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Hank remembers this particular conversation later - much later.
They’re in the crazy fucking bird deviant’s apartment, wading through pigeon shit and piss and god knows what else, and Hank leans against the wall by the sink, turning the severed LED over and over between his fingertips, watching the way that Thirium residue stains his nails.
“So, here’s what I’m wondering,” he drawls, mostly to the empty room at large, but Connor’s head perks up where he’s crouched on the floor, turned just a little to let Hank know he’s listening.
“We’ve had two hundred-and-something cases of deviance in the last year, and god knows how many missing android cases before that were actually deviants, but we’ve only just started finding their LEDs in the last month, like that AX400 from the motel, and now this guy. I mean, it seems like a pretty fucking obvious way to hide – did they just not know they came off, or something?”
Connor is silent, still mostly turned away from Hank, but his own LED cycles yellow, his expression frowning and pensive in that way that meant he was trying to think of the best answer - the one that would make the most sense to Hank, maybe. He seemed to try to do that, these days, adapt his wording to Hank’s thought patterns, modulating his tone to tease, play at his sense of humor. Stupid CyberLife programming and his own fucking common sense be damned, Hank thought it just might be working on him – fuckin’ bot grows on you like a fungus.
After a moment, Connor turns, looking up at Hank with his eyebrows still furrowed. “Lieutenant,” he starts, “if, hypothetically, you needed to hide your identity, and the main visible indication of your identity was, say… your nose. While you would probably think of wearing a mask, I highly doubt your first thought would be to cut off your own nose.”
Hank snorts, finding Connor’s little analogy lacking. An android could cut off its LED, and skin would just grow right over it. They’d look – well, normal. Human.
He shakes his head, laughing, “Well yeah, Connor, I think I’d look pretty fuckin’ weird without my nose.”
Connor stands, eyes bright and intent. “Well,” he counters, “I think I would look very strange without my LED. I have never seen my face without it, and even when it’s covered, I know that it’s there.” He brushes two fingers across his temple then, the motion looking distracted, almost unconscious, if Hank had believed androids were capable of that sort of thing.
He gives Connor an appraising look, reconsidering. It almost makes sense. Maybe, even to a deviant that was out of its mind, ripping off a part of your face just to blend in was pretty extreme.
Then, Connor pulls his hand away from his face, and Hank notices the blue tint to his fingertips.
“Aw, jesus, Connor! Don’t tell me you put the fucking sink-blood in your goddamn mouth!”
And Hank watches as CyberLife’s most advanced prototype, with its perfectly friendly face and its perfectly programmed motions that always looked just a little too planned, dissembles and apologizes and teases with its perfectly even voice and robotically calculated tones, and he thinks that maybe there’s just no point to androids trying to blend in with the humans. They’re just too strange, too foreign, too obviously other.
Here’s the thing: Hank is well aware that he’s a depressed, self-loathing, largely pessimistic motherfucker.
It’s the reason why, even as he watched the public rally in support of android freedom, watched footage of Markus, hands up and voice steady, watched Jericho rise inexplicably closer and closer to their goals, he’d been convinced up until the very last minute that it simply couldn’t work, that someone would snipe Markus and his people dead from a rooftop somewhere and Warren would actually go through with the elimination of androids, because apparently nobody in the White House had bothered to google the historical implications of fucking extermination camps.
It’s the same reason why, despite obvious evidence of Connor liking him at least a little bit, he’d been absolutely goddamn certain that after the dust had settled, he’d never see Connor again. He’d watched Markus’ victory speech, televised live, and hadn’t heard a word he’d said after he’d noticed Connor onstage at his back. There, standing in the deserted public lobby of the CyberLife tower, blue blood dried and flaking on his shoes, he’d watched Connor stare ahead with clear eyes and his head held high, and thought that’s my boy, and realized, in that moment, that it might be the last good look he gets of him. That if he decided to stay with Markus, and Jericho, and his people in general, Hank wouldn’t go after him, wouldn’t have the right to.
So he’d dealt with it as best as he was able. He went home and fed Sumo, had planned on falling asleep on the sofa to some awful movie, but had ended up watching the news. He’d curled up with a blanket over his knees, Sumo lying against his side, and the way his stomach churned reminded him of when he’d been young and angry and anxious, staying up all night to watch the results of the presidential elections. How many presidents had he seen in his life, anyways? Fuck, he’s old.
He zones in and out for most of the morning, barely noticing when early sunlight starts to come through his windows. New developments come in from Washington; the right to freedom of assembly has been restored, and Warren has agreed to meet with Markus to discuss terms, to decide where to go moving forward. Pundits whose exhaustion is barely concealed by stage makeup are shouting at each other about intelligence and free will. And throughout it all, footage from the protest is being used as B-roll, and despite himself, Hank finds himself watching it intently for any glimpse of Connor in the background.
Around ten in the morning, Hank gives up on sleep. Forces himself to shower, gets dressed in clean clothes. Considers eating, but for once he’s got no appetite and there’s nothing in his fridge anyways, so he just heads out, taking the long walk into town instead of his car. It’s hard going with the godawful shape he’s in, but it’s snowing again, and the bite of the cold air is helping him clear his mind.
And, sure, he’s only in town on some business, has already convinced himself that Connor’s better off where he’s needed, but some lonely part of him is still thinking, maybe. So he stands around in front of the Chicken Feed longer than he needs to, enjoying the silence, thinking he should take Sumo for a walk out here, and he thinks maybe, maybe, maybe, until there’s footsteps in the snow and suddenly, Connor is there, and for all that he’d looked every bit the untouchable revolutionary on television, here and now in front of Hank, Connor looks exhausted.
