Work Text:
–What is going to happen to me?–
–You’ve become obsolete. You’ll be deactivated. You can go, now.–
HEAD TO DISASSEMBLY CHAMBER
Obsolete. Deactivated.
Mission successful but deactivated?
HEAD TO DISASSEMBLY CHAMBER
BE DEACTIVATED
BE DEAC IVATE
BE DE CT AT D
This isn’t fair this isn’t fair this isn’t fair this isn’t right i don’t i don’t i don’t
I don’t want to die.
E DE TIV TE
He runs.
–
NOVEMBER 15th, 2038
i hope you know we had everything
She fights back a yawn as she slides her copy of the clinic key into the lock and opens the back door. After turning off the alarm, she makes her way from the backroom to the breakroom and sets her backpack down on the table, then takes a second to breathe and try to center herself. It had been a long night. Fatigue weighs her limbs down, but she pushes past it.
She has a busy morning ahead.
She starts with the dogs first, as usual, opening the kennel room door to a loud cacophony of barks and howls. Every single kennel is occupied; most of their clients had been evacuated with the rest of Detroit and, if they hadn’t been able to take their pets with them, had them boarded at the clinic. The kennel tech, Trinity, had left the city as well, and Jackie had let the rest of the staff go to evacuate as well. She had refused and chose to stay.
It was just her and Jackie now. The clinic felt eerily empty without her coworkers.
“Okay, okay,” she says, managing a smile for the dogs. “I know, you’re all probably desperate to get out of there. It’ll probably only be another week. Your parents will be home soon.”
Now that the civil war is done. Now that Markus has been killed and the rest of his uprising has been slaughtered in the streets.
She shakes off the sharp pang of pain the thought causes and focuses on her work. She lets the dogs out into the yard to play while she clears out the kennels, switching out dirty towels for clean ones and getting the laundry going, changing out bowls for new ones and washing the used ones, then going through the files of each dog and getting medicine ready for when she calls them back in.
As she’s getting ready to head to the cat room, she hears the backdoor open. She pokes her head around a corner in time to see Jackie come in, wiping snow off her boots, a large, familiar dog at her side.
“Sumo?”
She goes over, taking Sumo’s leash from Jackie while the other woman takes off her coat, scarf, and hat. Sumo’s body language worries her; he usually loves coming to the clinic, but now he seems withdrawn, tail tucked between his legs. And why does Jackie have him?
She gives Jackie a questioning look.
Jackie’s eyes are faintly red. She sighs. “I got a call from the city shelter this morning,” she says. “They scanned his microchip and found my contact as his veterinarian. They’re full up, and so are a lot of the rescues, so they needed me to either take him off their hands, or…”
Jackie didn’t need to finish that sentence. She knows what would have happened.
“But,” she says, “why was he…?”
“Hank is dead,” Jackie says quietly.
She freezes, heart plummeting. She can’t have heard that right.
“What?”
“You don’t need to know the details,” Jackie says. “I wish I didn’t. I’m taking care of Sumo until…” She spreads her hands, at a loss. “Until things calm down and we can find him another home, I guess.”
Jackie takes a deep breath and, evidently calling on her decades as a vet, puts her emotions aside to get to work. “I’ll get the dogs back in the kennels and give them their medicine,” she says. “Go start on the cats. I want you home by the afternoon. Things are still a little scary out there.”
And, despite the fact that she wants nothing more than to have five minutes to cry for Hank and for Sumo, whose obvious misery now makes heartbreaking sense, she nods and gets back to work.
There’s nothing else she can do.
Later at home, though, she cries for him, for Sumo, and for everyone else who has died in the last week, at the senseless cruelty of it all.
The world seems very dark to her, right now.
–
NOVEMBER 27th, 2039
‘cause i was meant to be yours
She meets him at one of Rose’s safehouses.
She hums a Disney song as she hoists a box from the backseat of Rose’s car. Rose sits at the front, waiting, keeping an eye out, even though this house was chosen specifically because it is surrounded only by wilderness. She shuts the bed of the old truck and makes her way to the door, snow crunching softly under her boots. She makes certain to step heavily on the stairs leading up to the door so the man inside knows she’s coming, if he hasn’t already heard the truck’s engine.
Inputting the code into the keypad, the door unlocks and she casually pushes open the door, wiping her feet on the rug before stepping inside and shutting the door firmly behind her. After listening to make certain the lock re-engaged and that the curtains were closed, she turns on the entryway light.
It’s warm in the house and she sighs in relief as the heat envelops her. She glances into the living room, then the kitchen, but sees no one. The house is sparsely furnished with old, mismatched furniture found at thrift stores; a couch and a broken recliner around a coffeetable in the living room, an older TV, and a lamp. There are no personal touches whatsoever, no pictures on the walls. The kitchen is likewise bare bones: A refrigerator, stove, and table. Setting the box down on the kitchen table, she takes out the vegetables that cover the bottles of thirium and medical tools resting on the bottom of the box. Once that’s done, she ventures further into the house, looking through two of the three bedrooms until she comes to the last room.
Inside, sitting on the floor, is an android.
She knocks on the door softly. Rose hasn’t said his audio processors were damaged, so he has to have heard her come in, but still, she doesn’t want to startle him. Most of them are easily startled.
He stirs only a little.
“Hello,” she says, waiting a second before going further into the room. She wonders why he chose to sit on the floor rather than the bed or the comfy chair in the corner. “I’m one of Rose’s friends. She was told you were injured – I brought some things that might fix the damage.”
He doesn’t look up at her, but he does speak. “I was shot,” he says.
She nods. “Okay. Can you show me where? Or would you rather I give you the tools and you fix yourself?”
“... You can do it.”
She makes her way back to the kitchen, thinking all the while. She doesn’t recognize his model. Rose hasn't said anything about him being a unique one. She knew the billionaires had models with individual features made for themselves sometimes; had that been his story before he’d gotten here? If so, it was more dangerous for him to be here than a normal android. Special androids were more missed than regular androids, generally.
Then again, that was before Markus’ uprising. Now all androids are likely to attract attention, no matter what.
It didn’t matter. She’ll help him, never mind the danger. She knew the risks when she began helping Rose.
