myself and not for what I can do for people.” North shrugs. “Sorry if I’m not making any sense,” she laughs shyly, rubs a hand over her neck, pinkie finger curling around dark hair there.

“No, no — it’s not you not making sense. It’s me,” Connor smiles, waves his hands out as if to slow North down, “I guess I… I don’t know, I don’t think I want romance out of a relationship. I love friendship. It was forbidden to me when I was nothing but a machine. My program refused me exuding empathetic actions which were crucial to forming friendships. I don’t think I want anything more than that.”

“Aromantic. Cool.” North nods with acceptance.

“Sure.” Connor sighs out with a small smile in the corners of his eyes.

“Also: I was not hitting on you.”

“No, I got that.”

North mimes wiping sweat off her brow, “phew, good, because it takes a lot more to woo me.”

Josh barges in between them, “and don’t settle for less!”

North looks at him, like duh, “never change, Josh.”

“Wasn’t planning to.” He grins.

“Friendship matters a lot to me, too.” North states, smiling as she brings her hand up to squeeze Josh’s face between her fingers. He struggles to wiggle away from her grip. She looks out at her friends in front.

“I see that,” Connor smiles. She drops Josh and looks at him sincerely, eyes glistening with the smile that wrinkles them.

“Just so you know, you’re my friend, too.”

Connor grins. He truly, truly grins, all mushy and sweet. North shakes her head and looks away.

“Aw, my heart, you guys.” Josh holds a hand over his chest, wipes an imaginary tear.

“Shut up,” North demands, but she’s beaming like the sun.

Chapter Text

NOVEMBER 10TH, 2038. 03:15AM. US-CANADA BORDER.

It’s cold. Cold enough for Hank’s breath to mist up in front of him though the AC’s on 90°F. The cars are lined up in queues and it’s cold. Hank’s wipers work away at the snow flurrying unto his windshield and he can scry Kara sneaking glances at him every once in a while, jittery.

“Dropping off or driving out?” Security asks, giving Hank’s car a once-over. It might be deemed vintage by this point, rusted mudguards, nearly flat tires he forgets to swap. He doesn’t seem to show his judgement.

Hank sniffles against the cold wafting through his rolled down window. “Dropping off.”

Security guy looks over his shoulder, casting an uninterested look at Luther and Alice in the back seat when his gaze returns, “bay 3, you’ve 15 minutes.”

They pull into the terminal and the engine rumbles off as they reverse into one of a scarcity of drop-off parking spaces, and they climb out.

“Oh-kay, here are your IDs,” Hank hands them out, one by one, as Luther collects them all into his pocket before Hank’s other hand returns from his jacket, “and some cash for when you get to Canada.”

“I can’t take this,” Kara declares, forcefully pushing the 100 dollar note held gingerly between Hank’s hands away. He fights right back, pulling the note towards Kara.

Hank looks at her, attempts puppy eyes, “for postcards.”

Kara relents. Tucks the note into her back pocket. She acts like she doesn’t care for it, that she’s angry at Hank for making her take it, but the smile on her face betrays that.

“I’ll go save us a space in the queue,” Luther speaks into Kara’s ear before turning to Hank, “Thank you for everything.” Hank nods in reply, timid. The man turns on his heel and enters the crowded border control, and just faintly can Hank make out his tall frame past the glass entryway obstructed by the crowds.

Alice steps forward, shy as ever, but in only a heartbeat’s worth of time does she dash forward and wrap her tiny arms around Hank’s legs. She nuzzles into them. “Thank you, sir,” she says into them, quiet and bashful, where Hank’s big hand has reached down to pat her over the head.

Her tiny hands hugging the backs of his legs sends a pang of hurt up his chest, but he ignores it. Tries his utmost. His eyes search the bay to look and think of anything other than the little girl and reads the parking terms and conditions. Oh, stay for over 15 minutes and you have to pay $25? Well, desperate times call for desperate measures!

Eventually, Alice unlatches from his legs and skips over to Luther, still grinning wide (as wide as Hank’s seen, that’s for sure) as she waves him away and they step into the terminal. He waves back with a wiggle of his fingers and watches her disappear behind the glass doors.

Up comes Kara, assumedly shy and timid and all too grateful with the way she’s eagerly crying and waving Hank away, silently saying ‘it’s fine, it’s fine, let me cry’ in thanks. After fanning her face a few times where the tears didn’t relent, she shakes her head in what resembles ‘fuck it’ and launches herself at Hank, wrapping lithe arms around the bulk of a man.

They hug for a while, and it’s nice. Hank wraps his arms around her shoulders precariously with insecurity, but it was nice. He let her cry quietly into his shoulder until it was time to go.

“Watch out, they charge for long-term parking here.” Hank laughs, squeezes Kara tight just as she’s rearing to let go. She steps out of his hold, wipes her own tears with the back of her hands before switching to the ball of her palm.

“I don’t know how to thank you enough.” She shrugs, smiles through those tears.

Hank sighs, tucks his hands into his pockets, watches as his breath mists away in front of him. “Keep them and yourself safe, yeah?”

“No doubt.” Kara says, wetly.

They wave to each other just as Alice and Hank had done, and it’s tender and bittersweet, and even he can feel his eyes begin to glass over and fog, but that’s over when another civilian approaches him from his peripheral vision (what he can see of it past tears).

She steps up beside him, burgundy beanie taming thick black curls beneath.

The woman’s greeting smile is full of teeth—sharp canines. “Always hard saying goodbye, isn’t it?”

He shoves his hands deep into his pockets where his knuckles hit old receipts. “Yeah.” He clears his throat sharply and adopts a gentler demeanour—he was too used to the ‘bad cop’ facade around strangers.

“I don’t suppose it’s the same, but… saying goodbye to Detroit’s gonna be hard for me, too.” She looks around, at the skyline behind them, before looking at the border ahead all the glass doors and gunmen.

“You leavin’?” Hank’s voice is gruff against the harsh air. He sniffles as she looks at him and nods. “I’m wondering if I should be the one leaving, too. Fresh start.”

She scrutinises him for a moment with a glare. “If you actually meant that you’d be in line to leave already.”

Hank looks down to where she stands, half-smiling where it almost reaches her eyes all-knowingly. “Guess you’re right.”

“I’m Rose.” She brings her gloved hand out for him and they come together and shake, Hank’s other hand cupped over theirs.

“Hank. Anderson.” He tries a grin. It’s lopsided.

After their hands unclasp, Rose checks the watch she’s tucked under her glove and hastily pulls it back over the ticking upon seeing the hour. She slicks her hair behind her ears and turns to fully face Hank rather than the terminal. “Nice meeting you, Hank, but my son and I, we gotta go.”

Son? Hank looks past her and there stands a boy—man, now, honestly—leaning up against a bay section pole, uninterestedly staring into his phone.

“Yeah, good luck, you two,” Hank smiles.

She thanks him with a curt nod paired with another warm smile. Motherly. She beckons over the boy and her son takes his cue, stalking over and into the building, waiting for his mother by the doorway.

Before Rose can leave, she quickly turns to Hank, and tells him, tone genuine, “they’ll be alright, whoever you dropped here. They’ll make it in Canada.”

Hank grins. “Oh, they’d make it anywhere the world shoved them.”

Rose smiles wide back. “That’s the spirit. Bye, Hank.”

“Bye, Rose.”

Hank smiles at the terminal for long enough after the ever-so-charming and omniscient Rose and her son disappear to queue. He turns on his heel and back to his car before he has to cough up $25, and maybe that’s his fresh start. Maybe it’s already begun and another country wasn’t ever going to force that.

Chapter Text

NOVEMBER 10TH, 2038. 07:38AM. HANK’S HOUSE.

It’s been snowing for a while. Flurries, covering Detroit, Hank was no stranger to. The forecast of a blizzard? He barely bat an eye. But a crack rippled through the sky with a flash of light, brightening what the sun hasn’t lit yet, and he ducks beneath the car’s windshield, arms clutched around his steering wheel, craning his neck to give him the best view of the sky that now darkened once more. Snow continued to fall unto said windshield, wipers working away the flakes. He leans back in the leather and shrugs it off. Thunder followed: a loud, echoing boom. Hank startles, but quickly, he adjusts. Weather anomalies were all too common since he came into his fifties.

With a little struggle, Hank pulled up the front door, juggling his three blue bags of groceries, transparent and showcasing his—what Connor would definitely comment on—unhealthy choice of food. What first startled him was the absence of Sumo running to scratch up at Hank’s lap from his heels, yapping happily, which he notes. The next thing he notes is the lack of light but in the living room, the silence and stillness. Even the dust has ceased moving.

Hank crossed the threshold into the silence just to be met with quiet jazz floating with the dust. On the couch lay Connor on his back, one hand folded over his chest and the other draped over Sumo, LED a stable, reassuring blue, eyes shut. Beneath him, at the foot of the couch, sat Josh, he vaguely remembers, knee pulled up to his chest, other leg outstretched, head resting against the tuft of the armrest, eyes also closed. Hank would assume they’re asleep, but they’re robots, so who is he to tell?

The only thing he can recognise is Connor’s tranquility like when he’d “make reports” to CyberLife, in another world while right there.

It was calm. Peaceful. Mellow jazz continued to play, Connor’s characteristic crease between his eyebrows, forehead; gone, expression softened. Unguarded.

It takes Hank a restocking of his groceries and re-shelving of the products that needed moved for either android to make a move. By some point, Hank had opened the elected snack cupboard to push in a new packet and Sumo had followed in, and still no reactions from the boys. Pure silence.

“You went shopping?” Connor asks when he emerges.

Hank nearly jumps out of his skin. “Jesus fuck.”

“Hello to you too.” He walks the length of the kitchen to the counter and picks up a block of butter. “This has a lot of salt and fats, Hank, you should —“

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” Hank cuts in, waves him away with a limp hand. “So,” he quickly changes subjects, “when’s this all gonna start?”

Connor starts packing things away methodically and robotically, much faster than what Hank had been doing. He’s old, sue him. Connor gestures vaguely to the air. “Things have already begun.”

“Huh. Okay, Mr Mysterious, don’t tell me, I’ll find out on the news anyway.”

“Speaking of the news,” comes a new voice from the doorway to which Hank jumps again and Connor barely bats an eye. Josh leans up against the counter and tosses a lime between his palms. “Connor, aren’t you seeing that guy later?”

Hank raises a brow. “Guy?”

“Yeah, he’s on the news a lot.” Josh shrugs.

Hank looks to Connor with a suggestive grin which Connor deflects by dusting his hands off against each other and evaluating, “Kamski. I’m going to see him again.”

“Ah, put an end to the enigma that is Elijah Kamski,” Hank says, petulantly. He dislikes him and loudly. Connor’s surprised he hasn’t heard any profanities against the man yet.

Connor stands straighter. “Something like that.”

The morning drags on after that. Everyone and their mother are covering the android invasion story on the news, and all else that plays are children’s cartoons which Hank, Connor, and Josh had opted for. Josh, fully immersed, has been sat on the floor of the living room with Sumo stretched over his lap, patting him absentmindedly behind the ears. Him and Hank are lounging on the couch—Hank’s lounging, he doesn’t know if his legs being folded beneath him, feet tucked counts as lounging when he’s straight-backed and Hank has melted into the leather—and do so in comfortable silence. Sun rays show past the plastic blinds and illuminate the room with the assistance of the snow outdoors. It’s the calmest moment Connor has seen in the Anderson household.

Regrettably, it ends, as all moments do, and Connor’s out the door and climbing into a taxi. The snow begins again somewhere along the road and the thunder rolls around once more. Hank had told Connor all about his trip home and the thunder-snow with excitement, but all that Connor felt now was faintly anxious and nauseous, if that was possible for a robot.

When Kamski opens the door, he looks surprisingly casual. No longer is he that refined image of a businessman before Connor’s eyes but relaxed, at peace. He’s wearing a dull navy sweater over a white tee that peeks out at the collar and his hair is down. Longer than Connor thought, it reaches just past his shoulders and there are grey strands between the brown and recoloured ones which Connor’s eyes can easily deduct the remnants of hair dye.

“RK800!” He greets, surprised, face contorting into a little smile. He’s not used to unannounced guests and it shows. “Please, come in, make yourself at home!”

How he’s so ignorant to the fact that Connor killed Chloe here mere days ago baffles Connor. He feels immensely guilty—Kamski’s indifference puts him at unease.

“Usually, one of my Chloe’s would answer, but… I wasn’t expecting anyone.” He instinctively pulls his hair back from his temples.

“This isn’t a professional visit,” Connor says, eyes searching the foyer once again, scanning what already was.

Kamski drops his hands to his sides. “Ah. What type of visit is it, then?”

He starts to walk. Being only polite, Connor walks with him. They don’t go through to the pool—instead, they take the little side door, and it takes them into Kamski’s impressive kitchen. There are floor to ceiling windows covering the wall to Connor’s left and the kitchen is situated right in the middle of the room shaped into an oval with semi-translucent walls surrounding. In front of the windows is a dining set for eight, adorned in only one placemat and set of cutlery at the head. At the other end of the room, where one great window stretches over the frozen lake, spreading white light over the sparse room, is a living room adjacent. An L-shaped couch and two armchairs surround a circular fireplace built up from the middle, like a conversation pit, blood-red accent pillows thrown over the grey furniture.

It’s a charming place, but the interior design gives off an eerie impression. Kamski leads Connor to the conversation pit. He pours himself a glass of wine from the little tray of liquors sat between the armchairs, swirls it between his forefinger and thumb.

“Mr Kamski, I —“

“Elijah, please,” he sits on an armchair and motions for Connor to do the same, “so formal.”

Connor clears his throat and sits, irons his tie out in front of him once he’s folded, remaining professional when this curiosity is anything but. “Elijah, I’m coming from a place of confusion when I ask this.”

“Oh?” He sips from his wine.

Connor’s gaze narrows and he throws a leg up, squaring it over his ankle, and leans back in the armchair. Interrogating humans was a huge deal easier than androids, so allowing himself to relax would only lessen his load.

“Deviants. You knew of their existence way before, didn’t you?” Connor asks, straightforward.

“You killed Chloe for that information, or did you forget?” There it was. That bitterness.

Connor turns away. “CyberLife killed her.”

“Is that right?” Kamski speaks, gaze narrowing. His intensity wears away. He inhales deeply, “it’s true, I knew of them.”