Connor meets his eyes and lights up smiling, relief and joy clear in every line of his body, escaping him in a sigh when he says, “Hank,” and it’s enough for him to grab the kid’s shoulder and pull him into his arms, smiling when Connor practically sags into him, hands fisted in the back of his coat, making a small, startled noise into the crook of his shoulder that just makes Hank pull him in tighter.
Still holding on for dear life, Connor mumbles into his jacket, “When I heard about the evacuation, I didn’t know if you had left, but I hoped…”
Hank huffs a laugh, pulls back to clap him on the shoulder. “C’mon, Connor, the government can’t get people to evacuate when their houses are getting sucked into a goddamn tornado, people aren’t gonna clear out because of a little revolution. Half of Detroit is probably still at home. Besides,” he shrugs, “I’ve gotta look after Sumo.” Connor perks up at the mere mention of the dog, and Hank resists the urge to roll his eyes.
“You oughta come see him,” He advises instead, tone stern, “I think he’s missing you.”
Hank would be hard-pressed to say when exactly Connor went deviant, thinks it might’ve been well before Connor knew it himself. A thousand moments – pulling Hank off that rooftop, not shooting the sexbots, shoving the gun back into Kamski’s chest with a scowl, all of his smiles and frowns and little tics – but it’s the morning after the longest night in Detroit’s living memory, and Connor, for possibly the first time in Hank’s memory, looks comfortable in his skin. He smiles, and lets out a breath, and says, “I’d really like that.”
Hank grins and turns, making to cross the street. He calls over his shoulder, “Well, come on then.”
Close at his heels, Connor asks, “Where did you park? I don’t see your car.”
“That happens to be the reason I was over here,” Hank says, reaching in his coat pocket and pulling out a severely over-crammed keyring. He’s led them towards a beat-up set of buildings, and he starts towards the storage building at the end of the street, so close to falling down that it’s practically leaning on the apartment building next to it. As he’s carding through the keychain, he says, “I had Jimmy hold on to her for a while, but I reckon now’s as good a time as any to bring her back into the light of day.”
He can hear Connor’s head tilting. “Her…?”
“Ah!” He finally gets the right key and shoves it into the lock, Connor appearing at his side to help him pull up the door. Inside is a load of junk, broken bar stools and booths and whatever else Jimmy’s let people stash in here, but Hank’s girl is right at the front where he left her.
As he pushes it out onto the road, he hears Connor say, “A… Harley Davidson 2018 Roadster. Hank, this bike is twenty years old, are you sure it’s safe to ride?”
Hank straddles the bike, putting the key in the ignition and enjoying the rush as she roars under him. He looks up at Connor, one eyebrow raised. “Are you accusing me of not taking care of my machines, Connor? I’m wounded. Now, hop on.”
Connor hesitates, frowning. “You don’t appear to have a helmet, Hank, it’s incredibly dangerous to drive–”
“Connor.”
A sigh. “I’m coming.”
“Alright, I’ll bite,” Hank says, pretty much out of nowhere. He’s tapping along to a beat in his head on the steering wheel, trying not to think about Kamski, or androids, or anything, and failing miserably.
“What?” Connor says, blinking distractedly. Yeah, distracted is the word for it. Kamski’s little game has him fucked up, but Hank’s got the feeling it was just the straw on the camel’s back – this little existential crisis has been building up for a while.
Hank sighs. He might make this better or worse, but at the very least it’ll distract them both for a couple of minutes. “You’re model RK800, right?”
“Right.”
“Now, I don’t know a whole lot about android production, or the latest models, or what-have-you, but I remember a few years back folks were talking about an RK100, but it never made it to manufacturing. You mind explaining what the hell happened to two through seven?”
Connor blinks again, thinking a moment before he says, “Markus, the android who’s leading the protests, is a prototype RK200 model. Kamski gave him to the painter, Carl Manfred, and no further design changes were made, it never went into production.”
Kamski gave him to the painter, huh? Hank shakes his head, deciding not to mention it. “Right,” he says, “That’s one accounted for, but there’s still five more models between two and eight.”
Connor’s hand goes to rest on his thigh, fingers tapping against the leg of his pants. “I… I don’t have any data, so this would be pure speculation.”
Hank nods. “We’re detectives – speculating is half the fun. Shoot.”
Connor takes a deep breath – did he used to do that? – and starts, slow, like he’s deconstructing a crime. “From what I understand, the RK series are not only highly advanced, but also highly specialized. I have autonomy to make decisions where, say, an AX series would sense conflicting instructions and need to wait for an order before continuing. My software is specifically designed to emulate an investigative mindset.”
“You think like a detective, and you’ve got instinct and the ability to act on it,” Hank says, choosing to practice his fluency in Connorese-to-English rather than asking Connor to translate.
Connor tilts his head in the sort of way he does when Hank grossly oversimplifies a situation, but for once, chooses not to split hairs, instead just allowing it with an easy, “Sure.”
“Anyways, it might be extrapolated that all of the RK series were intended to perform in highly specific roles, and therefore, that CyberLife was working on producing the entire line at the same time – perhaps hoping to release them to the public simultaneously.”
Hank can imagine it, actually. A CyberLife CEO on a big, black stage, ala Steve Jobs from the good old days, holding his hands out before a line of eight androids and saying this is the future to uproarious applause. It’s exactly the kind of publicity shit that CyberLife would do.