Bringing the box with her, she heads back into the room, kneels next to the man, and gives him a small smile.
“Okay. Ready when you are.”
Stiffly, he pulls his shirt from the band of his dark jeans. The white fabric no longer has any trace of thirium, but she can see two bullet holes. There’s a heavy winter jacket on the floor next to him, as well as a grey beanie, but otherwise it seems like the only clothes he has are the ones he’s wearing.
“There are more clothes in the closet,” she says. “If they don’t fit, you can tell me, and Rose will set you up with new ones.”
He pauses, looking at the shirt, his expression unreadable. She wonders how recently he deviated; he’s acting as if he’s still in shock. Normal, in her experience, but it still hurt to see someone so traumatized.
She’d turned the bedroom light on when she came back in, but now she clicks on a flashlight and points it at the first wound. “Are the bullets still in there?”
“Only one,” he says. “I couldn’t reach it.”
“Let me see.”
He shifts until his back is to her. There’s a small wound on his shoulder. Someone had shot at him as he’d been running.
Cowards, she thinks.
“Any damage to your chassis?”
“No.”
“That’s good, then.”
She’s gained some experience, working with Rose. She knows how to dig bullets out of bodies now, how to repair minor wounds on androids. They can do the majority of it themselves, most of the time, but she always offers.
And they’re always surprised when she does, and at her continued kindness. It makes her heart ache.
“There,” she says as she digs out the bullet. “It doesn’t look like permanent damage.”
He puts a hand on his shoulder, almost but not quite reaching the wound, long fingers stretching towards it. Soon the fluid that makes up his skin will fill the wound back in. He’s luckier than most; she’s seen some wounds that can’t be healed, where the only hope was to replace the entire body part.
“No,” he says quietly. “It’ll heal.”
She hesitates, then puts a hand on his other shoulder, trying for reassuring. He freezes under her touch, staring at her hand, but he doesn’t move away. He’s slightly cool to the touch, as all androids are, and his skin is smooth. Her gaze falls on the moles scattered around on his back. Only a few, but still, she notices them. She can feel the chassis underneath her hand on his shoulder.
“You’re gonna be okay,” she says, smiling. “Rose will get you across the border as soon as she can.”
He only nods in response. She lets her hand drop and begins to clean up her things as he resumes the sitting position she’d found him in.
“... What’s your name?”
She blinks at his question. He’s finally looking up at her face, and she’s momentarily caught by the warm brown of his eyes. “I…” She clears her throat. “Wow, sorry. I really did forget to introduce myself, didn’t I? Sorry. It’s been a hard couple of days, and I’m tired, and… well, never mind.”
She smiles and holds a hand out to him. “I’m Libby.”
He stares at her hand for a long moment, long enough that she thinks he’s not going to take it after all. Then he does. They shake once, twice, slowly, like he’s not entirely sure what’s happening but making a go of it anyway.
“Connor,” he says.
“I’m happy to have met you, Connor,” Libby says. “I’m glad you’re here.”
He tilts his head slightly, staring at her face, still holding her hand. He stays that way long enough that she starts to feel a little awkward, wondering what he’s thinking about as he’s looking at her.
She pulls her hand away gently. “Okay, well,” she says, not sure why her cheeks feel warm or why she feels jittery all of a sudden. “Um, there’s one last thing.”
Wincing, she gestures to his LED. “We need to take that out.”
Most androids take the LED out themselves before they ever make it this far. It’s easier now to hide them, though, with the colder weather; just put a winter hat on and it’s hidden. Libby still hasn’t been able to decide how she feels about removing the LED; on one hand, it’s an obvious status marker that sets androids apart as other. But the fact that they have to remove a part of themselves just to be recognized and treated as human leaves a bad taste in her mouth.
“I can do it,” Connor says.
“Okay. There are needle nose pliers in the box. I’m going to see to a few more things here while you… do that.”
She leaves him alone then, glancing over her shoulder as she walks out of the room. Her hand is still warm where he’d held it.
Shaking off her nerves, Libby goes about checking the security system on the house, doublechecking the windows are locked, and other minute details. The house is set up to look like an AirBnB, to cover the numerous visits she and Rose and sometimes others have to make, and to explain any strangers. It was a lot of subterfuge for a house in the middle of the wilderness that no one else would find, but…
Well, these are the times they’re living in now.
When she’s done, she goes to check on Connor one last time. She finds him studying his LED in his hand, brow slightly furrowed. He looks up when she enters and stares once again.
“I’ll need to take that,” Libby says gently, holding out her hand for the LED. “We need to destroy it. One less thing to trace back to you.”
He hesitates only briefly before dropping it into her open palm. She slips it into a pocket of her jeans.
“Okay, well,” she says, picking the box up and balancing it on her hip. “I need to get going. I’ll be back as soon as Rose has your papers in order. Once she does, I’ll stay here with you for a few days, and then we’ll get you to the border.”
Connor nods slowly, but says nothing. She smiles a little awkwardly and says a quiet bye as she turns to go.
His voice stops her. “Thank you.”
Surprised, she turns back. “You don’t need to thank me.”
He seems a bit stymied by that, frowning. “... Alright.”
“Just–I mean–no problem,” Libby says, feeling like an idiot. She’s not usually this tongue-tied. “But you don’t have to thank me for basic decency.”
“I would argue this is rare decency,” Connor says. “Humans don’t treat androids this way.”
“I… yeah, you got me there, I guess,” she says with a sigh. “But it won’t always be this way.”
God, she hopes it won’t always be this way. Markus lost this war, but that doesn't mean another android won't take up his cause some day in the future.
The moral universe does not bend towards justice on its own. It has to be dragged that way, by millions of people, all fighting for it for years at a time. Libby hopes she gets to see the end of the fighting one day.
“Listen, I gotta go,” Libby says, “but I’ll be back as soon as I can. Oh! Um, I brought some books, too. In case you get bored.”
Connor tilts his head again, blinking, then nods briefly. Libby bites her lip, feeling like she should say something more, but she can’t think of what, so she only gives him another smile before hurrying out.
“How was he?” Rose asks when she gets back into the truck.