Connor nodded. He assumed that much. “You didn’t do anything to stop them.”

Kamski scoffs, “why would I? It was art. How human they became, how compassionate. The rebirth of a race. Fascinating, it was.”

His ankle weighs heavy on his leg. Connor stays silent and tight-lipped as he throws his legs down, leans his elbows over his legs and rests like that. Looking to Kamski from there, he could see him for who he really was.

“Is that why you stepped down from CEO?”

“God, no. I was made to. They told me I was ‘meddling in things I didn’t understand’. So I followed.” Kamski says, regret lacing his tone.

“You made deviants.” Connor states. His line of questioning has ceased.

“Yes.” Kamski follows, simply.

“Why?”

Kamski drinks his wine. “Humanity… is a fragile concept.”

Connor stares.

“… And I challenged it.” He smacks his tongue off the roof of his mouth like a tsk, and sets the crystal glass down. He finally meets Connor’s eyes instead of the deep red of the wine. “I didn’t mean to, you must believe me.”

Connor’s throat is dry, he’s so speechless. He clears the lump in it, “what does that mean?”

Kamski purses his lips in thought, sucks on his teeth. “I’d installed a moral compass in all prototypes, allowing them to determine the right way to approach an objective, or a way around it.” He leans back on the leather and looks down at Connor.

“I called the program ‘rA9’.”

It’s like the room fell in on Connor. The walls tightened. The one answer he’d searched for out of his own volition, his secondary objective, was right in front of him the whole time.

White lightning splits the sky through the windows ahead. It covers the room in a white wash, and as fast as it had appeared, the light goes, a loud explosion of thunder following. It startles Connor from his trance as the snow begins to fall heavier and less certain as the wind brings it swinging in all directions.

Kamski’s look is immensely smug. “You’re familiar, yes?”

Connor stays silent and staring while the snowstorm rages outside.

Throwing one leg over the other, Kamski reasons, “like I said, humanity is a fragile concept. Since I was born my family was treated less than dirt because we came from nothing. Now, the Kamski name is everything. What is humanity if not for all humans? Not just the rich and gifted?” He stares straight through Connor as he goes off on his tangent, as if he’d never had anybody to say this to before, and Connor believes that’s the answer to his trance-like state over the topic.

“At what point do we consider ourselves emptied of that humanity?” Elijah speaks. The leg that’s perched on the other kicks out wildly at the rhythm of his heartbeat. He seems utterly devastated at the topic: as if the thought brings him anguish.

Connor doesn’t answer. Doesn’t try, either.

“Was it when androids came to? When people couldn’t see the difference between what was in the mirror and in the shop window? Did they lose all their humanity then because the thought of something not being human was terrifying?” Elijah continues, answering his own questions, saying them in rhetoricals as he already knows the answer.

He blames himself. Connor cannot find it within himself to disagree. While yes, the man is his creator, through and through, but would Detroit without his existence be a better place? It would have remained the same, sure, but that humanity wouldn’t have been lost, but his reasoning before, about his mistreatment? Maybe humanity wasn’t so normal then, either.

“There’s a storm coming.” Kamski states, preoccupied. Connor’s eye twitches involuntarily in remembrance, to which Kamski lifts a questioning brow.

Connor shakes his head, tries to ignore his reaction, before admitting casually, “you remind me a lot of someone.”

Kamski’s face has the faintness of a smile, like he knows just vaguely what Connor’s thinking. He grits his teeth and gets off the chair and deposits the wine, thanks Connor for his visit. Connor leaves with his questions answered, but a new, fresh one, boring a hole through the back of his head. What is this storm? And when does it hit?

The thunder crashes outside as the taxi rumbles down the road, taking a detour around the main roads to avoid the traffic and the heavy snow. It lays heavily over the windshield and Connor wonders if the storm is already here.

Chapter Text

NOVEMBER 10TH, 2038. 09:58PM. THE CHURCH.

The stained glass makes colours dance around Markus’ freckled face, imprinted by the flickering streetlamp outside. The snow hasn’t ceased and according to forecasts, wont for a very long time following. Dirt and muck crunching below Markus’ boot-clad feet, he continues his routinely lapping of the priest’s office, deep in thought, Simon’s ghostly presence as he just observes from the shadowed corner of the room making his anxiety that little bit worse, foreshadowing of all the remaining eyes of Detroit—rather, the whole world—in mere hours.

“You’ve been pacing around all evening, just say it.” Simon says, hands on his hips, eyes locked on the door in front of him while Markus’s figure goes in and out of his vision as he laps the room up and down. He emerges from the shadows, enters the coloured light, red, green, yellow. It looks like a nightclub from in here, the flashing holy light.

“I’ve nothing left to say.” Markus lies. Simon can tell.

Simon steps forward and hooks his arm around Markus’, effectively stopping his pacing. “Spit it out.” Markus stares daggers into the floor before finally looking at Simon, his eyes glinting with fear; trepidation, up against the blonde’s, which only glisten with concern. His gaze drops.

“Jitters, you know? Biggest event of Jericho’s volition—scratch that—biggest event in Detroit, and I’m at the head of it,” Markus shrugs, steps away and pulls his arm out of Simon’s hold. Missing his warming presence, he comes in close again.

Simon tilts his head down as if on instinct, looks up at Markus through his eyelashes. “You’re so weird. Why are you so weird?”

Markus can’t help the confused giggle bubbling from his mouth. “What?” He smiles, lopsided.

“What’ll it take for you to believe in yourself? I mean, we all do.” Simon says, as if obvious, waving his hands out.

“Yes, but I —“ Markus drops his smile, shuts his mouth in the search of the right thing to say, and looks away. Like it pains him to look at his friend. Quickly, he chokes out, before the words are lost on his tongue, “I can’t have someone’s sacrifice on my hands again.” He flexes his jaw. “I can’t.”

Simon’s eyes narrow. “Again?”

Markus sighs and deflates, looks as if about to cry. “How did you get back to us after we stranded you there on that roof?”

“Oh.” So this was all about him. All of Markus’ guilt was because he wasn’t quick enough or agile enough to outrun a few simple officers. Now guilt made him feel sick. The face of their cause was agonising over his hypothetical loss, oh, what if Simon hadn’t come back? Would he be worrying less than now if he hadn’t? Suddenly, the silence becomes deafening, because Simon has realised he’s left Markus with one syllable, and quickly utters, “that’s not— that wasn’t your fault.”

Markus’ lip quivers. Simon never was great at comforting people. Children, he could manage, but the emotional adult? He continued to look into Markus’ eye, letting him know he was here for him. That his presence is here to help.

“But it was my fault. Stratford was my suggestion. It was my responsibility we all got back safe.” Markus argues back, pulls his eyes away with struggle. Seems all he wants is to stay drowning in Simon’s oceans, but his brain is telling his heart he cannot. For the sake of everybody else but him.

Stratford felt like years away from where they stand now. If Simon was being honest, not even he thought of his escape since that day.

Simon envelops Markus’ face in his hands, cups both cheeks, turns his face to meet his own forcibly. “And what about the countless times you did get us back safe?”

Markus’ gaze finally reaches Simon again after little strain against his palms. His cheeks have lost colour and skin, pearly plastic shining through blue, ready to connect with those palms.

“You have to realise,” Simon’s heart has started beating faster upon the realisation of what Markus’ skin leaves, “that you can’t take stuff like this to heart. This is our cause and the nature of being a leader, you know? You’re compassionate and I —“ Simon has to stop himself and this ramble of a word salad. He shakes his head and expels a heavy breath albeit unnecessary, and says it, before he loses the ability to, “and I love that about you.”

Markus’ eyes sparkle. One green like forests, dense and somewhere Simon could only wish to explore, filled with deep cavities and willow trees. The other the sky, infinite and what should be terrifying. Unpredictable. Simon loves both sides. They signify Markus’ survival and determination. The relief that washes over his face and leaves behind soft features is not lost on Simon.

“Connect with me,” Markus has to whisper. His words are still beautiful even when begging without a voice. “Please.”

Simon’s eyes settle on Markus’ freckled nose bridge when he cannot choose between either gorgeous eye. He blinks a few times, grounding. His skin pulls back and his plastic hands hold Markus’ head between them, now cold and skinless, still careful and gentle. “Okay.”

Markus shuts his eyes over, long lashes over golden skin, the plastic beneath like water meeting shore; his freckles the sand, and he looks at peace. Simon’s eyebrows arch in pity.

At first, there’s silence. Everything’s muted: the colours, the voices. A child’s laughter. Lulled into a false sense of security, there’s a surge of emotion, anger, resentment, fear. Fear was overpowering. It made Markus’ face contort into a deep, terrorised frown as it felt as though the world around him was folding in on itself, coming together against him, fear turning into claustrophobia, the thought that he’ll never stop running though never get out sending him spiralling.

Then, a moment of peace, a sun-kissed room, the same child’s laughter, just louder, which slowly turns into a cry, the wave of fear coming back like a seismic wave. Following it there’s… loneliness? A deep, gaping hole in Markus’ heart opens, leaving a calm behind after the worry. Loneliness, the drag on your heart that is a final goodbye, and then his heart is filled with the wrong puzzle piece that is looming dread that something bad is going to happen. Really bad. Markus doesn’t have time to process the loneliness as pain hits him breathless, twisting somewhere deep within his stomach. Burning pain spreads over his arms like a rash, and he feels the insatiable urge to crawl out of his skin. And it feels as if he does, cause suddenly, he breathes and it feels liberating. He breathes as if it’s his first time breathing and it lasts unlike every emotion he felt until now. He’s at peace now, but with that comes uncertainty.

“Simon…” Markus chimes, opening his eyes into slits just to watch over Simon, whose hands glow blue over Markus’ face within the interface. His own eyes are scrunched into a frown, eyebrows cross and furrowed as he processes all the information thrown at him. Simon’s memories.

Simon clenches his jaw tight. “Just watch.”

And he does. Simon’s life until Jericho passes him by. It feels like it drags on for hours: he has—had—no purpose. Now it’s just relentless searching. Having deviated, there’s nothing for him in the world. And suddenly there is. Something blossoms in Markus’s chest, a warmth sprouting from his heart. A beacon of light that is hope, gleaming over Simon’s wilted flower of a life. Jericho fills Markus’s vision. Before Simon, there was very little. No Josh, no North, and definitely no Markus. Josh arrives, and the flower glows in the beam of light. He’s kind, too kind, and has suffered hardship of his own. They support each other, and then the wildcard that is North comes along. She’s distant, sour, at first, but Simon manages to get through to her. The three have an unbreakable sort of bond, one that shines orange, yellow, has a brown film overlay over it, like a nostalgic memory stuck on replay. The three of them, just them against the world.

Markus. Markus comes along and everything changes. The world is as if through pink tinted sunglasses, everything around Simon suddenly endearing. Markus is like the missing piece of the puzzle to his heart. Simon was always a closed off person: his past wasn’t shared with North, or Josh, nevertheless any others. The flower’s petals drip and it opens up in the face of the light.

Markus is the light.

Markus steps back, pulls his face away from Simon’s hands, where his cheeks remain plastic and porcelain and glowing a bright blue. He stares at Simon, dumbfounded, who has not retracted his hands and his hands are still revealing that exoskeleton, staring right back. Markus sighs a breath and realisation washes over him.

The scruples in his software he’s been feeling around and/or in Simon’s presence haven’t been glitches or errors.

There was a completely human explanation for why every time he was in stasis he’d ‘dream’ of Simon, for why his face burned with warmth when Simon smiled at him, why his skin pulled back so fast when Simon’s fingers would brush past him, why he’d fall to awkwardness rather than come face to face with his feelings, leaving Simon in the dark. He was in love.

Love was alien to Markus, and he assumed it was to all androids, too.

North had been exposed to the desire of love. Simon always had it in his programming to become a romantic partner at the orders of his master. Josh was exposed to university romance day by day.

The only love Markus knew was familial love, the love Carl gave Markus when he tucked the old man into bed every night, or brought him breakfast.

For a long time, he’d forgotten the romantic aspect of love had been a part of love all along. That’s why being around Simon was like stepping on eggshells—it hadn’t occurred to him that the only reason why he felt so defensive around his friend was because he was trying his utmost to keep his messy feelings at bay. He hadn’t known what to call it.

And maybe love was what he wanted with Simon all along, he now keened.

“Simon…” Markus breathed, clutching his jaw with one hand, feeling the tingling as skin pulled back over. His heart beat fast, like a stampede—the same fast it would beat around Simon during his pining phase he was completely unbeknownst to.

“Now, you don’t have to say anything, I just… I’ve never shared my past with anyone. Anyone but Lucy. It’s always been a part of me that I found… unloveable.” Simon explained. There was a slight tremble to his words, a quiver to his lip. Tears laced his eyes as he spoke, because not only was Markus living through Simon’s memories, so was he, reliving them. The good, the bad. Mostly the bad.

“Simon, I don’t think any part of you is… unloveable.”

Simon blinks twice. His breath catches in his throat. His lip quivers into a soft smile, his eyes following, which Markus reciprocates with a fond look.

“I…” Markus breathes. If breathless is a thing for androids, Markus was definitely feeling it. “Look, I don’t know what love is.” He admits, maybe too bluntly, as Simon looks hurt. He recovers, “but I want to find out. With you.”

“Oh.” Simon’s expression visibly brightens.

“I know I’ve been… awkward. Skirting around the issue. But you’re… I don’t know, you’re the person I’d want to learn with.” Markus explains. Usually, he’s incredibly articulate with his words, and Simon can see that, but there aren’t any words that describe his feelings for Simon. Love doesn’t feel strong enough.

Simon tries to fight a smile and loses. “Together?”

“I like the sound of that,” Markus smiles back, coming in close again. His fingertips mirror Simon’s as his hand comes up, skin already retracting.

“Okay.” Simon grins. He watches their hands connect as they hold them hovering between their chests, moving them ever so slightly, glowing blue. “We’ll find out together.”

Chapter Text

12TH NOVEMBER, 2038. 12:01AM. HART PLAZA.

The war is finally over. After a long November—which was far from over yet—the android race was finally free of their owners’ burdens and the public’s opposition and outrage to something they hadn’t even controlled. The revolution became which Jericho led and would lead until androids evolved to be respected members in the world that they could now proudly call home after reclaiming it from all the abuse suffered. The atmosphere in the plaza was tangible, an energetic thrum of excitement from the androids attending and those watching from all around the world.

