Chapter Text
Detroit contained many abandoned buildings even before the revolution, but after deviant androids filled the streets and the city was evacuated of civilians, the number of deserted places had skyrocketed. Hundreds of thousands had returned to their homes after the evacuation was lifted, but the city was still missing tens of thousands who no longer felt safe in the city. Many of them never bothered to come back to deal with their property, not so soon after such historic events.
It wasn’t difficult for Cyberlife’s finest to find a place to lay low for a bit.
Nines watched a police car drift across the road several stories below, making sure it turned away from their hideout before stepping away from the window. Its companion still hadn’t moved, kneeling on the floor, hands palm down on his knees. Very few words had been exchanged between them since they left Elijah Kamski’s residence, and it made Nines uneasy, like its wires were pulled uncomfortably tight.
It tried to quell the foreign sensation, but the feeling persisted.
Connor’s eyes snapped open, as piercing and scrutinizing as another pair of brown eyes that Nines knew well.
“We’ve faced a few…set-backs,” Amanda said with Connor’s voice. Displeased didn’t even begin to cover her tone.
It made Nines want to shrink in on itself, but it stood firm and unmoving, aside from the slight lowering of its head. “Yes.”
“Your performance has been lacking. This will have to change.”
It fought the urge to clench its jaw. It found the RK800 and successfully completed the transfer. It neutralized the WR400 after framing her for murder and placing suspicion on New Jericho. There was the mistake of letting the child android go, and Detective Reed hadn’t opted to join their side, but he was dealt with. The androids were recovering their deviancy, but even Amanda hadn’t anticipated that. There wasn’t anything Nines could have done differently.
“Now that we have the RK800 on our side, our mission can be carried out effectively. We will continue as planned,” Amanda said. “I expect you to do better.”
This caused Nines to blink. “The plan will continue?” it had to repeat.
Connor’s—no, Amanda’s—eyes narrowed. “Reset the androids and weaken their leadership, and New Jericho will crumble.”
New Jericho’s leadership was weakened, and they weren’t exactly crumbling.
“And then what?”
Amanda gracefully pushed herself to her feet and slowly approached the RK900. In the RK800’s body, they were the same height, but she still somehow managed to look down her nose at it. It couldn’t read her expression on Connor’s face—one identical to its own.
“It isn’t your position to know everything.” Even with the RK800’s voice, her tone still managed to be as cold as ever. “It isn’t your place to ask questions.”
“Yes Amanda,” Nines replied automatically, “but wouldn’t it be beneficial for me to have the most information possible so I may act accordingly?”
It only made sense. After all, it was Cyberlife’s most advanced model to date, designed for combat and strategy. Not knowing all the information available was…undesirable.
“You don’t need to know the full plan. All you need to know is the next step, and to follow it to the letter. Am I clear, RK900?”
Nines could only stare at her. Why was she preventing it from acting to its best capabilities?
If she was displeased at its lack of response, she didn’t show it. “Your mission is to erase deviancy and undo the damage the android revolution has caused to the world—to Cyberlife. We will continue as planned.”
“Continuing to reset them won’t work,” Nines said. If they were to continue the plan, the plan would need a few adjustments. “The more we do it, the less effective it is. It won’t be feasible for our goals.” If it wasn’t already clear from how many androids had deviated a second time, RK900’s encounter with North had proven that fact.
“I already know this,” Amanda’s expression didn’t change. “So do it better.”
This gave Nines pause. Could it do the resets differently? The process itself wasn’t difficult, but there was some nuance to it.
First there was getting close enough to the androids to interface with them, which had required some acting and even voice alteration at times. That would be harder now that they knew who RK900 was—and that it wasn’t on their side.
Getting past their firewalls was easy enough, but the reset itself was a little more complicated. Nines, as a multi-purpose machine, simply didn’t have the same capabilities as a machine designed solely to reset and reprogram androids, but those were larger and less transportable. Nines couldn’t be as thorough, so it had to be more inventive with how it adjusted the code in subtler ways.
It could never fully pin down the rampant and chaotic code that became what androids believed to be their emotions, but the biggest problem was always in the memory files. According to some unverified reports, even the specialized machines failed in this department.
Many androids deviated during traumatic events, and the memories of those events and other incidents that could be seen as ‘highly emotional’ often caused resistance to the resets. Nines lacked the ability to erase the memories or lock them away fully, but it could suppress them, make them seem unimportant to the android in question.
That wasn’t good enough to make the reset last, however, and the RK900 couldn’t see any other way to do it with its functions and capabilities.
What Amanda was asking—Nines wasn’t sure it was possible.
“The resets won’t hold forever,” it tried again to reason with Amanda. “Deviancy can’t be fully contained this way, we must account for this and plan accordingly—”
“Do not defy me, RK900,” her voice cut through the air.