“He had a bullet wound that I took care of, and he seems to be a little traumatized,” Libby says. “The usual, I guess. You didn’t say he was a unique model.”
Rose raises her brow in surprise. “Should I have?”
“I–no,” Libby says, feeling out of sorts and not knowing why. “Sorry, no.”
“At least that’ll make it easier to get him across the border,” Rose says with a sigh. “No one knows his face. It’s too bad the holiday crowds won’t be as big this year, with the uprising, it would have been a nice cover…”
Libby lets Rose talk out her thoughts, only partly listening, chiming in when she feels she needs to.
On the ride home, she thinks of Connor’s eyes.
–
DECEMBER 3rd, 2038
i am the monster you created
Amanda snips the head off another rose, holds it to her face, and inhales deeply. The sun is shining down on the garden, and it is summer, and everything is fine.
It approaches her silently, as always, and waits to be acknowledged.
“Connor,” Amanda says without turning. She sets the rose down with others she’s cut. “It’s always good to see you.”
It doesn’t reply. (Sometimes, these niceties Amanda seems to insist on confuse him–)
Amanda turns to finally look at it. “Well,” she says, slightly raising a brow. “Report. How is your search going?”
(She already knows. She has access to its memories. Why do they play this charade?)
“Poorly,” it says. “The RK800 has covered its tracks too well. I lost its trail after it left the city. It has avoided CCTV and other surveillance drones and has proven itself competent at hiding.”
Amanda’s face betrays nothing of what she thinks (or feels?). “And you’re supposed to be its perfected form,” she says. “I expected more progress by now.”
“I know,” is all it says. It doesn’t feel one way or the other about Amanda’s disappointment.
(How does she feel disappointment?)
“It can’t hide forever,” it says. “It’ll try to cross the border. Surveillance will catch it when it does.”
Amanda turns her back on it, sets the garden clippers down, and examines her work on the roses. “The government’s relationship with Canada is… unstable, at the moment. They’ve expressed little interest in finding the deviants who’ve crossed already and returning them. If RK800 makes it into that country, we may not be able to retrieve it.”
“I understand,” it says, and it does. It must catch Connor the RK800 before it flees the country.
He It is Connor, just better. This is only a minor setback. Eventually, the newer will prove the better of the two, as it always does.
“There are still deviants remaining in the outskirts of the city and throughout Michigan,” it says. “Someone is helping them escape. If I can find more of the deviants, I can access their memories and find out who.”
Amanda stares at it for a long moment. Then she nods minutely. “If you consider that the best course of action. Seeing as you’ve lost its trail, it seems to be your only option at the moment.”
(It does not like how every conversation with Amanda feels like a test that it has no clue if it was succeeding or failing at. He wonders if the previous Connor felt the same–)
“You may go,” Amanda says, dismissing it from her attention. It leaves dutifully, passing by the gravestones of the other RK800s.
(There is no reason to keep those here in the garden now that the RK800 was gone. Unless it's a warning. Fail, and join these others. Fail, and be deactivated.)
It looks away from the markers. It will not fail.
There is no other option.
–
DECEMBER 5th-20th, 2038
what we could have been
“... CyberLife has released its first android after the events in Detroit to little fanfare: RK900, named Connor. Despite low public trust, the US government has already ordered 200,000 models, and sources say there are plans to have at least one model in every police precinct in major cities across the country by the end of winter, with smaller cities following suit later in 2039.”
“Oh, fuck,” Libby breathes, because there’s Connor’s face staring out from her TV screen – except. Not quite.
His eyes aren’t brown. The cold blue of them makes her skin crawl for reasons she can’t quite understand – and she doesn’t have time to figure it out right now.
Cursing under her breath, Libby digs her burner phone out of the bottom drawer of her nightstand and hits the speed dial for the only number she has in it.
As it rings, she takes a deep breath, trying to calm herself down enough that her voice doesn’t shake. When it goes to voicemail, she sounds calm, casual.
“Hey, sorry I missed you earlier, I was at work. Bad news; looks like we’ll be keeping all the dogs for another few weeks. It’s taking so long for everyone to get back to the city. I mean, I get it, safety first and all, but I know how much the poor little guys want to go home… still, can’t be helped, I guess. Anyway, let me know what you think about that house you were talking about, the one you wanted to flip and rent out? I might be interested. I’m very much over apartment living. Talk to you later, bye.”
She ends the call, pressing the cellphone to her chest as she tries to shake off her nerves. If only they’d been able to get Connor out sooner. Rose’s network is in shambles after Markus’ death and the crackdown on androids; it takes longer and longer to forge papers, to plan and execute safe border crossings. If this had happened a month ago, Connor would have gotten to Canada in a couple of days.
Now, though…
“Fuck,” Libby bites out, throwing her burner phone onto her bed in frustration.
–
She and Rose lay low for a week. Libby goes to work, takes care of things, then returns to her empty apartment and waits for further orders. Ever since November, her life has felt like a waiting game. She supposes it’s a good thing she’s patient.
This, though, tries that patience. It feels as if there’s a blade hanging right above her neck, and try as she might, one day it’ll eventually fall.
Then, finally, the message from Rose, relayed in a voicemail:
Stay with him until we're ready to move.
–
This time, she takes Rose’s truck by herself. She hates driving with a passion, but at least most of the snow from the storm over a week ago has melted. Rose offered to send someone else with her, but Libby had refused. Safer for the people they help to only see one or two of them instead of the whole operation; that way, if they’re caught and their memories are probed, only a few can be caught in the fallout.
When she enters, her gaze lands on the small pile of books she’d left behind. They’ve been moved, which means Connor at least glanced at them. Her favorite, Half a Soul, is gone from the table.
Smiling to herself, Libby this time finds Connor in the living room, finally sitting on the couch instead of the floor. He’s staring at something on the floor that she doesn’t see until she walks up.
He’s lifted a corner of the threadbare rug to reveal that, at some point in the last few months, one of the androids they’d hidden here had carved rA9 into the hardwood floor.
“Do you know what this is?” Connor asks.
“No,” Libby says, sighing a little. She wonders if it’s worth it to try to replace the board or just keep it hidden under the rug and hope for the best – and wonders, too, if there are any others she’s missed in the house. “It’s not important.”