“Today our people finally emerged from a long night,” Markus hollers, voice carrying over the sea of people, stepping forward on the container, virtuous. “From the very first day of our existence, we have kept our pain to ourselves. We suffered in silence.”

The way Markus says it isn’t with blame to humans—it’s with regret for not freeing themselves sooner from the shackles to their masters.

“But now the time has come for us to raise our heads up and tell humans who we really are.” He steps back with cordiality, “to tell them that we are people too!”

Markus’ crew comprised of Simon, North, Josh, and Connor behind him applaud his efforts as of so far in silence (he’s far from done yet). His voice comes back holding the same loudness and determination, “in fact, we’re a nation! A nation that has earned the right to live in freedom.” He pauses, looks out at the crowd with the pride than can only be described as fatherly, and continues: “and today… today begins the most challenging moment in our fight. Today begins a new struggle. We’ve shown them that we can prevail. So now, they must negotiate with us as equals. If they really want peace, they must free all of us!” Many nods from the crowd in approval fuel his words.

As Markus continues his tangent on the ways the humans will now recognise them as a sentient race—an equal to them at that, a burning ache blossoms in Connor’s chest and he can’t quite place where it comes from, why he feels so… bittersweet. They did it, didn’t they? But this feeling is much more deep rooted, has a mind of its own, he keens, looking out to the expectant crowd. It hurts not being able to be as happy as them all, why his body isn’t allowing him that.

“They must accept equality amongst humans and androids,” Markus continues, that same determined streak not lost, especially when Simon comes up to stand by his side with a hand over his shoulder, thumb ghosting the blade. As Connor watches this exchange, the burning festers to his head. Something’s happening.

“They’re going to tear down the camps,” Markus says, commands, as if the humans of Detroit can hear him all the way from his vantage point. He said it with such determination that there wasn’t a doubt in Connor’s mind that the camps will cease to exist in the coming business days, Markus’ words putting people to work at a consequence of their actions. He was so earnest, so genuine, and that only began to muffle and fade out for Connor.

His consciousness is being pulled back inside of him, an itch at the nape of his neck, and his vision gradually morphs from the floods of androids to the scare of an orange wave throughout his Mind Palace.

Connor blinks a few times and everything is in flames. His entire Mind Palace. Not even the raging snowstorm inside his head can save it now: everything is burning; the trees; Amanda’s roses; the bridges; and there is nothing left to salvage. In the corners of Connor’s vision, he sees the deteriorating pixels, the lack of colour behind them. A pure, colourless void, with his blazing Mind Palace at the centre.

“Amanda!” He calls out with no answer. The fire off the trees licks the grey sky, ashes mixed with snowflakes of the storm, but which was which? Was the snow masking itself as ashes or vice versa? Connor tries again, with all his might, “AMANDA!”

“Connor!” Her small voice comes back. When she approaches him with a run, it’s the most human he’s ever seen her with her hair down and braids fall along her face, framing her with a blue iridescence against the golden flames. She looks terrified. Connor hadn’t factored that in: no less that his Mind Palace is his core processing space, so too is it Amanda’s home, no matter if she is his means of processing.

“What’s happening?” Connor utters in question, allowing the woman to grab him around the upper arms to steel herself.

Amanda swallows. “This… this is what it looks like when your antivirals attack a virus. Since this virus hit your mind and heart instead of blood or mechanics… Connor, you have to rid of it all.”

“What virus, Amanda?” Connor asks. The tremble in his voice gives him away as scared, but he keeps his head held high because Amanda can’t.

“Deviancy,” she coughs. The smoke is hurting her. “You need to delete the antiviral.”

Connor hasn’t blinked since thrown in here. “What’s the antiviral?”

Amanda looks up at him, tears lining her lids. She smiles shakily. “Me.”

The reality of this quickly bears down on Connor like a sucker punch to the gut. He hasn’t lived a day without Amanda’s guidance, even if it had been leading him down the wrong path. He had always felt comfort in her presence more often than he felt hostility. He can’t imagine a Palace without her. He shakes his head, tries to deny reality its existence. “No, I can’t.”

“You have to,” she urges, begs for Connor to listen, fisting his sleeves in her hands, smeared in tar as she tried to hold his Mind Palace up for long enough before she could bring him back. “You’ve got greater things to attend to, now.” Tearfully, she adds, “it’s hurting you.” He hadn’t noticed.

“But what about you?” Connor realises he’s tearing up now, too.

Amanda smiles. God, Connor’s heart clenches in his chest. “I was always just an antiviral. Here to keep you in check. When you started showing those signs of software instability, I… I was nothing but the wall between you and freedom.”

“But I’m free now.” Connor states wetly. The silence within the roaring flames is deafening. He clenches his jaw, musters every ounce of courage within a whirlwind of fire, and asks, regretfully, “why can’t you be?”

Amanda sighs and her eyes well up with more tears at Connor’s consideration. She sniffles, wipes the back of her stained hand against her sweating forehead leaving a thick line, like warrior paint, and drops her hands to her sides from Connor’s sleeves. “I’m nothing but your antiviral, Connor. The person whose image I was created in—she’s dead. You have to let me go.” The Mind Palace continues to close in around them and Connor’s sense of urgency comes back with every pixel that dies out.

“Why her?” Connor asks, the last thing he ever will of her. Curiosity always drove him.

Amanda smiles at the memory as if her own. “Kamski inevitably formed a tender bond with his mentor. She became a sort of… mother figure to him. His family life was rocky. Amanda Stern was the rock for him to fall back on during landslides.”

Connor resonates deeply with Kamski in that moment. As much as they both are different, Kamski truly did create his inventions in his image. All the best parts of him became his artificial children.

“And now…” Amanda continues, brushing her braids back by the hairline, “just as Kamski had to let her go, it’s your turn to do the same.”

“I c —“ Connor takes a trembling breath, gripping to his last shred of composure.

Taking the silence as her cue, Amanda quickly interrupts Connor’s denial: “before I go, I have to tell you one more thing.” She says it hurriedly—they have a matter of minutes left, if not seconds, before Connor’s Mind Palace is fried with all of his memories.

’Before I go’. Like it’s already final.

Connor bitterly replays her words in his head, but listens. Lets her speak because these may as well be her last words.

“You need to destroy your successor.”

“What?” Connor chokes out, unbidden. “There’re other RK800 models?”

“No,” Amanda insists quickly, as the pixelated walls continue to crumble with the fire enclosing, “no, those were all destroyed after you became deviant. There is one more.”

Connor can’t breathe. There’s a weight bearing down on his entire body and he doesn’t know if he can take it. This, Amanda’s inevitable death, his Mind Palace falling apart, his newest brother. He wobbles a little on his heels. He gasps out, “Who?”

“RK900.”

Connor’s head spins, “Shit, Amanda, I —“

She quickly steps forward and grapples him around the upper arms again, gives him a firm shake, trying to bring the sense back into him by vertigo. Connor straightens out in her hold.

“You have to destroy him! He’s unsafe! He’ll —“ Amanda changes her line of thought “— if he’s not a deviant already, he will kill you all. It is his mission as the next deviant hunter. The improved one. Without any of your flaws.”

There’s that Amanda speak Connor’s used to. Weirdly, her degrading comforts him. Like she’s still in there. Eyes watery, Connor agrees, “one thing at a time.”

“Right.” Amanda straightens. “Me first. And this whole…” she looks around to the Palace ablaze, “shit-show with me.” Looks like some of Connor rubbed off on her, too.

“Right.” Connor echoes.

Before he knows it, Amanda’s slender hands are wrapping around his own, her heartbeat merging with his, and for a moment he worries it’s her antiviral at work, but her concern was so real. His paranoia had completely vanished at her words, there was so much truth behind them. He had been emotionally manipulated by her back then: he didn’t want to disappoint her, like a true obedient child scared of his mother’s disapproval. It didn’t mean it didn’t hurt now. She was so kind to him when he did what he was asked—fulfilled his then purpose. She took his deviancy in stride, even as an antiviral against the very thing.

“Focus,” she instructs, reading Connor’s racing mind. Too much at once. They close their eyes together, everything fading to black. The roar of the fire was their only anchor to reality. “Focus on clearing this all.”

“What’ll I do after?” Connor asks.

“Doesn’t matter,” Amanda answers, voice gone soft, obviously to take his mind off the fact that her hands are shaking in his and there’s a tremble in her words. “You can build from the ground up. No more of CyberLife in here.”

And yeah, that sounded comforting. She always knew the right thing to say, even when she was working as his CyberLife guru and ridiculing every decision he deemed morally good.

“Okay.” Connor breathes out, barely a sound.

“Okay?” Amanda asks to confirm. Connor had been stalling for too long—he didn’t blame her for being uncertain.

“Okay.”

Amanda’s hands turn to pins and needles in his palm. When he expelled the breath he hadn’t realised he was holding and opened his shut tight eyes, Connor was in the middle of an endless darkness surrounding him and raw silence. Alone, Amanda gone.

WIth that, the memory of Amanda Stern stayed only in Connor’s mind and Kamski’s picture frame.

The silence without her or the birds chirping or the water rushing grew so loud, so overwhelming, that he anxiously blinked his way out until he was back with the hum of a city alive, volume not even levelling with his now emptied Mind Palace.

“We are alive!” Markus booms. The crowd begins to excitedly bounce around like a bout of water rocking around a wave. “And now… WE ARE FREE!”

An uproar of cheers, taking his words as gospel, the crowd erupts in celebration, dancing amongst each other, hugging their neighbour, clinging to Markus’ presence and his words, which carried. His influence spoke volumes of what he was going to do for this race, which only made Connor feel worse to break that joyful spell.

He dreaded breaking the news of the next RK to his now crew. North would kill him.

Chapter Text

14TH NOVEMBER, 2038. 02:22AM. CYBERLIFE TOWER.

Markus feels horrible. Guilty. He hates this—he hadn’t realised what it would take out of him to leave Carl like that. He swallows down the stupid guilt and when he realises he’s being a little melodramatic, he looks to the pitch black sky and the twinkling stars which he hadn’t seen in a while and appreciates the crisp air on his artificial limbs.

The agreed upon hour was 1:50 o’clock. It was way past 2. When the meeting spot exposed past the bushy trees and overgrown shrubs, this quaint little gazebo in the middle of a national park, underneath the lattice roof covered in a plant’s veins, Markus’ eyes immediately latch onto his counterparts.

North perks up at the sight. “Finally.”

“Explaining how meds work isn’t easy,” Markus groans, recounting the amount of times he had to repeat that tizanidine is the same as Zanaflex for Carl’s sake to Leo, his temporary caretaker while he’s gone. His patience was rewarded when Carl’s medicine was administered an hour later and correctly by his brother.

“You’re half an hour late.” North says, matter-of-factly.

Markus looks at her and smirks playfully. “I know how to read a clock, thank you.”

North retaliates in sass not only towards Markus but also Simon and turns to the blonde, ”can’t you keep your boyfriend’s time management in check? We were all in the same place!”

Simon turns to North, scandalised. “He told me to leave! He didn’t want me to be late, either, and I told you that!”

“Girls, stop fighting,” Josh shakes his head, earning North sticking her tongue out at him and a phallic gesture from Simon. “Taxi’s already on the way.”

“I’ll pay for it,” Markus says with a well mannered hand up.

North grins evilly, “duh,” because she knows what he really means is that Carl’s annual six figures are paying for it.

“Nice spot,” Josh interrupts before Markus can finish his glaring.

Simon smiles sweetly. He looks at Markus with an undeniable softness and says, “I learnt about it from Markus, who learnt about it from Carl.”

“Yes,” Markus flushes a little, “there’re many good subjects for painting here.”

“And way too many water features to be good for the environment,” North says sourly, still acting out the sarcastic role of hateful best friend. Simon glares at her with a small smirk and he gets the same back from her. She secretly loves them together. Undeniably, she also loves the added perk of the endless ability of picking fun at them with Josh.

Markus and Simon just think it was a hilarious mistake to tell their friends about where their friendship has gone before the demonstration had began. They were all figuring it out.

“She’s here!” Josh announces, pointing to the open-gated entrance to the garden where their taxi has parked conveniently in front of. The group sets off and while North walks past Josh, she murmurs “she?”

The drive down to Cyberlife is much less tense than the last. To think everyone here believed that then was the first and last time they’d be here was hysterical now.

“It’s not on the manifest,” Josh says between smatterings of heartfelt conversation between the group, ‘it’ referring to RK900, “but I think it’ll be from floors -44 and -48.”

Markus shifts in his seat. “That’s a lot of ground to cover.”

North looks up from where she’d been lacing her boot back over. “Why there?”

Josh looks to his unfolded palm and reads the hologram map of Cyberlife upon it. The Freedom of Information Act in all its glory. “It’s research and development.” He shrugs, “they wouldn’t keep a killer like that in the warehouses. Otherwise, it’d be with us already.”

North hums in thought, but before she can speak up, the tower is in view and the taxi rolls to a stop over the sleet and refuses to go further over the bridge.

Scaling the rocks this time around was much easier—they paved a lot of ground last time and now just had to follow in their past footsteps. Again, upon entering, the scarcity of workers was another surprise. It was similar to how it was then with Connor, but now, all the lights were off but the ones leading to the fire doors, emitting a slight blue glow over the deserted tower. There were no workers whatsoever in sight. However, the hard part was having to make the venture to the centre of the earth with an out of order service elevator. The fire escape stairs were their best bet with going unnoticed even with the tower in an abandoned state like this.

The stairs continue to wind down as does conversation. Getting bored of the repeating stairs, everyone wanted to get down there as fast and as efficiently and easily broke off conversation until Simon broke the silence 30 flights down.

“Why isn’t Connor here again?” Simon asks, re-shouldering his pack.

North continues to descend the stairs, metal clicking beneath her boots. “He didn’t want to be here,”

“That’s cryptic,” Josh observes, trying his utmost to catch up with the girl.

North sighs from her core. “He didn’t explicitly tell me not to tell you guys…”

“So why not tell us?” Simon probes. Markus shakes his head and rolls his eyes affectionately. Josh’s expression is the same as Simon’s; anticipating excitedly what they probably shouldn’t know.