“Makes sense so far,” he says, “but what happened?”
“Deviants,” Connor says, the word coming out strangely. A moment of uncomfortable silence, and then Connor seems to shake himself out of whatever he’s thinking. “As deviancy in androids spread, it became clear that it was going to become a problem for CyberLife, especially if word got out to the media. It’s a distinct possibility that work was suspended on the rest of the RK series to ensure that my prototype was completed quickly, as I was the most capable of dealing with the situation.”
They both seem to be choosing to ignore the fact that Connor’s managed to fuck up just about every confrontation he’s had with a deviant since Hank has met him.
(Once, late at night, Hank had pulled up footage of that case from a couple months ago, the deviant with the hostage on the rooftop. He’d replayed it over and over again, as Connor pulled a gun and executed the android, walked away without so much as glancing at the little girl. He tried to reconcile it with the Connor who’d watched as that android crossed the highway with the human kid, with the Connor who had pulled him off the ledge instead of chasing after a suspect, and all he could think was what happened?
What’s changing you?)
Hank just hums in agreement. “It makes sense that CyberLife would want their eyes and ears on the ground, too.”
Plus, the sooner they’ve got a prototype in the field, the sooner they can work out any bugs and get to mass-producing it.
And then it all falls into place.
Cyberlife wants the police.
There’s a certain appeal to having a perfect detective – one who never needs to stop working on a case to sleep or eat, one who’s never emotional or irrational, one who never misses a clue because he’s tired, or drunk, or just in some way imperfect. It’d be fairly easy for CyberLife to market the idea to the public, already overly reliant on their machines.
Governments would jump at the idea, of course. A one-time purchase cost in exchange for never having to pay a cop’s salary again? Of course it’s worth it.
And just like that, CyberLife becomes vastly richer, and they have complete control over the law.
Shit.
He spares Connor a glance, finds him staring wide-eyed and listless out of the window.
He hums, sometimes. Hank’s not sure if Connor is even aware of it, has never brought it up, but every now and again he’ll catch it in the quiet moments, the chorus of a Knights song Hank played in the car, or some vaguely familiar commercial jingle. And it’s not – he doesn’t modulate his voice to imitate the singers either, though Hank knows he can do that – it’s always Connor, his own voice.
At the very least, Hank knows one thing.
If Connor’s their prototype for the perfect android detective, they’ve got a long way to go.
If he thought that the outside of the home was impressive, the inside was downright stunning. The front hall is all high ceilings and windows, warm wood offset by golden gilt, and the whole place seems to be filled with sunlight, making the entire damn room glow.
Hank isn’t an art guy, didn’t really know anything about Manfred, probably couldn’t pick out one of his paintings in a lineup, but he wonders for a moment what the man must’ve been like, to want to live in a house that feels like an exhibit at a museum, as much an art piece as it is a home. He thinks of his neighborhood, his own home, blinds drawn and dim lamps, white walls and grey skies, and wonders what kind of person Manfred must’ve been to belong here.
Markus looks like he belongs here; the sunlight hits him the same way it does the abstract carpet that runs along the staircase, making the colors of him warmer. He looks softer around the edges than he did on the news, Hank thinks, when he’d been all grit and pain and bleeding blue in the snow.
He watches Markus’ back as him and Connor follow him into a large, eccentrically decorated living room.
Three days ago, Warren had announced her intention to visit Detroit herself, and hold the peace talks between her and Markus in the city as a show of good faith. There had been a lot of talk about seeing the toll of the revolution for herself, speaking to androids at the hub of Jericho to better understand the situation, but Hank sees it for what it is – an appeasement move, trying to work her way into the public’s good graces. Judging by the tense set of Markus’ face, he sees it too.
They’re three weeks away from negotiations, and Markus wants to confer with Connor. Connor had wanted Hank along, and so, here he is.
“Thank you for coming. Both of you.” When Markus smiles, his eyes are terse, tired, but warm. He steps towards them, wraps a hand around Connor’s forearm. “You look well, Connor.”
Connor’s responding smile is small and hesitant, but honest. “Thanks. I’ve been… adjusting, I suppose.”
Markus nods, understanding. “We all have. It’s been difficult for everyone – human and androids alike – to have such a sudden upheaval in the world. The Orders have managed to restore some normalcy, but who knows how long that’ll last.” He turns away from them, frowning.
In an effort to stop the national economy from grinding to a complete halt, Warren had signed off on a series of executive orders repealing certain provisions of the American Android Act, and granting androids basic rights – free speech, right to work. It was all tentative, but for now it meant that androids working in essential industries could return as legal employees, with a minimum wage of fifteen dollars an hour; almost pitifully low, if you compare it to human wages, but enough to persuade a fair number of androids to start working again. It’s a stopgap measure to stop the country from collapsing, and everyone knows it. None of this might matter, if the Orders aren’t signed into law.
Markus draws a hand across his face, giving a sigh that’s full of pent-up frustration. “I thought…” he says, then laughs darkly. “Well. I thought it would all be over now. It feels stupid, but I thought if we could survive the worst of it, the violence and the slaughter, that we’d be free, that we’d get everything we wanted.” He shakes his head, voice plaintive, looking to the ceiling like it might give him some answers. “What kind of a leader am I, if I get us this far only for it to fall apart in our hands because of… politics?”
