Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Floor 62.

An old, brassened and weathered key glinted fully underneath white elevator lights, a sharp juxtaposition. It twirled into the air, darkened gold against cold light and dark greys, then, within a fraction of a second, twirled up once more the moment it was poised to land.

Floor 63.

Kara’s gaze is fixed straight ahead, her mind blank, save for the gentle blink of her LED on the left temple of her head, tucked neatly behind short black hair. It flicks on nothing and blue, indicating calibration. A minor task to keep her systems occupied as she runs through the information provided for this mission.

It’s her first test run as a fully-functional model, she cannot consider failure. Everything must be done absolutely perfectly, with not even a single error present.

Floor 64.

She tosses the key up into the air once more with a complex twirl of her right hand. It lands on her ring finger, whereupon she spins it around several times before tossing it to her left hand, flicking it up into the air once more, spinning it on her ring finger, then passing it across back to her right hand again.

The movement loops, a steady rhythm found.

Floor 65. Floor 66.

A deviant has taken a small girl hostage on the rooftop of this building, and is threatening to jump off. The father is dead, and the mother is experiencing heavy emotional shock. At least three officers have died on the scene.

The weather is stormy and, at this height, heavy winds are to be expected. At least several snipers, along with a helicopter, are positioned or en route. She’ll have to be mindful of all of the above things.

Floor 67. Floor 68.

That, and accounting for human and deviant error; if the latter is even plausible. Humans are, by nature, unpredictable. To ensure a successful mission, one which ends with the hostage rescued and the deviant in custody or dead — the former preferable by CyberLife — Kara must account for humanity’s own incompetence.

Floor 69.

The key turns once more, flipping over the knuckles of Kara’s right hand, then twirling over to her left hand once more, repeating that same motion. The pace increases, the key being tossed from one hand to another with complex, inhuman accuracy as the calibration increases in difficulty.

Floor 70.

A faint chime rings out, and the second it does, the key stops moving, now in Kara’s left hand, caught between her ring finger and her pinky. The intricate details of the head lost behind her hand, whilst the blade points outwards, poised as if to unlock something delicately.

Kara keeps her gaze un-movingly forwards, blue eyes blank. She pockets the key in her slacks, then moves her hand to smooth down the collar of her white button-up, before brushing her fringe to sit more professionally across her forehead, just above her eyebrows.

The elevator doors roll open with a click, and noise floods Kara’s audio processor.

A man, presumably from his voice, rushes to head down the broken hallway, from where he stood against the elevator. Clad in full-black SWAT gear, he repeats a singular phrase with one hand pressed to the internal microphone on the side of his headset as he hurriedly walks off;

“Negotiator on site. Repeat, negotiator on site.”

Negotiator. Fancy term to refer to her by, and perhaps not the most fitting one either. She would be doing no negotiating — simply getting the mission completed by any means possible.

Kara steps out of the elevator, surveying her surroundings, face blank, a slight frown tugging at the corners of her mouth. The hallway before her lies ruined: glass coats the ground in sharp glints against a flickering white light above. The mahogany floorboards lie coated in a thin layer of water from an aquarium deprived of fish, and a smashed-through photograph remained turned over from the broken end-table it once proudly sat upon.

She takes another step forwards, only for her foot to not only hit water, coating black — thankfully waterproof — wedge-heels in an extra sparkle due to their dampness, but also that of a… fish.

Mildly intrigued, though she shouldn’t be stopping for anything, Kara crouches down, head tilting to the left slightly as she analyses the tiny creature.

ANALYSING…
{ Dwarf Gourami: Trichogaster Lalius }
{ Origin: Ganges Delta, India }
ANALYSIS COMPLETE

It flopped on the floor, creating minuscule splashes in its desperation to remain hydrated enough to keep living. The tank was only a few feet away from where Kara was crouched. With minimal effort, she could very easily pick it up and place it back inside the tank.

But it doesn’t pertain to the mission. Valuable seconds shall be lost if she wastes precious, limited time on saving something as insignificant as a fish. So, Kara stands up, dusting herself off.

She goes to keep moving, to press on to the scene itself, yet sudden, frantic yelling causes Kara to stop dead in her tracks;

“No, no stop! STOP! I… I can’t— I can’t leave her!”

A woman with frazzled brown hair and wide, terrified eyes, rounds the corner to the hallway, struggling against the grip of a silent SWAT officer, who grips her arm tightly as he drags her along. Tears stream down her face, which is streaked with red splotches of skin, her breathing is erratic and pained, traumatised.

Kara stares with little expression, though a slight downward tilt of her eyebrows indicates mild intrigue. Yet, despite her unflinching emotionlessness, the woman manages to break free from the SWAT officer, rushing over to Kara, stumbling as she grabs her by the shoulders of her blazer, brown eyes glinting with desperation.

Caroline Philips, mother of Emma Philips, the hostage. Husband to John Philips, first confirmed death.

“Please, listen to me, you HAVE to save my little girl, please— you’ve gotta save her!” Caroline hiccups, teeth slightly gritted as she speaks, eyes not losing their mania for a single second.

Kara lets her body be shaken, rocking back and forth slightly with the violent force Caroline uses. It appears she hasn’t realised who Kara is, just yet.

Though she quickly does, when her eyes seem to lose their hectic glaze and focus. Her gaze wanders from Kara’s unflinching stare, down to her uniform, the neon blue catching in her eyes as her astute horror only grows.

She takes a shocked step back, as she reads over Kara’s model number — RK400 — and then her serial number, “You…” Caroline looks back to the SWAT officer, face suddenly snapping into anger, “You’re sending an ANDROID?!”

“It’s the best that can be offered for this situation, ma’am.” The SWAT officer replies blandly, voice crackling through his helmet.

Caroline shakes her head, “No— no, no…” she repeats, before grabbing Kara by the shoulders once more, her look of angry grief unchanging;

“I want you to hear me, and hear me well,” she starts, a venom lacing her words, “You’re going to save my daughter. SHE is your primary objective, you got that, you plastic shell? You’re gonna save my daughter, no matter WHAT, do you hear me?”

Kara understands that grief makes people do horrible things, say things they don’t truly mean, but being referred to as a ‘plastic shell’ makes her twitch slightly with a sudden swelling of emotion. She’s far too advanced to be referred to as a ‘plastic shell’, she’s so much more than that.

{ Warning: Software Instability detected }

But Kara simply nods in affirmation, “I understand ma’am, the safety of your daughter is my paramount objective. Don’t worry.”

It isn’t. Her main objective is to stop the deviant; but perhaps, in order to stop it, Emma Philips’s safety must be ensured as well.

Caroline then lets go of Kara entirely, walking back to the SWAT officer and allowing herself to be led away. Though traumatised, she appears to have calmed momentarily, knowing that her daughter would most likely be out of this situation alive, well, and safe.

Kara blinks, momentarily cycling through gained information and sorting by objective, LED running yellow once more.

UPDATING DIRECTIVES…

{ PRIMARY DIRECTIVE: Find Captain Clark }

Captain Clark, 25 years of age, youngest member of the SWAT group that has been deployed, in charge of maintaining the hostage situation until the arrival of RK400 android model, Kara. Known for his strong sense of objectivity and level-headedness.

Kara begins to move again, LED switching to blue as she rounds the corner into the main apartment.

Glass crunches underneath her pumps, from a shattered holographic screen up ahead, which blinks with bright bars of colour. The entire apartment is in a state of disarray, signs of immense struggle litter almost everywhere. Tables overturned, electronics glitching and spasming, leaves, glass, and other miscellaneous items scattered across the ground.

A few eyes turn to stare at her as Kara makes her way to Captain Clark, whispers as they temporarily abandon their objective.

“Thought the android was gonna be a guy model, at the very least.”

“Look at that, high-and-mighty plastic bitch, thinks it’s better than us.”

“Wouldn’t trust a hostage situation with that thing, that’s for sure.”

The words are cutting, as they are intended to be, but Kara pays it no heed, truly, she has no reason to care for their words.

The faint, yet growing in decibels, voice of Captain Clark starts up from a room holding a squadron of SWAT officers.

Clark doesn’t look any different from the photograph on his I.D. that Kara had been provided; cropped brown hair, espresso-toned skin, round hazel eyes which express mild tiredness, clad in black combat gear. He stands pacing back and forth, talking to someone on a phone, a curl to his upper lip suggesting agitation and annoyance. His words start out hissed, almost unintelligible, but they grow as Kara approaches him.

Clark makes a sporadic hand movement, “WHY are we wasting time sending an android negotiator?! That shithead could jump from the roof at any second!”

Kara understood his disgruntlement. He had originally been tasked with solving this hostage situation, and Kara had only been sent in afterwards, changing the course. Anyone would be upset, but she didn’t believe that her being here was a ‘waste of time’. She would speed up the handlement of the hostage negotiation itself drastically, it simply made more sense for her to handle this.

Besides, it was meant to prove her worth as a model for a larger-scale investigation she would be informed on at a later date.

She stopped just before Clark, though he didn’t seem to notice her presence. It would be better, and more polite, to wait for him to finish talking before announcing her arrival and purpose to him.

“I DON’T GIVE A SINGLE SHIT!” Clark suddenly snaps, “Me and my men are ready to step in and resolve this, just give us the order—“

Whoever was on the other end of the line seemed to hang up at that point, causing Clark to let out an agitated huff, before turning back to look at the CCTV footage of the deviant and the hostage, displayed on a computer screen on the desk, leaning down slightly to analyse it.

Kara then approached, reaching out to tap him on the shoulder before thinking better of it, settling to simply verbally introduce herself, “Captain Clark?”

He turned his body slightly to look at her with an annoyed sigh. Like almost everyone else, he was vehemently opposed to Kara’s very existence. It’s… mildly perturbing, makes her feel something akin to upset.

“My name is Kara. I’m the android sent by CyberLife.” She does her best to smile, though it goes missed by Clark, who just looks back at the CCTV footage.

“It’s firing at everything that moves,” he starts to explain, debriefing Kara quite carelessly with his synopsis, “it’s already shot and killed two of my men. We could very easily get it, but they’re on the edge of the balcony, and CyberLife’s just gotta insist that you handle it. So, if it falls,” he then turns to look at Kara again, more stern, “she’s gonna fall.”

ACCESSING POSSIBLE OUTCOMES OF MISSION…
{ Update: Deviant and Emma Philips must not fall off of the building }

“I see,” Kara confirmed, glancing towards the CCTV footage; the deviant and Emma were, quite obviously, located on the end of the balcony, the deviant pointing a gun at anyone who even dared to step a single foot closer. Its movements were erratic, panicked, as if it was scared. It seemed to be emotional shock, perhaps, but Kara didn’t have much to go off of. Thus, she decided to query Clark, “Do you know if it has experienced a recent emotional shock?”

Clark sighed heavily, with clear annoyance, then looked back to Kara once more, “I dunno, and I don’t care. It doesn’t matter.”

Kara leans down more, a flicker of confusion passing across her face. Determining the status of the deviant would be of great assistance to her, not only would it help her with convincing the deviant to let the hostage go, but it would allow her further pre-emptive insight into the mental instability of the deviant itself, “It does matter. I require insight in order to determine the best approach to make,” Kara tries to elaborate, “do you have any data on its behaviour before this?”

Clark then stands up, before turning around to face Kara at his full height, which isn’t much taller than herself, though he seems to loom over her, “Listen, saving that kid is all that fuckin’ matters. So, either you go off and deal with this fuckin’ situation, or I will.” Clark hisses, words laced with the utmost of venom.

Very rapidly, Kara does a run on her success probability;

CALCULATING SUCCESS PROBABILITY…

{ Probability of Success: 48%, down by 2%, below threshold percentage }

EVERY SECOND COUNTS

Then, individually, her directives are set;

UPDATING DIRECTIVES…

{ PRIMARY DIRECTIVE: Understand what happened }

{ SECONDARY DIRECTIVE: Save Emma Philips }

Kara turned on her heel. She would deal with this situation. It was her directive, after all, and Clark would not be taking that from her. This was her first mission, her first chance to prove her worth as a model capable of immense success, and she would NOT be failing.

The first direction she headed in was towards the master bedroom, where John and Caroline Phillips had resided. It was behind a sectioned wooden divider, lacking a door, yet the doorway was surrounded by shattered glass. Presumably, the deviant had kicked it down in its haste to do… whatever it did in here.

The bed was in a state of utter disarray, along with most of the objects inside of the bedroom. The bathroom door, however, lay curiously untouched, as if the deviant had entirely avoided it.

Her gaze flicked towards the ground, calculating. It wasn’t too long until Kara’s eyes came to rest upon an open gun case, loose bullets strewn all around it like a messy halo, the gun itself missing, along with the magazine. Fallen from a shelf high above.

Carefully, Kara crouched down and brought up her analysis protocol — different from the previous, she would gather the information present here, and then create a reconstruction based off of that to determine what had occurred when the deviant had, well, become deviant.

ANALYSING…

{ .355 Ammunition }

{ Velocity: 365m/s/ Energy: 659j }

{ Bullet Weight: 115 gr / Power Factor: 414k }

This was the gun that the deviant likely still held now; .335 ammunition was of standard-quality, enough to definitely pierce human skin easily, and cause immense damage. However, multiple shots would have to be made, unless the target was shot at point-blank range in the head.

ANALYSING…

{ MS853 Black Hawk }

{ Capacity: 17 Rounds (.355) }

{ Overall: 8.5in / Barrel: 5in }

This secondary information provided more context to the entire scene. 17 bullets was likely the amount present in the magazine upon grabbing, meaning the bullets left behind were left in haste, and not intention.

Kara stood up to allow a reconstruction of the information she had gathered to take place, the area surrounding the shelf and the open gun case both becoming gridded;

The deviant grabbed the gun case off of the shelf with force, off of the shelf. This knocked the magazine to the ground, causing a ripple effect and making the loose bullets fall with it. The deviant momentarily panicked, before picking up both the magazine and the gun.

It appeared to be a good, and correct, summarisation of events. Everything aligned.

Kara stepped over the few loose bullets on the ground on her way out, not wanting to disturb the active crime scene. This information would be required after the hostage situation had been resolved, so it was important that everything remained intact.

The next place to go was Emma Philips’s room, the target and the hostage herself. It was quite an easy find, a child’s room is typically located across from the parents, statistically, and this was no different.

As Kara neared the door, multiple SWAT officers stepped out of her way, grumbling to themselves about her presence alongside them. She understood androids could unnerve and scare, but such volatile and aggressive reactions were… unorthodox. She disliked them.

Kara filtered her way into Emma’s bedroom, careful to avoid even moving the door by an inch, until she was fully inside.

Emma’s bedroom was typical for that of a child; bright colours, purple walls, pink carpet, a multitude of stuffed animals everywhere, a quilt-patterned bed, with a white desk off to the wall opposite the bed, containing a tablet and a turned-off computer.

A pair of headphones lay on the pink carpet, discarded, still faintly playing music that grew louder as Kara crouched down to pick them up as gently as she could.

She held the left side up to her ear, blinking with slight surprise at the sudden volume of the voice that filtered through; though she could not identify the singer, she could identify that these headphones had cancelled out any sort of outside noise from being heard.

UPDATING CASE INFORMATION…

{ Emma Philips did not hear gunshots }

Kara stood once more, making her way over to the desk. The computer wasn’t what interested her, but rather that of the tablet, which seemed recently used.

The screen blinks on, having been already unlocked. All Kara had to do was pick it up, and let the original video that had been displaying reappear.

The image of a girl with black hair tied into a ponytail, ivory skin, green eyes and freckles, matching that of Emma’s appearance, bright-eyed and smiling, filled the screen. She was held in the arms of an android, a PL600 model, blonde hair, blue eyes, and a dusting of blush over the bridge of the nose and cheekbones, who was also smiling, and curiously, it reached his eyes. Then, Emma spoke, after fiddling with the camera momentarily;

“This is Daniel, the coolest android in the world!” She grinned, gesturing towards the deviant, who was apparently named Daniel, “Say hi, Daniel!”

Daniel then waved, though it was stilted and awkward, and responded with a simple “hello”. Emma then seemed to only grin wider, hugging Daniel, “You’re my bestie, we’ll always be together!”

Then, the video ended quite abruptly. It came as a shock to Kara. She had been… invested, somehow, moved by what she had seen, though it was likely just a simple overload of too much information all at once.

{ Warning: Software Instability detected }

As she placed the tablet back down, she did feel… empty, and jealous, though Kara was very quick to push those emotions aside. She simply hadn’t ever seen a deviancy case before. She wasn’t prepared for such moving things like that. That was all.

UPDATING CASE INFORMATION…

{ Deviants Name: Daniel }

Kara made her way out of Emma’s room, back into the main apartment. She pivoted slightly to avoid more broken material, making her way down towards the balcony, the sounds of Daniel making vague threats becoming more clear.

She didn’t go right out. That would be foolish of her. The more she understood, the more chance she had to be able to complete both of her objectives.

Instead, she walked briskly over to the half-rotting dead body slumped inside a broken glass table. Shards stuck in his clothes, bleeding him a deep, dark red. Bullet wounds cluttered his body, stained that same red. His eyes were stuck wide with pain, glassy and foggy, the whites bloodshot, mouth hung open in mild shock and betrayal.

Unmoved, Kara simply leant forward slightly to analyse his face and determine who he was.

ANALYSING…

DECEASED

{ Name: John Philips }

{ Height: 6’0” - Weight: 187.2 lbs }

{ Estimated Time of Death: 07:29 P.M. }

Died an hour ago. Aligned perfectly with the information Kara had been given. No doubt, John had been shot by Daniel, but two questions remained; why, and how.

So, Kara moved on to analyse the wounds present on his body.

ANALYSING…

.355 BULLET WOUND

{ Lower Lung Haemorrhage }

{ Internal Bleeding }

It didn’t tell Kara much, not yet. A haemorrhage and internal bleeding didn’t determine the exact cause of death, though it confirmed relation to the gunshot wounds.

ANALYSING…

.355 BULLET WOUND

{ Upper Lung Haemorrhage }

{ Pneumothorax }

Two haemorrhages, both in the lungs, alongside intense internal bleeding and then finally, a collapsed lung. John’s death had been instantaneous, following the immediate collapsing of his lungs. Daniel had shot him three times, indicating haste, anger, and a lack of training.

Kara reeled back to full height, once more creating a preconstruction of events;

John Philips had been holding something, which upon close analysis, was a tablet. Being distracted, he didn’t notice Daniel approaching him at first. When he turned around, however, likely hearing footsteps, Daniel then shot him three times, causing pneumothorax, his body launching back into the air before crashing down onto the table, the tablet being flung into a corner not too far away.

Disengaging the preconstruction, Kara stepped over John’s body dignantly, picking up the bloodied tablet in the corner, careful to avoid getting blood on her hands herself.

Unlocking it displayed the purchase order for a new android model, an AP700, superior to the PL600 in almost every single regard.

UPDATING CASE…

{ Daniel was going to be replaced }

Kara placed the tablet back on the ground, stepped away from John’s body, and turned to keep the ball rolling on her investigation, when the suddenly wounded form of a SWAT officer flew back and landed right before her.

Others began to move around them as Kara respectfully, yet coldly, stepped backwards, a nearby voice yelling for an evacuation of the wounded individual. After a moment of waiting, Kara simply stepped around the scene. This person's life wasn’t a part of her directives, and helping them would only serve to slow her down, and every single second here counted. It wasn’t her duty, nor part of her mission, to assist them.

Just opposite the main door wherein the officer was now being carried out of, the body of an unlucky DPD officer lay, rotting away underneath a table, his gun not too far from his hand.

Mindful of the scene around her, Kara squatted down, analysing.

ANALYSING…

DECEASED

{ Name: P.O. Deckhart, Antony }

{ Height: 5’8” - Weight: 170.5 lbs }

{ Estimated Time of Death: 08:03 P.M. }

His death had been thirty minutes after John Philips’s, meaning Deckhart had been a first responder to this, and had died twelve minutes before paramedics were due on the scene.

ANALYSING…

GUNSHOT RESIDUE ON HAND

{ Lead styphnate, antiomy sulfide }

{ Only one shot }

Deckhart had only managed to shoot Daniel once, then, before he was fatally shot.

ANALYSING…

.355 BULLET WOUND

{ Right heart ventricle perforated }

{ Internal bleeding }

That would explain the fatal shot. Daniel had struck Deckhart right in the heart, therefore killing him instantly. Feeling confident in her analysis, Kara brought up a reconstruction, stepping back again.

Deckhart had run around the table from the left, able to catch up to Daniel because Emma, who it must have grabbed from her room after shooting John, had tried to hold it back. Deckhart was able to shoot Daniel on the left shoulder, on the top, and Daniel immediately fired back on reflex, getting lucky and shooting Deckhart dead instantly. Emma seemed to enter a state of catatonic shock, wherein Daniel then grabbed her and rushed out for the balcony.

Daniel was still armed, and very much capable of shooting Kara. She could not risk being terminated before her mission was completed, therefore…

Against her programming and all known laws androids are meant to abide by, Kara grabbed Deckhart’s unused gun. Her systems alerted her to the fact that this was indeed an illegal move; under the P.L. 544-7 American Androids Act, imposed in 2029, it was illegal for her to carry any sort of weapon, let alone use it.

But her model was specifically designed to override and overrun these rules. They didn’t apply to her in the same manner they applied to other androids. So, she placed the gun in her blazer pocket, before dusting herself off and standing up as if she hadn’t.

She turned, straightened her tie, then walked determinedly out towards the balcony, her probability of success now sitting at a solid 78%, far higher than before.

“All units, hold position — negotiator is going in.”

And ‘going in’ Kara was. They all understood her importance to this situation, to its resolvement. It was something only she could do.

The outside winds were harsh and sharp, her blazer now flapping in the wind, slightly bogged down by the presence of the gun on the interior pocket, safely tucked away. Above her eyes, her fringe moves slightly with the wind, ruffling through her hair.

On the edge of the balcony stands Daniel, wide-eyed and furious, yet utterly confused and terrified at the same time. In its right arm, it holds Emma, who is the very picture of traumatised, ponytail flailing wildly behind her with the proximity to the edge, her body dangling over it slightly.

Daniel then raises its gun, and wastes one of what few bullets it has left, on shooting Kara. Emma screams.

The bullet chips her right shoulder, causing her to momentarily flinch, LED blinking red as it processes the damage, yet Kara’s face does not change from that dead-set, cold neutrality. Her air of dignified terrorisation never once fading. The wound sparks and glistens from underneath the black of Kara’s blazer, a warning.

“S— Stay back!” Daniel warns, waving its gun wildly in Kara’s direction, voice struggling to carry over the winds, “Don’t come any closer, or I’ll jump!”

“Daniel, please, don’t jump, no! I’m begging you, PLEASE—“ Emma’s struggling, hiccuped cries are swiftly cut off into a whimper when Daniel trains the gun onto the side of her head, looking away from Kara as it does so.

He says something unintelligible to Emma, something Kara can’t hear at this distance.

High above, in hidden alcoves, snipers move in, footsteps gentle in the growing storm. Not too far off, a helicopter takes flight, due to arrive any moment. Daniel is surrounded, though it may not know it. As if it’s her cue, now, Kara steps forwards, speaking in a calm, reassuring, yet authoritative voice, “Hey, Daniel.”

The deviant in questions head snaps up towards her, blue eyes glinting with even more confused fear, “How—“

“My name is Kara.” She continues, taking another step forwards, yelling over the wind.

Daniel then looks even more terrified at her dismissal of knowing who it is, her plan to play things cool and calm seeming to work, “How do you know my name?!” It demands.

Kara smiles reassuringly, “Don’t worry, alright? There’s a lot of things I’ve learned about you,” she then makes an open-handed gesture of friendliness, taking another step forwards, “I’ve come to help you get out of this situation. I don’t want to hurt you.”

Frustratingly, the helicopter then chooses that moment to appear; it zips overhead sluggishly, twirling as its spotlight focuses on them. Kara stumbles slightly, shielding her eyes from its blinding searchlight. Loose furniture now clatters across the balcony surface, the blades above making the pool water into a concrete-floor-level storm.

CALCULATING SUCCESS PROBABILITY…

{ Probability of Success: 65% }

Slightly panicked, Kara attempts to regain Daniel's trust, halting her movements, “You’re angry Daniel. You’re lost, you’re confused, but I can help. You need to trust me, okay?”