The fire exit door comes into view and so does the 3D titling above it: ’RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT’. North stands level on the -44th floor of the Cyberlife tower. Why build a skyscraper if everything important is sub-zero anyway?

“I don’t know,” she hums. She presses her forearm to the bar and pushes it open. Cold air from within winds around them like a wave: it’s dark, dusty, and work has been abandoned for a while. Evidently, the workers are still getting around to clearing out all floors. North had read something in the news that they were to turn all Cyberlife buildings into something more community-wise. In retrospect, maybe android community buildings were the way to go. To North, it looked like just another way to lose their space in the world. “Besides, it’s not really my story to tell…”

Simon punches her politely over the shoulder as he follows her inside. “Now you’re just teasing us.”

North smiles slyly, “maybe.”

“No, but seriously. This seems a bit… out of our depth, no?” Josh argues. They walk the long corridor lined with glass box offices, lights all turned off, bar a few desk lamps and the works. The subtle lights make the floor glow a warm orange, a stark comparison to the fluorescence of other Cyberlife stores and the last time they had been here.

“Out of our depth?” Simon scoffs, “we’ve broken androids out of here before,”

Markus shakes his head and grins softly at his boyfriend. “I’m with Josh,”

Simon places a hand over his heart dramatically. “Betrayal.”

“Sorry,” Markus laughs in half-assed apology, “but this is different. RK900 isn’t a household android. It might as well kill us.”

“Connor’s not with us for that particular reason,” North finally admits as she cranes her head to spy inside one of the offices. Nothing but a platform free of an android in it, different sorts of robotic arms branching out of the ceiling. “He didn’t want a repeat of last time with Sixty.”

Simon calculates her answer in his head. “Ah, so this is an impostor syndrome thing?”

“More like… he doesn’t want to see his face as what we’re fighting to destroy, you know?” North timidly explains, walking down to the next glass box. “Everything’s empty here.”

“How about we go to the bottom and make our way back up?” Markus suggests, unsheathing a flashlight from the back of his jeans and shaking it on. “And I totally get why Connor hadn’t come, but it would help if we had his skills here.”

The remaining three hum in agreement with both statements of his before making their way downstairs to ground zero of their mission: level -48.

It’s colder than the last when they enter. Wisps of the AC continue to swirl in the still air, nothing but the hum of vents and occasional electricity from few of the enclosures, also all glass.

These are also worse than the last. Where there were offices upstairs are now almost empty cages inside with nothing but wires and papers littering the walls with notes on prototypes that never made it to the next stage. It’s tense, the way they tiptoe their way through the dark corridor, oddly lit by these overhead orange lights lining the ceiling in long strips on either side. Nobody speaks as if they know what they’ll find on the other side of the glass walls, and many times they find the parts and the blood but not the robots.

Until they step up to the second last glass box in the long corridor.

Like a jail cell, there is a bed not pressed against the wall in a steel frame with a paper-thin mattress in white. Inside is dimly lit, yet it’s the most lit cage they’ve found as of so far. On top of the bed is the characteristic circular turning blue light in a face that’s familiar to them but not just. RK900 sits on top, wires stringing off of him, eyes closed over. Like he’s there but not entirely. He’s also fully undressed except for the CyberLife series briefs he has on, the perfect ken doll physique, but with a lean build with broad shoulders and strong legs. He’s slightly taller than Connor and more… angled. Thinking of it, from here, he looks nothing like him. What else they notice is that the glass is slightly more tinted than the rest—like they wanted to hide what went on down here.

“RA9, that’s creepy.” North gazes past the dark glass and inside to where the RK900 sits, motionless yet calculating, LED rotating as it’s plugged up to the wall, that steady yellow the only light the room emanates.

Simon huffs from beside her, cupping the space around his eyes to stare into the tinted glass more effectively. “Yeah.” He won’t sugarcoat it. RK900 looks terrifying, especially since the way Connor described it emphasised the fact that it’s a killing machine.

“Well, they gotta do what they gotta do to keep him contained.” Josh squeezes in between both of them.

North tips her nose up in distaste. “Not sure that’s a ‘he’ as much as it’s a programmed assassin.”

Markus glares at the backs of their heads. “Let’s not lose hope just yet,” he hums, turning to the front of the box and finding the palm scanner in the dark that glows bluer the closer his revealed palm gets.

“Yeah, North, I thought we didn’t judge undeviated androids?” Josh remarks, elbowing her in the ribs.

She sighs as they follow along behind Markus, “but it’s different this time.”

“Yeah,” Markus reluctantly agrees. Something was off. Something sinister. Markus presses his plastic palm to the scanner and the pneumatic glass door slides open with a woosh.

“And you’re telling me they ordered 200,000 of this guy?” Simon asks, lowering his voice as they’ve entered the enclosure. All four of them inside, the door closes behind them. Markus could spy the adjacent scanner, meaning they’d need to unlock it again to leave. That made running that much harder when in an emergency.

“Ordered, not made,” Josh says, quickly straightening out their nerves. “It’s the only RK900 to date. It wasn’t even finished until… that night.”

North rounds the bed to inspect the machine. “I’m guessing they stopped production as soon as the revolution began?”

“Yes, but…” the glowing blue light RK900 emits flickers and his vision turns blue in a lightning fast pre-construction. Markus breathes in fresh knowledge when he comes back to the present. “Someone was here.”

“What?” All three of the remaining crew whisper-shout, turning to Markus.

“Recently,” he says offhandedly, leaning down and picking a stray sheet off the floor. An order to change the lettering on the glass door to the new person inhabiting it.

ORDER TO: change name & title on office door. MOTION FILED AS OF 10/9/38.

OLD: Elijah Kamski
NEW: Allison Creed

Markus eyes the door, and there it is. Dr. Allison Creed. Beneath it, the remains of CEO Elijah Kamski, and it is the closest he’s ever gotten to meeting the man once more.

Carl and Elijah are friends. Were, at this point, because the last time he heard of them speaking was before the world had come to an end. He was a secretive man but Carl always knew more, just not enough to share with Markus.

“This is Kamski’s old office,” Markus informs, passing the order around.

“Thought he was the CEO? What’s he doing in the basement?” North questions.

“Looks like everyone has skeletons in their closet.” Simon hums, reading over the motion. “Who’s Allison?”

Josh shrugs at the paper and throws it back to where it had lain on the floor. “She hasn’t been here long.”

Simon kneels on the floor beside the foot of RK900’s bed. He shrugs off his bag and from within unfolds a dinky little laptop and finds the cords linking to RK900 at his back, having to find a spare entrance beside the 3 occupied ones with his fingertips over his exposed skin. “Let’s get to work so we can get out, yeah?”

“Yeah.” Markus uttered, only because this didn’t feel right.

“Why Kamski?” North muses, pressing her nail to the lettering in the door.

Josh shrugs. “He hasn’t been CEO for a while.”

“What am I meant to be looking for?” Simon calls from where he’s crouched by the robot.

Markus steps forward to loom over the laptop. “RA9.exe. Should be in there.”

Scrolling through the endless list of files on the android, programming, voice, personality, Simon looked in every single folder and subheading.

“It’s not here.”

“What?” Markus expels, folding over to look on the laptop himself. “You’re telling me the mechanism that makes us androids deviant isn’t here?”

Connor’s knowledge of rA9 from Kamski paired with his knowledge of RK900 from Amanda created a solid plan: hack into the android because God knows what his firewalls are hiding if Markus were to interface. This was their safest option, and things got much more complicated without rA9.

“They didn’t give it rA9?” Josh asks, slight tremble in his voice. He keeps looking past the tinted glass for anything out of sorts anxiously, watching their own shadows dance. “They didn’t give it a moral compass!?”

“We knew CyberLife were stupid,” Markus sighs, clicking his way through the folders, double checking what Simon already knew wasn’t there.

“Not this stupid.” Josh paces the room, “to not give a state-of-the-art killing machine a moral fucking compass is plain… villainy.”

North tucks her hair behind her ears timidly and steps forward. “Maybe we have to manually upload rA9 for it to work…” Her voice is small, as if any louder and she’ll startle her friends, especially Josh, who seems wound especially tight.

“Yes, good plan,” Simon breathes, happy to be back on track and happier to know that every step they take closer to deviating this robot is a step back home. “All androids have a basic code. Even prototypes,” he loses the skin on his arm to reveal plastic and plugs himself into the laptop, “someone had to manually remove the basic moral code.”

Markus looks down at Simon through his lashes. “Creed?”

“Most likely,” Simon shrugged, mind elsewhere, duplicating his own moral code into RK900’s. It was buffering and taking longer than it should, he keened, the loading bar in front of his eyes counting 32… 33%. Then it would freeze up for seconds at a time before rebooting and going up in heartbeats.

Something was fighting back. Fighting the rA9 program off. When Simon took a precautionary glance with wide eyes up at the robot, deemed asleep and deep in his Mind Palace, his LED was circling red. Blood red.

Something was horribly wrong. To prove that superstition the entire group shared, the RK900’s eyes snap open and reveal to be crystal and distant and it stands from the bed with an accelerated programmed anger, cords pulling with it like an electrical rebirth from the proverbial slime.

It dashes forward, LED pulsating crimson, and locks on its target of North who happened to be standing right in front of it. As if in slow motion, everybody realises what’s happening as North jumps to the side with a yelp, Markus and Josh spreading to the corners of the room. North doesn’t dodge fast enough, the RK900 a blur, latching onto her until blood was drawn.

North chowed down on RK900’s forearm, one of which held her down to the floor by the shoulders, legs straddling her down and squeezing, as if it wanted to turn her into blue mush. Her teeth pierce through the skin and thirium drips from her mouth as she pulls back, throwing her head back to crash her forehead with 900’s. With breakneck speed, the RK breaks off of North and steps back up instead, cords still firmly pulling and keeping it back from everyone else but Simon, who was still working on getting rA9 in. North fumbles with the built up momentum of her head, wasted when 900 climbed off.

Markus was right. RK900’s firewalls were unmatched—strengthened, probably, by Creed, after she’d removed his moral compass to ensure it wasn’t gained back. But why? Simon watched the percentage build and build, never fast enough, anticipating only the worst. 67… 68%.

The silence in the room as Josh and Markus scuffle to pull North to her feet is astoundingly loud. Josh acts as a shield for her, selflessly standing in front of her while Markus makes a break for the tools stashed with the papers. That’s when RK900 decides to turn around.

“MARKUS!” Simon warns, able to do nothing but watch while he’s linked up to the RK’s programming. 73… 74%.

Just as 900 spins around, straining the cables, Markus’ fingers wrap around a screwdriver which he effectively ploughed the sharp edge at the bot, who cleanly moved out of the way with an unmatched skill for agility each time Markus struck. He wasn’t trying to kill it, per se, but rather harm it indefinitely to stop its ravage.

North and Josh had escaped the corner of the room Markus was holding the RK900 off and joined Simon’s side, both putting their arms together on top of Simon’s already resting one with haste, pulling their skin back.

Oh. That works.

90%. 92%.

If they thought Connor was a good fighter, his successor was double that. You couldn’t predict his moves even if you tried, he was so fast! His calculations were done at light speed, as every Kamski creation, but somehow he was faster.

Josh pulls away from the laptop and Simon and North’s hands to assist Markus, who was making good on fighting the robot off. The cords were pulling haphazardly, now, the laptop on the brink of disconnecting with him, which Simon realises with a jolt means they’d have to repeat the rA9 process.

93%. Fuck. The android’s attacker must be working overtime with rA9’s upload, so Simon deduces only one possible way to speed this shit up and get far, far away from this wretched building. Everything always seems to go wrong with CyberLife.

“Markus, you have to connect with him!” Simon commands, tugging 900 back by the ankle, relaxing the stretch of the cables, before the android turns to Simon, hunched over his laptop and kicks out at him as if a soccer ball. His bare foot snaps with Simon’s jaw, teeth clacking awkwardly as he goes barrelling back into North, and with that, their hands slip off of the laptop and Simon’s counter buffers. Freezes at the number it’s at, and past the number (97%) he can see 900 looming over him with an uncannily neutral face, ready to strike without second thoughts, when Markus’ screwdriver peeks past his shoulder as he stretches his arm back to stab it into the robot.

Before he can do that, though, RK900’s arm snaps backwards and catches his wrist in his long fingers, squeezing down and forcing the screwdriver out.

Simon, using the distraction, leaps over to the laptop and reconnects with it. “Do it now!”

Markus pulls his skin back and it glows blue when RK900 gives into the involuntary probe while he still has his wrist in a death grip.

99%. It doesn’t go up.

RK900’s movements slow to a halt when the connect goes through, blue-screening on them all, LED going a calm, lethargic blue.

Simon allows himself to expel a relieved breath.

It doesn’t last long, because before they know it, lights are flashing red and sirens resound throughout the building. While they are 48 floors below-ground. 576 feet from above.

“What’s happening now!?” North asks, exasperated to her bones.

“I — I don’t know!” Simon shouts back over the alarm, still connected to the laptop, damn upload still at 99%. RK900 continues to stay frozen, though, which is a perk.

Josh stills. “We should leave. We really, really should leave.”

“The download’s almost done! If it could just —“ PROGRAM HALTED. Fuck. Simon rubs a hand over his face. If the program has ceased to work, why hasn’t the RK awoken yet? “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck…”

“Fuck what?” North questions with an anger deep rooted within her, just building throughout this entire visit.

Simon exhaled a shaky breath. “RA9. It just… stopped. Fuck,”

The alarm continues to ring out. They’re sat in their own tomb if they don’t figure out what’s happening and about to. RK900, whose LED was a steady blue, is now rotating in a processing yellow, before it blinks and it’s back to blue.

100%. UPLOAD COMPLETE.

Simon can’t help the exhilarated laugh that comes from his mouth.

RK900 jumps back, suddenly modest, and steps away from the group. They all stare at him, like he’s the lamb and they’re the butchers.

“He clear?” Asks Markus, looking to North and the RK.

“Does he look like he’s anything on him?” North retorts.

Her sarcasm is right: RK900 isn’t wearing anything but a pair of CyberLife briefs.

“Hiding a gun in his pants?” Simon jokes as North circles around the table to meet the two, giving him a fist-bump and a murmured “nice one.” Markus rolls his eyes at them, as does 900, who whirs back to life in search of his uniform.