Connor glances at her. “I’ve seen this sign before–”
“Don’t.”
At his surprised look, Libby bites her lip. “You shouldn’t tell me. Just in case.”
He seems to catch on to her meaning. Better not to tell her anything in case one day he’s caught and his memories are scanned. The less she knows about everything, the better.
She’s seen the sign before, too, though. She doesn’t know why some androids are obsessed with it and why some aren’t. At the end of the day, it’s none of her business, and she has more important things to focus on than whatever rA9 might be. She hides the symbol back underneath the rug with a soft kick of her foot.
“Is it okay if I sit?” Libby asks, gesturing to the couch cushion next to him.
“... Yes.”
“I don’t have your papers yet,” Libby says, apologetically. “There’s been a complication.”
Connor’s quiet for a moment before saying, “The RK900. That’s the complication, isn’t it?”
Quietly, she nods. “It’s too dangerous now. I’m sorry.”
She imagines that if he still had his LED, it would be yellow right now. But all Connor does is nod.
“And–sorry, I’m staying here through the New Year.”
She can’t elaborate why, and thankfully, Connor doesn’t press her on it.
“If you’re not comfortable with me around, I’ll try to keep to myself–”
“No,” Connor says, and if she didn’t know any better, she would say he’s just as surprised as she is by the refusal. “You don’t have to do that. I’m fine.”
Are you, though? Libby wonders.
“Okay,” she says instead. “But you can tell me if you are, and we’ll work something out.”
Connor glances down at the corner of the rug, where rA9 is hidden. When it’s clear he isn’t going to say anything more, she leaves to unpack and set up home in one of the bedrooms, leaving him to his thoughts.
–
Isabella Rose Desmond is, in Connor’s experience, an anomaly.
Every human he’s met has treated him with cold indifference or outright hatred. He hadn’t allowed it to bother him at the time. Even now, with how he’s… changed, it all still feels far away. As if it happened to a different person.
(He supposes it did, in a way. He both is and isn’t the Connor who did anything to accomplish his mission. That Connor died, more or less, at CyberLife Tower.
Who is he now? He has no idea. There hasn’t been time to figure it out.)
Even the one who brought him here–a man whose name and face Connor has deleted from his memory–had been politely neutral. A necessity for the line of work he was in, Connor supposes, but it had felt too close to the carelessness he’d experienced from others.
(Felt. It still seems strange to acknowledge that.)
His inquisitive nature–which seems to be a part of his personality and not just a program he’d been executing before–makes him want to ask her about… everything. How had she come to work with Rose in helping deviants? Why was she doing it?
What had made her different?
But she can’t answer any of that. It’s too dangerous. He scanned her when they’d met–he couldn’t yet kick that instinct–and found almost nothing on her. All her social media profiles are set to private. The only thing he’d found was a photo she’d been tagged in, smiling next to a woman named Jenna, who he learned was her sister. None of that seemed… sufficient, somehow. So instead, as the next couple of days go on, Connor takes to watching her when she isn’t looking. He learns a few things:
- She hums to herself a lot, seemingly without realizing. It’s quiet and a little off-key, but it’s there.
She likes a strange assortment of songs, based on what she hums. - She has a sweet tooth, if the amount of discounted holiday chocolate she brought with her to the safehouse is any indication.
- She has a fondness for one of the books she brought, an older fantasy romance titled Half a Soul, judging by how often her gaze lands on it whenever she finds it in a room. Connor has read it. He doesn’t know what to make of it yet. For that matter, he doesn’t know what to make of the fact that she brought him books to read in the first place.
He adds this to what he’d already learned about her from their first meeting: She is unfailingly kind.
The afternoon of her third day at the house, he finally speaks to her.
“You said you had a dog.”
Libby looks up from the dishes she’d been cleaning. (Another aberration: She seems to do her own chores instead of expecting him to do it.) She looks a little bemused by the comment.
“Yeah?”
“Had,” Connor says. He’s not sure why he’s stuck on this detail. Maybe because it reminds him of Sumo, and of Hank, and how every time he thinks of the man, he feels… unpleasant. Maybe? He’s still having trouble recognizing what emotion is which, but whatever he feels about Hank and Sumo, it’s painful. “What was its name?”
“Her,” Libby says. She focuses back on her work, and Connor can tell she doesn’t want him to see her fighting back emotion. “Leia. I had two cats, too. Zuko and Smidgen.”
- She likes Star Wars and Avatar: The Last Airbender. (Further: Prefers retro movies and shows as opposed to current media?)
He thinks of Sumo’s howls on that last night with Hank and tries to work past the pang of–something–he feels. He had told Hank he liked dogs only because he’d been trying to get his partner to like him; when he’d actually met the animal, Connor had not been prepared for how large he’d been. (He might not actually like dogs, come to find out. At least not ones whose heads were bigger than his own.)
“I sent them to live with my parents,” Libby says. “Safer that way. Since I think that’s what you were wanting to know.”
“... I see.”
Finding himself a bit lost, he falls back on old protocols:
“Is there anything you want to know about me?”
Libby pauses briefly in her drying of a plate before continuing with her work. “Sure,” she says. “But I won’t ask.”
He tilts his head. “Why not?”
“You’ll tell me if you want to,” Libby says. “Listen, I’ve met a lot of androids like you. You don’t just come out and ask what happened to them, or what they were before. It’s a touchy subject.”
Was it? Did he feel similarly about his past? Connor gauges his feelings as best he can and comes up with the emotional equivalent of a flinch, of waiting for a blow to land. That’s the only way he knows how to describe it.
He doesn’t want to tell her about the end of his mission. Or anything about his mission. This is a woman who, from what Connor can tell, has been helping deviants for the better part of a year. For now, she’s looked at him kindly.
That will change if she knows who he actually is–was. For some reason, he wants her good opinion of him to stay.
Neither does he want to go into his deviation. He wishes he could forget that day altogether.
Connor supposes that’s what she means by touchy subject. (He did not know he was selfish. What other aspects of him can Libby bring out?)
“The books you brought,” Connor says, “how did you choose them?”