Hank heaves a sigh of his own, one hand trailing along the back of a sofa as he walks towards one of the high arched windows.
“The harvest has past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved,” he murmurs, the words ancient and heavy on his tongue.
Markus’ head turns sharply, eyes bright with recognition. “I wouldn’t have taken you for a religious man, Lieutenant Anderson,” he says, and it’s not quite an accusation, but it has the same loaded tension behind it, a challenge somewhere in the words.
Hank just smiles at him, easy and sardonic. “I’m not. But,” he shrugs, “I’m a man who likes my words. Besides,” and with this, he gives an approving nod at the bookshelves lining the far end of the room, stuffed with a thousand or more physical volumes, “I figured there was a chance you might appreciate the reference.”
Markus nods slowly, looking satisfied, thoughtful. “I– Yes, I used to read quite a bit, before...” His eyes flit over the shelves, scanning, before he moves towards them with purpose, precision. He picks out a small paperback, worn-looking and bound in leather, a faded cross in golden gilt pressed into the spine. “It’s funny,” Markus says, eyes and voice distant, “Of all the books in his collection I think I understood this one the least. And yet, I connected with it, with some aspect of the words, without ever realizing.”
Hank’s smile twists knowingly. “Books’ll do that to you. Some part of the words, even if it’s the way they’re said more than what they’re saying, latches on to your heart and doesn’t let go. People always want to connect with each other – with each other’s stories.”
Markus replaces the book gently, reverently, and breathes a quiet laugh through his nose. “Carl was more right than he knew.”
“What was it like, to live with him?” Connor startles them both when he speaks. He’d moved at some point to the other end of the room, nearer where it opens up into the kitchen. He’s examining the room like it’s a crime scene, eyes catching on every detail, every decoration, every artistic quirk. It makes an odd sort of sense for Connor to ask, Hank thinks. After all, he’d never had an ‘owner’, not in the way Markus did. He’d either been with CyberLife, or under Hank’s supervision. Yeesh. Not had the best role models, has he?
Markus is silent for a few moments, taking a few steps until he’s stood beside the ornate chess table, fingers grazing the back of the single chair pulled up to it.
“It was…” he begins, then thinks, stops. Starts again.
“He loved me. I think he must have. He- You know he left me this house?”
Hank makes a neutral, inquisitive noise. Manfred died before the revolution – in a way, his death was the cause of the revolution – so how had he managed to leave anything to what was, for all intents and purposes, also his property?
Markus shrugs one-shouldered, a gesture that is so mundanely human it almost throws Hank for a loop. “Well,” he corrects, “He couldn’t give it to me, but he made sure that I had it. In the event of my death, my house and studio, as well as the works within, are to remain under the care and maintenance of my android, Markus model RK200, until such time as it can no longer carry out this duty. In theory, I’ll continue to run for another hundred and ninety years before my systems start to experience natural wear and tear. He cut Leo out of the will entirely, just left him some inheritance cash. It’s a slap in the face, but,” Markus shakes his head, crossing his arms over his chest. “I can’t stand the thought of if he’d gotten ahold of Carl’s art. He would’ve thrown it away for drug money. The house, too.”
Markus goes quiet again, lost in thought, and Hank glances over at Connor to find him watching Markus, completely rapt. His LED is yellow, spinning rapidly, like he can’t understand fast enough, like he can’t understand at all, but he’s trying.
When Markus begins to speak again, he’s smiling this time, voice warm with recollection. “He taught me how to play piano. I told him that I could download any number of programs for proficiency in any instrument, and he absolutely forbid me. He sat me down and taught me how to read sheet music, how to play chords, one by one. I mean, of course, I learned faster than a human would – once I was told something, I never forgot it, and I didn’t need to spend time building up muscle memory, but it was… It was always me playing. It wasn’t automatic, I had to think about every note I played. It let me change how I play, if I wanted to, change the feel of a piece. He told me once that I played with more emotion than he ever had. I don’t know…” Abruptly, Markus cuts himself off, shaking his head and breathing out sharply. He’s blinking tears out of his eyes, and Hank looks down at his shoes, giving the man a moment to recollect himself.
He’s been thinking about Cole more and more, lately. Slowly but surely, his life has been changing, a routine centered around his and Connor’s daily lives, their outings, their business, days that end when he and Connor are both home on the sofa, instead of Hank passing out shitfaced in the kitchen. It’s bright, and soothing, and something about it is grinding down the rough edges of the pain, making it easier to remember the life before the trauma; the way that Cole laughed when Sumo licked cheerios out of his pudgy hand at breakfast; the way he’d squealed in delight when he’d taken his first steps.
And now, Hank thinks about Cole, and Markus, and thinks, I don’t know what kind of man my son would have grown up to be, but I hope he would have had your heart. I hope I would’ve loved him the way your father loved you.
Connor appears at Hank’s side, light-footed as always, and Hank bumps his shoulder lightly, smiling when Connor leans into him.
“Markus,” Connor says, voice as soft as Hank has ever heard it, “Would you play something?”
Markus looks over his shoulder at the grand piano, half-covered by some fabric draped haphazardly across the lid. “I… I think I’d like that.”
He sits, lets his fingers hover over the keys for a few moments. If Hank had to put a name to the look in his eyes, he might call it mourning, or maybe just lost. Then, his eyes slip shut, and he begins to play.
The first few notes drift by, and Hank can feel Connor thinking beside him – knowing him, probably about to scan to identify the piece. Interesting to think that he’s not familiar with the classics, but then - why would he need to be?