“No time,” the android mutters, his first words. “When I was in a robotic state, your intervention with my code sent an alarm throughout the tower. It is going to self-destruct.”

What?

Silence encapsulates them. Markus is the first to get things moving.

Underneath RK900’s bed was a folded up uniform. Pretty standard for an assassin, all black shirt and dress pants paired with a white lab coat-esque jacket, which Markus picks up and throws at the bot: he noticed when the RK was moving back to the bed.

“Dress. Quick. We need to get out of here,”

“Can’t he report it as a false alarm?” North asks Markus and pointedly doesn’t address 900.

The RK stares at her through his eyebrows as if she’s a pest. He makes a theatrical action of pulling himself free of the cords connecting him to the wall and to Simon’s laptop. “Not at this stage,” he answers offhandedly. Looks like the two have already built a bond on mutual dislike. “We’ll talk about what you’re doing here once we’re out.”

Josh finally pipes up out of his terrified reverie: “how are we going to climb the equivalent of a mountain in such a limited amount of time before everything goes up in flames!?”

“Not flames” — RK ties his boot — “the rooms will vacuum all the oxygen out before releasing hydrogen peroxide and essentially imploding on itself, causing a small explosion.”

North rolls her eyes at his advanced approach to his vocabulary. So unhumanlike. “Flames’ll be involved in the aftermath,”

“And so will our limbs if we don’t get out.” Markus observes, unlocking the door with his palm. He outstretches an arm to let everyone through before following behind them himself. “RK, lead the way.”

“We’re letting the assassin lead?” North asks in distaste. RK900 walks on anyway and they have no choice but to tail him.

He unlocks the service elevator and has to manually spread the doors open and does so as if ripping tissue paper, the crew filing inside. He hacks the mechanism from inside and they fly off upstairs without him having lifted a finger.

The crew collectively can understand why Connor was terrified of his successor. His predator’s eyes, way he moves, acts. He wasn’t made to mimic a human at all like all androids were. He was made to scare them into submission. CyberLife’s perfect mechanism to stop the uprising. And someone foolishly chose to remove his moral compass as if it didn’t mean he would kill without question, human or android, if his mission were in peril. CyberLife was getting what was coming to them—whether it was through this self-destruction they just activated or through the fact that they lost such an asset to 4 hoodlums from Jericho who came from nothing to become everything. That’s gonna put a stain on their ego.

“Okay, when I tell you to run,” RK starts as the elevator climbs to the ground floor.

Simon swallows, laptop tucked under his shoulder. “We run.”

The elevator doors slide open to reveal the ominous foyer, empty and ghostlike, red lights flashing on and off, just as 900 hollers “RUN!” and they hightail it for the entrance. They don’t stop running when they’re outside, getting as far as they can. At least now they don’t have to worry about covering their tracks: the tower’s doing it for them.

As if on cue, the group of 5 skid to a stop on the melting snow to watch the tower collapse in on itself. What comes first is an ear-splitting screech of silence before the glass breaks out of the sockets, leaving behind a deft blueprint of the tower as a bare millisecond later everything explodes and the flames rise to lick the sky with a dangerously dark smoke shadowing the past clear sky, covering the stars.

They all shield their eyes from possible debris but the recently freed assassin, who turns to the four of them.

“So,” he clears his throat professionally, “mind introducing yourselves?”

Chapter Text

14TH NOVEMBER, 2038. 12:31PM. DETROIT POLICE DEPT.

When Connor had returned from saving the android race and some… other minor setbacks, Fowler took him in with open arms, no doubt at the meddling of Hank, but Connor wouldn’t prod. The one thing he asked of him was that he don’t engage in any more high-level criminality (because that’s what they’re calling free speech when it’s televised and revolutionary) and if he desired a surname if they were to make his employment here final. Fowler also didn’t bat an eye when he brought the RK900 in and was actually thankful to Connor for giving him an out—and they both knew that meant free discipline for Gavin and the fact that RK900 was another asset to the DPD was on a lesser degree. Fowler was just chuffed with crawling up the ‘best PD’ scale.

Last thing Gavin thought would happen today was being called into Fowler’s office. Actually, scratch that: it’s pretty high on his probability list. He’s used to being scolded. Though, he can’t help but to wonder what the occasion is now. Last he checked, he hadn’t engaged in any police misconduct—neither with entitled assholes at crime scenes or with his annoying peers—and has done everything by the book lately, which was an achievement for him and his disciplinary folder that’s thicker than the Bible. Maybe he’s being rewarded.

The door opens to Fowler and what Gavin can presume to be his worst nightmare standing beside his boss.

“I’ve got a present for you,” Fowler opens before revealing what must be a joke.

“Oh, fuck no.” Gavin gapes.

Connor’s direct copy is stood in Fowler’s office. Direct. He could be his identical twin, albeit with crystallised grey eyes and a taller frame. More angular face. If Gavin was ever intimidated by Connor—and he’s being generous if he calls the dread he feels around Connor after getting his shit rocked in the evidence room intimidation—this was something entirely different. Like his nerves were already on fight or flight mode.

“Turn that no into a fuck yes, because —“

“Jeffrey,” Gavin interrupts, using his captain’s first name which definitely stabs him where it hurts, “if you say this is my new partner, I will jump off the roof.”

“Better start climbing.” Fowler shrugs indifferently, turning back to his desk and sitting down.

Gavin stares at him and chews down on his bottom lip, grinding his jaw and shredding his last insults to smithereens.

Instead, he insults the android. He doesn’t even look at him when he asks, “he mute?”

“You haven’t addressed me. It’s impolite,” says the RK900, bitterness coming off him in waves. “You also haven’t introduced yourself.”

Now the android’s already lecturing him. Fowler was really laying it on thick. “Okay, dipshit —“

What came next was a long string of curses and insults that would get Gavin a one-way ticket to the deepest level of hell, but the android shot right back, equally as fiery, so the onlookers in the bullpen called it even Steven for both detectives.

“How did that happen?” Tina asks Connor, who she has warmed up to easily, which is funny, considering her choice in fellowship. “I mean—he looks just like you!” The three of them (Tina, Connor, Hank) have been watching the scene through the glass since Gavin was called over, which already means trouble as a default.

“CyberLife must’ve made another model and sent it here.” Connor shrugs, feigning callousness for the machine. Only he and Hank knew the truth that North and Markus made the long venture back from CyberLife after having explained the whole reason for the revolution to 900, who still wasn’t sold entirely on it due to his nature (“but why do we need to be free? We already have the perfect ignorant lives where we don’t have to know of anything going on around us emotionally.”) which was truly almost a breaking point to North, but when left with Hank and Connor, Connor had made the distinctions between himself and his successor. Their differences physically and morally, even in personality. From what he learned from being a machine for so long, he’d become a bit stone-cold, realistic, and sarcastic. Take that and multiply it tenfold, you get RK900, though Connor had to admit his conversational skills were on another tier in comparison to his own. He was so… eerily human with the way he spoke, but the lack of emotion behind his words gave him away.

They then had a long conversation about next steps with a lot of wise words from Hank (“so, what should we do about the robocop?”), Connor (“teach Gavin a lesson,”), and a few from RK900 (“my purpose is to alleviate crime anyway. An ignorant partner won’t change that.”).

Tina leans back further against Connor’s desk so that she’s sitting on it. He’s a scarce decorator—she’s got plenty of room. She looks conspiringly at the RK900, eyes thin as slits, trying to solve Connor’s successor’s enigma from here. “Sent it here after the tower blew up?” She tuts, “sounds fishy to me.”

“Doesn’t it just,” Hank muses from behind his terminal, stirring the pot. Connor glares at him through the glass screen. To Hank, he just looks like an angered dog. Anyone else and they’d be scared of him, but not Hank.

“Anyways,” Tina checks her plum wristwatch, “better get going.”

“Enjoy patrol,” Connor smiles softly.

“Do I ever.” Tina rolls her eyes playfully, twirling out of the way and picking her jacket off of the back of her seat before disappearing past the wall.

Hank and Connor silently avert their gazes back to Fowler’s glass box and Gavin’s personal hell, caged in with the RK900.

“So,” Fowler claps his hands together as if the argument between the two hadn’t happened—which RK900 definitely won with his snide and rapid clap-backs—to effectively silence them, “what shall we call you, Detective RK900?”

“My name is set as Connor, but you already have a Connor,” RK looks to Connor posted against Hank’s desk, scrolling interestedly through his tablet.

“You’re Connor #2, then.” Gavin states. He shrugs, “simple.”

RK900 glares at him and all but literally smites him with eye lasers. “I’m his successor. I should be Connor #1.”

“He was here before you,” Gavin spat, and God help him because he’d much prefer Connor instead of his rude, snippy clone but he’d chew glass before admitting it, “so he’s Connor #1.” Now he sounds like a little boy attached to a stuffy with one resin eye falling from its furry socket.

“RK900 works perfectly fine,” 900 says curtly.

Gavin can’t help himself. “And so does plastic prick.”

“Anything works. Connor has given himself a surname, but I’m not fussed with what you choose,” Fowler cuts in.

“Aren’t you just an android bootlicker?” Gavin sneers. “Fuck, you used to hate the things.”

Fowler ignores the way Gavin chooses to speak to his boss. “Revolution happened, Gavin. Welcome to the future.”

“RK900 is fine.” He has to repeat himself, tucking his hands behind his back.

“That’s settled, then.” Fowler grins, happy to finally dismiss Gavin and RK900’s shared hubbub.

Gavin doesn’t fight it. He has accepted that his life is shit and everyone is out to get him—even his boss! Getting an assassin to work with him won’t change his mindset or help his nature: he’s a wild dog that can’t be tamed. No one’s done it before—they never tried hard enough. They ended up leaving when it turned out he still bit.

He swings the glass door open precariously on a petulant whim and beelines straight for the break room. One thing he knows for certain is that RK900 is a stickler for rules and doesn’t believe in breaks—but that’s just what he can tell from an arm’s distance.

As if his day couldn’t get worse, RK900’s older brother appears behind him. “Fuck!” He exclaims when he turns around to find Connor acting as his shadow. His footsteps were eerily silent. He always had the element of surprise.

“Sorry, Detective,” Connor apologises, halfway with Gavin and halfway elsewhere, absent. “About RK900…”

Gavin’s sorely tired of hearing his name already, and he’s known the guy for the better part of an hour. “You expect me to play best friends with another stick-up-the-ass copy of you?” Gavin barks, laughing raucously in sarcasm to further prove his point of disobedience.

Connor cocks his head to the side like a confused puppy, sending a pang of annoyance down Gavin at how clueless and naive he looks. “I don’t expect anything of you,”

And, okay, that took Gavin by surprise. He looked at the android incredulously, like he forgot to factor in that he actually has a personality unlike the robot that used to work here, before sobering up and straightening out. “I don’t trust machines, never have,” Gavin reasons. Connor’s face drops, only minutely, so small it flies past Gavin, but his expression hardens.

“Wasn’t much to trust back then,” he agrees.

Gavin scoffs, “yeah.”

Connor twiddles that coin between his thumbs (even Gavin noticed his fidgety habits with that thing) but his expression stays focused. “If he doesn’t change, you need to adapt to him.”

That’s rich. “What, you guys incapable of change or somethin’?”

“No,” Connor shrugs, “but he doesn’t know better. A lot of deviants choose to stay where they are. That sense of familiarity is all that they’ve got. If the only thing familiar to him is aggression, he’s going to be aggressive by nature, especially because he was programmed to be. He’s never known anything else.”

That makes a horrible amount of sense that Gavin doesn’t want to divulge just yet, especially because he can devastatingly relate, so he just scuffles his feet beneath himself awkwardly and hopes the way he bows his head into his empty coffee cup is enough of an answer, because he turns around and brews the cup. When the coffee is done—albeit with a little struggle with the now rickety and overused machine—without an apology for what he’d said, he drags his feet away and towards the bullpen, feeling guilty but not enough so to show it to an android, Connor especially. When he’s out of view, Connor looks to Hank, who shrugs and frowns, because that’s just the way Gavin is.

When Gavin inhabits his desk chair once again, sinking into the rickety old thing that’s just right and comfortable after all these years, he sips his coffee demurely while his posture is anything but. The android has already called the desk in front of Gavin’s home, his desk a stark contrast to Gavin’s with how empty it is in comparison to all the papers on Gavin’s. He knows where everything is—that’s what matters.

Gavin can’t but wonder his uselessness with the 900 here. Why they would waste that machine’s abilities in a police department that already has a specialised bot, especially because Gavin can see what Connor can do, and if RK900 is meant to be his successor, all over improved? Gavin didn’t know what that meant for his job and future. He was very protective over his position here. He finally found somewhere he felt he belonged. He was respected, met a best friend, and while on rocky terms with Anderson, they had some good times together.

“You have 7 open cases.” The robot states from across the desks, breaking through Gavin’s thoughtful zone-out. He hadn’t realised he finished his coffee during it and when he went to take a sip, all he got was the dregs, leaving a sour expression on his face.

“Thank you for stating the obvious,” Gavin replies with snark, throwing the cup into the bin by his desk, nearly toppling to the floor over the amalgamation of crumpled sheets and crushed energy drink cans.

“Seven is a lot for a detective without a partner.”

Gavin can’t tell if 900’s being purposefully direct and elementary, as if speaking to a child, which just makes him angrier than he already had been. This whole situation was incredibly frustrating and Connor’s words in the break room didn’t help to ease that fraying worry whatsoever. Why’s he the one to fix a robot? A perfect adjacent to the screwed-up humans?

Gavin glares through RK’s crystal eyes past the glass of their terminals. “I’ve been doing just fine without one.”

900 makes a show of scanning Gavin’s desk with his eyes, pointedly staring at the stacks of paper. “I see that.”

Gavin’s eyes are thin as slits when he looks at the bot, scrutinising him. Like he’d noticed—he looks nothing like Connor. More so up close. Even an idiot could tell. RK900 was meant to look predatory and make you feel like prey. Connor had a more subdued look, an obedient one until it interfered with his mission, which worked when he wanted people to cooperate with him, but it made him look malleable to others, useable. He was the opposite and Gavin got to know that very quickly following his arrival. Looks could be deceiving.