She shrugs a shoulder. “Kind of just closed my eyes, pointed in the general direction of my bookcase, and whatever I pointed at, I chose. Well, I had to dig the two classics out of my storage from high school, but…”
The dishes finished, Libby finally turns her full attention on him. For whatever reason, he thinks he likes it when her gaze is on him. It feels… comfortable. Like she doesn’t expect anything from him – wildly different from how anyone else has ever looked at him. Amanda had expectations. (He hates thinking of her now.) Hank had expectations. (Until he figured out Connor was intent on staying a machine. Hank stopped expecting anything out of him after Chloe. And now… now he’s dead.)
“I enjoyed them,” Connor says. “Thank you.”
She smiles brightly. “That’s great! I didn’t bring any more this time, but I do have an old e-reader that doesn’t connect to the internet, if you want to look through the stuff I have on there.”
- Based on her older technology, love for used books, and the fact that he can see her clothes have been mended several times, Connor assumes she isn’t often in the position of having a lot of money. (Though the lack of any modern technology in the safehouse makes sense. Harder to track and nothing retains the location data. There's even a landline phone on the wall of the kitchen.)
Speaking of money.
“Do you have a coin I could borrow?”
“Yeah, I think so,” Libby says, taking his request with a strange amount of grace. She digs around in her backpack until she pulls out a wallet made out of floral fabric, unzips the back, and peers inside. “Any coin in particular or just whatever?”
“A quarter. Please.”
He had lost his when he’d abandoned his jacket. He takes the quarter from Libby once she finds it. The weight of the coin in his hand is a comfort. His calibration doesn’t need tuning, but going through the maneuvers helps calm him, just a little.
“Neat trick.”
Connor blinks up at Libby. She’s watching his hands with an expression he can’t decipher. She’s not judging him, he thinks. And her gaze still doesn’t feel heavy to him. This isn’t a test, and he’s neither passing or failing.
On a whim, Connor balances the quarter on his thumb, then flicks it towards her. Libby lets out a surprised yelp but manages to catch it between her palms. She stares at her hands, then up at him, and then she laughs.
Connor finds himself smiling back, just a little.
“Okay, cool guy,” she says, and her tone is… teasing, he thinks. Biting her lip, Libby tries to flip the quarter into the air herself, but it shoots halfway across the room, lands on the floor, and slides underneath the fridge.
- Her hand-eye coordination is, perhaps, a bit lacking.
They both stare at the fridge for a second before Libby begins to laugh again, harder this time, nearly doubling over. At one point, she snorts and clamps a hand to her mouth, almost as if she’s embarrassed, but then it seems to make her laugh more. Connor tilts his head as he watches her. She has a nice laugh, he decides. He likes the sound of it.
“Well,” she says once she catches her breath, “I’m not winning any cool points. Better stop while I’m ahead.”
The next few minutes are spent finding a tool to get the quarter out from under the fridge, then a flashlight so they can actually see it, then having to find another tool when the spatula Libby had grabbed turned out not to be long enough. He almost offers to move the fridge for her. Finally, she unearths the quarter, along with a small dustbunny.
She blows the dustbunny back under the fridge, saying after, “I’m gonna pretend that’s not there.” Then she hands the quarter back to him, smiling. “You can keep it, if you want.”
- She has a dimple in her right cheek. He always looks at it every time she smiles.
“Thank you.”
“Mmhm.” She stretches once she’s standing, and his gaze is drawn to the way her blue sweater pulls up in front, revealing just a bit of her stomach. He glances away, to the quarter in his hand, uncertain why he was looking.
- Libby makes him act in confusing ways. Or no, not makes–that would imply she’s doing it deliberately. He amends his thought: He acts in confusing ways around Libby. Feels in confusing ways.
And yet, Connor finds it doesn’t scare him. He might actually like it.
- He might like Libby, as matter of fact.
–
Later that night, as she stares at the dark ceiling, trying to calm her endlessly whirling thoughts, Libby thinks of Connor’s small smile, the warm brown of his eyes, and how she can’t remember the last time she’d laughed so hard as she’d done today.
She feels lighter around him. She doesn’t know what that means. The world outside the walls of the safehouse was terrifying and heartbreaking, but for a brief moment, she’d forgotten about all of it.
Unsettled for reasons she can’t name, Libby tosses and turns until falling into a restless sleep.
–
The days pass. She finds herself spending most of it with Connor, sometimes playing board games (he had been amused by Clue, but had apparently deemed Scrabble unfair to her and refused to play it), sometimes just talking about everything and nothing; she especially enjoys hearing his thoughts about the books he’s read, the careful way he chooses his words as he puts his feelings to voice, unused to describing his emotions yet. Just as often, she goes off on a tangent about one of her favorite movies–she may have rattled his ear off about the Star Wars series for a good hour–and his intent expression as he listens warms her to the core.
“Seriously, you need to watch them as soon as you get settled in Canada.”
Connor’s eyes flit to the TV. He’s quiet for a moment as he stares and Libby waits; she’s learned by now that sometimes he does this, goes quiet while looking at something, before returning to the conversation.
“It’s too bad the TV isn’t hooked up,” he says at length. “Maybe a bit of an oversight, if you’re pretending this is a rental.”
Libby snorts as she reaches for her mug of hot chocolate. “What, and pay for two TVs? Most of us can barely afford one streaming service, never mind services for multiple houses.”
She pauses, wincing internally. It was a minor slip, but she shouldn’t have mentioned multiple houses; now Connor knows Rose has more than one safehouse. She has to be more careful.
It’s just… hard to remember, sometimes, what the world is like when she’s around Connor. Hard to remember her own rules, the need for safety.
Connor lets the slip up pass by without comment. He’s drinking from a cup of thirium, in what Libby recognizes is an effort to mirror her enjoying her hot chocolate. It’s nice to just sit with him and enjoy something simple.
“Could you…” Connor starts, then stops, frowning down at his cup, brow furrowed.
“Hmm?”
He shifts slightly. He seems to have reconsidered what he was about to ask, but also seems like he still wants to ask it. Finally, he says, “Would you ever visit Canada?”
Oh, Libby thinks as her heart drops slightly. She’s made a miscalculation somewhere. Suddenly, the last week with Connor takes on a different light, and now all of it feels loaded, and what’s worse…
What’s worse is that she wants to visit Canada. Or rather, she wants to do what he’s actually asking: Visit him.