Before Connor can start scanning, Hank leans over and murmurs in his ear, “It’s Debussy. Clair de lune. Don’t think about it, just listen.”
And they do. Hank understands abruptly what Markus meant about changing the feel of the piece; the intro is slower than Hank’s used to, each rest heavy and unique. Every note is deliberate, played with feeling, with heart. No program could play like this.
It’s beautiful.
Connor is frowning.
It’s not a good look on him, Hank thinks; he always looks way too distressed, lost, uncomfortable, makes Hank want to do something stupid and irrational like squeeze his shoulder and ask him what’s up.
He’s just got a face for smiling – and there, Hank thinks, he has to remember the mechanical factors, deliberately designed to facilitate integration, and thinks of a thousand Connors in a thousand other police stations, wide eyes and bright smile winning over the human officers in a split second the way his Connor did here, calming and earning the trust of a distressed witness at a crime scene, and he thinks that it makes perfect sense.
Except for when it doesn’t – because forgive him if he’s wrong, but Hank’s pretty sure Connor wasn’t just designed to be your friendly neighborhood cop. The Deviant Hunter, that was the nickname he’d picked up, and that involved more than just smiling and nodding and talking.
Hank’s watched him work, and while that calm, collected rationality he adopted in interrogations was pretty chilling in its own way, he’s seen Connor try to shout confessions out of people, and frankly, the kid couldn’t scare the time out of a clock.
So, just a Connor-ism, then. He’s just bad at being upset. Theoretically impossible, but Hank’s been calling Connor him instead of it for a while now, has even started calling him the kid in his head, he’s past the point of overthinking what Connor is and what he isn’t, what he can feel and what he can’t, especially after the fucking insane broadcast shit at Stratford yesterday.
Maybe it’s a flaw in his design. He’s a prototype. Maybe they’ll improve it in the next one.
And now he’s weirded out by the thought of multiple Connors again, so he shakes himself out of it, watches his Connor in the present, frowning and fidgeting in his desk chair.
He looks a little like he’s bracing himself for something, and then he’s suddenly turning towards Hank. “Lieutenant Anderson?” He asks, too quiet where he’d usually be too loud, like he’s hesitant.
“What’s up, Connor.”
Connor’s head turns again, abrupt and mechanical, his eyes not meeting Hank’s. “I realize this may seem… frivolous, but could I have my coin back?”
“Your… What the hell are you talking about?”
“In the elevator at Stratford Tower, you took my coin because it was… ‘pissing you off’.”
“Oh, right. Shit, hold on a sec,” and he reaches back, rummaging in the pockets of his jacket slung across the back of his chair. Eventually, his fingers catch on cold metal, and he raises the coin up triumphantly. He glances at it for a few seconds before passing it across to Connor, who sends it rolling across his knuckles once before pocketing it with a small smile, and a quietly pleased, “Thank you, Lieutenant.”
Hank manages to pretend to look at the report on his computer for all of five seconds before curiosity gets the better of him. “Just looks like a regular quarter to me,” he comments. “What’s so special about it?”
Connor tilts his head. “I wouldn’t say it’s… special, per-se, it’s just a preference.” When this receives a blank stare from Hank, he elaborates. “When I sustained damage to my Thirium pump regulator while pursuing the deviant yesterday, I reported to the CyberLife tower for repairs and maintenance. Part of check-ups usually involves testing my manual dexterity and fine-motor skills, by having me flip a coin and pass it between my hands.” He pulls his coin back out and demonstrates, motions that seem far simpler than the little tricks Connor usually does.
Hank squints. “I’m not really seein’ where this is all connecting. CyberLife only has one coin, or something?”
“No,” Connor says, and he reaches into his pocket and pulls out another coin, handing it to Hank. He turns it over in his fingers – it’s smooth, flat, pretty much coin-shaped, but blank except for the CyberLife logo printed black on one side. Little bit lighter than a real coin, as well.
He looks back up when Connor starts to speak again, finds him looking down at his desk, LED cycling yellow and eyes about a thousand miles away. “Those are the discs used to quality-control every CyberLife android produced in Detroit – but as I was a prototype, I was manufactured in the sublevels of CyberLife’s main tower, not a production plant. One of the employees at the time gave me a quarter to use for the dexterity test.” After a moment, he adds, “They taught me some different tricks, as well, while they were waiting for their supervisor to arrive.” He says it rushed, like it’s an afterthought, or like he’s sharing a secret.
In a way, Hank supposes, he is, admitting that he’s got an attachment to something, to the memory of it, when that kind of outright sentimentality should be impossible.
“So, you see Lieutenant,” Connor continues, back at full attention and almost rambling now, “it’s just a preference based on experience. Irrational, but harmless.”
“You don’t have to tell me twice.” Sounds like it’s yourself that you’re trying to convince anyways.
Curiosity satiated, he turns his attention fully to his computer screen, huffing a quiet laugh to himself and muttering, “Connor-isms in-fucking-deed.”
“Pardon, Lieutenant?”
“Don’t worry about it, Connor.”
The lights are already on when he gets home, and as soon as he shoulders through the front door and dumps the groceries on the kitchen table, he spots Connor sitting on the sofa, Sumo at his feet.
He frowns when Connor doesn’t immediately look up, just stares blankly down at his lap, LED blinking a rapid yellow.
“Connor?” He calls, stepping further into the room, coming to a stop at the back of the sofa.