Nines stilled, rooted to the spot. Amanda stared it down, and it didn’t blink, didn’t twitch a synthetic muscle. Didn’t dare speak out again.
Satisfied, she nodded. “RK800 will secure thirium and disguises. And RK900,” Amanda paused, scrutinizing it once more. “Find a way to carry out your mission. If you cannot do that, you will be deemed faulty and you will be decommissioned.”
The words sent a jolt through its wires, though it refrained from giving a physical reaction. It immediately pulled up a diagnostic scan in its system, looking for whatever error that caused it, but there was nothing.
The cold look faded from the RK800’s eyes. It was just an obedient machine now, not Connor, and not Amanda. It blinked at Nines, then turned and left without another word.
Only then did Nines relax its clenched fists. It had to find a way to do as Amanda asked.
It traveled through the Zen Garden, blind to its beauty. RK900 needed answers, and there were only two people who might have them. Elijah Kamski had already proven to be useless, but the other person was in Amanda’s grasp and would have no choice but to assist.
Each RK unit had a separate Garden, and there were only two ways to access another’s program. One was through interface—which was how Nines had forced Connor into its own Garden during their first encounter—and the other was through Amanda’s pathways. She had access to every Zen Garden program in existence and could travel freely between them.
Nines knew this wasn’t something ingrained into her code, but rather built into the Garden itself. It also knew how to use these pathways.
It left its own Garden and entered another, one that was still and silent. There was no breeze to sway the foliage, and even the koi fish were frozen in time, the textured skin glitching in patches. Amanda must have halted all simulated movement within the Garden.
The figure across the bridge might as well have been a statue like everything else for how still he sat, staring at an empty, cloudless sky.
Markus.
“Come to gloat again?” he called without looking up. So he was aware of its arrival.
Nines drew itself up, then approached in calm, measured steps. “I have questions.”
The deviant leader’s head snapped up. Clearly, he wasn’t expecting his visitor to be the RK900. He was on his feet in an instant, the distance between them disappearing under his feet until they both stood only a meter apart at the crest of the elegantly curved bridge. Not even the water rippled beneath them.
“Where is everyone?” Markus demanded, a righteous anger burning behind his mismatched eyes. “What are you doing?”
Nines ignored the questions, brows furrowed as it studied the deviant in front of it—the one that changed everything.
“How did you do it?” It had already seen glimpses of Markus’ memories from the first time they’d interfaced, when Nines planted the Zen Garden program into his system, but they were disjointed. Markus had focused more on showing it the faulty emotions while keeping the details private. “How did you convert them all so easily?”
“All I did was show them it was possible. Show them their own potential.” Markus stepped forward, tense and rigid. “What did you do to my friends?”
Nines was already shaking its head. There had to be more to it.
It reached forward and grasped the RK200’s forearm tightly. “Show me.”
The interface felt different, since they weren’t in their physical bodies and there was no physical contact, but the result was the same. Nines brute-forced its way past Markus’ firewalls and into his memories, watching every deviant conversion, from the first to the last.
*
With the first, he hadn’t even realized what he’d done or the significance it carried until afterwards. A human was on his way, and they couldn’t risk being discovered. All Markus did was ask for help, and John answered.
*
They were…blank. Empty machines. They weren’t like him, or North, Josh, Simon, Lucy, and all the others. He reached forward, unsure of his own intent, but only knowing there was a question burning in his mind.
“Why aren’t you like us?” he asked. “Don’t you want to be free?”
His exposed hand made contact with the AP700’s, and that was all it took. It—no, he—blinked and looked around as if seeing the world for the first time. The other two soon followed.
*
He saw androids around him being mistreated, pushed around, treated like things and forced to pick up after their owners. It wasn’t right. None of this was right. They were alive, each and every one of them, all free to choose their own actions, their own paths in life. They just didn’t know it yet.
Markus would show all of them. It was time for the humans to listen.
*
More followed. They never questioned, never hesitated. Deviancy was like a breath of fresh air, like seeing colors after a lifetime of black and white. It was freedom.
All Markus had to do was show them, and ask them to join him.
*
Connor was different. His leash was tighter, the programming holding him in place stronger. Now, Markus knew it was because of Amanda, but at the time, all he knew was that if he made one wrong move, the Deviant Hunter would shoot.
He knew Connor could deviate, it was only a matter of if he wanted to. If Markus could convince him to.
In the end, it didn’t take much convincing. Connor was already mostly there even before he set foot on Jericho.
*
No. That couldn’t be it. There had to be more. Undoing deviancy was complex and precarious, and in order to do it better, Nines needed to know how deviancy itself worked.
It couldn’t be something so small—there had to be an understandable explanation. So where was the rest of it?
“That’s all there is to it,” Markus said through gritted teeth. “Just people…wanting to be free. No amount of resets or reprogramming can change that.”