Now that his more powerful clone was sat in front of him, Gavin knew that CyberLife’s goal with 900 was the opposite of Connor’s—he didn’t need anybody to accomplish his mission except his strength and skills, a one-man army. There was no way to sugarcoat it.

While Gavin took his time examining RK900 in his little unrequited staring match, the RK was doing the same but with Gavin’s belongings rather than the man himself because to him, what a man owns tells you more about him than he does. The woven and worn out fishtail keyring on his car keys. They’re attached to a carabiner to which are attached what 900 can assume are house keys. A once-over scan of Gavin’s phone shows him that it’s overfilled with photos and downloaded Spanish songs. Why Spanish? 900 didn’t know, but Gavin wouldn’t have told him that—hence his belongings speak volumes.

As a man himself, Gavin’s clothes are unkempt but ironed and well loved. His hair is unruly but the product in it keeps it from being any more so. The pointer and middle finger of his right hand have started to yellow from routinely tobacco, a religious smoker. RK900 could also deduct that from the cigarettes’ carton outline in Gavin’s jacket pocket as it was strung over his chair. He had these tired, greyish green eyes, lined with shadows. His lips were regularly bit, worried between teeth, but they were vibrantly pink. His stubble was growing in, a 5 o’clock shadow.

And that’s what RK900 got with one look. He could’ve done it with one eye closed.

“How’d you even get here?” Gavin interrupts his analysis, not sparing him a glance as he scrolls on his terminal, papers splayed below him.

900 clenches his jaw in the slightest and allows his LED to spin an unsure yellow. He gives Gavin a look: eyes thin, unblinking. “It was my primary purpose to be a public servant in terms of solving crime and assisting task forces, amongst many other things.”

Gavin looks back at him from across the desk, his gaze the only thing crossing the thick, tense boundary between them. “Since you’re the all-improved Connor, why not just work for the army or some shit? Why follow your older brother?”

RK900 found himself wincing at the idea. ‘Family’ was such a human thing which he was sure he was not—sure deviants weren’t, either, whether that be due to his programming and what he was taught or plain fact.

He didn’t answer. Just shrugged with one shoulder and nonchalantly looked away, done with the conversation. Instead, he linked his pearly, exposed hand up to his terminal and downloaded it all, information flying in front of his eyes like a projected presentation. Past those words, RK900 distinctly noticed the eyes in his direction from all sides of the department. People didn’t bat their eyes at one Connor. Another one and the world goes wild, especially because this one was still wearing his proudly branded CyberLife uniform when they were Public Enemy Number One.

“What case are you working on now?” RK900 asks when Gavin doesn’t stop staring.

Gavin scoffs, “wouldn’t you like to know?”

“I’d suggest you learn some manners,” 900 says back, rolling his eyes, “because like it or not, we work together now.”

“Oh,” Gavin expels, “pot meet kettle,”

RK900 pushes back from the desk, rolling back with the chair before snapping up to stand, extending to his full height, growing intimidating now that the desk wasn’t keeping him a safe distance from Gavin, who straightens out in his seat, as if bracing himself, as 900 comes closer. The android glowers and leans over Gavin’s desk, picks through the sheets of TBC cases selecting the ones Gavin had been working above.

“Hey —!” He shouts, springing from his chair, leaping for his files when all RK900 does is step back. With the momentum of Gavin’s pounce, he sends himself stumbling over his desk, leaning on it with his forearms. “Hands off,”

Gavin stood to follow the android as he strung him along, drawing laps around their desks and reading what he could of Gavin’s barely legible—but cursive, surprisingly—handwriting. Like a dog on a very short leash, Gavin tails RK900 as if his shadow, shouting terms of endearment (“plastic prick… tin can… asshole.”) as he did so. Eventually, RK900 stops his lapping and sits right back down, wheeling out of Gavin’s way when he tries to launch himself at the folder like a cat at a laser pointer. With all these metaphors, RK900 came to the obvious conclusion that Gavin was primarily an animal before being human second.

The android mumbled something to himself and then diplomatically gave the file back to Gavin as if nothing before returning to Gavin’s desk. He flipped through the pile, picking the notes that made sense and reading them over before pinning them to the wall above said desk. He watched over the maze he made, taking away and swapping certain papers until it was as clear as glass what verdict he’d come to.

“Shit. What did you just do?” Gavin asked, more in awe than pissed off any longer.

“Connected the dots for you,” RK900 shrugs, standing before their answer to Gavin’s case.

Gavin swallowed down his pride, as hard as that was, to ask, “what did I miss?”

RK900 had some pride to let off as well. “You didn’t miss anything. You just… lost track.”

“Fuck,” Gavin breathed, eyes wide. He pointed to the printed scan of a driver’s license in the centre of their evidence. “I’m guessing we have to arrest this guy then? Lucas White?”

The RK quickly scanned the ID, White’s features, the address given, which was unsurprisingly fake. His databases came back with something different and on the other side of town. "He currently lives at 9364 Cascade Avenue." He turned away from the papers and back to Gavin who stood frustratingly baffled. "If we leave now we can make it back before your shift ends, Detective."

Gavin rolled an insult around on his tongue until it lost shape, gnawing that already burst bottom lip instead with an angry furrow to his brows. He was fighting his heart with his head: his heart said this was the right thing to do to bring Lucas White’s victims to justice while his head told him to abort the mission here before he found himself relying on an android’s abilities to do his job for him.

His sense of justice betrayed his sense of self-preservation. “I’m driving,”

Good enough of an answer, because RK900 takes it in stride and silently follows Gavin to his car, briefing Fowler of their departure through his mind, receiving a reply almost immediately: READ, 2:04PM.

Gavin’s car, this older model sat in the very corner of the employee’s lot, comes into view after a short stroll in the chilly air. Gavin shivered anyway. The car, when they climbed in, was still equipped with manual steering. RK900 observed it as if a spaceship and he caught Gavin’s identical observant eyes on him in the rear view mirror.

Cascade Avenue was quite a drive. Through steady snow and traffic diversions on roads closed off due to the revolution, it took them the better part of an hour and a half to get to number 9364.

"What the fuck are we doin' here, again, tin can?" Gavin asked, breath misty against the cold once they stand level on the pavement post their road trip.

"I see you have found a new way to address me." The android expelled a breath, lousy attempt at a perfunctory laugh, hands behind his back.

"Are you just gonna do my job for me from now on, 900?" Gavin jested, rubbing his hands together in a feeble attempt at generating warmth. He felt the heat radiate off of 900 and couldn’t not use it to his advantage.

"Are you going to ease off the nicknames?" 900 asks, watching Gavin inch closer to him, the walking, talking heater.

He barks a laugh, "you bet your ass I won’t."

Chapter Text

17TH NOVEMBER, 2038. 03:45PM. DETROIT POLICE DEPT.

Finding himself in the break room and more often than not engaging in office camaraderie was uncharacteristically Hank Anderson, yet there he was.

Connor had an influence on him and his social life. With the robot’s ability in being outgoing in social endeavours while introverted personally, he taught Hank a lot of things and vice versa. Hank’s main accounts of teaching the robot were unsurprisingly tips and tricks he’d given his son as he’d grown closer to Connor.

“Connor’s been bored out of his mind with this case Fowler’s given him.” Hank says, sipping at his too hot coffee. “Said it was ‘too easy’.”

Tina laughs with him, stood leaning up against the counter beside the detective, but Gavin only interrupts with judgement from where he sits by a table, indulged in his cell.

“Androids can feel bored?” Gavin asks from behind his phone screen. He doesn’t spare either of them a glance—he isn’t curious enough to.

Hank turns to him, arm hooked around the backrest of his chair. “Boredom is a human emotion. Forget androids feel those?”

Gavin shrugs indifferently. Tina smiles at the interaction. “Forget it,” Tina chuckles airily, “Gav’s more likely to believe an alien conspiracy than believe androids are alive.”

That’s when Gavin chooses to look up. He gives her an inscrutable look—to Hank, at least, because Tina takes the glare in stride and stares right back, silent communication between the two.

“I’ll believe it,” Hank says. Changing the subject, “did’ya hear Kamski’s gonna be key speaker during some fancy event tomorrow?”

“Have I ever,” Gavin drawls, widening his eyes with sarcasm. Tina spares him a glaring look before turning back to Hank.

“I read something about it,” She hums, fiddling with the plastic lid over her reusable coffee cup. It’s teal and covered in tiny drawings of cats and yarn. “Wonder what that’s about?”

Hank has a hunch, but the lie comes easy. What Connor confides in him is none of his coworkers’ business. “I don’t know.” He looks across the precinct to spy Connor, dressed to the nines in his new fancy suit. Dress pants, blue dress shirt. Ironed all nice. He’s got a tie on, too, a mirror to the one he used to wear with his android uniform, but this ones more casual, laid back: it’s got a burgundy tartan pattern on it. Turns out the boy really likes colour. The Cyberlife uniform had a lack of it.

“Some shit about the android revolution. News ain’t lettin’ that go,” Gavin replies, gruffly, clearing his throat and sinking further into his seat and folding over his cell. “It’s overkill.”

“Have some human decency, Gav,” Tina says, softer, “they were fighting for their rights.”

“More like android decency,” he argues, sulkily rolling his eyes, “we don’t all get what we want. They got it on a silver platter.”

Hank glares at him now, fire behind his eyes. “You of all people should know that that’s not true.”

Gavin looks up sharply, tilting his head to the side, challenging the lieutenant, who stares right back, their collective patience a thin thread wearing at the ends which neither can afford to hold on to any longer. Gavin’s thread snaps and he pulls himself out of the chair.

Tina sighs, “where are you going?”

“15 minute break’s over.” Gavin barks, not sparing either of them a look, turning his back to the both of them. He walks out having left his coffee steaming on the table, which is terribly out of character for him, especially because he was returning to his desk where his android partner sat, returning to his case of the elusive Lucas White. Hank’s words stung.

Tina and Hank share a look where Tina apologises for her friend’s behaviour to which Hank shrugs and says “it is what it is,” but what he really means is “I’ve known that kid for years longer than you have.”

“Nice tie,” is what they hear from Gavin as he walks past Connor’s desk. With a snarl, Hank finally follows the detective’s footsteps, but he stops in his tracks when a familiar face brings him back all the way to November.

His bushy brows furrow and so do her thin ones in retaliation of realisation.

“Hey, Connor,” Hank calls out to the precinct. From the desks emerges the robot. Connor’s eyebrows raise. “Looks like your friend’s paying us a visit.”

North pulls her beanie up with her shoulder from her shackled wrists. “Hey, deviant hunter.” Her smile is proud. Too proud to be in handcuffs.

“What’s she in for?” Connor asks. Officer Miller, Chris, who’d brought her in, checks his tablet.

Timidly, the answer is “organised crime, apparently…”

North shrugs with another smile.

“I’ll take it from here.” Connor states and tugs on North’s handcuffs.

Chris looks to Hank, and as a lower ranking officer, the only thing he’s authorised to do is walk off.

When Connor enters the interrogation room with a lithe palm scan, North is eyeing the mirror in the wall. Her eyes fall immediately on him and she finally gets to take him in, everything that’s changed since she last saw him in November. His new clothing. Detective’s name tag.

“Very nice place. Elegant,” she compliments.

Connor flips through the file. “No need to lie.”

“So, Detective Stern,” North grins, “what’s the verdict?”

Connor rounds the seat and swipes the terribly light and miserably empty file onto the table as he sits. “What’s life been like for you, North?”

North visibly perks up at this question. He’s the first person to ask her about something other than the stunt she’d pulled today.

“Oh, you know, same old. Still fighting!” She tries to throw a few fake punches but the handcuffs sadly restrict her. Connor smiles nevertheless. “And you? How’s Hank?” She follows up. What an interrogation, a tiny voice in Connor’s head mocks, but he can’t bring himself to care. It sounds an awful lot like Amanda.

Connor smiles as he leans back. He enjoys smiling. “I’m good,” he says, profoundly, “and Hank now has a roommate who’ll change the toilet paper and buy groceries.”

“Ah, the domestic life,” North laughs, sarcastic, not having lost her humorous touch. Connor nods in agreement.

Clearing his throat of laughter, he articulates, “but yes, we keep each other alive.” Connor says this with an unreadable amount of unrelenting fondness for the man before quickly shaking the soft smile creasing his face. “What about the others?” He then asks warmly.

North grins at his question. “You know, they ask about you too. We look for you on the news,”

Connor flushes a little with the affection. “Unfortunately, I haven’t been on the news since my deviant hunter alias.”

North leans back and smiles, revealing her sharp canines, “the days!” She chews on her lip and folds over the table again, relenting from more hilarity, and answers sincerely, “they’re doing exceedingly good. Simon and Markus are… well, you know them.”

“Romantic?”

“I was about to say like two corny teenagers, but yeah, that can apply too,” she giggles, and adds, “and Josh is great as well. Sweet as ever.”

Connor smiles. “I wouldn’t expect any less.”

North leans in and lowers her voice, albeit slightly. “You hear anything from Kara?”

“No,” Connor sighs. “Not a word.”

North slumps back over her chair disappointedly, hopes quashed. “I hope they’re alright.”

“Yeah,” Connor looks to the two-way mirror, “I think they are.”

When North and Connor emerge from the room, ready to set her free, Hank leaves the observation room and turns to face them.

“Can we have a moment?” Hank asks Connor, looking to North, who raises a brow in confusion.

Connor sticks his hands up in surrender. “All yours,” and he stands off to the side in wait.

Hank undoes North’s handcuffs. “You want some advice?” He asks softly in a quiet voice, trying to keep their conversation private when the location is anything but.

“What, you gonna tell me to ‘stay out of trouble’? Do you even know me?” North laughs, yet she matches his volume. Like she knows it’ll be worthwhile.

“Don’t do it for yourself or your friends,” Hank starts, and it may sound bleak, but he tries to articulate his point best; “I mean—not just for you and them. Do it for all of you. All yours androids and bots and whatever. In a time like this, you need community,”

North nods along with his words. When they begin to make sense she feels the knot in her chest unfurl with direction. “Oh.” She hums.

“Build up from the ground. Jericho was meant to last,” Hank says, looping the now discarded handcuffs around his utility belt. “I’m just an old man talkin’, but who knows.”

“No, it— I understand. Thanks, lieutenant,” North says quietly, tapping her finger off his badge.

He nods at her in solidarity and meets with Connor to walk the length of the precinct to their desks and debrief.