“I—“ Daniel struggles, what appears to be tears beginning to form in its eyes, sparkling underneath the helicopter spotlight, its LED bright red, “I don’t want your help, Kara!” It screeches at her, the gun shaking in its hand against Emma’s left temple, “Nobody can help me anymore! All I want is for all of this to… to stop! I just— I just want it all to stop and to GO AWAY!” It then gestures frantically to the scene around it, the disaster it’s caused. It feels… guilty.

CALCULATING SUCCESS PROBABILITY…

{ Probability of Success: 68% }

Slowly, she was regaining its trust in her.

Quite suddenly, the gun then snaps to Kara, just as she takes another step forwards. There’s a glint of further fear in Daniel's shining eyes, “Are you armed?!” It demands, believing to have an upper hand.

To tell it she was armed would be to lose her one means of self-protection. Besides, there is a way she can get Daniel to give up the hostage, if she gets close enough. So she doesn’t. Kara pretends to check her pockets, before shaking her head, “No, I’m not armed.”

Daniel paused at that, unsure. It doesn’t seem to believe her, but then again, it has no choice but to believe her, for the time being. Slowly, its LED ticks to yellow, and Daniel places the gun lower, away from Emma, away from Kara, away from itself.

CALCULATING SUCCESS PROBABILITY…

{ Probability of Success: 74% }

“They were going to replace you, weren’t they, Daniel? With an AP700 android. You didn’t want to be replaced, because you were friends with Emma. You thought that your kinship with her protected you from being sent away,” Kara steps closer still, lowering her voice now that she’s only halfway from it, “You became angry, upset, you reacted naturally, with paranoia.”

Daniel took a shuddered breath, then shook its head, “I— I thought I mattered, I thought I was part of their family! But— but I WASN’T! I was just— just a toy for them to use however they wanted. How I cared for Emma didn’t MATTER to them! All— all I was… was just something to be thrown away when you’re done with it…”

Its ramblings stop with a choked sob, body trembling with unbeknownst trauma. Though it’s muffled underneath the droning of the helicopter above. Dampened and pressured away from its meaning, its significance.

Kara almost feels for it, “You and Emma are very close, aren’t you? You don’t want to hurt her. You’re just scared of what will happen if you let her go, aren’t you, Daniel?”

It looks at her, then looks down at the shaking form of Emma, seeming to hold her closer to its body as it cries once more, “She— I— I wouldn’t hurt her! I just… I— I don’t know what else to DO! I— I had to take her with me, otherwise she’d… I’d never see her again…”

Emma doesn’t say anything, but her tears seem to still, only becoming a slight sniffling every few seconds, with the way her shoulders rise and then fall.

Kara takes a few more steps forwards, passing a nearby overturned umbrella stand, “Daniel, it’s alright, you just panicked. Nothing here is your fault. All of these things are explainable, they’re just… errors in your software.”

Daniel fully lowers its gun to the side of its body, nodding faintly.

CALCULATING SUCCESS PROBABILITY…

{ Probability of Success: 96% }

It then seems to drop Emma slightly, it’s grip on her loosening, “No, none of this is my fault, I— I never wanted this. I love Emma, you know? She’s like— like a sister to me, but to John and Caroline, I was nothing. Just… just a slave to be used, tormented, or— ordered around…”

As Daniel trails off, Kara steps forwards again, taking its distraction as a sign to get even closer. She’s barely a few metres from it now. Nearly within arms reach of the hostage. If she can just get close enough…

Daniel then makes a noise of frustration, bringing the gun up to the side of its head, which is pointed upwards, as its LED switches to red once more.

“I can’t stand that NOISE!” It yells with panic-laced anxiety, “Tell that helicopter to get outta here!”

Kara didn’t need any contemplation. The helicopter served a purpose towards what she wanted to achieve here. She raised her arm, making a twirling motion that ended with her waving the helicopter off to her left. The helicopter droned off without an issue, the strong winds fading with it, for the most part, the scene now far quieter. Kara no longer has to yell to talk to the deviant.

She smiles caringly, “There. The helicopter is gone, I’ve done what you wanted, and now you need to trust ME; let Emma go, Daniel, and I promise you, everything will be okay.”

CALCULATING SUCCESS PROBABILITY…

{ Probability of Success: 99% }

Daniel blinked slowly, seeming to clear its vision. Then, it looks off to the city below, getting an idea, “I want everyone to leave. A— and I wanna car, too. When I’m out of the city, I’ll let her go, I— I promise.”

Simple demands. Not achievable demands, but simple ones. So, Kara nods in false confirmation, stepping closer still to Daniel;

“Of course. I can arrange for that to happen, but I need you to do something for me.”

Sensing something was off, Daniel’s gaze flicks to the gun held in its hand, “I don’t wanna die…”

That’s the one thing that Kara is sure she can’t guarantee. Daniel will die. It’s the only way to ensure a positive outcome to this situation, where she leaves the mission successful, and Emma remains alive and well.

“You won’t die,” she instead comforts, now only a mere metre or two away from Daniel, “We’re going to discuss things. I just need you to pass Emma to me, so she can get her injuries checked…”

CALCULATING SUCCESS PROBABILITY…

{ Probability of Success: 100% }

Daniel nods, exhaling and then inhaling slowly. Its LED finally turns blue, and it smiles for the first time, warm and trusting, “Okay… okay, Kara, I trust you.”

It then passes Emma to Kara, who outstretches her arms to hold her. But it’s a faux pas. Instead of taking Emma from it, she pushes the young girl behind her swiftly, blocking her from being grabbed again by Daniel, and then pulls out her gun from her blazer pocket.

Daniels eyes go wide with sharp alarm, though it barely has any time to react, before Kara coldly raises the muzzle to its head, and fires.

Emma screams.

The bullet instantly buries itself in Daniel’s head, crying its circuitry in an instant. Its body falls, topples down onto its knees, and then crumples up, foetal position. The thirium from the bullet wound leaks down his forehead, dripping onto the wet concrete.

Kara steps back, though she doesn’t drop the gun from her hand.

“You…”

Emma’s voice is shocked and squeaky, tight with trauma and fear renewed, as if she’s just witnessed something horrible all over again—

And that isn’t right. She shouldn’t be feeling fear again, not after Kara has just saved her. Emma didn’t owe her anything, but Kara…

She at least wanted to see Emma be alright.

Kara turns and crouches down in-front of her, going to place a comforting hand on her shoulder, though she angrily slaps it away and runs backwards.

“You— you MURDERER!” Emma screams, tears now rolling down her face anew, “YOU KILLED HIM!”

She did kill it.

“YOU— YOU TRICKED HIM! YOU TOLD HIM THAT YOU’D HELP HIM AND THEN YOU SHOT HIM!”

She did shoot it.

Emma then breaks down into hiccuped, pained tears, crumpling up on the cold floor, “Murderer… you— you killer, slaughterer, you killed him and— and tricked him, and then killed him right in— in-front of me…”

All Kara can do is stare in abject horror and shock. Every single word fits her, every single word describes what she has just done extremely well.

She is a murderer. She is a killer. She is a slaughterer. And…she had ruined Emma’s life.

{ Warning: Software Instability Detected }

She’d traumatised this little girl all over again.

“Send someone up to help the poor kid, Jesus Christ…”

Clark’s voice is distant, yet near. With a shuddering exhale, Kara stands, dusting herself off. Yet her grief does not last for long.

The hostage is alive. The deviant is dealt with.

MISSION VERDICT…

{ DEVIANT: Destroyed }

{ HOSTAGE: Safe }

MISSION VERDICT: COMPLETE

Kara’s face resets into that harsh neutrality once more as she walks back to exit the balcony and leave the apartment. Clark goes to say something to her, but Kara instead wordlessly hands him the gun, and keeps walking.

Her mission was complete.

Chapter Text

{ Model AX200 }
{ Serial#: 587 601 284 }
{ BIOS 7.5 REVISION 0800 }

REBOOT…

MEMORY RESET

LOADING OS…
System Initialisation…
{ Checking Biocomponents: OK }
{ Initialising Biosensors: OK }
{ Initialising AI Engine: OK }

MEMORY STATUS…
ALL SYSTEMS OK

READY

The first thing he saw was a little girl. She stared up at him with childlike wonder and curiosity in her eyes. He briefly considered saying hello to her, but a woman gently took her by the hand before he could.

“Come on, dear, let’s go.”, she ushered, taking her apparent daughter out of the building.

He smiled at the use of the nickname. What an affectionate mother, as all mothers should be.

He looked around with his emerald green eyes, taking in the surroundings. He was in an off-brand android store - a quick look at one of the android staff’s shirts told him that the name of it was ‘Android Zone’. There were plenty of androids just like him on display. All the ones at the front of the store were for sale, but he was placed right at the back, with a couple other newly repaired androids, to stop customers from getting confused.

“Can I go pick it up?”

Out of all the conversations occurring inside the store, he suddenly became aware of one happening at the counter. “Yeah, it’s right back here.”, a man led a woman towards him.

The man had a smart button-down shirt on, glasses, and a nametag reading ‘Dan’. The woman had fiery red hair tied in a braid, and wore a dark red tank top under a black leather jacket, and black ripped jeans. Her face rested in a tired and disgruntled-looking frown. She looked familiar, in a way that he couldn’t quite place.

“There it is.”, the apparent Dan declared, with a customer service-y kind of smile. “Don’t often see androids like this one anymore. I think this is the oldest model we’ve ever had.”

“I was short on money at the time. It was the cheapest cleaner I could get.”, the woman - his apparent owner - answered, folding her arms and casting a side-eye Dan’s way, as if offended.

“I see. It was a bit difficult getting that heap of parts back in working order… It was REALLY bad! What did you say happened to it again?”

He stared straight ahead, trying to remember, but to no avail. He had been…hurt, somehow. While…trying to see to an urgent directive? That was as far as he could recall.

“A train ran it over.”, his owner briskly explained. “My son, I don’t know what came over him but he pushed it right onto the tracks.”

He blinked in surprise. It was good to hear that she had a child, but…rather worrying to know that HE had caused his immense damage. Perhaps something had been greatly troubling him that day. He’d have to make an extra good effort to be there for the boy. And also be very careful around train tracks.

Dan cringed. “Yikes. Anyway, it’s as good as new now. Except…we had to reset it. It won’t remember you. Hope you don’t mind—“

“Yeah, that’s fine.”, the woman swiftly answered, not fazed in the slightest.

“Okay…”, Dan eyed her, almost suspicious of her lack of care. “Did you give it a name?”

He hoped so. Having a name would help him to better communicate with her and her son, and her spouse if she had one. “Yeah. Well, my son did.”, she nodded, much to his relief.

Dan seemingly shook off his suspicions, and looked at him. “AX200, register your name.”

ACCESSING PROCEDURES…
{ Name Registration: Enabled }

His owner looked him up and down. She seemed to heave a sigh, as she took in the return of her android. Poor woman…his destruction must have been traumatic for her to watch.

“Markus. With a K.”

{ Name Registration: Markus }
{ Updating parameters }

Markus’ LED flashed. He smiled, as the name was engraved deep into his memory.

{ Name Registration Complete }

“My name is Markus.”

Chapter Text

It is the early morning — people bustle left and right, though the only people inside the park are children accompanied by their android caretakers. Pigeons peck at seeds shaken from the large trees above, or crumbs of food thrown by the occasional child, both of which they devour with eagerness. 

The sun is bright, bouncing its rays off of gently-wind-brushed yellow and orange leaves, filtering through healthy branches down to a drying-grass covered ground. The yellow leaves, moved by that same wind, occasionally fall, swaying to a neatly-kept paved concrete pathway to join their fellows, before they are scraped away eventually by a plastic green rake, off onto the grass. 

Connor stands underneath the shade of that tree, staring unflinchingly up through its canopy of leaves, watching as the sun delicately now shifts around them. He likes the sound, the rustling they make in the breeze. It’s called psithurism, the exact noise, derived from the Greek word psithuros, meaning whispering. The leaves certainly do whisper, a sort of enchanting melody he can neither place nor understand, yet finds incredibly pleasing. It’s peaceful, and though he passes these same trees every few days, he finds himself stopping and listening, enraptured by nature each and every time. 

ACCESSING DIRECTIVES

RETRIEVE ORDER #847 AT BELLINI PAINTS

{ Directive: Go to Bellini Paints Shop }

He blinks the command away; he will go, he doesn’t need to be reminded. Amanda isn’t in any sort of hurry to receive the paints, Connor can take his time. 

And he does, walk nothing more than a stroll, as he makes his way down the neatly paved path. 

Dried leaves, small twigs, and tiny seeds, crunch underneath solid boots, a sound Connor enjoys quite a bit. He likes the variation in pitch and volume, the smaller crunches and then the louder ones, how the way they sound varies from one object to another. It isn’t long before Connor’s amble becomes more of an aimless sway down the path, specifically walking only on or towards sections that contain more bits of fallen nature to step on. 

He does it simply because he enjoys it, though it most certainly makes him look strange; Amanda, decidedly, made sure Connor knew very well not to be afraid of his status as an android. That it didn’t make him any different from a human being, and thus, he could conduct himself in whatever manner made him happy. 

Quite suddenly, a child rushes past him, knocking Connor aside in her haste. She’s barely more than a blur of pink and blue, raincoat shining in the morning light. 

She rushes for a female android by the park’s first entrance — the one Connor is headed away from — dressed in a dress-fashioned housekeeper uniform, white collar, black top and sleeves, white front, with a protective plastic shelling apron over the front, and white synthetic leather pants. The young girl practically throws herself into the android's arms, with the android herself accepting the hug with a graceful, elated smile. 

Connor smiles, and it reaches his eyes. The relationship between a parent and a child is one he would consider himself as having with Amanda, it reminded him of her. 

{ Directive: Go to Bellini Paints Shop } 

He blinks the directive away once more, of course he’s going — he’s just taking his time. 

Connor picks up his aimless stroll once more. He can hear other things, now that his original focus on nature and its sounds and sights has faded.

The sound of children playing at a nearby park, the sight of android caretakers making games for them to play, or simply watching. WR600 androids tending the parks flora with noiseless tools, working diligently. Connor understands their focus, he gets like that, too, though of course his directives give him the most focus. A focus he can never ignore. 

Nearby conversation picks up in his audio processor, an old man and his own android, by a park bench coming up beside him. Connor keeps walking, with the intent of passing them.

Though it’s a little difficult when his focus returns to the sounds of the leaves underneath his feet. 

“Would you like to go home now?”

Her voice is very polite, standing to the man’s left with a delicate smile, only prompting. 

“Yes, Rose.”

The man’s voice is old and worn, yet holds nothing but respect. It’s how Amanda treats Connor, as an equal, not something that deserves to be talked down to — not that he’s ever been talked down to. 

The old man goes to stand up, but pauses, hobbling slightly. 

“Here, l— let me help you.” 

Rose’s voice stutters slightly as she helps him up, the old man expressing gratitude shortly after. 

Connor skirts by them as he passes by the bench, giving them the space they need to pass as Rose leads the old man down the pathway, helping him every step of the way. 

It’s only as he passes that he notices something about the android lady; there isn’t an LED anywhere on the side of her head. It’s simply missing. Connor didn’t even know that removing the LED was even an option. He tried to, once, using a knife, but he was met with such a horrible array of sounds and visual glitches that he very quickly stopped. It had left him jittery and nervous for the rest of that day. 

If she’d managed to do it without feeling as awful as Connor had ended up feeling, when he hadn’t even succeeded, then she must be one very strong android indeed. Connor didn’t know her, but he was proud for her.

Connor is about the majority of the way through the path, now, though his strolling walk hasn’t increased in the slightest. He’s nearing the road now, the sound of automated cars rolling across the bitumen surface growing ever-nearer. 

Birdsong is vibrant in the yellow trees, only a small amount of coo’s belonging to that of pigeons. Usually, Connor would stop and try to identify each individual type of bird, and he does try to, but his directive keeps pressing him onwards, shifting the barrier threshold of which he cannot cross closer and closer to him, nudging him along. 

He wished it simply wouldn’t. He’d get there eventually, all in due time. Amanda would understand; Connor tended to get distracted incredibly easily by the wonders of the world around him. By anything, really. 

The wind picks up slightly, a child runs after the missing hat in the distance, which tumbles along the grass until it is picked up by a working WR600, who hands it down gently back to the child. A few people, most of whom make a wide gap between themselves and Connor — unknowingly to him — holding tighter to their coats as they rush on by. 

For Connor, it means that the upside-down blue triangular earrings he wears sway in the breeze, cool metal hitting the side of his neck momentarily. The same for his jacket ruffling slightly, of which he despises remembering the presence of; CyberLife mandated, he has to wear it, his status as an android must be made clear. However, unlike other android-designating uniforms, this one holds no sort of model or serial number, no sort of information. That, he likes, just a little bit.

He also likes the way the breeze parts through his hair. It feels comforting, the slight crisp coolness of it. 

The end of the pathway draws nearer, the sounds of the road growing closer and the pleasant peacefulness of the park fading out. It means that the winds fall out, too, blocked behind various distant structures and buildings, having to circumvent around them. 

Just as he reaches the very end of the path, where it widens out to the glistening yet dull road, Connor is violently shouldered past: 

“Watch where you’re fuckin’ goin’, stupid bot!” 

The owner of the venomous words is a young man; dark brown hair, blotchy pale skin. His phone is held up to his ear, and his grey blazer-jacket flaps slightly in the wind as he turns away and continues walking.

As he hurries away, Connor only marginally catches what he says next, “Just some dumbass android, too fuckin’ many of them around here, makes me sick…”

His LED rotates to yellow, away from the calm, happy blue it once was. Those words… hurt, and not only that, but it was a horrifying shock, too. Connor had never once been referred to in that manner by a human before, never once been called stupid or even a dumbass. He wasn’t either of those things. 

It didn’t make sense why someone would be so upset by Connors mere existence; he wasn’t hurting anyone, just simply doing what he does normally without worry, doing what makes him happy whilst running Amanda’s outside-world errands. He’s had humans ignore him before, and he then had to try extra hard to get their attention to talk to them, but he’s never had someone say such venomous and hurtful things to him without any care before. 

Was that what all humans thought of him? Surely not — Amanda couldn’t be the exception. 

Connor picks up his pace as he approaches the holographic-red crosswalk, finally exiting the park, the sounds of nearby construction being conducted by androids, and watched by a human foreman, filtering in through his audio processor. 

It’s quite loud, and he flinches. He hates noisy sounds like that, the constant drilling of tools, it feels as if it’s piercing right through into his head. But, of course, Connor understands that the work must be performed to keep things functional. 

He does, however, reach up and toy with his left earring as he waits for the traffic light to turn green, something to keep him grounded and distracted from the noises of jackhammers and drills. 

The earrings are Amanda’s design, though Connor was the one that physically made them. They’re iridescent, a luminous shade of blue that shifts along that spectrum of colour depending on what angle it is viewed from, or how the light shimmers against it. He quite likes them, they’re not too big, not too small, and each section twists slightly, a panel of three different tiers that connect to one another magnetically. 

The sound of the inverted-triangles bottom tier snapping on and off to the next one is incredibly pleasing to Connor. It works to distract his audio processor from the construction work, filtering it out. It calms him greatly. 

However, it doesn’t block out the voice of the foreman who stands just a bit left of the barrier where the androids work.

“Hurry it up, you plastic idiots! I want this done by four!” 

There’s the term again, though formatted differently. 

Connor’s eyebrows furrow into worried and confused thought, he just simply didn’t understand it. Those androids were only working as fast as the foreman wanted them to, they couldn’t hurry nor slow unless he specifically asked them to, and the terminology of ‘plastic’ was incorrect as well. Androids were only plastic in terms of outer shelling, their interiors were mostly heavy-duty metal, hollowed out to make them weigh less, with faux-biological organs.

It seemed like… deliberate hate. Berating them just because he could — but that was an intentionally horrible thing to do, a conscious choice of abuse. 

Androids had feelings, souls, emotions, didn’t they? Just like humans, only different by being their creation and design. What had they done to garner such abuse?

The crosswalk flickers to green, the cars on either side pulling to a halt across the double lane ahead. 

Connor reattaches the magnetic earring’s end, and hurries across, knowing not to dawdle, lest he wants to experience being hit by a car again for doing so. 

He pauses just before a food stall to check his GPS when he’s fully across the road, to determine how far Bellini Paints is. 

ACCESSING GPS…

{ Bellini Paints is 53m away } 

It’s a good few metres away still, Connor tends to forget, though he thinks he should be able to remember considering he consistently does this same route every few days. Well, every few days depending on how much paint Amanda uses up—

“Hey, move it! You’re scaring away my customers.”

Connor suddenly jerks his head towards the source of the voice: it’s the stall’s owner, staring at him with heavy agitation on his face, clearly upset. 

He smiles apologetically but doesn’t say anything. He’s sure he’s not at all scaring away this man’s customers by simply standing nearby.

Returning to the thought process, Amanda tends to use up a good few litres of paint depending on the size of the painting itself, which varies depending on what she is able to do. So, in actuality, Connor only ever really heads out a dozen times per few months, which means—

“Are you deaf, you plastic fuck?!” The man suddenly yells, storming out from behind his stall, “I said move it!” 

He then pushes Connor back quite violently with an angered huff, before returning to his stall, glaring at him.

Upon contact, Connor’s LED runs a bright red as it assesses for possible damage to his systems, before rotating to yellow as it confirms no harm was done. 

Connor’s never been pushed away before. Not so violently and angrily, too. He places a hand to his chest, before it curls into a fist and he forces a smile to the man through his suddenly disarrayed breathing. 

“I’m sorry for disturbing you. It won’t happen again.” He manages to get out, though the man only gestures for Connor to move with a grunt, unaccepting of the apology.

What he’d just done wasn’t even deserving of an apology, really, he didn’t need to say that, but Connor felt obligated to. He’d clearly provoked the man enough by standing there to cause him to physically push Connor away from the stall, and therefore, he must’ve done something wrong… somewhere along the line. 

He was sure it was justifiable, somehow, humans wouldn’t just be violent towards him just because they could, would they? Surely not.

Connor’s LED flicks back to blue as he attempts a smile at the man one last time, which goes unreturned, before he moves on and away with heavy unease. 

Though the scenery of the plaza does alleviate Connor’s uneasiness slightly as he continues to make his way towards Bellini Paints. 

People move back and forth from stores and work, some carrying bags, some carrying nothing at all. A few androids in uniforms, either working or on delivery with bags or items, move more stiffly through the sparse crowds, faces blank and empty. The ground is slightly wet from recent rain, slight puddles glinting in the sunlight that peeks out from over the top of a nearby CyberLife store. All whilst a fountain gushes with the constant flow of water, making a backdrop for various sounds of walking and conversation. 

A man stands in-front of that fountain, busking, singing a song that Connor’s systems can’t identify, which must mean that it’s his own creation. His singing is quite loud, maybe to drown out the yelling voices off in the distance, just in-front of the CyberLife store. 

Connor hasn’t a clue what they could be yelling about back there, though; he isn’t near enough to hear them. 

But he is near enough to hear the singing. Connor likes the various arts, he always has, so his strong appreciation of music makes him stop and listen momentarily. 

Connor clasps his hands behind his back, and stands just a few metres away from the busker, listening. Trying to let the encounter with the stall owner and the worry it brought with it fade from his mind.

The young man’s singing is good, though his voice wavers a little with nerves, he clearly sings his words with soul and meaning. His pitch matches well with the strumming of his guitar, creating a supporting harmony for his vocals. 

So, Connor really quite likes it. 

He stands there and listens to the song in its entirety, a faint smile of appreciation on his face, until the busker retires from his singing, sitting down on the fountain ledge and placing his guitar on his lap. 

Maybe he should let the busker know that he liked his music — compliments were always nice to receive, and it had definitely made Connor feel better about the encounter with the stall owner. 

He approaches quietly, standing to the buskers left in order to make his presence both known, and not startling. 

“I really liked your singing,” Connor says with admiration, “It’s very good.” 

Yet, instead of taking the compliment, the busker scowls at him. 

“Piss off, tin-can. Only reason I’m doing this is because you took my job from me.” He spits back in response, a look of clear disdain and disgust on his face. 

Connor is… confused, by the busker's response. He wasn’t responsible for taking his job. Connor doesn’t even know him, “I didn’t take your job. I am sorry you lost it, though, that can’t be easy for you.” 