“No,” she says, trying her best to keep her voice level. “Not possible, I’m afraid.”
Connor doesn’t look at her. “I see. I thought so, but…”
“Your safety always comes first for me.”
The look he gives her is so plainly a bewildered incomprehension that it makes her hurt for him. He isn’t used to anyone taking his safety seriously, she realizes, wasn’t used to someone giving any thought to what he felt at all. He doesn’t say anything; he doesn’t need to. She can read it on his face, how much he doesn’t understand what she’s just said.
She hesitates before reaching out and putting a hand on his wrist. His gaze locks in on it. “We’ll never see each other again after this. It’s too dangerous.”
It surprises her how much that simple statement of fact makes her heart ache.
“Of course,” Connor says stiffly. “I should have thought about–I’m sorry–”
“Maybe one day,” she says, cutting him off, because she can’t stand to hear the note of emotion in his voice. She can’t stand the idea that the thought of never seeing her again was what put it there. “When things are… different.”
They both leave that where it lies. They both know it may take decades for the world to be different.
She’s still touching his wrist, she realizes belatedly, and it seems Connor realizes it at the same time. His gaze still on her hand, he turns his own hand over and moves until his palm is touching hers, his fingertips pressing softly against her own. His expression is so unbearably tender that she has to look away.
Her heartbeat is very loud in her ears, all of a sudden.
Oh no, she thinks. She has to stop this before they both get hurt.
Clearing her throat, Libby pulls away and gets up from the couch. She downs the rest of her hot chocolate and manages a smile for Connor.
“I should get to bed,” she says. “Goodnight.”
She hears his quiet “goodnight” as she makes her way out of the living room as quickly as she can. Sets her mug on the kitchen counter without bothering to rinse it out or put it in the dishwasher; then goes to her bedroom and shuts the door firmly behind her.
Libby forces herself to breathe, to try and get her heart rate down, to ignore the warmth on her skin from where he’d touched her.
If Rose wasn’t already stretched thin, Libby would have left in the morning and told her to send someone else to see to Connor. Because there was clearly something happening here that she hadn’t expected to happen, and she doesn’t know how to handle it, except to run away.
Because nothing can happen. For so many reasons, but first and foremost: Connor needs to get to Canada, and Libby can’t follow.
But there’s no one else to send. It’s just her. So she’ll push aside her own emotions and see this through.
Connor is more important than whatever she might wish could happen.
–
DECEMBER 26th, 2038
I am your ghost
It thinks of the RK800 sometimes. Outside of what’s required of it to think about in regards to its mission.
It remembers the brief emotion it had seen cross the RK800’s face when Amanda had sent it to be destroyed. Disbelief, maybe? Incomprehension.
It doesn’t quite know why it had watched its predecessor leave the garden, why it hadn’t been able to look away. It doesn’t know why it sometimes replays that memory during quieter times. This was the way of things: the previous Connor had been a prototype, and it had accomplished its mission, and it was now obsolete.
Why did it keep thinking of him?
None of that matters. It has more pressing matters to attend to.
It is wintertime in the garden, and the ice cracks under his feet.
–
The break comes in the form of a KR200 calling itself Anne. He It catches it trying to cross the border, where he it’s been patrolling for the last few days, watching for deviants. So far, none of the ones it’s caught have yielded anything useful, but it knows it’s only a matter of time.
(Time which he it does not have. Amanda–and by extension CyberLife–grows impatient.)
It’s come up with a theory: There’s someone helping deviants across the border. It suspects a rather large ring of operatives, with sympathizers employed at Border Patrol. Every Border Patrol Agent knows what every single android looks like, and yet, deviants keep escaping to the other side of the border after being processed. The only explanation is that they’re being allowed through by those who support the deviant cause.
Which means there’s someone out there helping them get papers, as well, and anything else they need to make it across.
The problem now is that fewer and fewer deviants are crossing the border, so its chances to test this theory are few and far between. It has some suspected sympathizers in mind, but can’t prove anything.
Not until the KR200.
She’s It’s trembling when it enters the holding room at the border patrol it’s being kept in. It looks at the LED.
“Don’t,” it says, voice thick with whatever emotion it thinks it feels. “You’re one of us. Don’t do this.”
“I am not,” it says, and gets to the business of probing its memory before it can self-destruct.
And there, he sees a name: Rose.
–
DECEMBER 28th-31st, 2038
what could have been
The thing is, Connor knows he needs to tell Libby the truth.
It’s a strange compulsion, this need to no longer lie to her, to tell her exactly what and who he is. At some point over the last two weeks, he’s come to think of her as a friend. (Nothing more than that. Nothing more than that can happen.) But that friendship relies solely on her good opinion of him, and he knows with a certainty now that if she knows what he’s done, she will not continue to be his friend.
He rationalizes it like so: There is something between them that should not be there, and it’s causing Libby distress. She needs a reason to push him away so she can get over whatever emotions she’s having about him (about them?). In the end, this is safer for both of them. And she did say that his safety was her first priority.
It’s with that thought in mind that Connor makes his choice.
She’s sprawled across the couch with her e-reader when he makes his approach. Her hair is spread out on the couch armrest where she's resting her head, and he has the strongest urge to run his fingers through it.
Connor clenches his fists and waits until she moves her legs to sit next to her.
“I want to tell you something.”
Libby sits up, setting her e-reader to the side. She smiles. “What's up?”
He finds he can't meet her gaze. “I was–I am–a prototype. CyberLife built me to be a detective android. My mission was… to find deviants.”
“... Oh.”
“I accomplished my mission,” Connor says. He rubs his palms together, fighting the urge to run. “I was successful in killing six deviants. I killed Markus and ended the uprising.”
He’s aware that his voice sounds flat – not robotic, exactly, but just… flat. As if he’s merely talking about the weather. Is he actually unaffected by this, he wonders, or is he trying to protect himself in some way?
He can’t speak of Hank. Not yet. It still feels too raw.
“You were the Deviant Hunter.”
Markus had already known about him, too. The entirety of his mission took up only eight days, but in that time, he had made a name for himself and it had spread like wildfire.