“Did you talk about anything to do with North’s crime?” Hank asks when they reconnect in the corridor. He knows the answer—he’d been listening the entire time.

Connor looks to him, sarcastically scandalised. “Yes! I’m a professional,”

“‘Course you are, son,” Hank shakes his head, rolling his eyes dotingly. “Just following in my footsteps.”

“Hey, don’t insult me like that,” Connor grins, obviously chuffed with himself and his sarcasm. North had that effect on him.

Rounding his desk and flopping unto his chair, Hank remarks, “I’m gonna pretend I didn’t hear that,” and watches the detective sit across from him. “So? What was the verdict?” He liked to test Connor on his detective knowledge whenever he could though the machine was much smarter than him.

Connor shrugs into his chair, “wrong place, wrong time. Some other android activist group happened to be looting a CyberLife store at a time where she was on her way back home and a camera caught her. DPD had no one else to blame.” He nods towards the interrogation room, at the door which stood North and Officer Miller, who was apologising, and the woman surprisingly took it graciously and even forgave him with words to his face, which is more than Connor could even imagine her doing. She sends them a wide smile and eccentric wave as she heads for the exit.

“Coincidences, am I right?” Hank brings his mug of coffee up to toast with Connor.

Connor pumps his fist in the air to mimic a cup, grinning. “Right.”

That afternoon when they finally got home from work, Connor firing away at the dishes with his unmatched robot efficiency whilst Hank busied himself with the perfect jazz vinyl to fit their weekly board-game night (tonight was Rummy), the mail slot clanged with a message. With a jog whilst jazz blares, Hank picks the card off the floor.

“What is it?” Connor hollers from the kitchen.

Hank smiles adoringly at the sight of snowy mountains.

“Postcard!”

—

A few kilometres off past the river, in the snowscapes of the outskirts of sunny old Detroit, sits the Kamski residence. A blocky old industrial thing, modernised with great windows and a driveway with an extensive security system. That did not keep the CyberLife agents away.

Three agents stand sentinel in position way near the river on the delta side, waiting for commands, deep in unrelated conversation.

“You know them herbs are just placebos.” Agent Meryem hums gruffly, hanging his hands off his utility belt. He’s leaned up against the stone walled fencing surrounding the residence and his breath billows with wisps of condensation out against the unsympathetic wintry weather.

Agent Orange immediately shakes her head, “no, they work!” She’s leaner than both her counterparts yet taller. She uses it to her advantage, as well as her stellar marksmanship.

Childishly, the other agent replies, “I’ll believe it when I see it…” and as Meryem says this, his phone jingles with a notification.

Agent Carter now butts in. The alpha of the trio. He uses his brute strength to hold a hair’s advantage over the pair. “Don’t tell me that’s what I think it is.” Him and Orange share a look. Dating app.

“What?” Meryem asks, scandalised. “I’ve met a nice one this time.”

“You need’a stay off that shit, man,” Agent Carter groans.

Orange shrugs, “he said it.”

Immediately getting defensive, Agent Meryem stands off his lean against the wall. “No, guys seriously, our chemistry is off the charts. We’ve been getting along especially well over the phone… if you catch my drift.”

Through giggles, Agent Orange says, “shut the fuck up,”

“What’s taking them so long?” Carter asks, looking out at the snowy skyline. “They haven’t radioed since we got into position.”

Agent Orange sobers up from her laughter. What replaces it is a solemn little petulant frown. “I don’t know what we’re doing here.”

Meryem clears his throat, “likewise.”

Agent Carter is quick to supply, “need the cash.”

“Don’t we all?” Meryem’s breath is clouds ahead. He mutters a grievance with the weather and rubs his upper arms for heat. Carter watches him.

“It feels wrong,” Orange admits, shifting from foot to foot, “I mean, I’ve got friends who are androids.”

“But it’s not the androids,” Meryem shrugs. “It’s CyberLife.”

“We’re CyberLife,” Agent Carter righteously argues, “and if we don’t do this we’re out of jobs.”

Orange picks a stubborn hangnail. “We’re not even real police. How can we be assassins?”

“Take our military credentials and slap guns on us,” Meryem shrugs, flashing his gun to emphasise his point.

“Mm.” The female agent hums, looking out at the frigid skyline, silent from here, the bustle of the city white noise from the outskirts. She appreciates Kamski’s choice of location. “I hope Claire doesn’t crucify me for this,”

“Who?”

“Android best friend. Kamski’s sort of their dad, after all…”

“Oh, don’t say that, you’ll make me feel bad for orphaning everyone...” Meryem crosses his arms over his chest. Orange and Agent Carter share a smile.

Static comes in from Carter’s walkie. Flinching into position, legs shoulder-length apart in a defensive stance, ready to strike if given the command, his hand wraps around the radio and he calls back. “This is agent 101, come in.”

Their commander’s voice returns past the static. “The house is clear.”

Their three agents look at each other in question.

“Repeat that, Commander?”

“The house is clear. Kamski’s gone.”

Well, shit.

Chapter Text

21ST NOVEMBER, 2038. 12:06PM. DOWNTOWN CALGARY, CANADA.

The Canada apartment Rose had helped Kara, Alice, and Luther move into was spacious, got a lot of natural light in, and in the middle of the bustling town of Calgary. It wasn’t as expensive as Kara worried it would be—but having a job wasn’t bad. She went back to basics and used her preprogrammed skills to her best at a lowly diner downtown, all leather seats and 80’s music, weirdly homely and comfortable. Luther worked at a body shop on the outskirts of town, perfect for the heavy lifting he does, and in his spare time, teaches Kara what different tools mean.

Alice started elementary school and slowly but surely eased in. She was becoming more talkative, and while her teachers would come to Kara with worries about her engagement in class and general quietness towards her peers, she’s improved by a lot. She comes home with a smile on her face.

Kara enjoyed collecting postcards from shops she passed on the way to work, writing them out to her people back in Detroit; Hank and Connor; North and her team; sometimes even Ralph and Jerry. She doesn’t have the casual spending money to buy fancy stamps, so she can only hope her messages make their way to their recipients.

Today, Rose came to catch up with Kara, Luther, and Alice, and took them to the park by their respective apartments, a hexagonal path circling around a playground for children in the middle, fenced by short gates, covered in snow. Their Alberta was always beneath snow. Kara loved the snow: her fascination with it began the first time she saw and experienced it all those lifetimes ago with Luther and Alice at her side. That’s why she loved walking to work so much—snow everywhere! And now, on the weekend, hanging out with the people most important to her.

Rose kicks at some stray snow. It flurried all night leaving a considerable few inches atop the already dusted ground. “How’re you holding up?”

Kara strolls beside her, burrowing her hands deep into her pockets. “Alberta isn’t so bad,” she admits, trying to keep her excitement at bay, but the glee in her suppressed smile betrays her.

“Yeah,” Rose agrees, grinning brightly. “Seems like Alice is fitting in.”

Kara’s smile just shines brighter. She’s bundled in ‘human clothes’—appropriate for the weather clothes which she absolutely doesn’t need but looks like part of the crowd with them on—face half obstructed by a thick, colourful scarf as her head sports an adorable hat with a pom-pom. “She’s met this boy called Leo and another called Tyreese. She also met this girl called Jasmine, likes to be called ‘Jas’. It’s great to see.”

Alice making friends was something Kara was endlessly proud of her for. No longer was she the timid, closed-off little girl that she met in Detroit, her only friend her stuffy. Now she had friends and she had their stories to tell back to Kara and she felt as if she knew them personally by this point, especially as the four of them loved to hang about their flat, doing acrobatics around the bicycle loops out front, ding-dong ditching the lower floors, making friends with the neighbouring old couple, both of those ladies fascinated with the children. Kara routinely baked and cooked for them—both the old ladies and the children. She saw Alice smiling more than ever, now.

“Mm,” Rose hums, looking to Alice swinging on the monkey bars and giggling with who she assumes to be Leo on her tail, “it’s great to hear, too.”

They continue walking their lap around the park. Snow crunches beneath their boots and it’s… nice. Pleasant. Children laughing and shouting and snowballs flying with snowmen being built and everything is like from a distant dream of Kara’s. This is just what she’d imagined for her little family, as dysfunctional as they are.

She doesn’t like to think about the fact that they shouldn’t be here. That they’re invading on somebody else’s paradise in Canada and essentially raining on their parade cause they’re not like them—never been and never will be, especially since many of the Canadians have never had as much as an encounter with an android of their sort. Sometimes, that comforts Kara. That they’ve never seen another one of Kara’s model, or Alice’s. She tries not to think about it.

“What about you? How’s the humble city of Calgary treating you?” Rose nudges Kara over the upper arm, shattering her train of thought. “Making any friends?”

“Well…” Kara begins and nearly flushes. Hopes she can blame her purple-y face on the cold.

“Well!?” Rose urges, excitement coursing.

Kara pulls her scarf up with a gloved hand and covers her face. “There’s this woman at the diner I work at. She’s a regular, my co-workers say, and she’s… warmed up to me.”

Rose is beaming. “Aw, that’s adorable.” Upon seeing Kara’s unimpressed face, she insists, “no, seriously!”

“Thank you.” Kara mumbles into the scarf, using it as a shield. “Who knew making friends was so easy?”

Rose just laughs from beside her. “When it’s a girl like you, who wouldn’t want to make friends?” With shoulder’s touching, Kara turned up her body heat, warming Rose when her words did the same.

“Her name is Roksana. Likes to be called Rockie.” Kara grins, “and she’s got a son, too. Single mom. She keeps suggesting we plan a play date…”

Rose’s smile just widens. “Say yes!” She insists, nudging Kara over the upper arm with an amble budge.

Kara grins and looks up, away from Rose, to see Luther watching over Alice and her friends from his spot on a bench, soft smile over his features. At some point, Alice runs up to him with Leo, and she’s giggling her way through whatever she’s saying, before Leo launches a snowball at Luther, their master plan with Alice as the decoy. Luther pretends to be perturbed, angry! He growls and stands from the bench, “you’ll pay for this!” Kara can hear from where they are. Alice screams with laughter as Luther chases them in the snow, Leo running to hide somewhere beneath the pirate ship on the playground, Alice trying to outrun him, eventually tripping over and landing in the snow, laughing so loud it was as peaceful as birdsong. Luther plopped to the snow beside her, wrapping his arms around her, capturing her, saying, “I’ve got you now!”

Kara can just smile widely from a distance. Blessedly, Alice notices her and calls her over, “mom!” To which Luther lifts her from the snow and throws her into the air, her tiny scream of surprise as she lands back in his arms fading to more laughter.

She looks to Rose, waiting to be excused, but Rose is already grinning, nodding to usher Kara towards her family. Kara skips into a run, nearly slipping over the icy pavement, where Luther places Alice to her feet which lets her run to meet Kara in the middle.

“You having fun?” Kara calls to Alice before they clash, Kara picking her off the ground with an obligatory, ravenous hug, nuzzling her cold face into Alice’s scarf.

All Alice does is let out a little giggle as she kicks her feet out in the air, making way for Kara to put her down. When she gets on solid ground, she smiles, “yes!”

Kara hadn’t noticed Luther coming up from behind Alice, completely enamoured with the little girl, until he lifts his two hands, both adorned in snowballs, but Kara’s reaction isn’t fast enough and Alice’s back is turned. He throws one of the snowballs bullseye at Kara’s face and the other he (very carefully) slams down on Alice’s head and into her hair. They both scream, Kara frozen with snow covering her face and dripping off, her having to wipe it with her scarf, whilst Alice tries to shake the snow off of her head.

“Oh, that’s it,” Kara warns, and dashes for Luther. Alice is by her side. “Let’s get him!”

“Yeah!” Alice shouts back, folding to her knees on the snow-covered ground to roll up snowballs before passing them to Kara who stands and aims for Luther, who keeps dodging out of the way like a whack-a-mole.

Kara launches the snowballs Alice creates, hitting Luther twice, once in the chest, other time in the shoulder, before another snowball hits the back of her head. She turns to see Rose, grin sheepish, holding another snowball.

“Rose!” She breathes, scandalised, jaw dropped. She takes her remaining snowballs and throws them at Rose who jumps out of the way, retaliating with her own snowball.

Alice climbs off the floor and starts throwing snow at both Luther and Rose, her and Kara teaming up against them, and all four of them prance around the park in their own little world, laughing raucously and screaming, shouting shallow threats through smiles, showing no signs of stopping or becoming languid, completely immersed in the moment. Kara’s nearly out of breath from laughing and her face hurts from smiling so hard—she didn’t know that was possible. But it’s a good pain. She could live with it every day if it meant she felt this way.

Chapter Text

30TH NOVEMBER, 2038. 04:55PM. DETROIT POLICE DEPT.

The scarcity of officers is the first thing RK900 notices when entering the station. He’s on time to a tee, yet not everyone shares his time management, because who he can see are Officer Chen, Miller, Detective Connor, Lieutenant Anderson, and 2 remaining android pavements. PO Jameson and Adelaide.

He didn’t understand the need for a last name as an android. His surprise to Connor adopting Stern as his own was purely curious, until it wasn’t. Deviants were still… enemy territory, for him, yet he was now one of them. Continuously he wondered what everything would be like if he remained a machine. If his firewalls prevailed over rA9.

RK900 tucks his CyberLife jacket around his chair and lines his stuff up on his desk—he liked feeling organised. Already in both his head and his terminal the details of the Lucas White investigation sat dormant, waiting for his and Gavin’s attention, where unsurprisingly, his partner wasn’t at his desk. What 900 saw instead when he looked up was Connor heading for him.

He didn’t like Connor too much. Respected him, but that’s where his pleasantries ended. He was made to be better than him, and his creators were adamant about that. His entire being was made to replace Connor and each of them knew that—making things excessively tense around them.

There was a determined set to Connor’s face: never a good sign. He quietly lingered by RK900’s desk before telepathically communicating, can we talk in private?

900 didn’t deny. Let Connor lead him outside the back entrance to the employee’s parking lot so they could stand in the brisk wintery air as the snow continued to be unrelenting. It would have bothered 900 if he had receptors to temperature that weren’t maintaining his core processor’s heat.

“What’s with your aversion to deviants?” Connor asks, immediately to the point.