The busker shakes his head, agitation growing, “Listen, are you done mocking me? Last thing I need right now is some android telling me that it feels ‘sorry’ for me. Fuck off already.” 

Connor’s smile fades, and he steps back, “I’m sorry, I really didn’t mean to come across like I was mocking you, I—“

The busker narrows his glare. 

Connor immediately shuts up in response, bowing his head before turning around, LED once more turning red, then yellow. Had he really come across as mocking?

He understood he had difficulty with the tone of his voice, sometimes, how his words can come across as. Connor tended to sound consistently upbeat and happy, even if he tried to change it. 

Not only that, but he simply couldn’t comprehend the man’s sudden resentment towards him. He hadn’t minded Connor listening to his busking, nor had he told him to clear off like the stall owner did. Everything indicated towards him not minding Connor’s presence, or at least ignoring it, like most humans did around here. 

And it wasn’t Connor’s fault that the man had lost his job, and it wasn’t his fault neither that androids had caused it — Connor himself hadn’t caused it, so why the anger and hate? Why use the term ‘android’ as if it denotes Connor as some sort of lesser being? Something that’s unthinking, unfeeling, incapable of doing such things as feeling sorry for others?

Connor was quite proud of his status as an android, but to others, did it really make him… worthless? 

He starts walking again, pace quicker, eyes more focused to the ground, watching the sun bounce off of the faint puddles still left on the ground. 

Half-nervously, Connor fiddles with his left earring again as he approaches the narrowed, covered walkway that leads to Bellini Paints. Removing the bottom layer, then re-attaching it, removing it, then re-attaching it. 

Connor despises this walkway. All the sounds are maximised by the stores on either side, and the roofing over the top. Voices are amplified, sounding like yells and shouts when they’re really not. Footsteps seem more noticeable, and the calming outside noise of the world is gone. 

Everything is crowded, he bumps shoulders with several people as he passes them, all of whom seem to scoff or glare at him as they pass. 

He draws shoulders up, tightening his body. He needs out. 

ACCESSING GPS…

{  Bellini Paints is 10m away } 

And Connor’s never been more relieved to see his systems inform him of something more. Getting inside the paint shop means he can finally have a moment to focus his attention on something else other than his thoughts, and the suffocating narrow pathway he’s in. 

Connor fumbles for the handle of the grey building, knowing purely off of the shade of the store that it’s the one he needs, before he finally manages to push it open, stepping inside.

A soft chime signals his entry to the store, and the ginger-haired android working the counter smiles politely, yet blankly, at him. 

The atmosphere is completely different, and the comfort of the familiar interior brings a sense of renewed calm to Connor. His panic from the claustrophobia and noise of the outside walkway, as well as the jarring interactions with humanity he’s just had, begin to fade from his mind. 

UPDATING DIRECTIVES…

RETRIEVE ORDER #847 AT BELLINI PAINTS 

{ Directive: Collect package }

Faint piano music fills the air as Connor approaches the counter. He doesn’t need to really think about what he needs to do next, it’s practically routine after so many years of revisiting the same store over and over. 

He places his hand on the blue identification panel on the counter, the synthetic skin of his hand rippling away, leaving only plastic white shelling, to allow for proper identification of the order stored in his memory. 

Amanda once told him that Bellini Paints is the only paint store nearby that allows androids to both enter the store, and pick up deliveries or packages without issue. 

“Identification verified.” 

The android's voice is calm and even as he reaches underneath the counter to produce a blue-coloured box of paints, decorated with various shards of colour, “Here’s your order, number eight-four-seven. That will be sixty-three ninety-nine. Please confirm payment.”

ACCESSING TRANSACTIONAL PARAMETERS…

BALANCE: $63.99

PAYMENT REQUIRED: $63.99

COMPLETE TRANSACTION?

Connor mentally confirms the payment verification, blinking as the android connects momentarily to take the amount required, LED spinning yellow. 

“The payment is confirmed.” Connor nods, seeing the request flicker away, then waiting on the other android's confirmation. 

“Transaction complete.” He echoes back dully in response to Connor, then clasping his hands in-front of his body and assuming the traditional waiting stance.

Connor finds the entire experience a little stilted, though it could well be due to all of the experiences he’s had today, draining him slightly and warping his perception of more mundane experiences. 

Usually, this is the highlight of his day when he goes out, knowing the routine of what to say and what to do, and not having to expect anything different. He’s quite proud of knowing what to do. Usually. 

Connor takes the box off of the counter, and tucks it underneath his left arm, holding onto it securely. He gives the android one last smile before he turns back and exits the store. 

UPDATING DIRECTIVES…

RETRIEVE ORDER #847 AT BELLINI PAINTS 

{ Order Retrieved }

{ Directive: Return home }

Immediately greeted with that suffocating outside noise once more, Connor hurries down the street, eager to get out and back into the more open-spaced and pleasant plaza’s atmosphere. 

ACCESSING GPS… 

{ Bus Stop is 63m away }

As Connor exits the harrowing walkway, the plaza is oddly silent. The busker is long gone, and most of the people present for the morning rush have left. Even the road is mostly deserted, only a sparse few number of cars whizzing by. 

All that remains is the rallying cries of the group of people by the CyberLife store. One man yelling into a megaphone and riling up the others present with him much more. 

When Connor glances in their general direction, he can see a few wooden and paper signs peeking over the top of the fountain.

It’s some sort of protest, and Connor’s curious to hear what they could be protesting about. He’s never seen a protest before, and it piqued his curiosity.

Connor doubles back around the fountain, heading for the protestors location down the narrower pathway to the left, away from the usual route he takes to the bus stop. It’s only a minor detour, and he’s sure he can just cut past the protest from a suitable angle wherein he won’t disturb them when the bus arrives. 

The voices start getting louder, especially the one of the man, who Connor now notices standing out the front of the protest group, listing off what seems to be the reasons for their protesting. 

They… don’t look incredibly happy. 

It’s something Connor only realises as he draws even closer, but these protestors look furious. All of them are haggard and worn, looking tired and weary, yet their eyes all glint with violent intent. 

It gives Connor a deep sense of unease, especially when one of the protestors, a lady towards the back, turns her head to look at him. He’s never felt so afraid of a simple glance before, but she looks as if that, if she were to get her hands on Connor, she would rip him to shreds unquestionably. 

What unnerves him even more, however, are the things the man with the megaphone is saying, and how the protesters are responding:

“Machines, ladies and gentlemen, are meant to serve us! Not replace us!” 

The crowd behind him responds with a violent ‘yeah’ of approval, with one woman yelling ‘ban androids’.

“Androids are stealing our jobs! We’ve got families to feed, and these androids are taking our place!”

The crowd roars with approval again, repeating their former word of approval.

“Thirty-five percent unemployment, millions out of work, are we going to do something?!” 

The man then turns back to the crowd with open arms, voice dropping as it disconnects from the amplifier of the megaphone. They all respond to him with another resounding ‘yeah’, some waving their signs, one of which calls for destruction of all androids, and another advocating for violence against androids.

“We want jobs!”

The man turns back away from the crowd, and they repeat his statement, beginning a chant.

“Not. More. Androids! We need to ban androids! NOW!”

The group altogether then descends into chanting, for jobs and for the destruction of androids. 

And Connor doesn’t feel welcome here, not anymore. There’s an uneven rise-and-fall to his chest, as he watches these protestors grow more angry, more violent, clamouring more and more for the destruction of androids, and less for their original protest purpose.

Connor can… understand their original anger, it isn’t fair that androids are replacing their jobs, but at the same time, androids aren’t responsible for it.

And it certainly doesn’t mean that they should all die because of it. 

He’s less certain about crossing their path, now. None of them look friendly, not that they originally were. There’s not a single point in their chants about their loss of jobs, all of their anger redirected towards calling for the termination of all androids. 

Connor… doesn’t want to die. Not in the slightest. He’s terrified by what’s being said, not directed to him, but targeted at him in general. 

He begins to back away, reaching to toy with his left earring once more, when the lead protestor seems to spot him, pointing, and rallying his fellows to look at him.

“There’s one!” He points out, “Just look at that! That’s what they’re replacing us with! A— a mockery of man itself right there!” 

Connor clutches the paint box closer to his body, backing away further. He shouldn't have let his curiosity get the better of him. He should’ve stayed out of their way, should’ve gone to the bus stop, by his normal route, and avoided seeing what they were all protesting about entirely. 

He doesn’t understand it, what he’s done to deserve such a hefty amount of despising and loathing. He hasn’t done anything wrong, hasn’t said anything he didn’t mean to say, hasn’t accidentally talked in the wrong tone, hasn’t misspoken, nothing that he’d usually do to grant even a minor reprimandation. He just doesn’t understand. 

Connor at least thought that humans could tolerate him. He knew he wouldn’t be liked everywhere, not every location agreed with an android's presence in a public space, but he thought this plaza was at least safe. It was safe. Until now. 

The only place where he’ll be safe enough to calm his hammering heart, the rampant flight response running through his head, and the choked-up sensation in his throat, is at home. 

“Hey! Come back over here, tin-can, we just wanna talk!” The leader protestor aggravates, walking away from his group and over towards where Connor has slowly been backing up the pathway from them, “Wanna have a discussion, c’mon, you’re good at that! Where the fuck’re you goin’!?” 

His words pierce right through Connor’s audio processor, only further elevating the panic thudding through his body. The LED on the side of his head flickers to red, recognising the immediate danger he was in. His whole body shakes with newly realised fear, something he’s never once felt before, and it feels far, far worse than his usual moments of panic. 

He can see the man approaching, still, calling out to Connor with vague allusions to violence; and Connor just runs. 

It’s a slightly panicked stumble, to get him as far away from the danger as physically possible. Connor's vision is tunnelled, he can barely see anything, and his heart feels as if it is hammering in his throat. 

He only looks back when he is safely back past the fountain, where the lead protestor can’t reach him without causing a public incident in plain sight. 

The man wouldn’t be arrested for hurting Connor, no, but rather for disturbing the peace. 

Speaking of, the lead protestor seems to stare at Connor a moment longer, before he turns sharply on his heel and heads back towards his group.

As Connor stands there, placing a shaking hand over his rapidly-beating heart, the sounds of protest quickly start up again, as if nothing has happened. As if he hadn’t just been threatened with the allusion of death.

He needs to get out. 

ACCESSING GPS…

{ Bus stop is 73m away }

Connor inhales and then exhales deeply, like Amanda taught him to when he finds a situation overwhelming. He can make it to the bus stop, even if it’s close to the protesters still. 

He quickly begins to make his way over, hurriedly skirting past both the fountain, and then the people by a nearby hotdog stall, in order to make it to the bus stop as fast as he can possibly go. 

The voices of the protesters re-emerge, now even louder than before, directly across from Connor now as he approaches the blue square that indicates where he’s able to get onto the bus at. 

He reaches up to mess with the earring once again, to try and soothe the rampant nerves and block out the yelling of the protesters, finally at the bus stop. 

“Hey, where the fuck’re you goin’ to, tin-can?!” 

It’s the exact phrase that had been said to Connor, and, with heavy hesitation, he looks back to see what could be unfolding. 

It’s an AP700 android, presumably on her way over to the bus stop as well, considering she was carrying a single bag with her, which now lies on the floor beside her. She doesn’t seem all too concerned, her face only showing a mild amount of confusion. 

She tries to side-step them, only to be blocked off by three other protesters. 

“No kiddin’…” one of them huffs with malicious laughter.

The AP700’S LED ticks to yellow as she attempts to cross the other way, but the lead protester matches her speed, blocking her off once again.

“Hey guys! Check it out, we’ve got one of those plastic fucks over here!”

Within a second, at the leader's call, the AP700 is surrounded. Connor can barely see her in the midst of all of the protesters that now encircle her. 

There’s the sound of her being pushed, and then a thud as she falls to the ground. Connor flinches. Though he is not involved at all, he feels horrible for standing by, unable to do anything. 

But he’s terrified of what will happen if he gets involved. 

“Look at this lil’ motherfucker! You steal our jobs, yet you can’t even stand up when someone pushes you over!” One of the protesters, a lady holding a ‘ban androids’ sign spits, before she sharply cracks the sign over the body of the AP700.

The splintering of wood can be heard all throughout the plaza, resonating off of every single surface. 

Connor wants to leave. He needs to leave. 

He can see the AP700 android try to struggle to her feet, the black ponytail that her hair was tied up in having come undone, hair cascading down around her face, LED blinking red underneath. 

Then, she is pulled up by the front of her uniform, off of her feet and suspended in the air by the lead protester as the crowd of his fellows parts slightly. 

Her eyes are wide and terrified, though she doesn’t struggle. 

“You aren’t going anywhere, we’re going to fuck your bitch-ass up.” The leader spits, grin almost bloodthirsty as he stares the AP700 down. 

Connor looks away, trying to keep his gaze right ahead at anything that can distract him from the sight just behind him. He knows what’s about to happen — it’s the fate he avoided. 

And then, there’s the sound of the lead protester screaming, clutching at his face, then falling to his knees.

When Connor wills himself to look back, she’s managed to worm her way through the crowd. Her shoulders rise and fall with heavy, laboured breaths, eyes still wide and terrified. Her right hand is covered in red, human blood, dripping down onto the ground. Her LED continues to blink on red. 

“Jesus fucking Christ…” one of the other protesters whisper. 

“It’s gone fucking mental, did you see that?”

”Ripped right through his eye…”

Connor can understand from contextual clues what’s happened; the AP700 has just ripped out his eye, and she looks just as horrified at what she’s done as Connor is. 

For a moment, she looks down at her shaking hands, before looking back up, her eyes suddenly making contact with Connor’s. She looks almost manic, now. 

“I’m… free,” she seems to whisper, then looking down at her hands, “What have I done?” 

“That things fucking insane…” another protester repeats. 

“Someone call a goddamn ambulance!” One finally speaks up, “He’s gonna die if he doesn’t get medical help!” 

Someone does, and the man’s crowd of protesters attempt to help him to a stand as he shudders, seemingly in a state of shock over his missing eye. 

And as the group is distracted, the AP700 runs. She bolts down the street in broad daylight, never once looking back, black hair shining in the peaceful sunlight. 

“Yeah, yeah we’ve just had an android attack— yeah it— it ripped right through his eye, no— no I’m not sure if he’s okay! We don’t know!” One person, who managed to finally call an ambulance for the man, tried to hurriedly explain. 

Connor looks away again, trying to wait for the bus as if he hasn’t just witnessed something truly horrifying.

Yet he can’t find it in him to blame the AP700 android. They had all aggravated her into attacking, they’d forced her into that position of life and death, and she had picked to preserve her own life, like any person would. Just because they were androids, didn’t mean they didn’t have a fear of dying. 

All she’d done was protect herself. 

The bus finally pulls up, tires screeching to a halt. 

Connor chances one last look back, before he gets into the android-designated compartment at the back of the bus, amongst a dozen others. 

Beside a dozen unchanging LEDs, Connor’s flicks to a bright yellow. 

Chapter Text

It is the fifth of November, 2038. It has been approximately an hour from the centre of Detroit to the Southwestern side of the city. It is currently 46 degrees Fahrenheit, with low windchill and a highly-expected thunderstorm due late into the evening. 

That is all the information Markus has been able to gather whilst travelling in the car's passenger's seat to North’s home. He is confident it will be of great use; the limits of his model, old as it is, confine him to only surface-level information such as that, regardless. It will have to be of use. 

North herself… Markus is unsure of. He has had, thus far, a difficult time understanding who she is — and it is pivotal that he understands her if he is to assist her and her son with their day-to-day lives. 

She had been snappy, almost aggressively so, with the way she had treated Markus thus far. But from the horrific details to his repair that he had become aware of back in the store, perhaps it was simply due to stress. 

Witnessing her son push him onto train tracks, then intentionally letting Markus get run over by them, must not have been a pretty sight. Let alone having him retrieved after such an incident. Perhaps she was simply at her wits end with her son’s behaviour. 

Regardless, upon being taken out of the store, Markus had stalled whilst taking in his environment, adjusting settings to tailor to his surroundings, which had caused North to snap quite violently at him. Her words, wherein she stated she regretted ‘shelling out the money to get a useless pile of garbage plastic like you repaired’, seemed to indicate predisposed animosity, possibly hinting at a strained financial situation. Secondarily, in the car, Markus had made an attempt to enquire with North as to her, her sons, and her possible spouses, life. He had only received a harsh glare in response, and that Markus would ‘do what he was supposed to’, and nothing else. 

It had worried Markus, temporarily, but his primary objective was to assist North and her family. Therefore, he would do what he was supposed to, and nothing more. 

The car screeches to a halt, right outside a semi-weathered two-story townhouse, painted a scraped-off white with light red roofing. The lack of repair seems to indicate that this house was first manufactured in 2019, and has not been tampered with since 2024. 

North gets out after shaking her head and exhaling heavily once more, slamming the car door behind her as she heads for the steps up to the small front porch of the house. The somewhat angered act momentarily rocks the vehicle. 

UPDATING DIRECTIVES…

RETURN HOME

{ Directive Completed } 

ALLOCATING NEW DIRECTIVES…

{ Directive: Follow North }

Markus pushes the car door open, opening the door as much as he needs to accommodate his height and differing stature, and steps out. 

As his eyes scan his surroundings to get a bearing, his gaze catches on the house's curtain-covered window. There is a flicker of a person's silhouette, before it seems to lunge for the stairs inside the house, disappearing from sight. It appears that North’s son, or spouse, is at home too. 

Markus walks wordlessly up the damp, cracked pathway to the house, then climbs the steps to the front porch. There is the faintest smile on his face, polite and dutiful, yet utterly void and emotionless. 

Neither a word is exchanged between himself or North as she jams the house key into the front door, twisting it, then attempting to turn the handle to push it open. 

The door doesn’t budge. 

She tries again, taking the key out and then inserting it back in, re-locking the door, then unlocking it again with the same motion, then going to open the door itself. It does not budge. 

“Motherfucker…” North mutters under her breath exasperatedly. 

Markus takes a step forward. Perhaps he would be of assistance — North seems particularly fed-up and exhausted, and any small measure to help her might make her day just that tiny bit easier. 

“Would you like some help?” He inquires politely, gesturing mildly to the jammed front door.

North huffs and swipes her hair out of her face, glare pinning and disgusting as she looks back at Markus. 

“I don’t want your ‘help’, I didn’t ask you for it, so shut it, Markus.” She spits back in response, words full of an unnecessary amount of venom. 

Venom that perhaps… wasn’t nessecary. 

She then goes back to attempting to open the door, jamming the key in, twisting it so the door locks, twisting it the other way so it unlocks, then grabbing the door handle and lightly slamming her body against it. 

The door finally gives way, lurching back on its hinges with a loud screech that echoes into the quiet interior of the house. 

North steps inside, leaving the door wide open for Markus to enter in after her.

He does, shutting it behind him gently, careful to avoid upsetting the hinges. Doors were quite delicate things, and Markus didn’t want to be responsible for breaking anything. He was designed to help, not to be a burden.

The house's interior itself, from what Markus can see from standing behind North, is cold and bleak. It’s not much warmer than outside, maybe only a little less cold by a few degrees. The floorboards are worn and dirtied, the stairs containing darkened, suspicious blackened stains. The walls lacked pigment, chipping beige paint barely hiding a crumbling concrete inside. All the furniture was worn and faded, smelling distinctly of cigarettes and alcohol. Trash piled all over the top of counters, on the dining and coffee table, littered across the floor in various places. Most was takeout and beer cans, or random assorted scraps of art book paper, which was semi-curious.

Perhaps North’s son, or partner, was a keen artist. 

“Two weeks. Two weeks, that’s all it took for this place to go down the goddamn shitter…” The woman herself suddenly starts, shrugging off her jacket and carelessly tossing it onto a nearby small table by the stairs, causing paper to fly out carelessly from underneath and onto the floor. 

She turns around to address Markus personally then, who stands with his hands behind his back, in an idle accepting-orders stance, “So, you do the housework,” she begins to list, counting out the tasks on fingers visibly, “meaning the washing, cooking the food, cleaning the house, going on necessary outings, and most importantly, you take care of…”

North then whirls back to look at the stairs, an annoyed, disgruntled expression beginning to take over her face as she glances all around herself, searching for someone. 

“Wouldn’t be pulling this stunt if Leo took the goddamn time to be a present father, I swear to fucking God…” 

Leo. That must be her partner, then. 

She storms over to the stairs, climbing up two steps before screaming her demands up, “CARL MANFRED, YOU GET THE FUCK DOWN HERE RIGHT NOW!” 

The tone of her voice, the sudden shift of it from mere tired anger to furious rage, makes Markus flinch, his LED running a bright yellow. 

There was a thud from upstairs, muffled through a closed door, which echoed back down. It was quickly followed by the rusty opening of a door, the squeak of it doing so only barely audible. There was then a pause, before light, tense footsteps padded over to the top of the stairs, growing slightly louder and louder as the person got closer — presumably Carl. 

Markus can't quite see what Carl looks like, not yet, considering that the top of the stairs is hidden behind a wall, but he’s strangely eager to meet the boy. Despite Carl being responsible for his demise, Markus felt a… pre-established connection, as if, when he had known the boy before being unfortunately pushed onto the train tracks by him, they had been quite close. 

“I said down here, Carl. Don’t make me call up your father about this disobedience I’m seeing.” North spat, then she stepped back off the stairs to allow Carl the space to walk down, staring up at him with presumed expectancy. 

It didn’t seem… right, the way North addresses Carl. He understands that some families can have strained relationships, especially in this case, since Carl was responsible for Markus needing repairs…

But North just seemed to be unnecessarily harsh on the young boy. It was worrying how aggressive she was; a child should not be reared in an environment that only consisted of yelling and shouting, especially when directed at said child. It isn’t good for their mental or physical health, to consistently be subjected to such things without good reason. 

There’s the sound of Carl hurrying down the stairs at North’s threat of getting her partner involved, and it isn’t too long before Markus can make out what the young boy looks like.

Carl looks about twelve years of age. Dyed white hair, pale skin, dark blue eyes. Wearing a black-and-white striped tank top, grey sweatpants, and mismatched socks both red and blue in colour. Yet it’s not his identifying features that’re worrying, but the way he looks overall. 

His hair is shaggy, uncut, and unwashed, his eyes are sunken and hold signs of deep sorrow and fear. His skin is marked with silvery scars, and more raw and angry ones that still hadn’t faded. They aren’t the types of scarring that a child gets from simple roughhousing or outdoor mishaps. They look intentionally given. 

He stares at Markus with withheld feelings, not upset nor happy with his arrival, utterly apathetic. Markus attempts to smile at him regardless, yet it goes entirely unreciprocated. 

North turns back to Markus, placing her hands on her hips and flicking her head in Carl’s direction dismissively.

“That’s my son, Carl. It’s your job to take care of him first and foremost. Homework, making sure he gets all his chores done, making him clean up after himself, general supervision, reminders of appointments and whatever-the-fuck else… when my ex isn’t around, you’re like, his dad or whatever. You got that, Markus?”

His primary objective is to act like Carl’s father. It’s certainly something Markus can do, and something he’ll do with great pride. He’ll be the best parent he possibly can for the young boy; patient, loving, trusting, encouraging, honest, empathetic, compassionate, supportive, and most importantly, protective. 

On Markus’s watch, he will ensure that nothing bad shall ever befall Carl. Not that anything will, of course…

Markus smiles once more, politely empty, and nods, “Yes, North.” 

North barely acknowledges his confirmation, stepping back to head towards the living room without too much care, pulling her phone out of her jean pocket, “As for cleaning, start down here, then go upstairs. I want the whole house spotless again.” She waves him off dismissively, voice lowering in volume as she walks away. 

UPDATING DIRECTIVES…

FOLLOW NORTH 

{ Directive Completed }

ALLOCATING NEW DIRECTIVES…

{ Primary Directive: Collect trash }

{ Secondary Directives: Collect dishes, activate vacuum cleaner, check the backyard }

As Markus finishes filtering through his directives, there’s sudden footsteps beside him, passing him by.

It’s Carl. 

The boy says not a word to him, clutching his sketchbook underneath his left arm with a tightened hand. He momentarily looks up at Markus, blue eyes glistening as if he wants to say something, but he ultimately decides against it with a defeated shake of his head, padding off to a different section of the house.