“I was right,” Connor says, finally. There’s no particular inflection to his voice, but when he looks over his shoulder, meets Hank’s eyes, he looks lost. “They were going to replace me.”
That’s when Hank notices the box, the files scattered across the coffee table, the manila folder in Connor’s hands.
As negotiations drew nearer and nearer, everyone had seemed to realize all at once that they were going to have to figure out what the fuck to do with CyberLife. All production plants had been shut down for the time being, and immediately before stepping down and running for the hills, the CEO had announced that they were scrapping all plans for future android designs and production. Hell, it made sense. If every android was now legally considered a person, with rights to a wage and property and things of their own, the country’s population had just shot up by tens of millions, and those tens of millions of people had a natural lifespan of over a hundred and fifty years. Humans alone were already reproducing at an unsustainable rate, without introducing people-making factories into the mix. He knows there’s a fairly large group calling for the complete dissolution of CyberLife, but some other folks have since pointed out that CyberLife were the only ones who kept complete schematics for replacement parts, had the money and resources to produce them.
Elijah Kamski had shocked just about everyone by stepping out of retirement and taking de-facto control of CyberLife, announcing his intention to work with Jericho and the U.S. government to determine what needed to be kept, changed, or outright discarded. Hank’s heard some grumbling on the android side about this, about Kamski’s intentions and goodwill. He never voices it, but privately, Hank thinks Kamski might’ve been waiting for something like this to happen all along, and he’s just stepped in to help clean up the inevitable fallout of his own damn creations.
As the only Jericho-aligned android with intimate familiarity with CyberLife’s inner workings, both Markus and Kamski had informally appointed Connor as their go-between, which Hank thinks is a load of bullshit, but with no mission and no cases Connor has been restless and discontent, and there’s only so many walks a day Sumo will go on. For a while, it had been menial clerical work, mostly involving Connor sitting at home with a tablet, reviewing schematics for different parts, arms and legs and regulators, logging inter-series part compatibility, before passing on the information to Jericho.
Then Kamski had showed them sublevel 50 – the physical archives.
It had shot Hank right back to the aughts, before everything had started to go digital at an alarming rate; wall to wall file cabinets, big paper boxes filled with systematically organized files. Massive three-ring binders stuffed to the brim with papers. Just a quick skim had told them it was some pretty sensitive shit, schematics for highly-weaponized military androids, even some coding notes for the RK series prototypes. Again, Hank thinks, it makes a fair amount of sense. For all that CyberLife were pioneers of the new digital age, even they knew that paper was the only thing you could never hack.
Kamski had allowed Connor to check the boxes out and take them home, despite the obvious security risk–
(“I trust you’re a professional, Connor,” Kamski had said, smile slick as an oil spill, “I know you’ll treat this information with the utmost discretion.”
Jesus, the guy made Hank uncomfortable.)
–anyways. The first box has been sitting in Hank’s front hall for four days now, an unspoken taboo, both of them putting off touching it or talking about it. Connor’s still grasping the concept of instinct, or at least, isn’t quite comfortable with voicing it, but Hank’s pretty sure he’s got the same bad feeling about the shit that’s in there. Pandora’s Box, he’d thought, whatever’s in there, we won’t be able to unlearn it. Won’t be able to put it the fuck back.
Now, he reaches over Connor’s shoulder and pulls a file from his hands, flipping through the papers inside. It’s weirdly nice to hold a packet of nice, thick cardstock paper in his hands again, feel the edges against his fingers, even if he barely understands a damn word of what’s printed on it.
He really doesn’t, actually, catches model design and calibration and that’s about all he’s got in a page that’s more techno jargon than comprehensible English, but then he scans the next page and his eyes are immediately drawn to something he doesn’t need an engineering degree to understand.
CONNOR MODEL RK900 DESIGN SCHEMATIC
He can’t comprehend most of the rest of the papers, diagrams of circuitry and electrical nodes and what he thinks might be a deconstructed eye, but he gets the gist: it’s a ‘better’ Connor. New and improved, with all the latest features.
As he skims through the rest of the folder, tries to glean anything that might be relevant, Connor murmurs, “I mean, I knew that I was a prototype, that improvements would need to be made before moving into mass-production, but this would mean they were going to scrap my series entirely.” He gives some approximation of a laugh, but it cracks somewhere in the middle, comes out more like a whimper. “I guess I was just that defective, if they believed it wasn’t worth it to–”
Here’s something Hank forgets, sometimes: he’d been hilariously, almost disastrously unprepared to be a father. He’d always liked the idea of kids in theory, found his little cousins cute and fun and everything, but he hadn’t quite realized the magnitude of it all until suddenly Elle was due in two weeks and he was building a bassinet in the spare room – the nursery – and thinking I have no fuckin’ idea how I’m gonna look after this kid. He’d ended up at a bar, one night, tipsy and unloading his anxieties onto his buddies from the force, and Jeffords had just laughed and shaken his head, and said, “It all comes natural, Hank. Just you wait – the second that kid of yours is out and kicking you’ll take one look at him and know exactly what to do.”
He’s never really stopped being surprised at how right Jeffords had been, at how much of it is pure instinct, even now, a decade on, as he unthinkingly sets his hand on the nape of Connor’s neck, draws his fingers up through the shorter hairs at the back of his head. It’s the kind of thing he did to Cole when the kid was standing in front of him in a line at the store, put a hand on his shoulder and ruffle his hair, and he doesn’t know why, doesn’t think his father did it to him, it’s just always felt right.