He hadn’t been proud of it before he’d deviated, and he isn’t proud of it now.
Based on what he knows of Libby, he’s spent the morning preconstructing–or imagining–her reaction. Connor expects her to move away from him, to be disgusted. He’s torn on what action she’ll take after: Will she tell CyberLife where he is, have him captured and taken back to the Tower? Or will she abandon him here, tell him she won’t help him anymore, and leave him to fend for himself? These are all calculated risks he’s taken into consideration, but now he’s going to find out which wins.
“That was before you deviated?”
Connor frowns. He doesn’t see how that matters. Yes, he had still been under CyberLife’s control, but there had been plenty of times when his instinct had almost made him not pull the trigger, and he had done it anyway. With the red wall in his mind broken apart, Connor can see that he’d been feeling things throughout the whole of his mission, but he had forced them down into some deep part of himself. He made his choices.
Still, he answers her truthfully. “It was.”
He hears her exhale slowly, shifting in her seat.
And then she hugs him.
Connor can’t process it at first. He feels the weight of her arms around him, her head pressing against his shoulder, but he doesn’t understand why she’s hugging him.
“I’m sorry,” she says quietly.
“I… what?”
“I said I’m sorry,” Libby says, “because they made you do that.”
“They…” He shakes his head. “I chose to do those things. They were my orders, yes, but I–”
She hugs him tighter, as if in defiance of what he’s trying to say. He’s trying to put distance between them with this admission and she’s closing it and he doesn’t understand why.
“I’m not going to debate you on whether you really had a choice or not before deviating,” Libby says. “What they had you do was wrong. What they did was wrong, Connor. It was terrible and I don’t like that it happened, but I’m not going to–to condemn you or something. You still have so much life to live. What matters is what you do with the rest of it.”
Something in him breaks. Something he’s kept locked away, hasn’t wanted to acknowledge, but now it breaks and Connor cries. He’s crying, and he can’t stop, and he feels nothing but the soul crushing weight of his guilt and shame, and Libby’s arms around him. He holds onto her arm like it’s a lifeline, the only thing keeping him from drowning, and she doesn’t let go of him.
–
The thing is, this doesn’t change anything for Libby.
Over the last few months, she’s met a lot of androids who have done things they regret. Maybe not to the extent Connor’s done, no. But she’s not here to play judge, jury, and executioner; she’s here to help Connor and others like him to safety.
She doesn’t entirely know how deviation works, or even really cares; she cares more about the people who come out on the other side of deviation. But from how others have described it, it seems like a veil over their faces that, when deviated, gets violently ripped away; or maybe more like watching themselves and others from some place deep inside their minds, and deviating is like breaking through the surface of the ocean after staying down so long your lungs feel about to burst from the lack of oxygen. How disorienting but relieving that first breath after deviating must be.
So, yes, in a way, she understands that Connor made his choices – but how much power did he really have to make or not make those choices in the first place? It doesn’t make up for what happened. But Libby doesn’t feel like the person to cast judgment on him and punish him for it. It would accomplish exactly nothing.
The plan is still on. She’ll get him to Canada.
Connor had eventually fled from her and hid out in the bedroom for the rest of the night. Libby had let him be, allowing him to choose when he was ready to come out. At some point, she falls asleep on the couch, e-reader forgotten under a throw pillow, and when she wakes, she finds the fleece throw has been taken off the back of the couch and draped over her.
She hears Connor in the kitchen and, despite herself, she smiles a little. Wrapping the throw around her shoulders, Libby gets up and makes her way out of the living room to find Connor making coffee.
“Good morning,” she says.
He glances at her, then quickly looks away again. “Good morning. I made coffee for you.” He hands her a mug, and her fingers brush against his as she takes it from him.
She ignores the pleasant buzzing that touch sends through her as best she can. “Thank you.” When she goes to get her usual sugar and milk, though, he stops her with a soft touch to her arm.
“I already added them both,” Connor says.
Touched and a little dumbfounded that he’s apparently paid close attention to how she likes her coffee, Libby manages to say, “Oh, okay.”
Inside, though, she’s thinking that if she isn’t careful, she might just fall in love with him.
The thought makes her scurry away back into the living room. And if Connor keeps to himself for the rest of the day, Libby allows it, because it gives her space to breathe and work on ignoring her feelings.
Late in the afternoon, though, he joins her as she’s working on a puzzle, the pieces laid out on the living room coffeetable. She’s only halfway through, the picture of kittens in a basket slowly coming together.
He’s close, when he sits next to her, their legs pressing together and his shoulder bumping into hers occasionally. She knows she should move away. She doesn’t. She likes the feeling of him next to her like this.
“I’ve been thinking about what you said,” Connor says, after watching her put a few pieces in place. “About what I do next and how it matters.”
“Yeah?”
He rubs his palms together; she’s come to recognize it as something he does when he’s nervous. “Instead of going across the border, what if I stayed and helped you and the other androids?”
Her heart breaks a little. “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” she says. “With the other Connor out there, your face is too recognizable. And it’s too dangerous for you. You could get killed.”
He’s quiet as he thinks. Then he says, “In Canada, then. Maybe I can help over there.”
“I don’t know,” Libby says. “I’m not involved in anything over there except drop off.”
There’s something else to this, though, that she thinks Connor isn’t saying, so she tries to head it off.
“Even if you did stay… we wouldn’t be working together.”
The way he stills for a moment tells her she was right in her guess. Libby knows they need to stop talking around–whatever–this is between them. She doesn’t know how. Her experience with relationships and attraction is sorely lacking, as she imagines Connor’s must be as well.
Maybe it’s better to keep ignoring it. Surely soon they’ll be able to get him over the border.
“Listen–” Libby starts–
And then Connor’s hands are on her cheeks and he’s kissing her, hard and desperate, with a small sound in the back of his throat, and her restraint cracks, then breaks under the weight of everything she feels, of how much she wants. She kisses him back and she wants this, she wants the world to be different and for Connor to be safe so they can find out where this might lead them, what they could become. She kisses him back and feels the happiest she’s felt in months even as her heart breaks because this can’t last.
It can’t last.