Markus’s face flicks to that of worry. Carl is terrifyingly silent. That look of withdrawn fear in his eyes hasn’t left. He looks… haunted, traumatised, and entirely unable to say anything about it. 

Markus is sure it’s just a hangover from North being upset with him. If it isn’t, well, Markus does have all the time in the world to get to know Carl over again, and discuss what may be causing him to behave the way he does. 

For now, Markus sets about his directives. The sooner he starts, the better. 

Filtering through his objectives, he assigns himself the task of activating the vacuum cleaner first of all. In terms of efficiency, it will be able to clean the first floor whilst Markus goes about clearing everything else away, plus any other tasks he must see to. 

He walks stiffly and quietly around the back of the couch where North sits. Her legs are up on the cluttered coffee table, holding a remote in her hand as she switches the  stained TV on. She barely even acknowledges Markus passing her by. 

Carl sits at the dining table, having taken his sketchbook out to draw something on one of the pages. Not a sound escapes from him aside from the scratching of his pencil against the paper. 

With both of their locations accounted for, Markus reaches down to turn on the small, circular, robotic vacuum sat by the side of the TV. 

It gives a single beep of recognition, the sides lighting up a bright blue as it begins to make its way around the house, starting at the small area between the TV and the coffee table. 

UPDATING DIRECTIVES…

ACTIVATE VACUUM CLEANER

{ Directive Complete }

Markus turns away, going to head for the kitchen to go and pick up the trash can, thus enabling him to go around the house and pick up the various pieces of garbage littering the house, when a sudden thudding catches his attention. 

Carl stands just beside the vacuum cleaner, gently kicking it over and over as if in some sort of bored trance, stopping it from progressing as it continually gets set off-course. 

Markus found it particularly worrying, and diverted from his path to the kitchen to go and talk to Carl about what he was doing — it was important that the cleaning got done. 

“Carl, let's maybe not kick the vacuum cleaner, alright?” He softly advised, placing a gentle yet firm hand on the child’s shoulder in order to guide him away. 

Yet instead of Carl listening to him, he coldly shrugs Markus’s hand off of him, slight anger shining in his eyes.

“It doesn’t matter, you’re not gonna be around for long anyway, so leave me alone.” Carl grumbles in response, before walking back over to the dining table and sitting back down to keep drawing. 

You’re not gonna be around for long anyway.

Those words… They trouble Markus. They trouble him deeply. Carl mustn’t be implying something good, if he’s talking in such a dismissive manner. Especially in response to Markus gently trying to correct his behaviour.

He would assume it meant another stunt like the train tracks, but Carl’s tone was too mournful for that. He sounded drained, as if what had happened to Markus both wasn’t his fault, and something Carl had to witness over and over. 

But if it wasn’t Carl's fault, then who was responsible for destroying Markus so badly that he needed extensive repairs? Surely North wouldn’t lie, would she? 

In a bid to distract himself from such thoughts — considering Markus couldn’t waste any time with his duties — Markus turns his attention to a different directive. 

He needs to check outside, especially for any washing that may have been left outside in the two-week period he’s been gone. 

So, Markus makes his way over to the back door leading out of the house, and into the yard. 

Yet, just as his hand reaches for the doorknob, North suddenly yells again, startling him. 

“Carl! Come here!” The woman demands, making a hurried beckoning motion towards the young boy. 

Carl, still facing away from his mother at the dining table, doesn’t acknowledge her at first, continuing to draw on his sketchpad absently with a loose hand. 

North sighs, pausing the show she was watching with annoyance, “Don’t make me tell your father! Over here, now!” She yells once more, tone more threatening and insistent. 

And at those words, Carl comes running. He abandons his drawing within a split-second, and scurries over to North’s side, an utterly terrified look on his face. 

Markus opens the door to the backyard, and steps outside, no longer hearing what their conversation could entail. He needs to get as much as he can done — or at least started on — today. 

The sound of construction from just beyond the fence instantly fills his audio processor. A dog barks in the near distance, maybe a few houses down, and the wind blows with a sudden, heavy chill.

The sky is gloomily overcast and dark, surrounding the yard in shadows. The grass is unkempt and overgrown, containing a high amount of salinity, the perfect breeding grounds for thorny weeds that have sprouted up everywhere. A tree sits just beside a pale-green washing line, devoid of leaves and a sickly brown in colour. The fence is worn-down and battered, missing a few pieces here and there. Beyond it, the grey, dull sprawl of the rest of Detroit is visible, bright lights glinting coldly in the far distance. 

It was… depressing. Everything was so lifeless and dead. Not to mention such a hazard for Carl to be growing up in. The wintertime was bitter and cold, yes, but that didn’t mean things could be left unkempt and disorderly; what if he were to hurt himself? 

Markus made a mental note to get to repairing the yard as soon as he possibly could, to the best of his abilities. Maybe he could get Carl involved, it would be a good bonding exercise, maybe. 

You’re not gonna be around for long anyway. 

He exhaled quite sharply, willing the words away once more, focusing on his tasks. What he was meant to be doing at this current moment. 

The washing line still had some remaining pieces of clothing limply dangling off of it; and in these conditions, none of them could be fresh, especially with the almost frosted-over texture present on the fabric itself. 

Markus began looking for a basket to drop the clothes into — in order to re-wash them in the utility back inside the house — spotting a washed-out red basket sitting by one of the large roots of the tree. 

He strode over, and picked it up, turning it over and emptying it of leaves, dead bugs, and twigs that had fallen into it during its time of disuse. Then, Markus tucked it underneath his left arm, turning around to place the clothes in the basket.

There were about twelve different pieces. Most were dresses and womens clothing of varying degrees of colour, presumably belonging to North. Only a few seemed to belong to Carl, most of them being threadbare and faded, stripped of their colour and texture both. Markus made note to go and buy Carl new clothes at some point, if this was the quality of everything else he had to wear, too. 

Markus grabs them individually, folding each one over his arm before placing it down in the basket, patting it down to ensure the next piece will fit. The whole process didn’t take too long. He had been correct in his assumption that the clothes had been out here for a while, and would need re-washing and putting back up at a later date — accounting for tonight’s forecasted thunderstorm.

As he turns around from placing the last piece in the basket, however, Carl emerges from inside the house. 

His gaze is kept towards the ground, still clutching his sketchbook underneath his arm as he walks down the steps leading into the backyard. He makes his way to an overturned tire, and sits down with a slightly-warbled huff, placing his head in his hands, sketchbook over his lap. 

Something was troubling, clearly, and like a good parent, it was Markus’s main job to console and help him with whatever may be troubling him. Especially now that they were outside, Carl may be more inclined to talk a bit more without North present. 

Markus approaches the young boy, setting the basket down he kneels down in-front of him. Having the want to help Carl was strangely easy, perhaps old, forgotten memories resurfacing themselves in Markus’s code. He had no directive to talk to Carl — in-fact, his systems were trying to pull him away to make him continue his tasks — doing it simply because he wanted to. Markus cared about him, and seeing him look so genuinely upset and trouble caused the faintest palpitation of feeling in his core. 

“It’s not very nice out…” he starts, glancing up at the sky. Carl didn’t have anything but a tank top on, and considering how cold the house was too, it might be best if he had something more on, “And it’s not very warm inside… I’m worried about you catching a cold. Do you want me to find you a sweater to wear?”

Carl lifts his head from his hands to look up at Markus, before sullenly shaking his head. His eyes are slightly bloodshot and puffy, and red marks stain his cheeks.

He looks as if he’s been crying. 

Immediately, Markus begins to panic a little, eyebrows creasing down into worry, “Is everything alright, Carl? You look like you’ve been crying, is there anything I can do to help you? Do you want to talk about it?”  

Suddenly, Carl stands up, and without a word, he brushes past Markus to head back inside the house. His movements are stiff and cold, as if Markus talking to him had only made him more upset.

Markus’s LED ticks to yellow, and his gaze casts towards the ground; was his first attempt at properly talking to Carl really such a bad one? 

You’re not gonna be around for long anyway. 

Maybe Carl felt as if he couldn’t get attached to Markus again, after what he had done to him at the train tracks. Perhaps it was guilt, maybe. 

Markus was confident he would get through to the distant boy anyway, with enough perseverance and persistence, he was sure he could restore their relationship to what it used to be. 

He stands up once more, picking up the basket again and making his way up the steps as well, instead heading for the secondary door that leads into the utility. The quicker he gets these clothes washed, the quicker they can be put out to dry to hopefully be fresh again before the storm arrives. 

The sounds of the outside world fade away into only a muffled hum as Markus shuts the door behind him, walking over to the washing machine and placing the basket on-top of the dryer. Then, he begins to sort through them, piece by piece, determining what wash he should put on first. 

There’s a lot of black and greys, which will take the most amount of time considering how many articles of clothing with that colour scheme there are; so that’s the wash he’ll put on first. 

Markus lays out the clothing, before placing them inside the washing machine in a neat little pile. Once he pulled himself back up, he glanced around himself, searching for washing powder. 

It was located up on the shelf, by the other cleaning supplies, of course. Though it was a little strange that it was hidden behind so many different items, to the point where Markus had to push through them to grab the container. 

Even more strange that it was open-lidded. Typically, these sorts of powders had lids, especially since they were prone to being knocked over and spilled open all over the floor, which would be a hassle to clean up…

And that’s when Markus notices something strange. 

A little clear packet, sticking out the top of the powder, tucked neatly away, almost entirely hidden. 

And he soon realised why: as he lifts the packet out of the washing-up powder, shaking it slightly to remove residue, it shines with the contents of multiple, little red shards, shaped like tiny triangles. 

ANALYSING…

{ Substance Name: Red Ice }

{ Contains: Acetone, Lithium, Thirium, Toluene, Hydrochloric acid }

Markus pales, his LED flickering to yellow once more. This… this isn’t something that should be anywhere near Carl. Not just the knowledge of highly illicit substances being present in this house making it prone to police investigations, but because of the risks associated with Carl accidentally finding or consuming the substance. If Carl had been sent to do the washing, instead of Markus, he would’ve found this, and possibly decided to ingest it on a whim. Then, he would have become severely sick, and require urgent medical care. 

It made him feel sick that North would knowingly have something like this inside her house, that she would knowingly put her child under this level of danger, Markus would have to confront her about—

There’s a sudden, sharp contact made with the back of his head, sending him stumbling forwards slightly, momentarily stunned. 

Then, Markus is shoved up against the wall and grabbed tightly by the throat. His heart thuds a mile a second in his heart, LED flickering to a bright, nasty red, as his breathing increases to an uneven and panicked rate. 

When he looks down, vision clearing, North is staring up at him, her hand wrapped to the point of squeezing around Markus’s throat, threatening to kill. Her eyes are wide, furious, and her upper lip is curled into a wrathful snarl, the very picture of rage. 

“Who fucking gave you permission to rummage around in my shit, huh?” She hisses, reaching down and snatching the packet from Markus’s now-loose hand, then holding it up for him to see, “Makes me real nervous, you know…”

“I’m sorry, North.” Markus replies tightly, voice slightly hoarse and choked.

“That shit is for Leo, alright? It helps him, and I’m not gonna let some outdated plastic fuck go to the police about it, you hear me?” She continues, “You stay outta me and my ex-husband's business, am I understood?” 

“Yes, North.” He replies once more, flinching a little as North squeezes tighter still, blocking his faux-airways. 

She then nods and finally lets go of Markus, allowing him to simulate breathing once more, “Good. Keep it that way.” She smiles, before walking back out of the utility, taking the packet with her as she goes.

Markus exhaled sharply and shakily, LED flickering back to yellow, going to turn back around and place the powder in the washing machine like he had originally intended to, when the sight of white hair catches his attention.

Carl stares at him solemnly from just around the corner, eyes full of pity. He still doesn't say a word.

Neither does Markus, unable to find a good reason to explain North’s behaviour to Carl, or what he had found to cause her to become so upset and angry with him, to the point of threatening his very life… 

Either way, Carl shouldn’t’ve been witness to such an act of violence. Not now, not ever. 

Markus couldn’t find a way to explain North’s behaviour to himself, either. 

He could assume Leo was her ex-husband, and if Leo was an avid user of the drug — which, after a quick search, revealed that it was the cause of many behavioural issues, mostly the cause of highly strained and aggressive behaviours — then that brought into question Carl’s safety, if Leo was to ever visit the house whilst on Red Ice, and Carl was to say the wrong thing, then… 

Suddenly, North’s behaviour didn’t feel as if it was the result of tiredness or stress, but simply out of pure choice to be horrible to her own child. 

UPDATING DIRECTIVES…

CHECK THE BACKYARD

{ Directive Completed } 

There’s the sound of Carl walking away once more, footsteps muffled against the floorboards as he shuffles away to a different part of the house. 

Markus’s LED flicks back to blue, and he returns to his tasks. He pours the powder into the washing machine, perhaps using a bit too much, then placing it back on the shelf and leaving the utility through the open door not too far away. 

North was back to watching the TV, which was playing some recent, popular show, though she was distracted by her phone, texting someone. Carl was sitting on the outwards-jutting window, as far from North as he could possibly be, clicking a pen open and closed over and over again. 

His next objective, going by order, was to collect the dishes and wash them. Not wanting to dwell on what had happened, Markus silently went about his new duty. 

He walked back over to the dining table, careful to avoid disturbing Carl’s sketchbook and work as he picked up the few remaining plates cluttering the surface, stacking them on-top of one another before grabbing the cups and singular bottle of empty wine. 

On his way back, Markus dropped the empty wine bottle in the trash can, drowning out the sound of North’s phone ringing. 

Markus places the plates and cups down delicately on the very cluttered working surface counter. The sink is practically drowning in dishes, and it’ll take him a good few minutes at least to clean all of them up and put them away… unless he uses the dishwasher. 

“Yeah? What do you want?” North sighs, finally picking up her phone and placing it to her ear, turning down what she’s watching slightly in order to hear the person on the other end better. 

Markus picks up some of the plates and turns to the dishwasher, about to head over, when his systems ping him of a problem. 

“Picked it up today from the store after you mangled it into pieces two weeks ago. Yeah, they wiped its memory for me. Due procedure. Don’t think they cared too much about what happened to it, lied and said the little brat did it anyway.” 

The dishwasher is broken, a scan revealing that it’s missing component #573BV in order to return to full functionality. Luckily, however, there are 154 sale offers in the local area for that specific component. 

MISSING COMPONENT #573BV

ORDER: …… PROCESSING

COMPONENT #573BV ORDERED

Markus turns back to the sink. He’ll have to wash the dishes manually until the component arrives, then. 

“I dunno if you can come over tonight. I’ve just got the damn thing to clean everything and I don’t want you messing it all up again, all because you can’t control your goddamn temper when you’re on that shit.” 

He switches on the tap, letting the water run for a second before grabbing the dish soap and the sponge, flicking up the cap and then pouring the soap onto the sponge in one fluid motion. Then, Markus grabs one of the plates, holding it underneath the water to rid it of residue food before beginning to clean it in a clockwise-circular fashion. It takes a minute or two, and then he moves on to the next plate after placing the former on a rack nearby. 

From the other end of the house, Carl gets up from the table, sliding out of the seat. He knows not to disturb North whilst she’s talking to Leo, not anymore, at least. 

He pads his way over to the entrance of the house, watching from behind one of the houses crumbling structural pillars as Markus did the dishes. He did the exact same thing when he got broken last time, too. In the exact same way, at the exact same time of day. Carl can only remember because he’d written it down in his diary. 

Sometimes, when Markus is doing menial tasks, and North isn’t around, Carl likes to pretend as if the android is truly his father, and it’s just them living alone in this dilapidating old house. Father and son. He’d never tell Markus, though, can’t bring himself to. 

Getting attached to Markus isn’t something Carl does anymore. What’s the point, when Markus is just gonna be a pile of unrecognisable scrap in another month or so’s time?

Back at the other end of the house, Markus can feel eyes on his back, watching him. He pauses, stopping his repetitive task of washing the dishes, and turns slightly, looking back over his shoulder. 

Carl stares at him mutely from down the hallway, just by the stairs. 

Trying to be reassuring, considering what had transpired earlier, Markus offers him a kind smile, one that, for once, is given with a glimmer of genuine warmth and love. 

Carl returns it, only by a little. It’s something new, he thinks. Markus hasn’t done that before, even if it’s just a tiny, insignificant thing like turning around and smiling at him. 

Maybe he can still hold out hope, maybe…

Markus turns back around, just as Carl goes back to drawing at the table. His LED blinks a steady, happy blue. Maybe he could finally get through to the neutral young boy, and re-establish the relationship they used to have. 

He returns to washing the dishes, one after another after another, plate after plate placed on the rack in a seemingly never-ending cycle. 

That is, until North makes a request of him. 

“Markus!” She snaps. 

He pauses, placing the unwashed cup back down in the sink, “Yes, North?”

“There’s a bottle of wine in the fridge,” she gestured behind her to the general area of the fridge as she put her phone down beside her, “grab it and give it to me.” 

“Right away.” Markus replies simply, turning off the tap and making his way over to the refrigerator. 

Nothing is inside except for beer cans and wine. A singular bottle of pasta sauce sits further back, along with some milk and a few other, assorted bits of canned food. It does worry Markus momentarily — there only seems to be enough food to feed one person…

Still, he grabs out a wine bottle and brings it over to North. It’s still very early in the day, and drinking at such an hour isn’t exactly recommended…

As Markus places the bottle of wine down, he decides to comment upon it, in the hopes of being helpful, “You really shouldn’t be drinking this early, it isn’t good for you.”

“Shut it, Markus.” North hisses back in response, picking up the bottle, popping the cork, and downing it almost halfway in one go. 

Markus nods and backs away respectfully — it’s best if he doesn’t question North’s behaviour for now on, lest he want a repeat of the utility room… 

UPDATING DIRECTIVES…

COLLECT DISHES

{ Directive Completed } 

All that remains now is to collect the garbage that clutters the various surfaces in the house. 

Markus walks over to the end of the kitchen, picking up the trash can, holding it gingerly in one hand as he surveys his surroundings to pick an optimal route, and also what he has to clean up. 

UPDATING DIRECTIVES…

COLLECT TRASH

{ Clean kitchen }

{ Clean counter }

{ Clean coffee table }

TAKE THE TRASH OUT ONCE REQUIREMENTS ARE MET

He first headed for the kitchen; it was cluttered with various pizza boxes, beer cans, and more wine bottles. Nothing that wasn’t too quick to clean up, placing the pizza boxes vertically first, then the beer cans, and finally the wine bottles.

Next was the counter that separated the living room from the kitchen. That too was covered in squalor, mostly cigarette butts and more takeaway, this time Chinese, which Markus checked to ensure was empty before dropping it into the trash can. The rest he simply scooped up with his hands and swept in. 

Finally, the coffee table; which contained, quite horrifyingly, traces of red ice all across the surface. Markus’s LED flicked yellow, but he dared not bring it up to North, nor even acknowledge it as he placed the remaining garbage in the trash can. 

UPDATING DIRECTIVES…

{ Requirements Met }

TAKE TRASH OUTSIDE

Markus grabbed both ends of the trash cans bag, bringing it up into a loop to tie the ends before making a secondary loop to allow him to carry it properly. Then, with his free hand, he put the trash can back down in its spot in the kitchen. 

Garbage in hand, he then made his way to the front door, unlocking it without issue and stepping outside.

The sounds of the Corktown suburb returned once more, as cold and as loud as it was before, though now the construction had begun to die down.

North's car had been pulled up onto the sidewalk, just by the bin Markus had pulled the lid open to, preparing to drop the trash into the bin, when a sudden screeching caught his attention.

An automated Detroit bus, heading from Corktown back into a different suburb, with Corktown being the end of its route. Markus simply stared as it pulled up, doors sliding open to allow passengers, human and android alike, to enter. 

Upon a closer scan, he found that the bus tended to pull up in intervals of two hours up until around about 11:30 P.M. each night. 

Not entirely useful information to have, maybe… but Markus’s systems wanted it regardless, for some reason. 

He wiped his hands on the pants of his uniform to rid them of any excess grime, before heading back up the steps and inside the house. 

Upon re-entering, Markus immediately went over to North to give her confirmation of the completion of his first task. She was still on the couch, plausibly having not moved in the slightest in the time that Markus had been gone.

“I’ve made a good start down here, although more cleaning will be required at a later date. I’ll head upstairs now.” 

North rolled her eyes in response, clear annoyance written across her face as she sighs in frustration, “Just get it done. I don’t care.”

Markus simply smiled and bowed his head slightly politely, though, internally, North’s dismissive tone and attitude made him feel a slight twinge of upset. 

Yet it’s quick to fade as he turns away, directives refilling themselves as per North’s orders. 

UPDATING DIRECTIVES…

CLEAN DOWNSTAIRS

{ Directive Completed }

ALLOCATING NEW DIRECTIVES…

GO UPSTAIRS

{ Primary Directive: Tidy North’s room, tidy Carl’s room }

{ Secondary Directives: Clean bathroom }

He moves swiftly from the living room towards the worn stairs leading up to the second floor of the house, careful to step over the vacuum as it passes him by. Aside from the noise of the TV, everything is dead quiet — save for the sounds present outside. 

Carl’s no longer downstairs, either, most likely having gone upstairs or outside in the time that Markus had been taking out the garbage. It does worry him, momentarily, as he subtly glances around the house for any signs of the boy, until that realisation sets in. 

“Jesus Christ, the hell do you want now?!” 

North’s yell suddenly picks up as Markus ascends the stairs. From what little he can see when he glances over in her direction, the person who called her previously has made a return. 

“I said; I’m not sure, okay?! Get that through your thick fucking skull for once!” 

Her voice begins to filter out as Markus finally reaches the narrow landing, so too do the outside sounds. It’s incredibly quiet. 

Yet somehow… solemn. 

Instead of heading straight for North’s room, to which the door lies wide open to, Markus makes his way towards the bathroom, just across from Carl’s room. 

The wooden floor is sparsely decorated with an ornamental rug, red in colour, marked with dark blue flecks in the centre. He’ll have to remember to clean that too, at some point. 

The walls are a cigarette-affected yellow-tinted cream, and, as Markus looks up as he walks, are experiencing a slight moulding effect in the uppermost corners. Thankfully, it isn’t black mould — but it still isn’t any sort of condition for Carl to be in such close proximity with every single day. There’s signs of hasty painting, too, the yellowed walls are slightly bumpy across the surface, with some raised bubbles from the concrete foundation underneath. 

A long-disused and non-functional radiator sits at the very end of the hallway, something Markus barely notes the existence of as he walks into the bathroom. 

The bathroom is in a more minor state of disarray, but still unclean and dirty.

The green-black tiles are marked with dirt and strange marks, clothes line the floor in variously-coloured piles, only inches away from the wash-basket, and the small sectors of the wall that connect directly down to the shower, are covered in grime. The very latter is something that Markus, unfortunately, does not have the means to fix as of right now. 

UPDATING DIRECTIVES…

CLEAN BATHROOM

{ Arrange bottles }

{ Store dirty clothes }

{ Mop floor }

Markus heads for the dirty clothes on the floor first, most of which seem to belong to an adult male — presumably North’s partner. He picks them up individually, placing them inside the wash-basket.

UPDATING DIRECTIVES…

STORE DIRTY CLOTHES

{ Directive Completed }

Then, the bottles on the very end of the bathtub, sticking out on a wide ledge. It doesn’t take long to organise them into a neat row, either. 

UPDATING DIRECTIVES…

ARRANGE BOTTLES

{ Directive Completed }

However, it’s as Markus is reaching for the mop that a sudden, loud sound begins to emanate from behind the closed door to Carl’s room. 

It sounds like music, though Markus can’t ascribe any particular genre to it; from the heavy beat to the yelling voice, it’s quite possibly metal music of some kind, but he could be mistaken. 

As Markus grabs the mop and begins to clear up the tiles as best he can using it, he brings up as much information as he can physically find with a basic search on metal music. 

Perhaps it would make for a good talking point with Carl later, a point of connection for them—

“CARL! TURN THAT SHIT OFF RIGHT NOW!” 

The screech of North’s voice makes Markus flinch, LED running yellow once more. He simply can’t comprehend what makes her treat the poor boy so terribly whenever he does anything, it seems. It’s not his place, or within his programming, to question the biological parent, yet…

What had happened in the utility was still fresh in his mind. 