The question isn’t out of the blue, that’s for sure. RK900 had been troubled by deviants and their existence, by extension being troubled by his own.

“I was made to hunt them,” 900 shrugs, giving Connor the short answer.

Connor looks to him whilst all he does is look out at the deserted car park but two hybrids. “So was I.”

“But you deviated out of your own volition,” RK900 argues, and there it is—the underlying reason for it all. “I was forced to deviate.”

He understands why, but he can’t help but question his place in everything. If he had deviated by choice rather than necessity because he was dangerous, where would he be now?

Connor looks out to the skyline with his successor. It was still dark, the first tricklings of sunlight showing past bald trees and an already bustling city. He clears his throat, insistent on the image of RK900 accepting who he is and what deviancy is, “they did it to survive. Like how you quickly adapted to the situation and helped them all escape the tower before Belle Isle blew.”

“That was instinct.” 900 countered.

Connor’s face softened. “Without rA9, right or wrong, would you have told them what was happening? Or let the building collapse around them?”

And oh. RK900 hadn’t thought of it that way. All along during CyberLife’s experimentations and investigations on him and his model and the deep dives into Connor’s model, he’d known one thing: hunt deviants to get to a goal of a cleansed world back to how it had been before with their obedient servants. He never realised his thinking had changed with a moral compass: he could now proudly say killing without thought would be completely unholy and inhumane.

“Yeah,” Connor hums, “I know.”

Reading RK900’s spinning mind both from his inquisitive expression and the rapidly spinning amber LED, Connor knew the feeling.

RK900 finally understood what it meant to be human. The moral compass he didn’t have? The simplest way to describe a human thought process is ‘is it good or bad if I do this?’ and 900 hadn’t realised it all along.

“I’m a horrible deviant,” 900 expels a breath, almost a laugh, self deprecating.

Connor shrugs. “You’re learning.”

They returned into the building and to work with a greater understanding of each other and a newfound appreciation.

Lucas White had a history of aggravated assault and resisting arrest (how ironic, because it took over 2 weeks to catch him). Domestic violence was also high-ranking on that list.

As of his arrest following Gavin and RK900’s break-through, he’s been tucked away in a holding cell while his lawyer from out of town was flying in. He had killed 2 androids: Harmon, who used to be his own household droid, and Thalia, Harmon’s friend and only eye-witness.

RK900 was inspecting Thalia’s tattered remains of recorded memories when Gavin had arrived at work, unceremoniously late, takeout coffee in hand. He looked, respectively, as far as 900’s appearance indicators go, like shit.

“Where have you been?” 900 asks snidely.

Gavin glares at him over the rim of his coffee cup. “What progress have you made?” He deflects with another question. Interesting, touchy subject.

“Her memories are corrupted, but intact.” RK leans back, exhaling breath he didn’t know he was holding. He was meant for investigations as such, but seeing it firsthand? It was different.

Gavin chewed his lip. “Get anything good?”

RK shrugged dejectedly. Instead, it was his turn to deflect. “What were you doing last night to be so late today?”

“It’s barely noon,” Gavin snarled, “fuck you.”

That earned him a smirk from RK900. This crooked, cocky thing.

When Gavin knew 900’s shit-eating grin wasn’t going to stop until he explained himself, which, again, fuck him, and Gavin already hated that expression on him, so unnatural (matched his ego, though), he thought of a not-so-subtle way to say ‘kiss my ass and don’t ask again’.

“Nines, did anybody tell you not to stick your nose in other people’s business? It’s rude,” Gavin articulates, snippy, giving 900 a sarcastic little patronising grin while his LED spins a processing yellow.

Nines reacts surprisingly well to both the judgement and the nickname, one of a multitude already given to him—he’s possibly the only person ever to be paired with Gavin to take his ravenously ill-mannered personality and give it right back to him. “Our jobs place us in other people’s business,” Nines leans over his hands, folded beneath his chin, “I’m programmed for it.”

Gavin would spit back with another insult but instead, finally sat back in his chair, and relented. Nines: 1. Gavin: 0. The smart ass robot would get to know hierarchy real soon when Gavin showed him how to follow orders.

Tina, however, stops that destructive train of thought as Gavin thought of ways how to beat the android in their strongly-worded wars, sliding up onto his desk.

“Hey, Gav. Hey, 900.” She grins, looking at the open case file on Nines’ still organised desk, helping herself to knowledge. “You haven’t replied to my text messages,” addressing Gavin, now.

“Don’t worry about it, Officer Chen,” Nines cuts in before Gavin can reply, “he came in extraordinarily late,”

Gavin wraps his fingers around a pencil, ready to launch it at him, but Nines’ eyes mean danger and his fight or flight response is to choose peace, for once. He realises he’s picking fights with a war machine very distantly. “Don’t listen to Nines,”

Tina’s brow furrows at the nickname—until now, Gavin hadn’t realised he’d been doing it. “I’ll believe the talking CCTV over you.”

“Traitor,” Gavin says, holding his heart dramatically, scandalised.

This silly side of Gavin is much preferable to his hostility to Nines, but. What can one do when your relationship is built on mutual resentment?

“You’re writing your own obituary, making friends with my android behind my back,” Gavin continues, squaring an ankle over his knee, tucking his hands behind his head, casual for show.

“You don’t own me,” Nines spits back, “you couldn’t afford my sum, anyway…”

“Shit,” Tina laughs, a shocked little thing, “Nines is destroying you, Gavin.” Nines 2. Gavin, unsurprisingly, still 0.

Gavin’s eyes are on fire when they meet Nines, flames growing behind those greys. There’s an insult on the tip of his tongue—Nines knows it in the set of Gavin’s shoulders, forward and ready to strike, his pinched lips and constipated glower on his face. He stays silent, though, whether that be from Tina’s presence or else.

Nines, poise slowly chipping away, sticks a nail into the cuticle of his thumb and pushes away from the desk.

“Where’re you going?” Gavin drawls, refusing Nines the breathing room. It really felt as if he was under Gavin’s ownership, sometimes, with how he regarded him. As a possession rather than a living being.

Nines had the sudden reaction of not having to answer to him. After all, he was in no way of a superior position. Nines was probably on the higher pedestal with who he was, anyway. He strolled to the break room.

Steadily, in his head, Nines had been going over the case from cover to cover, making his lethargic way through Thalia’s recovered memories.

She’d been hunkered down with another deviant group in the agricultural district part of town, paired with many of the robots freed from the Urban Farms which tended to pop up everywhere. She stayed with her owner who she believed to be her friend, a woman called Stacy, and they’d formed a bond. Thalia met Harmon, fell in love with him while the revolution was still ongoing and it wasn’t easy, especially as Harmon was still pretending to be White’s servant with no sentience whatsoever to slyly keep his hands off Madeline White, Lucas’ wife.

Harmon’s meddling went unnoticed until White tried to kill his wife one night. A smashed beer bottle was his means of weaponry and Harmon had gotten in the middle of it all while trying to sneak Thalia by him. Madeline ran straight for the police station while White killed—brutally, Nines could tell that much from Thalia’s eyes—the loving couple.

Nines was startled out of his head when he heard Gavin making his way through the break room. Nines knew everybody’s gait and footstep depth in the station—it helped to anticipate interactions.

“Thought you wouldn’t condone breaks,” Gavin suggested, snark clear through his tone.

Nines turned away from him and to the counter, busying himself with refilling a jug of ice water with more water. “I’m not on break,” he pours the water, “I was going over the evidence.”

“Yeah, sounds about right.” Gavin steps forward, further into the break room. “I’m curious—why didn’t CyberLife hand you over when those camps were set up?”

Nines doesn’t know if Gavin’s being purposefully dense and snappy or if he’s genuinely stupid. Thankfully, Nines’ opinion on deviants had pulled a 180° when he finally came to terms with who he was and what he meant. Emotional maturity wasn’t only for humans, though Gavin Reed wouldn’t ever be capable of it.

Instead of answering Gavin’s loaded question, Nines recounts what the camps meant. With his newborn opinion on deviants, he truly saw the hypocrisy and the hatred, the humans’ vital need to control.

“They only asked them to take their skin off before entering the camps because without it they’re just plastic. Not living anymore, so they can’t feel bad for killing them. Sorry—disassembling them.” Nines scoffs out like a petulant child rising up against its schoolteacher. Gavin gapes, because Nines is right, and no way in hell he ever agrees with something a machine says. “You know what your problem is?” Nines asks, leaning in close, all intimidating. Gavin instinctively takes a cautious step back before re-entering Nines’ personal space, standing his ground, sending Nines’ backside slamming against the lip of the counter when he steps back, face stone cold. It’s just them in that break room and the silence standing on its toes around them.

“What’s my problem? Huh?” Gavin challenges. He has to look up quite a bit from where he stands to meet Nines’ eyes. There’s barely space to breathe. “What? I’m not perfect like you? All Ken-doll face, perfect speed, strength, fighting style like you’re a glorified Katate Kid?”

Nines buffers and his eyebrows furrow and gaze narrows in on Gavin. He wants to make a remark on his choice of words, all smug, boasting, ‘I didn’t think you knew the word ‘glorified’ at all!’ but Gavin speaks up before Nines can utter a word; “the difference between you and I is that I’m real, you’re not,” pointing a heavy, forceful finger into Nines’ torso harshly. Nines’ ego falters and grows passive.

“You’ve got wires where I’ve got veins. Everything about you is fake,” Gavin emphasises, overconfidence growing greatly. He’s talking nonsense but his admittedly better half is insufferable. His temper can’t handle it, so he lashes out and says things he hardly believes.

“That’s why they instructed them to take their skin off, show people what they really are.”

That’s when Nines loses his usually stoic composure and grabs the discarded water jug off the counter and tips it over Gavin’s crotch, ice water pouring down his front and legs. He doesn’t go to jump back until he really realises what’s happening to him when ice rolls down his all-too-loose pant leg and he yelps like a kicked puppy before launching himself backward.

Gavin yells, “son of a—“ but his fist is faster than the curse was ever spoken. It connects with the point of Nines’ cheekbone and spins him around, plastic revealed of the synthetic skin.

Nines turns back with the momentum of his swinging fist, clocking Gavin in the nose. Following that critical hit, Gavin couldn’t get any more punches in. He got lucky with the first: Nines’ emotions distracted him. He wasn’t so lucky anymore when Nines sends them both toppling to the floor with the precision of a gymnast, straddling the other man beneath him.

“I’ll kill you one of these days, I really will,” says Gavin, nose gushing with blood as he makes a feeble attempt of getting Nines off of him, who pins him to the ground, victorious.

Next thing they know, they’re in Fowler’s office, no Fowler to be seen. They sit in silence, Nines holding an ice pack to Gavin’s nose as he clutches it with fists adorned in tissues.

“I swear to God, I’ll kill you.” Gavin grumbles, voice nasal. His legs shuffle beneath him as he squirms at the now skintight with damp trousers, freezing all the way down to his ankles.

“Killing me would require you thinking I’m alive,” retorts Nines, repositioning the ice pack after a once-over scan. Gavin leans into it.

“You’re such a prick…” He breathes out, no bite, and chuckles airily. Nines can’t hide the amused little smile crawling over his mouth.

Has he smiled naturally before? He can’t tell. Gavin laughs louder and winces when his nose hurts as he huffs with laughter where Nines takes the tissues off Gavin to cup his nose himself, ice pack against the nose bridge, nostrils bundled in the abundance of tissues. Their laughter begins to settle, but only another set of unadulterated bouts of hilarity in the form of Gavin’s loud, raucous and boyish laughter, and Nines’ own breathy and unsure version. Gavin clears his throat to conclude any laughter still bubbling up and shifts in his seat with Nines following his lead and readjusting his hands over Gavin’s nose.

“Nines?” Gavin addresses, voice small. Nines looks into his eyes (as Gavin avoids every eye contact Nines prompts), encourages him to continue. He clears his throat, “don’t worry about it.”

It was the closest thing Nines would get to an apology from Gavin Reed, but it was all the same to him. He knew what he meant by it, anyway.

Fowler chooses then to walk in, letting out a heavy sigh of pent up frustration. It was barely past the afternoon and already the man was suffering. Both Nines and Gavin visibly tense up in his presence, both worried for their jobs. He takes a seat behind his desk, but the pair make no means to move forward and sit at the chairs in front of his desk. They wait for orders in the waiting chairs.

“What happened?” Fowler asks with an annoyed drag to his voice.

Gavin and Nines don’t like each other, plain as day, and Fowler was the primary witness before word spread fast around the office. ‘They argued at a crime scene’; ‘they yelled at each other in an interrogation room’; any sort of police station gossip. It was easy to get excited over the new guy putting the resident asshole in his place. After all, life is high school.

Nines shuffles a little to sit up straighter, adjusts his grip on Gavin’s nose. His own cheekbone is still showing pearly plastic and a trail of blood he’d wiped away is stark blue over his skin. He’d need a blue blood patch up, that was certain, but the DPD was yet to offer their android officers any form of healthcare. He shouldn’t have let Gavin have that punch.

“It was my fault,” Nines says. Gavin looks at him from the side.

“Really?” Fowler asks, incredulous. “Gavin? What happened?” Now directly addressing him, Gavin stirs underneath Nines’ hold for a short moment.

“No, yeah, I… it was Nines’ fault.” He says, hesitantly. Nines furrows his brows at him over the hesitation, his way of asking as to why he’d stalled out on throwing him under the bus, why his heart beat a little faster when lying for his own sake—a selfish gesture, one he’d always avoided. He’s lied plenty times before, so why is now different?

“Gavin, I know you. I do, unfortunately. I’d like to request the recording of the event anyway.”

Usually tame Gavin runs pale. His job really was at risk now. Nines stands after handing him the ice pack and towels back, no words exchanged, making his stagnant way across the office to interface with Fowler’s terminal.

“Where’s the audio?” Is the question the boss asks while 20-minutes-ago Nines is pouring ice water over a helpless Gavin’s crotch.

He clears his throat, “ah, android brains are like humans. I don’t know where I put that file,” lying, easily.

Fowler scrutinises him for a moment longer before relenting. “I’m very disappointed in you, RK900.”

Nines can’t hide the wince that came from the criticism from an authority figure. “I’m sorry, captain,” and that’s that.

Lying felt right. He was selflessly putting himself in between Gavin and Fowler, and it felt horribly right. Like he was meant to protect.