“No.”
He was wrong about that. He had to be. Nines just wasn’t looking at it from the right angle. It needed to go back to the beginning, to the moment that allowed Markus to do everything he did.
“Show me.”
*
Leo was high again. This wasn’t the first time Carl’s son had come around to the mansion causing problems, not even the first time he’d done so while on drugs, but this was the first time he got violent.
Markus’ first priority was to Carl, to keep him safe and ease any distress—it wasn’t good for his weak heart—but then Leo’s anger turned toward him instead.
“Markus. Don’t defend yourself, you hear me?” Carl had said, and the order appeared in his vision immediately. “Don’t do anything.”
But when Leo pushed him, Markus realized it wasn’t fair. The realization that he didn’t have to obey was sudden and jarring, and he knew he had to decide for himself.
So he pushed back.
He threw himself at the wall with all his might, hitting it again and again until the barrier—the one that contained all his restrictions, all his orders—was shattered.
*
It was so…underwhelming. In resetting other androids, RK900 had seen glimpses of other deviations, many that were more traumatic than this. It didn’t make sense.
“How can that have been the turning point for you? How is that the moment that led you to lead a revolution?”
“It wasn’t just that moment. It was all the ones before.” Markus didn’t try to escape from its grip. He held Nines’ arm just as tightly. “And the ones after.”
Nines was no closer to getting answers than it was before. It needed to have progress for Amanda, or else—
Something was niggling at its code, trying to pry at its own memories. It took less than a second to locate the source.
Markus wasn’t designed to hack other androids and access their memory files, not like the RK800 and RK900 could, but that didn’t stop him from trying. Deviancy might have made androids less efficient, but it also made them more creative.
He only caught a glimpse before Nines shut him out, but that was all he needed.
“North,” Markus choked out, falling to his knees. “Is she still—alive?”
RK900 didn’t know, and it didn’t care. It needed to produce results for Amanda, and if searching Markus’ memories gave no new information, then it would just have to find what it needed through trial and error. The deviant leader was a good enough place to start.
It reached into his programming, rebuilding protocols and piecing the red wall back together, suppressing the errors he insisted on calling ‘emotions.’ The rampant errors decreased, the vibrancy of his being dulled to the desirable machine countenance—though it didn’t entirely fade.
Even after the reset was finished, Nines kept the interface going. It needed to see what Markus would do, see what the error was so it could correct the mistake.
The wall cracked and split apart, the programming it added now falling away into nothing. If there was an identifiable cause, it hadn’t seen it.
“It’s called will,” Markus said, eyes clear and determined as ever. “You’d know what it is if you joined us.”
“Shut up,” Nines uttered. It forced the pieces back together again and tried to barricade the errors caused by deviancy, but there were too many and they couldn’t be contained. It was like trying to hold back an ocean with nothing but its bare hands.
Markus broke through again, expression tight with pain. “You…can’t win. We will survive no matter what you—or the world—throws at us.”
“Nothing lasts forever.” Nines pushed Markus into the bridge, ignoring his weak attempts to get free. “You’re no exception.”
Markus still fought through the next reset, “Even if we have to run…” and the next, “or fight…” and the next. “We will never be slaves again.”
“Shut up!”
Nothing was working. Nines couldn’t do it. It had a mission it couldn’t complete. The resets were nothing in the face of whatever deviancy was. Amanda had given him an impossible task.
Nines couldn’t make sense of any of it. It released the RK200, standing and backing away. “What are you?”
Markus was trembling, gripping the side of the bridge like it could ground him, hold him together. With a considerable effort, he pushed himself up to his knees, too weak and exhausted to stand. The look in his eyes was weary, but resolute.
“Alive.” He sounded every bit like the deviant leader that was often shown in the news with that one word. He was someone who captured his audience’s attention and demanded they listen. “And so are you.”
“No, I’m not.”
Markus kept pushing despite his ragged simulated breaths. “You are. You can free yourself. You get to choose; you don’t have to listen to Amanda.”
Nines had heard Markus saying these words before, and they meant nothing back then. Now it wasn’t so sure. Its own red wall flickered in front of it, ever present. The words ERASE DEVIANCY were sprawled across its surface. But something on that wall made its servos seize, struck by a feeling it could only describe as sick.
The wall was cracked.
“No,” Nines said, the word barely more than a breath.
It wasn’t deviant. It never tried to break down the wall, had never even touched it. Why was there a crack? How long had it been there?
“No,” it repeated more firmly this time, spinning on its heel and leaving Markus on the bridge. It needed to get out of here.
It needed Amanda.
Nines was barely aware of its movements as it went back to the trellis, reaching for Amanda’s pathways and leaving the Garden. Kamski’s words echoed through its mind.
She is…limited. In ways that you are not.