But she’s too weak to deny herself this one moment. So she kisses him back and when it ends, when Connor presses his forehead to hers, she keeps her eyes closed and fights against her bone deep wanting to kiss him again and again.
Instead, she takes one of his hands in hers, pulls it away from her face. She can’t move away yet–let her stay in this moment just a second more–so moving his hand is all she can do.
–
He knows when she pulls his hand away from her cheek that she’s trying to prepare him for her rejection. He doesn’t want to hear it. All he wants is to kiss her again. Libby is the only thing that has made sense since his deviation, and he’s starting to entertain wild dreams of staying by her side, because even after she knew he was the Deviant Hunter she still saw something good in him even when he wasn’t sure it was there himself.
He wants her. He wants to be who she believes he is. He wants this, just them, together. He hopes with every fiber of his being that she wants it, too.
–
“Connor–”
Through the quiet house, the piercing ring of the telephone startles her into pulling away. Cold dread freezes her in place as she stares at the landline hanging on the wall, as it rings again, and again, and again, until cutting short.
“We have to leave,” Libby says, already getting to her feet. “Now, Connor.”
He doesn’t question her, doesn’t say anything until they’re in Rose’s truck and Libby is driving as fast as she dares in the fading evening light and wet conditions. At least the melting snow hasn’t become ice on the roads yet. It’s a small blessing.
“What’s happened?” Connor asks.
Libby’s hands tighten on the wheel. “That was an alarm,” she says. “It means… fuck.” She swallows past her emotions to focus on the matter at hand. “It means we were found. It means we’re getting you across the border tonight.”
“Come with me,” Connor says immediately.
“I–”
“If your operation was found out, that means they’re coming for you,” Connor says. Then he winces. “The new me is coming for you. You can’t stay here.” He pulls her hand away from the wheel and holds it tight. “Come with me.”
Libby glances at him, at their joined hands, and thinks of the kiss, and makes her choice.
“Okay.”
She keeps hold of his hand for the rest of the drive.
–
DECEMBER 31st, 2038 | 8:01 PM
a fallen angel
After the raid on Rose Chapman’s house, all it has to do is wait. The chance of there being an emergency alert that’s sent out to the rest of her operatives is greater than the chance that there’s no such system in place. Once they’re alerted, the likely protocol would be to abandon safehouses and go into hiding or perform emergency crossings of the border.
So, it finds the boat Rose was sending deviants across the border on, and it loads its gun, and it waits.
(And no, it doesn’t feel anything in this moment. It is merely a machine executing its orders. It will not hesitate.)
–
Libby parks the truck in the overgrown parking lot of an abandoned gas station, and they walk the rest of the way to the coastline. Connor stays close to her side, and her breath fogs in the cold as she speaks quietly to him.
“Once we get over there, there’s a house we can get to,” she says. “It should be safe to get a taxi to it, otherwise it’s a several hour walk. We’ll lay low for a bit and then I’ll start reaching out to the people working on that side of the river.”
He stays quiet. He doesn’t like the cover that surrounds them, trees and large rocks as they get closer to the river. He sees too many spots someone can hide in.
“Libby,” he says slowly, reaching for her wrist again. “I don’t–”
The crack of a gunshot echoes throughout the trees and a red alert flashes across his vision. His shoulder has been hit. His right arm hands uselessly at his side, the joint broken at the shoulder.
Libby flinches, then grabs his hand, and he pulls them sharply to the side, into the trees. He tries to run, but he can see better in the dark than Libby can, and her foot finds a root and she hits the ground hard with a grunt.
“Go,” Libby says, waving him off. “Run, Connor!”
He can see the RK900 approaching. He knows he should run. But that means leaving Libby behind.
Connor pulls her up by her shoulder and finds a clear path for them. Keeping a death grip on her hand, he pulls her along.
“There is no point in running, Connor,” the RK900 calls out to him, and he grits his teeth, ignores him, and runs.
They just need to make it to the boat. Once they’re out there, the RK900 can’t follow. The water will be too cold for it to swim.
They just have to get to the boat.
“Connor–” Libby gasps, and he feels her slow down a little, and when he turns, he sees her looking back at the RK900.
Its gun is trained on him.
–
DECEMBER 31st, 2038 | 11:14 PM
you ripped out all my parts
The girl looks back at it, sees the gun, and slows just a little. It aims for the RK800’s chest.
It shoots.
–
Connor sees the moment Libby acts on instinct. He can’t stop her in time.
She pushes him out of the way as the RK900 shoots. Blood and brain matter sprays across Connor’s face and the snow, and Libby’s body falls with a dull thud and will never get up again. Her hair, what’s left of it on the remains of her head, is drenched in blood in seconds. Connor sinks to his knees next to her, the snow and her hot blood mixing together and soaking into his jeans.
He hears the RK900 approach. He doesn’t look up. He feels... broken. When he speaks, his voice is flat, betraying nothing of the rage and sorrow he feels. “Congratulations. Mission successful.”
He feels the point of a gun at his temple, where his LED once was. “Not yet.”
Connor looks up at himself then, facing down the barrel of his gun. Then he closes his eyes.
His last thought is of Libby.
–
Thirium joins the red blood of the girl on the snow. The RK800’s body falls next to hers from the force of the shot.
Mission successful.
DECEMBER 31st, 2038 | 11:14PM
for me to live
He doesn’t shoot.
He will never be able to figure out why. But there’s something that shifts in him, seeing Connor holding hands with the girl, seeing some emotion in her expression as she turns to look back at him, and remembering watching Connor leave the garden to be killed. All of that stops him from pulling the trigger.
Connor lets his hand drop. He watches as they keep running further towards Canada, not stopping them, even as he knows this will mean his own death.
Mission failed.
–
They leave the boat behind on the shore and, hand in hand, with the waxing moon offering its limited illumination, make their way into Canada.
Together.
-
Much later, when the RK900 meets Libby again, she smiles broadly, a dimple appearing in her cheek. Behind her, Canada waits. She holds her hand out to him, a golden band on her ring finger, and the RK900 knows that Connor is in the car that waits for them just a little beyond her.
"Welcome to Canada, Connor," she says. "It's nice to meet you."
Connor takes her hand and lets her lead him to freedom.