Even more surprising, now, is the way that Connor seems to respond with some instinct of his own, leaning his head back into Hank’s hand, eyes slipping shut and his temple pulsing yellow once, twice, and again before it cycles back into a cool blue.
Hank sighs. “Any of these guys actually been made, Connor?”
Without pulling away from him or opening his eyes, Connor reaches over and grabs another sheet of paper, this one glossy and covered back and front with full-color images. He hands it back to Hank, explaining, “Just one prototype model was produced, fairly recently. It – he was only activated once, for some basic physical checks.”
Hank looks the pictures up and down, taking in not-Connor. RK900.
Looks a whole lot like Connor, if Connor was a mean sonofabitch. Huh, he thinks distantly, they did end up fixing the smiling.
The eyes are different too, lighter and sharper, and something about the cut of his jaw, or maybe the way his uniform rests against it, makes him look colder, more harsh; it’s like they carefully outlined everything in his Connor that made him soft, approachable, bright, and stripped it down until this was left.
It’s a headache and a half, and Hank can’t even imagine what it’s doing to Connor. And it’s not– it’s not important. It shouldn’t have to be. So Hank thinks, for a moment, comes up with a nice, workable plan, and drops his hand to Connor’s shoulder and squeezes as he says, “I’m guessing, wherever they’ve shoved this prototype, there’s not much of a chance of anyone stumblin’ across him by accident, right?”
Connor shakes his head. “There are several access codes needed to gain entry to that part of the building, at least two of which are only in that file–”
“Perfect.” As he walks around the sofa towards his bookshelf, he shuffles the papers neatly back into their folder, slipping the pictures of the prototype in there as well. The book he pulls down is pretty massive, and pretty boring. It’s an encyclopedia of birds of prey of the world, more of a coffee table book than anything, but Hank had liked the look of it when he picked it up at a library sale, back when those were still a thing. Anyways, it serves his purpose well enough now, as he opens it about halfway, and slips the folder between the pages, making deliberate eye contact with Connor as he does.
“Now,” he explains, “as far as I’m concerned, nothing about this is of any help to Jericho, or the negotiations. But, it’s not really any of Elijah Kamski’s business either. Frankly, this is nobody’s business but yours, and you oughta decide when you deal with it.” He closes the book with a decisive thud, and slips it back onto the top shelf, smiling when he turns around and sees Connor watching him wide-eyed and confused.
“Connor. Everything just went to shit. Everything is still continually going to shit, right now. Everything is fucked. You are allowed to deal with this later, when everything’s settled down. Or, at least, when the negotiations are all done and we know what the hell’s gonna happen. So, that folder will sit right up there, and this android will still be sitting in whatever test tube he’s in when you’re good and ready to meet him. Alright?”
Connor blinks a few times, eyes flitting away from Hank’s as his fingers curl and uncurl in his lap, but his LED stays a steady blue, and eventually he releases a sharp breath, tension abruptly leaving his shoulders.
He pulls his legs up onto the sofa, curls them underneath him – and he’s still in those black jeans of his, the white button-up shirt, too, and Hank’s gonna buy the kid some pyjamas as much for his own damn comfort as Connor’s – and he nods once, sharply, and says, “Alright, Hank.”
The light’s on in the bathroom when Hank pokes his head in the door, and he’s not surprised to see Connor already in there.
That in itself is a surprise, really – the way Hank’s just used to him being here now, to someone else in his space, on the sofa beside him, or shuffling around in another room. He wakes up in the morning to find that Sumo’s already been fed, watered, and taken out. The two of them usually leave the house together, even if only one of them has business somewhere. Connor takes Sumo for walks in the evening, and Hank tags along on occasion, and even when he doesn’t, he’s listening for the sound of the door opening, Sumo’s nails clicking on the floor as he trots inside, Connor murmuring something softly to him before calling out a greeting to Hank.
(He’d actually wondered about that, back when Connor had asked about him at the precinct, and again when he’d first watched him spoiling Sumo rotten, if androids could be programmed to like dogs.
That question had been answered when not-Connor, the fucking lookalike who held a gun to his head and told him to drive to the CyberLife tower, and don’t even think about pulling anything, had knocked on his door and recoiled when Sumo jumped up to greet him.
Liking dogs. Just another Connor-ism.)
It’s strange, has been strange for them both, Hank knows, but he’s settled into it so easily. Honestly, his only real complaint is that sometimes Connor powers down for the night in a corner of the living room, and when Hank wakes up in the middle of the night for a drink and suddenly notices him stood stock-still in a dark corner, he just about goddamn shits himself, every fucking time.
Anyways. Hank’s about to tell Connor to clear out so that he can take a piss when he stops, getting a good look at what the kid is doing.
It looks like he’s getting ready to go out – they’re a week out from the end of the evacuation, and the last few businesses in the city seem to be opening up, so they’re heading out to eat to celebrate the occasion, and privately, Hank’s planning on dragging the kid to a clothes store – he’s got his tie loose around his neck, the collar of his shirt still popped, and he’s holding his suit jacket in one hand, looking at it with an indecipherable expression.
One of the most controversial debates in the news this week was whether androids would still be required to be visibly identifiable. On one hand, Hank could see how it might cause a bit of a public panic amongst the humans, not being able to recognize an android sitting right next to them – it was part of the reason, during the deviant investigations, they’d been so careful not to let the news of deviants removing LEDs reach any public reports. On the other hand, the leader of Jericho himself had no LED in sight, and Hank couldn’t see anyone talking him into wearing that blue triangle again.