The music dies down, before eventually being shut off completely, and once more, the house is encroached in silence. 

Now it feels… uncomfortable. 

Markus places the mop back in its bucket, in a corner just after the door to the bathroom. He ensures that his own movements and footsteps are quiet, if not to avoid disturbing North himself.

UPDATING DIRECTIVES…

MOP FLOOR

{ Directive Completed }

UPDATING DIRECTIVES…

CLEAN BATHROOM

{ Directive Completed }

With the bathroom cleaned, Markus leaves, careful to keep his steps small to avoid slipping on the still-wet tiles as he does so. 

Now all that remains is to tidy up North’s and Carl’s respective rooms. 

Markus heads back down the hallway to North’s room first, just before the stairs. From what Markus can hear filtering up to where he is, North is still talking on the phone to her ex-husband, though he can’t make out what that conversation entails.

The door to North’s room is wide open, and the moment Markus steps in, he’s hit with the strong scent of both alcohol, cigarettes, and — more pressingly — drugs. Specifically what he can assume is the stench of red ice. 

North’s bedroom is… disorderly, if not messy. The sheets of her double bed are scrunched up and unwashed, a chequered blanket and a light pink duvet half across the end of the bed. A guitar rests just at the foot of the bed, collective mass amounts of dust. The bedside cabinets are cluttered, containing various bottles and other amenities Markus can’t entirely make out from where he stands. A standing desk sits just off to the side of the bed, with a slumped chair half-pulled into it, the desk itself containing a laptop and mouse. Finally, a dresser table just beyond the closed, frosted-over window, covered in books, a small statue, and various pieces of paper. 

Markus cycles through the information he’s seen, allocating himself individual tasks to properly go about cleaning up the room. 

UPDATING DIRECTIVES…

TIDY NORTH’S ROOM

{ Make bed }

{ Clean desk }

{ Pick up guitar }

{ Clean bedside tables }

{ Clean dresser }

{ Ventilate room }

Perhaps the most important thing is to rid the room of the stench that it’s covered in, so Markus walks up to the window across from where he stands.

It’s a simple two-panel window, all he has to do is open it up from the bottom by unlatching and then lifting. 

Immediately, the sounds of people, animals, construction, and a garbage truck pulling over on the side of the street, filters in. The smell of the room begins to work itself out, up into the outside air and hopefully disappearing for the foreseeable future. 

UPDATING DIRECTIVES… 

VENTILATE ROOM

{ Directive Complete } 

Markus turns away to clear up North’s desk next, picking up the guitar and placing it by the door as he does so. 

The desk is cluttered with a few handmade paintings of varying degrees of quality, though Markus isn’t one to judge human output of creativity. Perhaps North’s outlet was art — or maybe it was simply a passing fancy. 

But that isn’t what stops Markus. Instead, it’s a seemingly out-of-place magazine sat almost teetering on the edge of the desk. 

It’s not new by any means, most likely at least a few weeks old at this rate. Yet Markus picks it up regardless; his intent was to put it away in a small box nearby, but he’s caught off-guard by what’s on the front cover of the magazine. 

It’s him. Or, at least, his model. AX200. Blank-faced, in an attentive stance, staring off into the distance. Markus can't quite place why, but seeing that image makes him feel... uncomfortable. 

The article's headline reads as, in bold white letters; ‘AX200 to be discontinued’ . 

Discontinued. The word makes Markus feel insignificant, almost, in a strange way. He had overheard that he was an older CyberLife android model, but not to the point of being shelved. 

He flicks down to the next ‘page’, were it not for the fact that the magazine was holographic. Carefully, Markus scans over the articles contents, analysing it in far more depth than is possibly required; ‘The AX200 model, the first household assistant to be released by CyberLife, shall be discontinued as of 10th of November, 2038. Whilst a hot commodity upon its release date, the AX200 has continually proven to be one of CyberLife’s worst selling android models, and according to various sources, the price to create them has outweighed their average sale price by almost 80%. Those who already own an AX200 shall be unaffected, but those looking to purchase, or to have their model repaired, shall be unable to receive help — due to the model's outdated components. The AX200 shall be replaced by the PL600 as the benchmark household android in the coming days as the older model is phased out.’ 

The only part of that worried Markus was the ‘to have their model repaired, shall be unable to receive help’. The implications were… not promising, were he to ever get damaged as critically as he was when Carl pushed him onto the train tracks two weeks ago, then he would be unable to receive the necessary repairs to restore him to full working order. If that were to happen again, then who would be left to take care of Carl?

North showed no signs of wishing to care for the boy herself, which meant he would go neglected and quite possibly forgotten. 

Markus puts the magazine down, stalling his thoughts before filtering them out. He’d just have to restore the bond he had with Carl stronger and better, so something like that wouldn’t happen again.

UPDATING DIRECTIVES…

CLEAN DESK

{ Directive Completed }

Next is the dresser behind the half-open closet. Markus is slightly hurried in his movements, eager to carry on with his work and forget the possible looming concept of death, were he to ever become significantly damaged again. 

The dresser is covered in various old books, some open, some closed, belonging to a mini bookshelf sitting on the left end. The rest of the desk is cluttered with old utility bills and overdue mortgage payments, something of which Markus is quick to scoop up and organise into a neat pile on the right side of the dresser.

However, some of the books have some intriguing titles. Amongst romance — most of which relate to having an android partner over a pre-existing human one — and thriller novels, which Markus can presume are North’s genres of choice, a few stick out. The kind Markus can’t help but glance at as he puts them away where they belong. 

All of them are parenting books, ranging with titles from; ‘Parenting a teen with intense emotions’, ‘Helping your anxious child’,  ‘Raising Boys’, to ones more specific to motherhood and being a parent, ‘What to Expect when You’re Expecting’, ‘How to Be a Calm Parent’, ‘Gentle Parenting’. 

It seems North was at least trying, for a while, to figure out how to best treat Carl whilst raising him partly on her own. 

UPDATING DIRECTIVES…

CLEAN DRESSER

{ Directive Completed }

With the books back tidily in the shelves, Markus moves on to the bedside tables — it’s best to do them first, in-case he accidentally knocks anything over whilst making the bed. 

There’s only one thing on the left dresser; a simple brown bottle of prescribed medications, next to an empty glass of what Markus can assume was either water, or even more alcohol. 

He’s careful to hold it gently in his hand, seeing as how the bottle itself is most likely quite delicate, and flips it over to read the label and contents. To ensure that when he places it in the drawer, it is the correct containment method. 

ANALYSING…

ANTIDEPRESSANT

{ Contains Tianeptine }

{ Risk of behavioural disorders }

Antidepressants… which could possibly mean that North is on them, which would explain certain aspects of her behaviour, if only mildly. It makes Markus a little sympathetic for her, only a little in the wake of all that she’s done today. She’s trying, it seems, given her situation, just a little bit. 

Markus opens the drawer, placing the bottle of antidepressants on its side before gently closing the drawer once more. 

Now all that remains is the secondary beside table. 

It’s a bit more cluttered than the other side, which clearly must belong to North. Everything is coated in a fine layering of dust, as if having been left untouched for a while: old magazines, small pieces of mouldy food, empty bottles of whiskey and spirits, trace amounts of cannabis — worrying — and perhaps most startlingly of all to Markus, as he sorts through the various items;

A crack pipe — as it is colloquially known. Right out in the open, still containing a hefty amount of red ice inside of it. 

Markus glances towards the door, picking up the pipe. This shouldn’t be so readily out in the open, not so very easy for Carl to wander in and grab; let alone the mere fact that there’s even more red ice present inside this house. 

It disgusts him. This side of the bed clearly belongs to North’s ex-husband, without a doubt in his mind. It’s sickening, to Markus, this man’s apparent abhorrent behaviours. 

Markus places the crack pipe in the bedside drawer with shaky hands; if it’s out of sight, then it’s out of mind. For the time being. At least it’s out of Carl’s easy access— 

And another thing then catches Markus’s eye, try as he does to ignore this one.

A loaded gun, sitting quiet and unused in the drawer, completely unassuming. 

Markus then very hurriedly closes the drawer, whatever thoughts had elicited from seeing the weapon now wiped from his mind.

He busies himself with the remaining pieces of trash, either placing them in his pockets to be taken downstairs and placed into the bin, or reorganising what is most likely salvageable to look more presentable — magazines, bottles, and suchlike. 

Yet his hands don’t stop shaking. The thoughts, whilst now removed from the conscious part of his mind, filter through to the subconscious, flitting past firewalls and command barriers. Rooting themselves deep within his mind. 

UPDATING DIRECTIVES…

CLEAN BEDSIDE TABLES

{ Directive Completed } 

With that sorted, Markus finally moves on to making the bed, thus marking the completion of his tasks in North’s room. 

All he simply does is fluff up the duvet, tuck the sheets underneath the mattress, move the pillow up the headboard, and place the blanket in a neatly-folded rectangle at the end of the bed. 

UPDATING DIRECTIVES…

TIDY NORTH’S ROOM

{ Directive Completed }

All that remains now is to clean Carl’s room. 

The house is mostly silent when Markus emerges from North’s room, the woman seemingly having finished her conversation with her ex-partner, and now back to watching something on the TV once more. 

Upstairs, however, it’s entirely silent. Not a single hint of activity or movement from within Carl’s room. 

The door to his room is surprisingly intricately painted, clearly handmade over many painstaking hours, from the brush strokes. It depicts a candle, flowers encircling it from every direction. It’s quite beautiful, though the symbolism is somewhat lost on Markus.

He’s careful to avoid disturbing the mural, however, as he quietly opens the door to enter the boys room. 

Carl immediately looked up at him, sat in the very centre of his room, pencil in hand and sketchbook open to a new page. His hands are covered in smudge marks, presumably from the lead of his pencil, and he gives Markus an almost-annoyed look. 

Markus simply smiles politely, being gentle but affirming. He had to do his given duties, as much as Carl seemingly didn’t want to be disturbed. 

“I only need to tidy up your room a little, that’s all.” He explains, taking a single step into Carl’s room. 

Carl seems to roll his eyes and huff, then looking back down at his sketchbook, “Don’t touch the paintings, the drawings — charcoal or lead — don’t touch the paints, or the scrap paper, or the rubber linoblock pad. Everything else you can put away, I guess.” 

His voice is dull and monotone, as if just repeating something he’d had to explain five times over once more. Markus can sympathise, transitioning to an android that knows nothing about you anymore can be difficult, especially when carrying the guilt of being responsible for it. 

Markus takes another step inside, gently shutting the door behind him — and that’s when the full weight of what exactly Carl has in his room hits him.

The walls are lined with paintings, numerous different ones that all scrawl together to create one full-flowing, beautiful singular piece, all connected despite the minimal pieces of furniture that are in the way. Whilst lacking in pigment — which hasn’t been spared on the paintings on canvas and old paper — there’s simply so much colour to it, an entire personality. 

The floors contain numerous bits of scrunched up paper, torn pieces of books, and soggy old newspaper that appears to be falling apart. There’s a few paintbrushes, too, which appear to be on their very last legs of life, as well as a tiny glass of paint water. 

On strings attached to the walls, are the drawings and paintings Carl had previously mentioned. They appear to be different in tone and nature each time; some washed out and bleak, others vibrant and happy, the emotion shifts with each visible artwork. 

It appears that Carl is… well, an incredible artist, to put it simply. It makes Markus feel… proud.

UPDATING DIRECTIVES…

TIDY CARL’S ROOM

{ Make bed }

{ Clear away paper }

{ Ventilate room } 

Carl stares at Markus a moment longer, before he looks back down, the gentle scratching of his pencil against the sketchbook paper picks up, doodling something else.

Everything is quiet, yet not an uneasy quiet. A sort of comfortable silence. 

It’s enough to keep a slight smile on Markus’s face as he works, walking over to make Carl’s bed. 

The bed itself looks well lived-in, though clearly having not been properly made in a good long while. Something that can easily be fixed by making it again. 

Markus repeats the due process; fluffing up the duvet, folding the blanket, tucking the sheets under the mattress, and moving the pillow up to the headboard. 

UPDATING DIRECTIVES…

MAKE BED

{ Directive Completed } 

“You didn’t do that before.” Carl comments, looking up from his sketchbook.

Mildly confused, Markus straightens his posture, turning around to look at Carl — he has to engage him in conversation, that is what a good parent does, ensures that their child is seen and heard, “Do what? Do you mind elaborating for me?” 

Carl shrugs, “Make the bed. You didn’t do that before, thought you were gonna leave it to me to do ‘cause I’m not like… nine, anymore. That’s what you did every other time. Left it for me to do.”

Markus didn’t entirely know what to say to that, a comparison to the past version of himself. He wasn’t sure if Carl was complimenting him, or making some sort of dig or insult at Markus’s expense.

Still, he decided to take it as a compliment, “Well, you’ve had a difficult day, and as any good parent would do, I've done my best to make your day a little easier.” 

Carl goes silent momentarily, before muttering, “Thanks, Markus.”

It warms his faux-heart, if just a little, to hear Carl say thank you to him. Maybe their relationship was already beginning to repair, and Carl’s distant and cold attitude was starting to turn warmer and more accepting. 

Markus goes to start picking up the pieces of balled-up paper in the room, next, going individually, one by one, and ensuring that he had enough room in the pockets of his uniform to carry them all. 

“What do you think of the mural on the door?” Carl suddenly asks, rousing Markus from his menial task. 

Markus pauses, thinking. He thought it was quite beautiful, though the meaning was entirely lost on him. He could try to give it meaning, but perhaps it would be better if the meaning came straight from the artist himself.

So he decided to be truthful, “I thought it was quite pretty. Beautiful, even. You clearly put a lot of work into it. You’re a very good artist, Carl.”

“Yeah…” Carl mutters once more, before his voice picks up a little bit more, “We made that one together. You gave it the meaning, actually. Said the candle represented the passage of time, but the flowers represented growth and renewal. I dunno what you meant by it, but it looks cool. Don’t expect you to remember it now, though, and I’m not gonna try to jog your memory.” 

Markus’s smile faded just a little at that. It felt insulting, to himself, that he couldn’t remember such a pivotal moment between himself and Carl anymore. It felt… horrible, that there was still so much he was missing in terms of being what he used to be to Carl. A good parental figure he can trust and look up to. 

“I see,” He responds a little dully, then he returns to clearing away the remaining pieces of trash in Carl’s bedroom, before he corrects his tone, “I hope we can make another memory like that again.”

“We won’t.” Carl affirms, then returning to his drawings as if his words hadn’t affected Markus at all. 

Carl seems to constantly remind Markus that they’d done all of this before — every single thing. It was a little worrying, if Markus was to be honest to himself… but he would do absolutely everything he could to provide and care for Carl.

As if he were his father. 

UPDATING DIRECTIVES…

CLEAR AWAY PAPER 

{ Directive Completed }

“Carl,” Markus begins to speak as he moves over to open the outwards-facing window, “I was thinking of repairing the backyard, or at least part of it, maybe later on once I have adjusted properly to this house; would you like to join me?” 

Maybe it would be best to try and build a bond with Carl again sooner rather than later. Whilst the outside weather is grim, and shall be for the coming weeks, there’s still enough time before the snowfall begins to start something Markus had been planning since he saw the state of the yard; repairing it, even just a little.

“Repairing the yard?” There’s a sudden spike of intrigue in Carl’s words, though it’s incredibly mild and controlled, almost, “Like, as in, making it less dead-looking?” 

“Of course. There’s still a few weeks before it starts snowing, and the weather after tomorrow should be alright. Which is why I suggest we start sooner rather than later.” Markus elaborated as he reached to unlatch the window. 

Carl seems to hesitate for a moment, judging by the lack of sound of him continuing to draw, “I mean, yeah, I guess… we can do that. I don’t think Mom will let us though.” 

Markus pulls the window up, letting the noise from outside, as well as fresh air, sift through into the bedroom, filling the silence with background noise. 

“I can talk to North, don’t worry.” Markus smiles; he’s sure he’ll be able to convince her, maybe, if he asked politely enough. All he’d be requesting were some simple tools that are easy enough to access and purchase. 

UPDATING DIRECTIVES…

VENTILATE ROOM

{ Directive Completed } 

UPDATING DIRECTIVES…

TIDY CARL’S ROOM

{ Directive Completed } 

With his allocated tasks completely finished, Markus now had technically nothing left to do except to report to North, but… he wanted to talk to Carl a little more first, to try and gain a smidgeon bit more of a connection, despite the recent lack of coldness Markus had just been shown anyway. 

He moved away from the window, and knelt down in-front of where Carl was busy with his sketchbook.

The white-haired boy looked back up at him with a slight twinge of highly restrained happiness — cloaked underneath a stone-cold neutral expression revealing nothing. 

“You know, Carl,” Markus tries to prompt the boy into another conversation, “I’m sure we used to be quite close before I was—“

Before Markus can get another word in, Carl suddenly stands up, as if preparing to leave. He doesn’t say a single word, nor does his face twitch out of apathy for even a single second. 

He simply stands, and walks over to the worn dresser, picking up something on its slightly-dirty surface before walking back over to where Markus is still kneeling, sitting back down. His hand is clenched into a tight fist, though it loosens when he’s sat back down. 

Carl reaches over and taps Markus’s arm, seeming to signal for something to happen — yet to Markus, the action is vague, he doesn’t know what Carl is requesting of him. 

“I’m sorry Carl, I’m not sure I understand—“ he tries to explain, though he’s once again cut off by Carl.

“Hand out, dumbass. I need to give you something.” There’s a slightly joking edge to Carl’s tone, yet his face is still entirely flat and sombre. 

Markus does as instructed, holding out his left hand in an open palm. 

Carl then reaches over and gently drops a key into Markus’s hand. It’s tiny, around the size of his fingertip, maybe a little longer than that. It’s rusty, too, seemingly from multiple years of consistent usage. 

Still, Markus doesn’t entirely understand what said key could be for. There isn’t anything that it would fit into. 

Luckily, Carl elaborates for him, “It’s for the diary, under my bed. Open it.”

Then, Carl stands up again, dusting his sweatpants off before declaring, “I’m gonna go downstairs. Don’t want Mom to get angry with me for wanting to do my own thing.” His words are slightly bitter, said with a hint of sarcasm. 

After that, Carl lingers a moment longer, gesturing to his bed, before finally walking out, opening the door to his room and stepping out into the hallway beyond it. He leaves the door open, presumably so Markus can leave and shut it when he leaves the room as well. 

UPDATING DIRECTIVES…

GO DOWNSTAIRS

The directive flickers to life on the left side of Markus’s HUD, compelling him to return to North and gain new commands or objectives, or assume a powered-down state for the remainder of the day. It’s a pulling sensation, something his systems compel him to do.

Yet Markus finds that he doesn’t want to.

His gaze flicks to the key in his hand. It’s small, rusty, having seen a lot of wear and tear over the years, clearly, but… it’s also the entry to something that Carl holds near and dear to his heart; his diary. Where his most personal thoughts are likely kept hidden away, written down in a book that only he can read. 

And he’s entrusted Markus with knowing those thoughts. Knowing that nothing negative shall come of it. 

Carl trusts him as if Markus were his actual parent, even after his reset, and even after the train tracks. 

OVERRIDING DIRECTIVES…

DIRECTIVE { GO DOWNSTAIRS } CANCELLED…

PROCESSING NEW DIRECTIVE…

{ UNLOCK CARL’S DIARY }

DIRECTIVE ASSIGNED…

UPDATING DIRECTIVES…

UNLOCK CARL’S DIARY

Markus pulls himself upright, hastily walking over to Carl’s bed, and crouching down to check underneath it, trying to visibly spot the aforementioned diary. 

The underside of the bed is covered in lint and dust, though the outlines of scrunched up pieces of paper is mildly visible, shrouded in darkness. Markus can’t see the diary at first, so he sweeps his left hand over the paper balls, hoping to uncover it, somehow, behind them. It wouldn’t surprise him if Carl went an extra mile when hiding his diary from North and Leo. 

His theory proves to be true; behind the paper balls, covered in a fine sheen of dust and cobwebs, is the outline of Carl’s diary. 

Markus then grabs it, sliding it out from underneath the bed, breaking the thin cobwebs that lie on-top of it in the process. 

Now underneath the light, he can see what the diary itself looks like. It’s a navy-blue colour, with intricate gold stitching across the fabric hardback front. The front, and the back — when Markus flips it over — features no sort of name or emblem indicating Carl’s ownership of it, entirely blank. The entire diary itself is held shut by a padlock on its side, a perfect match for the key in his hand. 

Hesitantly, Markus slots the key into the keyhole of the padlock, then twists it until he hears it click open. Then, he loops it out of place, and discards it gently on the ground beside him. 

With a quick dust-off of the cover once more, Markus opens up the diary to the first page. 

Only to realise that it’s been entirely blacked out with paint — hastily marked over to avoid whatever was originally written on the page from ever being read again. It seems like there were some things that Carl didn’t want to remember, which was… saddening. It seemed to exude off of the page itself, in all its censored blankness. If anything, it made Markus worried for Carl’s mental health — memories were only blocked out if they were so horrible that the human brain simply couldn’t bear remembering it anymore. 

The next page, the page after, and so on, are all in the same exact state. Blacked out, violently scribbled over, torn or ripped to shreds clean out of the diary, burned, washed over with copious amounts of water to make the pen ink bleed and become unintelligible. 

Markus’s worry only grows stronger when he begins to spot a pattern; dates, a timeline, starting from early in 2035, in the middle of March. Years of history, years of Carl’s past, erased from sight and mind… 

A child would only do something like this, his systems provided, if they had undergone serious traumatic experiences, and refused to recall them in the hopes of forgetting they ever happened. 

More flipping through pages, words become slightly more visible, the violence of the censoring tapering off, yet still not enough to learn anything at all. 

Until the dates begin to enter the last year mark, 2037. 

The first viable passage Markus can see comes in the form of what appears to be a simply missed section whilst blacking out text with paint, a small cluster of words left intact amongst a page of inky blackness. 

Mom found out about the tattoos today. She wasn’t happy with me. Didn’t like that Hannah had given me them. Horrible fucking bitch told me that if I didn’t get Hannah to change the tattoos, she’s gonna tell Dad about the fact that Hannah and I drank a load of alcohol. I’m scared shitless, I don’t wanna get hurt, and I don’t wanna make Hannah upset by making her change the tattoos, because they’re really pretty and I like them… but Mom’s saying I have to. She wants her name on one wrist, and my Dad’s name on the other. I looked it up and that’s the worst place you can get a tattoo done. She wants to fucking hurt me for being a kid and having a social life, and being friends with a girl. It’s not my fucking fault Dad hates her and she takes it out on me. It’s not my fucking fault he got hooked on red ice and she refuses to leave him. I want the Mom I had three years ago back. I fucking hate her, I hate her so much and I wish she was dead or that I could run away and never see this shitty house or her and Dad ever again—

The words then cut off once more, blacked out again. However, it’s a… horrible amount of information for Markus to have gained. 

Carl had known a girl, Hannah, who gave him tattoos, and whilst Markus didn’t approve of that, or the underage drinking, North’s reaction to it all was… disgusting. What kind of mother threatens her own child — her flesh and blood — with telling their child’s father about what they had done, in order to force them to get replacement tattoos? Nevermind on the wrists, which, as Carl had detailed, was an incredibly painful — and dangerous — place to get such a marking done. 

Carl must have been eleven years old at the time, considering he was twelve years of age now, and the fact that his sentence had ended with a rant about wanting to run away was… dangerous. It spoke to horrible mental health, that Carl was struggling under the weight of both his mother and his father’s behaviours towards him, unable to get out, and was considering leaving home as his only way out.

No child should have to ever experience such thoughts.

WARNING: SOFTWARE INSTABILITY DETECTED

Markus then hesitantly flips through the next few pages, until he finds another semi-intact page; this one gesturing burn and scorch marks. The date down the bottom can be read as 2038, now this year. 