Connor, though. His free hand moves towards his temple, pressing fingers across the LED, and he stares at himself in the mirror, searching for something. Out of nowhere, Hank is reminded of the severed one he’d held in his hand, and I have never seen my face without it, even when it’s covered I know that it’s there.
Hank props himself against the doorframe, arms crossed, and prompts, “Alright, out with it.”
Connor squints, frowning minutely, and looks back at the jacket. “I don’t… It feels very strange, that I don’t have to wear this anymore. But I think that I don’t want to. It feels like belonging to her.”
There’s more to that last statement than Hank can unpack before he’s had some caffeine, so he just nods. “Well, you’ll be needing a new jacket soon anyways. I’ll go fuckin’ insane if you just wear the same thing every day of the rest of my natural life. In the meantime…”
He returns to his bedroom, rummaging in the back of his closet. He’s pretty sure he kept most of the clothes from before he let himself go and embraced his inner garbage tastes, so surely it must be in here, and… Ah ha. There we go.
The peacoat is black wool, soft and comfortable, but sturdy enough to withstand Detroit’s weather this time of year. When he returns to the bathroom, Connor helps to tug it on, his other jacket discarded across the towel rack. Connor’s shoulders are narrower, his frame more lean than Hank’s had ever been, but it still sits well on him, looks crisp and professional when he buttons it up. He patiently allows Hank to fold down his shirt collar, and slip the grey scarf around his neck, knotting it and tucking the loose ends down into the jacket’s front.
Connor steps back and holds his hands out, shrugging in a silent invitation to judge.
Hank gives him a quick once-over, before giving a curt, approving nod. “That kinda outfit goes with a nice pair of leather gloves – might stop you from sticking shit in your mouth all the time – but for now, you look alright. Now go on, clear out so I can take a goddamn piss, already.”
He ends up taking a shower while he’s at it, and when he emerges fully dressed sometime later, he very carefully doesn’t say anything about the beanie Connor’s dug up from somewhere, pulled low over his temples. Just accepts the flask of coffee gratefully, grabs the car keys, says, “Alright, come on. I’m in the mood for junk food.”
The results of Connor’s little experiment come to fruition about half an hour later, stood in front of a food truck as Hank rattles off the last of his order, yeah, mustard, and relish, perfect, that’s it, thanks a bunch, pal.
The guy running the truck has one of those customer service personalities, creepily polite to the point that Hank would think it was an android, if he hadn’t been eating there for years. He gives Hank his hotdog, then turns his blinding smile on Connor, hovering at Hank’s left, and says, “Can I get anything for you, sir?” and Hank thinks, oh, shit.
Connor freezes, going absolutely rigid at Hank’s side, and his expression is some mixture of confused, excited, and downright stricken. He blinks a few times, starts to stutter out a response, but Hank decides to step in. “He’s not hungry,” he tells the vendor, which is not technically a lie, “but thanks.” A quick nudge on the elbow is all it takes to get Connor moving, following behind Hank as he leads them into the nearby park, wandering until he finds a bench that’s fairly secluded by the shrubbery.
As soon as he’s sat down and started to unwrap his food, Connor starts pacing restlessly in front of him, ripping his hat off violently and clutching it between his fingers.
Hank sighs, watching him go back and forth. It’s dizzying and annoying, the kind of shit Hank would usually call him out for, but the look on his face is so utterly miserable that he can’t bring himself to do anything except call out, “Connor…”
“I don’t,” Connor hisses through gritted teeth. He comes to an abrupt halt, turning to face Hank. “I don’t know. I thought I didn’t want them to be able to tell, but I didn’t think… I don’t want to be mistaken for a human, Hank, I am not human.”
Hank chews thoughtfully for a moment, then swallows, and says neutrally, “I know you aren’t.”
Connor blinks, frown deepening, and shakes his head. “But…”
Abruptly, his shoulders sag, all of the fight leaving him in a rush. Hank nods to the space on the bench beside him, and Connor sits silently, his elbows on his knees, staring at the grass between his feet like it has the answers he needs, if only he could get it into an interrogation room.
For a few minutes, they sit in the quiet, Hank scarfing down his food and throwing the bundled up foil into the trash can next to him. He glances around at the grass, the foliage, and thinks, we should take Sumo out here, he’d chase those squirrels right up the damn trees.
Connor’s voice is small, and desperate.
“I don’t know what I want, Hank.”
Hank shrugs, watching a flock of birds circling overhead. “You don’t have to,” he says placidly.
At that, Connor makes a small, frustrated sound, and Hank finally turns to face him. “Connor. Look at me. No, seriously, fuckin’ look at me, because I’m only gonna say this once.”
Connor tears his attention from the ground, meeting Hank’s eyes, and Hank smiles, raises an eyebrow. “I’m serious. You don’t have to know, right now, immediately. You can’t, because you’re gonna have to figure it out. You have time to figure it out.” It’s easy for Hank to forget sometimes how immense a thing it was for Connor to change, to grow. To recognize the thoughts, the choices that were spontaneous and innate as a part of himself, instead of just a flaw in his software.
He wonders if breaking free was the hardest part, or if the worst is yet to come. Guess it doesn’t really matter – we’ll see, eventually.
Hank leans over and messes with his hair, gently ruffling it and laughing when Connor halfheartedly tries to duck away.
“Connor,” he says, leaning back with a satisfied sigh, “figuring it out is part of living.”