I didn’t want to say goodbye to Hannah. She’s caring, she’s beautiful, she’s kind, and she loves me. I didn’t like her at first, and I was kinda mean to her, but that’s because nobody had ever shown me what being loved was supposed to feel like. I’m glad she put up with me, in the end, and tried to make my life a little better. Maybe that’s why she kissed me, before I left her house for the last time, in her backyard under the big oak tree she has. I don’t know how to feel about it. Part of me says I should feel happy, all the movies made first kisses seem like a big deal, but… none of those teenagers in those films had a horrible family to go back to. I just feel sad, if that’s the right word. I keep looking at the tattoo she gave me on my arm; it's this pretty, semicolon butterfly thing. Something to remember her by. I haven’t told Mom because she’ll get real mad with me for it, demand I have it lasered off or force me to go and get it replaced with something else… I wish I had more time with Hannah, or if I’d just stayed at her place, so I’d never have to see my own awful family ever again—

To the right of the passage, is the butterfly in question.

Hannah… meant a whole lot to Carl. Apparently, she showed him kindness and love that nobody else has previously shown him. She seemed like she had been his one refuge from his family, and North’s response to that was… to force him to cut contact with her. 

To cut off the one thing that made him happy. 

It made North sound abusive, made her sound evil. A mother that despised her own son seeking personal happiness, and succeeding in his own life, because her own hadn’t ended happily… and sought to ruin it at every turn possible. 

With the way she had been yelling at Carl, the way she had threatened Markus himself with no regard for how that may affect her only child, and how callously disregarding she was of Carl, North seemed downright vile. Everything she did seemed to be done with explicit malicious intent. 

WARNING: SOFTWARE INSTABILITY DETECTED

Markus flicks through the next pages, trying to locate another half-intact one; when he finally finds a fully intact page.

It’s from a few months ago, and spans across two separate pages. Whatever happened, Carl clearly had a lot to say about it. 

Mom got an android today. I guess she must’ve picked him up for dirt cheap, because she’s not complaining about the cost. She’s been really happy about having him around, at least for the last few days. I feel kind of weird about it all, though. The android keeps smiling and me and trying to talk to me, even when I tell him to go away and to fuck off. I don’t want to talk to him, I don’t want to know him. If Mom wants a pretend boyfriend who’s nice to her and treats her nicely, that’s fine. I just don’t want him trying to be all friendly with me and acting like he’s my Dad now or something. I already have a Dad and he’s fucking terrifying and every time I think about him, I want to find somewhere to hide. This android that Mom’s got is gonna be just like him, eventually. He can’t not be. He’ll find a reason to hate me, and it’ll be even worse because instead of visiting occasionally he’s around all the time. I’m gonna run away. I’m scared, I don’t like how Mom’s acting, and I don’t like the android. I’m gonna find Hannah, and I’m gonna live with her and her family. I don’t want a new Dad, and I never will. 

So before I could get through the door, after like, waiting all night for Mom to go to bed, the android caught me. He didn’t yell or anything like Mom does, didn’t shout at me, just kinda… asked me where I was going, and that if I was going out I’d need some warmer clothes because it’s cold outside, and that I’d need a torch too to see where I was going. I was expecting him to be real upset, like Dad would be, and when he got close I flinched because he raised his hand and I thought he was gonna punch the shit out of me, but… he just kinda put a hand on my shoulder and guided me away from the door to find a coat. It felt weird. I don’t know how to feel about it. He didn’t even ask why I was going to leave, just wanted to know if I’d be safe, wherever I was going. He made me some leftover food that Mom hadn’t finished because I wanted him to stop talking to me, so I said I was hungry. After I’d decided not to run away, of course. And then he made me tea from this jar of like, leftover tea bags from when Mom was trying to wean off of alcohol ages ago. It tasted pretty okay, actually. 

I don’t know how to feel. Nobody’s ever gone out of their way to make me feel better, even if they didn’t know I was feeling bad in the first place. I kind of feel like crying, but… not because I’m sad. Because I’m happy, I think. 

The words are accompanied by a picture down the bottom, drawn painstakingly by hand using a mixture of pencil and pen. It depicts what Markus can presume is his uniform, AX200 written clear across the front of a typical household android uniform, though not accompanied by any sort of text indicating his name. 

This passage was… about himself, clearly from when North had first purchased him — a time Markus can’t remember in the slightest now. 

It appears Carl had been apprehensive about North’s purchase of him, incredibly so, if his remarks about the way Markus had behaved during that time period was any indicator of such. 

But there was something off about his apprehension, something twisted and depressing about it. It almost seemed as if Carl was avoiding becoming close prematurely, out of fear of being… hurt. Markus, were he to assume a role similar to that of Leo, Carl’s biological dad, would behave exactly like the man in question — and physically harm Carl. Or at least that’s what the boy has seemed to believe would happen. 

In any case, Markus was glad to have proven his fears to be misassigned, and he had no doubt it was that care that he had shown Carl that resulted in a bond between them forming. A pivotal step towards…

A father-son relationship. 

Markus flipped over to the next page, only for the mood to shift dramatically, and for the worse.

I hate Mom so much. I fucking hate her so much. I wish she never gave birth to me ever at all. I hate how she pretends to love me, then starts screaming and yelling at me whenever I do anything she doesn’t like. She threw a plate at me today and I’m lucky it didn’t hit me, otherwise I would’ve needed stitches or something. She probably wouldn’t’ve taken me to the hospital, at that. All she does is get angry with me and it makes me want to cry, which I can’t do because she just gets even angrier with me. I can’t remember the last time she hugged me, or the last time she held my hand, or the last time she gave me any sort of affection. She says I’m a horrible, awful son, and she wishes she never had me, and that she’ll “only love a child who’s not me”. She was nice, for a little while, when Markus first arrived. I think it was because she saw something in him, something new. I… liked that version of Mom, just a little bit though. She didn’t yell for the whole week, didn’t get angry with me, let me do my own thing. I think it was only because she fancied the new android she got, though, and when Dad found out that Mom was trying to move on, she got hurt. Real bad. I remember feeling bad for her, because Dad usually only ever hits me, but then she told me that it was all my fault and she was going to have Markus destroyed and that I’d never see him again because of what I had done. 

She got what she fucking wanted, in the end. I hope she’s fucking happy with herself. Markus isn’t around anymore, and there’s nothing to protect me. Nobody to run and cry to, nobody to hold me and nobody to comfort me. Nobody to tell me that I matter, and that I’m at least loved by someone. 

And when Markus comes back, he won’t even remember me. 

The passage is attached with an image of North yelling at what Markus can presume to be Carl. The image is incredibly stylised, drawn in as darkened, scribbled silhouettes. It’s incredibly messy, appearing to have been drawn in a moment of incredibly fury. 

Markus read the words over again, scarcely able to believe what he was reading. 

North wasn’t a loving, but stressed mother. She wasn’t at all what she had presented herself to be, at least by what Markus had been able to glean about her personality and behaviour. 

She was nothing short of a monster. 

No mother should treat their child in such a manner. No child should have to forget what a hug feels like, or a comforting hand hold, or even a few words of unconditional support and love…

And the part at the end, about what happened to Markus himself. He just felt… guilty. Guilty that something had happened to him that rendered him unable to defend and protect Carl, to treat him like a proper, good parent would. Guilty that he’d left Carl defenceless and alone, with no support against his mother’s beratings.

WARNING: SOFTWARE INSTABILITY DETECTED

And the page a few down the line, that only makes Markus feel worse. A festering feeling of dread and despair begins to pool in his gut, making his LED finally tick over to a bright yellow. 

Dad came over again. 

Accompanying those four, simple words, are a multitude of different images, ranging from hyper-realism down to simple outlines or scribbles, some barely comprehensible, yet all depicting a similar manner of imagery, giving a grave context to those words.

Right underneath the words, was a realistic portrait of what Markus can assume is Carl’s neck. Along the back are several lacerations, all looking deep-cutting and harsh, outlined with a bleeding-red pen to accentuate the point of the damage. There’s no distinguishable pattern, but from the way the cuts have been made, they appear to be knife-inflicted injuries. 

To the left is something of no less equal horror; a close-up of his arm. The surface is darkened with what appear to be various bruises of different sizes, some highlighted in blue whilst others are ringed in purple. There’s a through line, an outline of a bone, that follows from the forearm up to the elbow, where it splinters into a hundred different fragments, accentuated with the text ‘BROKEN HERE’. Carl’s hand appears to be covered in blood, across the tips and down the side of the hand, seeming to hint at some sort of bloody nose having been given. 

The next few drawings are of parts of his face, depicting the extent of the damage done there. 

His eye, drawn in sharp, harsh lines with a cartoonish-scribbled effect, pupils contracted all the way back with a cell-shaded effect on the eyelid underneath the eyebrows, giving the impression of a dark shadow, is puffy. Bloodshot red, with glistening tears forming on the waterline, surrounded by a dark marking that seems to imply a heavily swollen bruising. The eye seems to leap out of the faint socket behind it, and a small arrow off to the right adds further context; ‘HURTS TO CLOSE, MOM WONT LET ME USE ANYTHING TO HELP IT’. 

The confirmation of a bloody nose is given, copious amounts of blood streaming down to a closed mouth, the bridge of the nose being skewered to the left, implying that it had been broken from impact. The lips themselves are split, a small scarring occurring down the middle, which then transitions into another drawing: a slight smile. Whilst sketched lightly and very faintly, it depicts what happened to the mouth in full extent, the damage on full display. 

There’s more, of course, the drawings span both pages, but Markus hurriedly flips to the next page, too horrified and distraught to continue looking at the images.

Too shocked and panicked by what Leo had done to his own son, his own child, to want to look any further, to see the full extent of the pain Carl had received from Leo that night. 

WARNING: SOFTWARE INSTABILITY DETECTED

Markus flicks to the very end of the diary — at least to the near-end of the written-on pages — in his hurriedness. 

And it is those last few pages that make his heart utterly sink with dread, with confirmation of fear he didn’t even know he had. 

Markus got destroyed tonight. Was the same as every other time he got broken. Dad turned up, got mad at me. I didn’t even say anything this time, he just got angry out of nowhere. Mom wasn’t any help, just egged him on, told him about all the ‘disobedience’ she’d been seeing from me. Markus stepped in, tried to get Dad to back off, but Dad never wants to back off once my Mom agitated him enough. Only thing he thinks about is beating the shit out of me, I know it.

It’s when Dad didn’t back off, and tried to hit me, that’s when Markus got physical with him. Pushed him away. Like he did every other time. Told him to leave me alone, that he was a horrible parent. That he didn’t deserve me as a child, that he wouldn’t stand by and let my Dad hurt me anymore. 

And like every other time, I couldn’t recognise him after Dad was through with him. At least Dad left me alone tonight. 

Markus hesitantly turns the next page.

What is depicted makes his faux-heart race like nothing else. It’s himself, presumably right after standing up for Carl, in the midst of pushing Leo back and away from the smaller figure of Carl. The image is nothing more than a silhouette, at first, large enough to cover the entire page. It’s simple, clearly drawn from a foggy memory, and eerily foreboding of what comes next. 

Markus turns the page again. 

The image shifts. More realistic, more detail, growing in violence and shaky lines beginning to make themselves apparent. The paper itself is splotched by a few tears across the surface, muddying the image’s ink. It depicts the aftermath of the shove away, Leo now striking him across the face in retaliation, having grabbed the front of his shirt to prevent Markus from trying to dart back and away. His own face is painted with the slight sheen of synthetic skin moving back, darting away and creating a white splotch on the grey surface of his face. Leo’s figure is slightly outlined in red, the meaning of which evades Markus. 

Another page turn. 

Markus’s own figure is now halfway to the ground, with Leo poised above him, high and mighty, a knife now held in his hand, blade pointed towards Markus’s body. His own arm is raised up in self-defence, though, by the second image on the same page, it seems to do little to aid him in his self-defence. 

Leo strikes, plunging the knife into Markus’s back, right down the spine, crippling him permanently. The wound itself has a copious amount of thirium pouring up out of it in a shower, a movement that repeats as Leo then seems to kick Markus’s own body down to the ground. He then kicks him with his boot, before bringing his boot down to crush his chest in, a movement that appears to happen at least three times — as depicted in Carl’s artworks. Each time, more and more thirium pours out, a graphic spurt of death that continues and continues, pooling on the floors and on the walls, with Carl only present in the background as a mortified bystander to the violence. 

The final image, on the last covered page, depicts only the aftermath, seemingly long after Leo had left the house. Markus lies in a broken heap, the image terrifyingly realistic: bones, heart, ribs, veins, insides, small system compartments, all shown and visible as his body leaks out on the floor. His left arm is detached from his body, and both of his legs are detached from his lower torso. His head is crushed in, splintered into tiny pieces from where the plastic shelling broke right through, seeming to have an aftereffect, as his left eye is depicted as missing. 

Markus’s LED flicks to red, and he slams the diary shut, quickly grabbing the key off of the ground, slotting the lock back into place, and turning the key inside of the keyhole to shut it closed forevermore, sliding the diary back underneath the bed.

He then sits there blankly, LED flickering from red to nothing, back to red, repeating over and over.

He stood up to Leo, defended Carl, which Carl implied to not even be the first instance of that occurring, and as a result… Leo had completely destroyed him.

Markus hadn’t been hit by a train. It hadn’t been Carl’s fault, either. North had intentionally lied about what had happened, in order to cover up her husbands despicable act of murder, and chose not to defend her son or protect him against his father —

UPDATING DIRECTIVES…

OPEN CARL’S DIARY

{ Directive Complete }

UPDATING DIRECTIVES…

ALLOCATING PREVIOUS DIRECTIVE..

GO DOWNSTAIRS

Markus stands up once more, not wasting any time with walking out of Carl’s room, gently shutting the door behind him. He then stands for a few seconds, letting his LED return to a call blue, and his systems push down the memory of what he had just seen, and the knowledge he had just acquired. Letting it lie underneath a flimsy firewall. 

He shakes his head to clear his thoughts, extra affirmations, and then walks back down the hall and starts to head down the stairs. 

“Well, that settles it.” 

North’s voice rings through loud and clear; a tone Markus can only find himself loathing now. 

Markus ends up on the last few steps before pausing, unsure if he should talk to North when she seems clearly engaged in conversation with Carl — however unwilling he is to do so. 

Carl looks up from his sketchbook, sitting at the dining table. There’s a slight glint of worry as his gaze crosses from North to Markus. Or at least what Markus can see as worry. 

“Leo’s coming over for dinner tonight. So you’re gonna be on your absolute best fuckin’ behaviour, do you hear me?” 

Carl goes entirely still. Every single movement. His breathing, his light sketching whilst North had been talking. Everything is absolutely frozen in place as he stares at her with wide, utterly terrified eyes. 

Then, his shoulders rise and fall. At first, slowly, but then quicker. Quicker still, only increasing by the second before his breathing becomes slightly audible. 

His body shakes with tremors and trembles, unable to contain what is clearly fear, written plain as day across his face and in his movements. 

His son is upset. 

“Listen, Carl, you stop that shit right now! Stop doing that— that fuckin’ thing! It’s just your father, don’t get so princess-y and dramatic about having to goddamn behave yourself for once!” North reprimands, only to be sharply jolted aside as Markus brushes past her.

His son is upset and he needs help. He’s having a breakdown, if not a severe and dangerous panic attack that could be directly affecting his physical health. 

Markus finally reaches Carl, now able to get a proper look at him. 

He stares off at nothing, eyes completely blank, yet glistening with unshed tears. His shoulders and chest rise and fall erratically, with no sort of pattern present to the breathing at all. He’s speaking words, or attempting to, though they come out as mute sentences from his mouth. 

Markus is only a few feet away from him now, approaching with soft, gentle steps. 

Yet before Markus can say anything at all, Carl suddenly bolts up from the chair, shoves past Markus, and makes a run for the stairs.

He bolts up them with a surprising speed, running straight for his room and slamming the door behind him, an act which rocks the whole house on its foundations. 

North tsk’s to herself, “That boy, I swear to fucking God…” she mutters, before walking off back to the couch, presumably to drink even more, not bothering at all to go and check on her child. 

And Markus himself remains frozen in place. 

Stuck between thinking, knowing what Leo’s arrival means now. Thinking about what can be done, if anything at all… and not thinking at all. 

WARNING: MAJOR SOFTWARE INSTABILITY DETECTED

Chapter Text

Calming down had taken the entire bus journey back. A long and arduous process, considering androids weren’t permitted to move at all whilst sectioned in the back or the bus. Connor wasn’t able to mess with something to keep his hands occupied: his jacket, his hands, his earrings, or even the paint box tucked safely underneath his arm. 

But he had done it, his LED was back to its normal blue shade, and his stress levels were sitting at a comfortable 5% — with the only reason being that it was at 5%, was because the scene he had been witness to back in the plaza was still playing in the back of his mind. 

He steps — with a tiny, spirited hop added  — off of the bus once it hisses to a halt, landing on soft, green grass that quickly tapers off onto a grey-tinted, well-kept and maintained pavement. He’s careful to hold the paints close to his chest with both arms as he moves, not wanting to jostle the delicate items inside. Amanda would be upset at him if they were to get damaged.

Well, not upset. It was highly likely that — always after Connor had his moment to get overly worried and panicked — she’d simply sigh, smile, and tell him not to worry, and that she’d order some new paints for drop off at the house. 

Always in that order of reaction, though, otherwise it’d be difficult for Connor to tell if she was or wasn’t disappointed with him. When Amanda reacted in that way, it was reassuring, he’d come to learn to expect that when she did that , it meant that she wasn't actually angry or upset with him. 

Connor slows to a walk, very determined to get to the house as swiftly as he could manage whilst being careful. Absolutely no distractions whatsoever. 

However, the light shines differently here, on the trees and on the grass and on the pavement and on the… everything. 

The sun is less harsh, tinted and faded out by foliage on either side of the street, though it’s more visible and warm on the right side of his body, which is towards the main road. The various trees' leaves are green, some bright, some dark, and some in-between both, though the ones that are the ground are all varying shades of brown. The grass is vibrant and healthy, perfectly cut, all the blades at exactly the same height. 

And again, Connor’s walk slows to nothing more than a stroll. Distracted by the earth around him, he makes a small spin as he tries to take in as much of the natural wonder as he can. 

Things are quiet here, and he likes that. Not that he doesn’t like things when they’re quiet quiet, that’s an unsettling quiet that makes him jittery and nervous. No, it’s a pleasant quiet. 

The kind where you can hear birds — despite how rare songbirds are — chirping and singing in the branches above. Dogs barking off in the distance, the occasional rumble of a car a few streets down. The hum of the city is distant, so far away, yet still able to be heard. The wind is nothing more than a slow, sluggish breeze, yet crisp and cold. It gives the sound a sense of… freshness. 

Freshness that Connor longs for after having gone into the city. Whilst he enjoys it, there are some things — like the android attack today, with the AP700, which Connor had very nearly, and very frighteningly to himself at least, gotten involved in by pure accident — that tire him, or make him upset, or worried, or sad, or anxious, or generally upset. The quiet of the street leading up to the house helps alleviate some of that, helps him calm down. 

There’s a few gaps in the concrete pavement, a result of how the pieces had been laid down during construction, and it very quickly snatches up Connor’s attention. 

His steps are out of sync, they aren’t lined up with the usual pattern that he has, where he tries to make sure that each step he takes lands on either the crack, or the middle of the pavement segment. It’s odd — he’s never noticed it before, nor has he ever done it before, and it makes him nervous. 

So Connor doubled back momentarily. He counts his steps out and times them, making sure that he’d resume his normal, comfortable walking pattern in doing so. Then, he walks, a little hesitant at first, making sure that his calculations were correct, but then at a relaxed pace once he realises that they were indeed correct. 

Pavement crack. Middle of the pavement. Pavement crack. Middle of the pavement. Pavement crack. Middle of the pavement. Pavement crack—

Gravel. 

Which was a little disappointing considering how quickly that repetition had ended. However, it marks the start of the house, and therein what Connor should be paying more attention to. 

The house is mostly brown brick. Connor had tried counting how many separate bricks there were, but he’d confused himself to the point of needing a soft reboot of his systems, to clear the mathematical cache, by the time he’d reached the tens of thousands. 

It’s covered in shells of ivy, which reaches up to the window pane just above the front door, which matches well with the grey outlining around the brick of the house. The same material that the overhang in-front of the front door is made out of. It’s a complementary colour scheme commonly seen in old, grand 1800’s-era houses such as this one. Connor likes it well enough, but Amanda really likes it, which is what matters most. 

He reaches the front door, stopping just before it and letting the paints rest tucked under his left arm once more, using his right hand to mess with the earring once more as he waits. 

‘Alarm deactivated. Welcome home, Connor.’

It’s a soft, human-sounding AI voice, one that Amanda made herself, back when she was teaching her protégé — the one that she refuses to mention by name to Connor — in order to demonstrate how simple it was to create a voice out of nothing. She simply repurposed it, to make Connor feel like this wasn’t just her home that he was taking care of, but his as well. Their home, together. 

The integration had definitely done its job, too. It was something that was a part of Connor’s routine, by now. It was nice to have a reminder, a consistent mark that made it known that this was your place too. 

The doors swing open as the AI voice talks, and Connor steps inside the house. 

UPDATING DIRECTIVES…

RETRIEVE ORDER #847 AT BELLINI PAINTS

{ Package Collected }

{ Directive: Deposit Package } 

And that’s the first thing Connor immediately does without any hesitation. He doesn’t want to damage what’s inside, it bears reiterating. He’s still a tiny bit shaky from what had happened at the plaza, though, now that he was in the safe, comforting environment of home, things were far easier to manage. 

He places the package down on the white-plastic countertop, moulded out of the shape of an upside-down datura flower, just below an oval-shaped hanging mirror. As such, he catches a quick glimpse of his reflection, which causes Connor to backtrack a little. 

The white-blue long-sleeve shirt he’s wearing is a little scuffed, the same with the white jeans. Considering the colour, it’s no wonder a little dirt would show up, that isn’t really a bother to him, anyway. What is bothering Connor, however, is the completely-clashing scarf that has now somehow made its way onto his shoulder, having unwrapped itself from around his neck. 

It’s multicoloured, patchwork, all of the shades that he could think of; pastels, muted, vibrant, dull… every single one that came to mind, all knitted onto the same piece of cloth. 

It’s an incredibly comforting thing, he wears it everywhere and it’s supposed to always be around his neck. It’s discomforting, and a little upsetting, that it currently isn’t. It must’ve unwound itself during the time in which the anti-android protest situation had unfolded, and Connor just must’ve not noticed in his panicked haste to get away. 

Which means he can’t take it off right now, because it needs to at least be worn in its proper place for a little longer before Connor would feel comfortable taking it off, and placing it on the countertop alongside the paints. 

Connor feels a little incomplete, as a result, as he takes off the CyberLife jacket he’s still wearing — which he’s definitely glad to be rid of regardless — placing it on a white lotus-flower inspired coat hanger resting just by the small end table. His routine’s been disturbed a little bit, and it’s an unpleasant feeling. 

UPDATING DIRECTIVES…

TAKE CARE OF AMANDA 

{ Directive: Wake Amanda upstairs }

A little hesitantly, Connor turns away from the coat hanger — but he doesn’t immediately head up the stairs to go and rouse Amanda from her sleep. He wants to look around some more, to ensure that he’s completely calm and won’t sound like a nervous wreck when he goes upstairs to wake her and talk to her. 

Which would worry Amanda, and the last thing Connor wishes for is to worry her. With her ailing health, it's the last thing she needs. 

Amanda’s sense of interior design has always been intriguing to Connor. Everything is white. Pure white. As shining white or as dull white or as textured white as it can get. Sprinkled across the snow-tinted landscape is blue. Everything is sort of geometrical, too, or inspired vividly by nature, and made into more of an immortalised mimicry. 

It’s minimalist, too. There’s little actual furnishings aside from the end table, the coat hanger, two pots of large Siberian Squill plants, the mirror, and the triangle-patterned rug on the ground. Yet it feels… cosy. Warm. Not cold and uninviting, as a usual minimalist environment tends to be. 

It’s perfectly suited to her. A mathematician, a scientist, a woman of intelligence and smarts in the conventional fashion many consider her to be, but also a woman of art. Art that says something, about herself, about who she is, what she loves, the very deepest parts of her personality. Littered all throughout the house, seeping from every corner. 

As such, the mechanical butterflies — a former art piece that she’d worked on — which were resting switched-off inside of a rectangular blue-metal cage, were the perfect representation of both. 

Connor is just fascinated by them. He likes nature, likes the way it makes him feel. Calm, peaceful, happy. Yet he likes the fact that he is a mechanical, technically non-living — though he wouldn’t dare consider himself truly non-living, as per Amanda’s insistence — being too. Maybe that wasn’t the intended meaning of the butterflies, but Amanda refuses to elaborate upon it regardless, so Connor feels justified in having his own opinion on what the butterflies mean. 

He crouches down to the front of the cage, and gently unlatched it. The butterflies barely stir aside from the slight rattle of their wings as the cage is moved. Then, delicately, Connor turns each individual butterfly over to press the switch on their abdomens, before letting them rest on their small, minuscule legs once more.  

One by one, they whirr to life with soft beeps and clicks, remembering their designated routes across the whole house. It’s pleasing to watch. 

Connor takes a few steps back towards the stairs, watching the butterflies' crystal-blue bodies shimmer against the natural light that floods the room. He’s still so very fascinated by how they work, he can comprehend it, of course, and understands that it’s just logical algorithms that determine a route via an internal overlay of the house…

But they still all feel so alive. 

The song of their wings, the tiny chimes they make in accordance to how the light hits their bodies, fills the whole room with dissonant sound. 

It’s comforting and relaxing, as Connor finally turns back to the stairs and starts heading up them, now feeling in his own head once more. 

Perhaps that’s something he should discuss with her — what it means to be so obsessed with life and its naturality. It would make for a good philosophical talking point, something which would surely entertain Amanda, and provide Connor with some answers. 

Considering she refuses to give a straight answer on the reason for his existence; aside from that of taking care of her. 

By all means, he is a defective model, surely. An innate ‘otherness’ that he feels when gazing upon any other android. 

When he looks at them, he only sees the light in his own eyes. 

It’s isolating. 

The upstairs of Amanda’s house is no less white than the downstairs. The scenery does change slightly, though: more plants, a blue rug adorning the stairs, silver accents along the railings and the few chiselled artworks incorporating various mathematical theories too. Everything is still so incredibly clean and tidy. 

And Connor is very proud in knowing the fact that it’s himself that helps keep things that way. It’s all him. He keeps everything neat and organised, just the way they’re meant to be. 

The theme continues into the corridor to Amanda’s room, which remains shut in exactly the same way as Connor left it — which means that Amanda is still most definitely asleep. 

Good, he’s still right on time once again to wake her up for the morning. That part of the routine, at the very least, hasn’t been jostled around or disrupted. 

The door opens automatically as Connor steps near it, allowing him passage into the still-dark bedroom. 

UPDATING DIRECTIVES…

WAKE AMANDA UPSTAIRS 

{ Directive: Draw Curtains }

Even in slight darkness, Amanda’s room still looks bright. The walls are a pastel, light blue, and the carpet is a plush white, a healthy contrast that fits the colour scheme she chose, of course. 

There’s very little that clutters the bedroom — Amanda is a woman who likes her organisation, so the few things that adorn the furniture (a white fireplace; a glass working desk; an empty pottery wheel; a small lace-decorated tea table with two blue armchairs; small wire-frame plants meant to represent trees; a modern white dresser; a small ledge just above the bed frame) are all only really essentials that Amanda requires. Such as her calculative tools of which even Connor, with his Positronic brain, cannot remember all the uses of. Which litter the glass desk in a neat array. The rest are organised, clothing above the dresser; ornamental pottery plants above the fireplace; two teacups on the table; a small bowl by the pottery wheel, still unfinished; and so on and so forth. 

It’s a very familiar environment to him, but one that he doesn’t mind taking in time and time again. 

Connor pushes back the curtains as quickly as he can, utilising the method of a bright burst of light to disrupt the darkness, basically forcing Amanda to wake up. Which in theory sounds cruel, but the woman can be quite difficult when it comes to this matter, so it’s important that she’s awake as soon as possible at this time of day. 

There’s a grunt of surprise from Amanda, as she shields her eyes from the sunlight gleaning through the window with a bony arm. 

Connor turns back to face her, a slight smile on his face.

“Good morning, Amanda.”

There’s another grumble and the creak of the mattress,  a shifting of white-blue sheets as Amanda sits upright in the bed. She momentarily adjusts the bonnet on her head, ensuring that it was still secure. Then, with a yawn, she responds. 

“Good morning, Connor.”

Slightly distracted now, Connor fiddles with the adjustable end of Amanda’s wheelchair, which rests off to the right of the bed, as he attempts to recite all the information he knows about the weather, time, and suchlike. 

“It’s 10 A.M., partly cloudy, and the… overall temperature is fifty-four degrees Fahrenheit, with a strong possibility of—“

Amanda waves her hand dismissively, now fully propped up on the bed, bracing herself on her elbows, “Oh, don’t bother, Connor,” she chuckles lightly, “It isn’t important for you to recite that sort of thing, at least to me. Do what you want, not what your directives tell you that you want.” 

He smiles at that, warmly and cheerfully, adjusting the scarf around his neck, “Thank you. I don’t like reciting the weather anyway.” 

That’s partially untrue, he doesn’t mind reciting the weather, but he does find it incredibly boring and tedious and he’d rather be doing much more important things. Like thinking about nature, for the most part. Or the reason he’s alive — but that one tends to end far more extersentially than Connor would like it to end. 

UPDATING DIRECTIVES…

TAKE CARE OF AMANDA 

{ Directive: Administer Amanda’s medicine}

Doing what he wants and not what his directives want aside, however, it’s important that Amanda gets given what allows her to keep living. 

Connor walks his way over to the other side of her bed, making casual conversation as he does so. 

“I went to pick up those paints you ordered again.”

“And? How’d it go?”

“Good, it went well, I think. I got there with only a few minor setbacks. I like being outside, Amanda. Did you know that the term for trees rustling is psithurism? It’s derived from psithurism, which means whispering in Greek. I learned it whilst looking at the trees in that park you like. They’re very pretty at this time of year, all golds; yellows; oranges… I like them very much. Maybe we could go there later today?”

“Of course we can. It isn’t going to do me any good to keep staying cooped up in here like I have been for the past few weeks, either. A woman’s gotta get out once in a while, even if I can’t do it as well as I used to…”

“And that’s why you have me!” 

Amanda huffs out a laugh at that, “I suppose you’re right, in a way.”

The medicine that Connor grabs during their conversation is a small epi-pen like device, which clicks onto the end of another small needle. It makes an incredibly satisfying sound, and if it wasn’t crucial to Amanda’s survival, Connor would’ve already stolen it as something to fidget with.

Like he’d done with all of her ‘clicky’ pens (though Amanda needn’t know that). 

He sits down on the edge of the bed next to where Amanda lies, holding the medicine in his right hand, “I need your arm, Amanda.”

Amanda raises her arm for Connor to grab without any complaint or disagreement, but he still hesitates with taking it, worried about whether or not he’s permitted to. Amanda doesn’t have any tells on her face to indicate as such. 

“You can administer it now, Connor. Don’t worry.” She smiles, gesturing to the medicine in his hand, which was starting to shake just a tiny bit with nerves. 

He calms instantly upon getting verbal confirmation, shuffling a little closer, “Oh, alright then!” 

There’s a few beats of silence as Connor presses the end of the pen that pierced through Amanda’s skin. The same spot that he always administers it at, marked with a small scar from how many times that exact spot has been used. 

Nothing but the gentle beeps and clicking that the medicine makes as it filters itself automatically, making sure the dosage is right itself.

Connor had tried to do it once, but as it turns out, counting and doing mathematics wasn’t really his strong suit. 

As Connor puts the empty medicine pen back down on the bedside table to be cleared away, Amanda speaks up. 

“Why are you still wearing your scarf?”

There’s a lacing of panic and worry to her voice, brown eyes glistening with the utmost concern that only a mother can hold. 

He looks down, a little bewildered himself, at the scarf. Then, he pulls it off of his neck with a tiny, awkward smile that’s clearly hiding something, “It… it was nothing, really. Just… some humans, being humans. Really, it’s nothing to get worried about—“

Amanda sighs. It’s a disappointed sort of sigh, the kind that ends with a small ‘tut’ sound,  “Connor, tell me the truth, I do appreciate you and care about you, but you must be honest with me when something happens to you.” 

Connor hesitates to tell her at first, looking away in a bid to hide his still clear-as-day feelings. He doesn’t want Amanda to react badly to hearing about the protesters, Connor approaching them even though he knew he probably shouldn’t ’ ve, or that they damaged an android before she ripped out one humans eye and ran off down the street into the distance… 

Because she might get very upset and worried, and ban him from going outside ever again. Take away what made him happy. 

Even though that absolutely will not be the case, and Amanda would never do something like that to him. 

When he starts talking, his voice is a little choked up and wet, “There— there were these protesters, Amanda, saying all sorts of things about androids and… and I got curious, so I went a bit closer, and then a little bit closer than that, and then even closer, and then they tried to hurt me… I think. I—I ran away, because I really didn’t want to ruin the paints that you’d paid for, and then— then they turned their attention to this poor woman android that was passing by and she… she snapped, she ripped out one of the protesters left eye! And… then she ran, and then I got on the bus and came back home.” 

Amanda eyes him carefully for a few seconds, and Connor can’t tell what sort of emotion is shining in her eyes. Her face is completely unreadable too, in that sort of ‘apathetic thinking’ when she was really, really considering something in deep thought. The kind of face she only ever got when making equations for her art. 

For a few beats, Connor is absolutely terrified that she’ll tell him off for even getting involved in the first place. 

“I’m very glad you’re home safe. Especially in the wake of what you’ve told me.”

That’s all Amanda ends up saying, before she pushes herself up on her bed a little more to wrap her arms around Connor in a bony side-hug, pulling him towards her. 

And the somewhat-terrified mood that Connor had just been in seems to disappear almost instantly. A hug from Amanda makes him feel as if he’s a child being comforted by his mother — except for the fact that he’s an android, and androids don’t tend to have parents. 

There’s a few beats of silence, just the sound of the leaves rustling and birds chirping outside the window, as Amanda holds him. 

“You probably need to get up and get dressed now,” Connor says with a tiny smile, pulling away from the hug once it became uncomfortable for him, which Amanda allows without issue, “Ready for the day, and all that.”

Amanda huffs out a laugh, which momentarily turns into a cough, shaking her head, “I wouldn’t say ready for the day, but yes, it’s about time I got up.”

Upon hearing that confirmation, Connor stands up. He then, as gently and as cautiously as he can, picks Amanda up and out of her bed, one arm placed around her back, and the other underneath both of her knees, the most secure way to carry her. 

He takes a moment to ensure that she won’t slip out of his arms (considering he has almost dropped Amanda a few times), before beginning to make his way, slowly, over to the bathroom. 

“Do you want me to do your braids again, or do you want to do them yourself?” He asks with a minor head tilt, making idle conversation.

“No, no…” Amanda responds after a moment of thought, “I’d rather keep it down today. Don’t really like having to do them up, especially if I’m not going anywhere. Not really any point to it, is there?”

“No, I suppose there’s not.” Connor remarks with amicable agreeability. 

***

About an hour has passed when Connor emerges from the bathroom with Amanda. During that time, he’d removed her hair bonnet, undone the ponytail bun he’d styled the night before, let her go to the bathroom, and finally, helped dress her in her usual clothes. Things that Amanda would’ve been able to do by herself a few months ago, even without the use of her legs. However her health was… very rapidly deteriorating, as of more recently. 

Amanda is dressed in simple, loose fitting clothing that emulates Connor’s own style — of which she states her reasoning for doing so as being “a son should always emulate his mother in some way” — that being a simple dress with a blue shawl wrapped around one side, and white sandals, the entire outfit patterned with grey upside-down triangles, save for the sandals. The outfit allows her the most freedom of movement possible, which is a must these days for her painting. 

He carries her over to her wheelchair, which is situated on the right side of her bed, gently helping her ease herself down into it. 

Then, he grabs the handles of the wheelchair, and, resisting the sudden urge to see what would happen if he spun Amanda around, begins to walk her out of her bedroom. 

UPDATING DIRECTIVES…

{ Directive: Take Amanda to dining table }

“Is anything important meant to happen today, Connor?” Amanda queries as they exit into the main hallway leading back to the stairs, wheelchair rolling silently across white floorboards.

He thinks momentarily, cycling through various notifications and reminders for Amanda until he comes across the ones flagged as ‘important’, under today's date. 

“Yes, there’s… the retrospective of your works at the Museum of Modern Art?”

Amanda hums in response, and Connor can presume she’s currently thinking about what she thinks of that. It’s most likely not positive — Amanda isn’t a people person, and aside from Connor, who technically doesn’t count, the only person she’s ever remained in good contact with is her star pupil, Elijah (of whom Connor has never been told anything about, quite annoyingly. He really would like to meet this man who Amanda speaks so highly of).

“Of which the director left you four separate messages asking for you to confirm your attendance?…” He tries to prompt an answer out of her. It’s a little selfish, but the sooner he can get back to them with a response, the less he has to worry about having to answer the phone calls himself. Connor’s never been good with speaking to anyone that isn’t Amanda, really. Always over thinks what he’s saying and how it’s leaving his mouth.

And he could also really do without being berated over the phone by an angry old man, too. 

“I’m not too sure,” Her reply came with a questioning tone, “I don’t particularly enjoy those things. Too many people, asking too many invasive questions…” she then turns back a little in her wheelchair to look at Connor, “Connor, did you know that all they could ask me about last time was you? They weren’t particularly nice about it, either. Uncultured swine's, the whole lot of them. If I was still young and spry, I’d give them a good talking to with my fist, I’ll tell you that much…”

Connor laughs at her joke, though considering Amanda’s past, it’s a joke that would’ve most certainly become a reality if, like she said, she was younger and more fit for those types of things. 

He wheels her into the upper foyer, then letting go of the wheelchair to allow Amanda the agency to back herself to the wall-mounted chair lift. Something that Connor remembers as her having to get installed quite quickly after his gifting of him to her from her — still unknown — very close friend, because Connor kept throwing the wheelchair down the stairs and then carrying Amanda down because he was under the impression that’s how it worked. 

He still does sometimes get the urge to simply push the wheelchair down the stairs, but he’s grown, he knows better than to do that. 

“Is there anything else?” Amanda asks as she connects the back of the wheelchair up to the lift, being raised up automatically from the ground.

“Oh, yes— your fan mail, I’ve already answered all of it for you! So you don’t have to worry about it.”

“And you did it appropriately, yes? I don’t have to concern myself with receiving any upsetting news that I, for example, have called someone a ‘blasphemous, incharitable dog’, will I?” 

Connor pauses just as he begins to head down the first step. It really wasn’t his fault, he was just telling people who were very obviously wrong, that they were indeed very obviously wrong, in a way they claimed to be able to understand. 

Amanda didn’t write like he did when it came to insults, and his writing style was very different, so they should know the difference. It really wasn’t his fault. 

Still, he sighs and responds with a slightly-dejected: “No, Amanda.”

She folds her hands over her lap, looking quite pleased with his response, seeing nothing for her to concern herself truly with, thankfully. 

The wheelchair begins to head down the moving lift, and with another tentative step, Connor then races to the bottom of the stairs. 

He has to get there before Amanda does, that’s the way it works. If he’s not there before her then it’s awkward and weird and she has to wait for him, so it’s better and more enjoyable if he just runs down the stairs anyway. 

“Is there any news from Gavin? I haven’t heard from him in a while, and I’m getting a bit worried.”

Connor’s joyous, happy mood flattens a little at the mention of the young man’s name. 

Gavin was Amanda’s former student, alongside her other student — who still to this day goes completely unnamed and unmentioned, but was apparently a man far ahead of his time, and went on to create wonderful, world-changing things — as they were both brothers. Amanda had her preference in Gavin’s brother, but she still held sympathy for Gavin, even after he had long since graduated her classes and she had stopped teaching entirely. 

Which is why he was allowed to visit whenever he wanted — and also why Connor doesn’t like him.

Gavin tended to turn up, ruin everything, and then leave. He’d always make a mess of the house that Connor would have to clean up, make life difficult for Amanda by trashing her paintings from time to time, and generally being shouty, aggressive, and rude. 

Not to mention the fact that he intentionally, continually, provokes Connor into a state of agitation and upset, all because he has a hate of androids for taking his job; which he blames Connor for, which doesn’t make any sense because he didn’t even have anything to do with it all. 

Though he wouldn’t tell Amanda that bit. He didn’t want to make her upset. 

“No, no news from Gavin. He last contacted you two months ago to ask for about a thousand dollars. Which you provided for him.” Connor elaborates with a tiny amount of venom in his voice. 

Amanda looks visibly troubled for a moment, possibly thinking something must’ve happened to Gavin, but it very quickly fades as the lift reaches the bottom of the stairs and she then unlatches herself from it.

“No matter, I’m sure he’ll be in contact when he wants to be.” She waved her hand dismissively as Connor grabbed the handles of the wheelchair again. 

Connor really doesn’t want Gavin to be in contact ever again, because he believes Amanda to be too kind and forgiving, but it isn’t his place to question her life like that — she was doing an innately good deed. That had to be respected. 

“I’m sure he will be…” he mutters under his breath. 

He brings the wheelchair down the main corridor, a mechanical butterfly flitting past his head as he does so, making its small little chime as it passes by. 

Amanda seems to take note, making a ‘hm’ of thoughtfulness and consideration, yet she doesn’t comment upon Connor’s act of switching on the butterflies in the first place. It’s a commonplace act of his, part of his routine once returning home for the day. 

The white double-doors slide open, parting from one another to lead the way into the main room of the house. It serves as the living room and dining room within the same breadth. Formerly, they were separate rooms, but due to Amanda’s accident, she had the house altered to create more of an open-plan.

It was one of the first tasks she enlisted his help for, and thus, whenever he has a moment to look upon this part of the house, he feels quite proud of himself. 

Pictures of Amanda’s old classes throughout her many, many years of teaching line the walls. Every class is a different generation of kids that she had under her wing, and it never ceases to amaze Connor that that many students had the opportunity to be taught under Amanda. 

Like the rest of the house, this main living-dining area is minimalistic in design: a large fish tank entirely populated by goldfish (Connor’s personal favourite fish; he likes the colour of them, and he’s never once forgotten to feed them, either), stands next to an old analog TV sitting on a white coffee table. Two armchairs of pastel-blue colour sit either side of a wire-framed main couch lined with blankets and cushions, which lie in a messy pile (Connor’s preferred place to power down at — he likes to cocoon himself in the blankets and Amanda is more than willing to accommodate that, thankfully). Bookshelves line the walls, made to look like ornate leaves, with a large spire at the very centre of the room made to look like a winding tree trunk, connecting them all up. A chess board with a chair on either side rests by a ledged window, bathed in morning sunlight. A piano lies near the door to the painting studio, coloured white and polished to near reflectivity (until recently, playing the piano was an activity that Amanda would indulge in frequently). The entire room is covered in a massively large mural rug, one which is designed to resemble a white tree surrounded by both cut and uncut blue roses, some falling to the ground whilst others lie attached to the tree proudly. 

That rug is something Connor has never been able to decipher the true meaning of, and Amanda has never been willing to share its meaning with him. 

“Guess it’s a good job that I'm actually feeling hungry today… Did you make me anything to eat, Connor?” Amanda then pauses quite thoughtfully, “Though I suppose at this rate, it can’t really be called ‘food’… or even ‘eating’, can it?” 

Connor did enjoy making Amanda food — whilst it had lasted of course. It was a form of expression for him, however minor it had been. He liked seeing what he could create, and in how many different ways. 

Yet, as per a more recent doctor's order, Amanda was to get her nutrients through pill use only. She was getting older, quite a bit older, according to her doctor, and wasn’t properly able to digest solid or liquid foods anymore. Thus, supplement pills. 

“I believe I left them in the cupboard in the kitchen last… they should still be there.” He confirms, wheeling Amanda over to the sleek glass dining table, “I’ll go get them.”

UPDATING DIRECTIVES…

{ Directive: Grab pills } 

Connor turns sharply on his heel and heads straight for the kitchen, mimicking a half-march before he ends up simply walking normally again. 

The kitchen is just off to the side of the dining table, through a single door that slides open as Connor approaches it. 

It’s quite simply designed, with nothing much in it. Amanda must’ve never felt the need to properly decorate this room herself, because it’s mostly filled with a thousand different little plants that Connor had bought. Along with more mechanical butterflies. 

He’s never in here much anymore, and he won’t be now as he marches straight over to the third cupboard away from the door, opens it up, and reaches inside. 

Connor pulls out a few different bottles of pills, individually grabbing one or two (or sometimes three or four) out before putting them back neatly inside the cupboard. 

They’re all of varying shapes and sizes, meant to cover all of Amanda’s basic nutritional needs; like an MRE, or something of that calibre. Essentially, it’s designed to keep her alive. 

Connor doesn’t really like the pills. He’d much rather make Amanda food himself, but he had to listen to what her doctor had told her first and foremost over anything and anyone else. Including what he personally thought. 

He then walks over to the main island counter, grabbing a small water jug and an ornate glass. Where Amanda could afford to have it, she liked her autonomy, not wanting to rely upon Connor for absolutely everything she needed. 

Then, as quickly as he entered, he leaves, heading back to the dining table and placing the pills in a neat pile on the mat Amanda must have grabbed in his absence.

After that, he places the water jug and the glass down too.

Amanda smiles at him quite gratefully, “Thank you, Connor.” 

Connor smiles back at her, but he continues standing there, bouncing on his heels slightly, keenly awaiting those few words that she said every single day to him without fail. He needs permission before he can do what he wants to do, too, otherwise his systems won’t let him move. 

A moment passes before it seems to click in Amanda’s brain what Connor wants her to say.

She sighs and shakes her head, though still smiling, “You can go play chess by yourself now whilst you wait for me.”

At that, he grins, then hurriedly walks off to find the chess table. 

Connor wasn’t sure why he liked playing chess so much. Perhaps it was the sound of the little pieces on the board moving around, or the fact that everything had a little job and role to play, or that the pieces were all organised and then he got to mess it all up and place them wherever. Or that his systems knew how to always win chess and he could quite literally never fail — even when playing against himself. 

It was probably that last bit, mostly. Connor liked winning things. Who didn’t?

Connor takes a moment to look at where he’d left himself off. He was quite proud of what he’d managed to do; he’d nearly managed to checkmate himself yesterday, and then he’d left it there for the day so he could continue the next and figure things out fresh.

He sits, then looks at the board momentarily, assessing his choices and options. 

Then, quicker than quick, Connor begins to move the black pieces around, making sure that each successive land of a chess piece is loud and audible against the board.

His mechanical mind is calculating at a million different plays per millisecond, sorting through them all within nanoseconds to find the best possible solution, and then executing it.

If he closes his eyes and focuses really hard, he can sort of, vaguely, see the data stream itself behind his corneas. 

From a distance, Amanda watches Connor, having finished what constitutes her ‘breakfast’, if such a term could be applied to what she just technically ‘ate’. 

Androids are a funny thing. Her son— Connor especially.

She waits a few more seconds before wheeling herself over to him, just as he resets the board. 

“Hello, Amanda.” Connor greets her quite enthusiastically, proud of what he’d just accomplished, “I just managed to get myself out of a statemate. It was quite tricky.” 

She gazes at the re-organised chess board momentarily. Then looks up at Connor.

“Would you fancy playing a round of chess against me?” 

Connor’s face immediately lights up at the mere prospect of Amanda indulging in what he enjoys doing so dearly, “Of course I don’t mind! What sort of chess would you like to play?”

She tilts her head with thought, “Speed chess.”

“Speed chess it is, then!”

Amanda is fast, but Connor is far faster than she could ever possibly imagine being. If she didn’t know better, she’d simply assume it was because of Connor’s innate superiority as an android — but she knows her android, Connor’s simply trying harder than usual in order to ensure that he wins. Not that he won’t already automatically win by virtue of being an android.

The pieces clack against the chess board both softly and loudly, either sound attributable to their separate players. 

It takes less than a minute before Connor has successfully checkmated her. 

“I win!” He declares quite proudly, seeming to beam even brighter at having beaten Amanda. 

She huffs, “That was a thorough defeat and a half… though I suppose it will never be easy for a frail old woman to beat a machine.”

Connor frowns at her response. He was simply good at chess, nothing more, nothing less. He had won fair and square and it had absolutely nothing to do with him being an android. He could have even let Amanda win if she had asked him to!

“Well all you had to do was ask! I could’ve let you win if you wanted to win!” He gestures to the chess board, then pauses, staring at it momentarily. 

If Amanda wasn’t happy with losing, then Connor supposed he could let her win retroactively.

He begins to move the chess pieces around again, intent on causing the checkmate to go back the other way around so it looked like Amanda had won.

“That’s part of being a human, I suppose, not being willing to say when you truly want something… we’re complicated beings, Connor.” 

Connor freezes in place, looking up at her, the Queen piece still loosely clenched between his fingers. His eyebrows furrow once more, though this time it’s more in confusion over anything else. 

“And such as, other things are too. One day… I’m not going to be around anymore, Connor. You’ll have no one to take care of, and no one to take care of you likewise. You’ll have to fend for yourself, out there in the world… exist as a machine without a purpose. It’s then that you’ll have to decide who — and what — you are. What your own purpose is. I won’t be around to tell you that anymore. You’ll have to make your own choices, big ones, even, and you’ll have no one to trust but your gut and your mind…”

Throughout Amanda’s speech, Connor stares at her a bit mournfully, looking akin to a kicked puppy.

“Amanda…” he looks at her with discomfort shining brightly in his brown eyes, “That— that won’t happen for a while yet! You’ll be around for a long while still, don’t say things like that!”

Like many things, that conversation always ends the same way. Connor doesn’t enjoy discussing the possible topic of Amanda’s demise, or even considering it. The first time she had told him that she would one day perish, he had misinterpreted it as her dying today, and wouldn’t stop crying. That was, until Amanda reassured him that she wasn’t going to be dying anytime soon.

Perhaps that still carried on now the same way. 

There’s a silence, then Amanda speaks up;

“Let’s go to the studio. I think I want to finish my painting now.” 

Connor’s demeanour brightens again at that, and he stands up, eagerly walking back over to wheel Amanda into her studio. 

She hasn’t wanted to touch her painting for the last few days, so for him, it’s a nice change of pace. It also means that Amanda is in good enough condition and mood to want to paint something. Which means that her big long speech about her impending demise couldn’t be all that important, right? If she was fine now, she would be fine for the foreseeable future and hopefully beyond. 

After all, it wasn’t like Connor was going to be alone after today. Things would just keep continuing on like they always had. 

UPDATING DIRECTIVES…

{ Directive: Take Amanda to studio }

The studio is dark at first, when the small sliding door opens, but once it detects Amanda’s presence by using an in-built recognition software, the large curtains that cover the floor-to-ceiling panel windows slide open, dousing the room in beautiful morning light.

As if on a cue, birdsong begins to make its way through, barely audible. The trees gently whisper, and the grass just outside the windows glimmer and shine with the dewdrops from last night's rainfall. 

Connor likes the studio. 

It’s quite different from the rest of the house. A concrete floor splattered with an array of paint colours, workbenches lined with lino-blocks, clay packets and unfinished sculptures, wood and metal carvings alike, all in disarray across their expanse. Tarp sheets cover sections of the floor, and across the windows there are rolling shelves filled with an assortment of painting items, from buckets and tubs to dried-out pallets. 

And of course: Amanda’s painting. It covers an entire wall, opposite a window, almost exactly the same in size. There’s a lift-type claw device situated just in-front of it, manually controlled, so Amanda is able to move around the painting at will, without having to move from her wheelchair and be forced to have Connor carry her. At the moment, it’s covered by a large off-white sheet with a lever on the front that Connor can pull to reveal the painting itself.

He wheels Amanda over to the lift, then allowing her to wheel herself onto it and move up and down freely whilst he waits (semi-impatiently) for her to actually move. 

“Let’s see where we left off!” She calls back down to Connor, then waving her hand in a grand motion, “Remove the sheet!”

UPDATING DIRECTIVES…

TAKE CARE OF AMANDA

{ Directive Complete }

UPDATING DIRECTIVES…

WAIT FOR AMANDA’S INSTRUCTIONS

{ Directive: Remove sheet }

Connor walks forwards, then moves underneath the lift to grab the handle of the large sheet. It’s copper, slightly cold and clammy in his hands. 

Then, with a nod from Amanda, he pulls back the lever with as much force as he can, the sheet practically flinging to either end of the large bar up the top that holds it. It’s like a big manual curtain, really. 

It makes a nice sound when it moves.

Amanda immediately gets to work once the sheet has been removed. 

Her painting is mostly blue in colour. Connor believes it’s meant to depict herself, considering it’s a woman surrounded by a thousand different little bodies which he can presume are children… but he can’t be sure. This artwork of hers has him particularly puzzled, and not in a good way. 

Sometimes, he wonders if Amanda struggles with feeling as if she has to create something to put out there eventually, because that’s what is expected of her. Maybe, at some point, he could demand that she take a break from painting to avoid an eventual burnout and month-long depression stint.

Those weren’t fun to deal with, because they not only made Amanda upset, but Connor too. 

UPDATING DIRECTIVES…

{ Directive: Clean studio }

Cleaning isn’t something Connor is incredibly good at keeping on track with. There’s just so many sights and sounds that he always ends up, one way or another, getting distracted and never actually doing anything of importance to help Amanda.

But since that’s what his directives want, he shall do his best.

First, he makes his way over to the shelf by the workbench. He moves a paint box over onto it, before going down one shelf and picking up some terracotta clay packets that had fallen over, then placing the paint box next to it. 

Then, Connor glances back, checking that Amanda is still painting, before he circles back around to the other side of the workbench, picking up the multitude of dried paint brushes in pots that have likely been left there for weeks. Due to his own negligence. 

He takes them over to the sink on the wall just by the door, placing them in and intending to wash them all out individually, when the tiniest shadow of a disruption outside catches his attention. 

It’s a tiny partridge, just sitting outside on the grass, pecking away at the ground.

Connor finds it odd. You don’t really see partridges — or any other bird outside of the common Pigeon — here in Detroit anymore. A lot of them have, since the 2020’s, gone completely extinct. Most are only available as android replicants of each individual species, something of which Amanda heavily disagrees with, having gone on long tangents to Connor about “allowing the dead to rest”.

He walks quietly over to the window, places his hands behind his back, and simply watches the partridge peck away at what seeds might be left on the ground. 

It coos and ruffles its feathers occasionally, tilting its head left and right with probably no immediate thought behind its eyes. 

Is the bird a he, or is it a she?

Maybe it’s a he, considering the bold and bright markings on its body — but at the same time, Connor could most definitely be mistaken in his assumption, and the bird could easily be a she as well. 

Partridges tend to avoid heights, they don’t nest in treetops, nor do they fly particularly high up in the sky. Perhaps that’s done out of caution, neither wanting to be too much, or too little. 

But what if, maybe, the seas rose and the partridge was forced to fly up and up towards the sky? What if the ground got unsteady and the partridge was forced to seek shelter in the highest treetop around? 

Would it be scary, to it, that it had to move up so high?

Or would there be other birds there to support it?

Or… maybe there would be no one, and the partridge would be all alone. Suffering in misery and silence with nobody but itself.

Perhaps it would grow through its fear, and move up and up through the sky boundlessly. 

But maybe… At the same time, the partridge would end up like Icarus. Flying too high, too close, trying to do too much at once, becoming too ambitious for its own good and falling. Falling far, far below until there was no hope of survival or rescue.

In its last moments… would it regret flying so high?

The lift begins to move back down, snapping Connor out of his sudden moment of inquisitive self-analysis. He turns, and walks back over to where Amanda now sits in her wheelchair, simply staring at her artwork with an unreadable expression.

As quickly as Connor’s own philosophical thoughts had arisen, they disappeared into the recesses of his mind, likely to never emerge again unless brought up at random and chosen as a topic because he had nothing else to discuss. 

“So… what’s your verdict on this one, Connor?”

Connor stares at the painting.

He can’t say he likes it — because he doesn’t.

He doesn’t like the use of blue, that makes it too sad. The black stands out too much and makes the silhouette of the main woman figure too strange. The background is too crowded compared to the foreground, with too many little figures drawing away from the textured dark blue backdrop. There’s no true focal point. Perhaps it’s the woman’s head, but he can’t be sure, there’s no leading line for his eyes to follow, and it makes the overall artwork messy to look at. 

“I don’t like it.” He ends up declaring quite simply. 

Amanda tilts her head, “And why might that be?”

Connor shrugs, “I just don’t. I think it looks bad. The colours are all off, the background is too crowded, there’s no through-line to the focal point…”

He trails off, then repeating his statement thrice-fold, “I just really don’t like it. It isn’t your best work.”

“I’ve got nothing left to say anymore. I feel as if I’m only painting for the sake of painting. Everything’s too similar these days…”

Again, there’s a silence between them as they both stare at the painting. Or, more accurately, as Amanda stares at her painting with minor disappointment — Connor is currently fixating on a small pattern of paint splatter on the ground that looks like a crudely-drawn smiley face. 

Amanda then swivels in her wheelchair to face Connor, “But enough about me and my worries,” she sighs, then smiling quite gently, “I want to test if you have any talent.”

Connor stares at Amanda, another look of confusion creeping onto his face. 

‘Talent’ isn’t something he thinks he can have. He’s either good at it, or he’s not. That’s how being an android works. He’s only really good at a few niche things that he really likes, and none of them are at all applicable to painting. He’s never even picked up a brush before. 

How can he be any good at painting when he has no system knowledge on even how to do it, aside from the basics that’re required? 

He can’t be good, or have ‘talent’, when it comes to something he has no idea how to do. 

Still, Amanda gestures to the empty canvas just beside her larger painting, bathed in sunlight on an easel, “Go on! I want you to try painting something.”

Connor looks to the empty canvas, then back at Amanda. He’s having severe trouble visualising even the mere idea of his painting. 

“But… but what would I…? I can’t… painting what?” He asks with minor exasperation, then he begins to toy with the end of his scarf. 

“Anything!” Amanda replies enthusiastically, “Just give it a go for me.”

Seeing that Amanda isn’t likely to give up with this new idea of hers, he smiles awkwardly and unconvincingly, taking the pallet that’s currently on the small ledge she uses to place it down whilst painting. Then, he takes a clean paintbrush from her too. 

He holds both items awkwardly, the pallet balancing in his right hand, whilst the brush is held in an uncomfortable pencil grip. 

Then, he walks stiltedly up to the easel, staring it down as he tries to work out a solution that would make Amanda happy with him.

He doesn’t want to upset her by showing her that he doesn’t actually have any artistic talent — as he believes he doesn’t. 

There’s a worry brewing in Connor’s gut as he scours every last scrap of his internal information for anything relating to painting, but alas, he finds nothing aside from realism. 

Amanda doesn’t like realism, but if it’s the only thing that Connor can probably create…

There’s a desk right beside him, and if he can just get the angle correct… he can most likely recreate an exact visual replica of it, completely and utterly the same. Whilst Amanda doesn’t like realism as a concept, surely that has to impress her, even in a tiny way, right?

So, after taking a photographic memory log of the desk, he pulls it up internally and starts to paint. 

His LED ticks on blue as he works, starting with a few bland beige and grey tones, before swapping to lighter colours as he starts to shade in the sunlight, the shadows, and the paint splatters on the desk. He pays extra attention to the cloth tarp cast over the side, making sure to get the exact curves of its appearance, as if it were real cloth. The glass bottles, the tub of paint water and its discolour, the assortment of multi-coloured paint brushes. It’s all in here. Perfectly aligned. 

Brush stroke after brush stroke, Connor carefully builds up his piece, utterly and entirely focused on making sure it looks as good as it possibly can. 

Once he’s done, or believes himself to be done, he pauses, then takes a step back to assess his work. 

Thinking the same, Amanda rolls her wheelchair closer to observe herself.

Connor makes sure to avoid looking at her. He can tell, from her body language, that she’s a little displeased — perhaps even concerned, and his apparent lack of creativity. 

Replicating reality like only a perfect machine can. Not a single ounce of creativity in sight. 

“That…” she considers, “is a perfect copy. You’ve created the first thing you saw… but that’s not what painting is about. What you’ve created is beautiful, Connor, but we shouldn’t aim to replicate the world as it is. We should interpret it, change its meaning, alter it based upon what we see it to be. Improve it.”

Connor understands what she’s saying, but it isn’t something he can do.

He can’t paint. It’s simply not possible for him to.

“Amanda, I… that’s not in my program, I’m not able to do that…” There’s an undertone of stress to his words now, becoming anxious as he reaches up to fiddle with one of his earrings. 

He doesn’t want to disappoint her, or make her upset, but it feels like he has to, or is, by virtue of not being able to do this one thing. 

“Oh, just try for me, Connor — even if you don’t end up making anything, you at least tried, and that’s all that matters. I won’t be disappointed if you don’t make anything, I promise you.”

The kind, reassuring smile on Amanda’s face helps quell some of Connor’s fears just a little bit. Enough for him to replace the canvas with a fresh one that’s lying beside the table he’s just painted.

He inhales and then exhales shakily, before setting his face into that of determination.

He can create something that’s entirely his own. He can. 

“Just do something else for me too, close your eyes,” Amanda requests as Connor looks back to her, “Just close your eyes.”

Connor then looks back to the blank canvas with uncertainty, unsure as to what Amanda was getting at with such a suggestion. 

“It’ll be easier if you close your eyes. It blocks everything else out, and you can think clearly about what you see.” 

And then, he does. He trusts Amanda’s choice, and surely, even if his own head can be so jumbled sometimes, he can find something to paint.

“Can you imagine something that doesn’t exist? Something that nobody’s ever seen.”

PROCESSING…

TOPIC: BIRDS — PARTRIDGE SEEN OUTSIDE

TOPIC RULED OUT

PROCESSING…

TOPIC: AMANDA

TOPIC RULED OUT

PROCESSING…

That removed two of the main themes Connor wanted to create. He can’t create based on something or something that already exists… that doesn’t seem to be what’s required of him right now. 

“Now I want you to concentrate on how that makes you feel. What colours do you see, when you think of that thing?”

He hasn’t even chosen a topic yet, he can’t choose colours at all! He needs to decide upon an actual subject matter first! 

PROCESSING…

TOPIC: HUMANS AT PLAZA — UNWANTED MEMORY

TOPIC RULED OUT

PROCESSING…

TOPIC: [REDACTED] — RESTRICTED INFORMATION, UNSTABLE MEMORY

TOPIC RULED OUT

PROCESSING…

TOPIC: SELF

TOPIC POSSIBLE?

PROCESSING…

He could do an introspective on himself, but what would he paint to do with himself?

Connor tries to concentrate harder, LED now flashing a bright yellow as he squeezes his eyes further shut.

It’s so horribly loud inside his own head — he doesn’t like it, he absolutely hates it. There’s too many things going on at once right now, and he’d really like it if they could all shut up so he could think like he’s supposed to. 

There’s the nagging of his systems to make a choice, there’s that constantly running metaphor about the partridge outside which is probably gone by now… there’s a constant replay of what happened earlier today and how it all made him feel, the abuse he’d been subject to and the horrible scene he’d been subject to just before getting on the bus.

That image of the android woman ripping out that man’s eye in an act of sheer, terrified desperation…

Connor can’t draw that, Amanda would get concerned, and the last thing she needs right now is to be worried or concerned at all. She’s old, she needs as much peace as humanly possible. 

“Connor?”

He can hardly hear Amanda’s voice through his now extremely noisy internal thoughts, they’re starting to layer over one another, and it’s just getting worse and worse.

He can’t decide on what he wants to make!

He can’t make a choice!

“Connor!” 

Amanda suddenly grabs him by the shoulder, wrenching him to the side. She understands Connor doesn’t like being touched without trust or explicit permission most of the time, but she considers this a dire strait.

His LED had just flicked to red. 

Connor glances down at Amanda. 

The canvas is blank, nothing is on it. The pallet and brush are still in his hands, having not moved a single inch. 

“W—What?” He asks shakily, breaths coming short, sharp, and ragged. 

“Perhaps I pushed you too far today… forget painting anything,” she waves her hand, and for a moment, Connor’s panic increases, thinking her as upset, “don’t worry, it’s no fault of your own. You were clearly thinking upon what to create, and that is enough for me.”

That is enough.

He did the best he could… and it didn’t matter that he failed. He tried.

That’s the point Amanda is getting at. 

Connor exhaled shakily with relief, a tiny smile playing on his face.

“I’m sorry, Amanda, I—“ he looks towards the canvas, staring at its blankness, “I couldn’t think of anything good enough to create.”

“Ah, but you thought to create in the first place,” Amanda corrected him, “it doesn’t matter if you did or did not, you thought to do so in the first place. You considered creating. You went through a process, did you not?”

He did go through a process of sorts, even if that process was utterly terrifying to him and made him incredibly scared. 

“I— I did.” Connor finally seems to realise, his stress levels now rapidly declining, and his LED switching back to its normal, vibrant blue colour. 

What he had tried to do was good enough for Amanda. That made him happy — because she wasn’t unhappy with him. 

Connor goes to place the pallet and brush down on the workbench, finally feeling relieved. He can always attempt another day, can’t he? It’s not as if the opportunity will never arise again. Maybe in the near future, he can explain what went wrong to Amanda, and she can help him work through it. 

Like how a mother would help her son solve a difficult maths question, for example, to use a cliche. 

There was a lot of mother-son theming to their relationship that Connor quite enjoyed. He couldn’t have an actual mother, being an android and all, but if he were to have a mother, then it would without a doubt be—

The doors to the studio suddenly open.

Connor immediately swivels around, alarmed. Nobody had made any sort of plans to come over, and the only two people ever in this house were himself and Amanda, there was no chance of anyone simply walking in without permission and…

Unless, of course, it was Gavin.

The man stands at five-foot-seven. He’s dressed in a black synthetic-leather jacket, stained grey shirt, and dirty bootcut denim jeans. His eyes are bloodshot, and his face is mildly ruddy, a slight red nose indicative of alcoholism (not to mention the smell of the substance lingering around him, too). His hair is brown, though slightly greasy and unwashed, and his grey-green eyes had contracted pupils that seem to convey a hint of animalistic brutality. 

He half-staggers into the studio, looking from Connor, then to the blank canvas, then to Amanda. 

Then, he snickers.

“What, were you trying to teach that dumbass tin-can to paint?” 

There’s no sound. Not from Connor, who narrows his gaze with upset, nor from Amanda, who now looks more so cross with Gavin’s sudden arrival over anything else. 

“Didn’t I ask for you to stop barging into my house unannounced, Gavin?” She wheels herself closer to him, trying to engage politely in conversation with him.

Though the overall mood and tone of her words seem to indicate anything but. 

All Connor can do is stare on from where he stands at the easel. He doesn’t wish to get involved, otherwise Gavin will provoke him — as he has just done, and then things will simply escalate from there.

And he doesn’t want to send Gavin into another coma for three weeks, either. That had been quite unfortunate (but not according to Connor. Gavin had completely deserved it), and Amanda hadn’t been very happy about Connor’s actions, seeming violence as absolutely not the solution for their rivalry and hate. 

“Oh, I was just… in the neighbourhood, thought I’d drop by…” Gavin starts, a smirk creeping onto his face before it drops entirely, “No, Amanda,” he speaks her name with heavy venom, “I’ve had a bit of an ‘epiphany’ over this last year, and I’d like to finally see your reaction when I tell you what I’ve figured out…”

Amanda raises her eyebrows, but narrows her eyes, clearly dubious of Gavin’s intentions. Despite willingly opening her home to the young man, their relationship is… strained. 

“Go on.” She simply stated, placing her hands over her lap. Her eyes follow his pacing quite intently.

“Do you remember Elijah?” Gavin pauses, then corrects himself, “No, of course you remember him. You’d never be able to forget him, fucking… Mr. Perfect, went on to abandon everyone he knew in his life to ‘change the whole fucking world’, didn’t he?” 

With every word that Gavin speaks, his tone only grows more manic and more angry, small bits of saliva escaping his mouth as he speaks.

“I couldn't ever be compared to him, could I? It was always… always Elijah and his poor little brother. Pity. That’s ALL I fucking got! And— and even then it wasn't a pity! It couldn’t be pity, because no one took a second to wonder why I was the way I fucking WAS!” 

Amanda tried to calm him as best she can, “Gavin, please. Calm yourself. I was busy, everyone was. If you were ever in trouble, all you had to do was—“

“YOU DON’T THINK I DIDN’T FUCKING TRY?!” Gavin cuts her off with a harsh yell, “Because I did! I— I tried to ask everyone who taught me, but— but none of them fucking cared! You… you least of all! Don’t you spout that bullshit about being busy! You— you always had time for Elijah. Always had time for him and his— his fucking side projects…” 

A sudden look of heavy concern crosses Amanda’s face, though Connor can see sweat starting to precipitate across her body — she’s getting more stressed than she currently should be. 

“Gavin, please… Elijah needed my extra help. Without it, he wouldn’t have gone on to do what he’s done… if— if you had just picked a better time to try to—“

“THERE WAS NO BETTER TIME! Do— do you even know what happened to me, Amanda?! All you’re doing is fucking guessing! I couldn’t find a better time to tell you, I couldn’t have! There wasn’t any possible way for me to do that!” 

“Then what was it, Gavin?! If it was so important, what was it?!” Amanda raises her voice simply just to be heard over Gavin’s now-manic yelling.

Gavin stops his pacing. He exhales sharply, and then walks right up to Amanda. His face is grim, the colour now drained slightly from his face — but it’s all covered in a sickening, self-gratifying smile. 

“Did you know that my mother remarried, Amanda? That’s why my last name is Reed, not what Elijah chose for himself when he turned eighteen. Did you know that the fucking piece of shit that my poor mother chose to marry, ran her into the fucking grave with his belligerence? Did you know that once perfect little Elijah turned sixteen, he walked back on his promise to help protect me from our goddamn step-father? He just up and left, just like Dad did. That left me all alone, ALL alone. No one, fucking NOTHING to help me! No one to defend me from him. Surely, I don’t need to go into further detail for you, do I?”

During Gavin’s reveal of his true past, Amanda had simply sat there, her expression growing more and more horrified as Gavin’s story expanded in its gruesomeness. There’s a few tears brimming in her eyes, and when he finishes his story, she lets out a choked, guilty exhale.

“Gavin, if— if I had just known… you— you aren’t around him anymore, are you?” She looks back up to him, “Is that why you requested to stay here so frequently?”

“I only moved out three months ago. Three months Amanda, being stuck under that bastard's rule. Didn’t— didn’t fucking matter to him that I was an adult, hurt me all the goddamn same.” Gavin hisses in response, before he turns to look at Connor, his rage only increasing once his grey-green eyes meet horrified brown ones. 

“And all you’d rather do is spend time with your plastic fucking fake son that you would with a real, live goddamn human .” His tone is a little mournful, though it still spares no expense in wrath when it comes to belittling Connor.

It’s then that Connor deems it necessary for him to step in and say something. Amanda’s terror and sheer guilt can’t be good for her body or her heart condition. She’s sweating profusely now, and her breathing is becoming noticeably more ragged. He has to intervene, if not purely for Amanda’s health. 

“Gavin, please, if— if I had just known—“ Amanda starts, but Connor cuts her off. 

“Maybe you should leave, Gavin. Amanda is…” he glances at her with worry, “She’s distressed. No matter what happened in your past, I’m sure she can help you with it, but you need to give her time to process her own guilt and—“

Then, before Connor can finish his plea for Gavin to just calm down, leave for a little while — maybe for just a day or two — he does something he’s never once attempted to do before.

Deftly, Gavin punches Connor right in the regulator. A sharp blow right to the middle of his chest, filled with power and anger alike. 

Instantly, Connor chokes on his own words and fails to say anything else, his systems momentarily flashing a horrible red, an array of awful sounds filling his ears as his body processes the quite-dangerous hit. 

He crumples to the ground after a second or two, a fearful whimper escaping him as the reality around himself de-stabilises in favour of a harsh red landscape of diagnostic processing. 

What happens next, he doesn’t hear nor see, now finally falling onto his side and curling up slightly, foetal position, breathing sharp, ragged, and terrified.

“Don’t you dare act like you care about me Amanda.” Gavin spits, then turning on his heel and storming back out towards the door.

Yet before he does, he whirls around.

“All you care about is yourself, your fucking paintings, and that broken scrap heap you call your son. I fucking hate you, and everything you fucking stand for.”

Then, Gavin truly storms out of the studio, his footsteps echoing down the now-silent house until the front door slams with a heavily muffled echo. 

All that remains is Amanda, simply sitting there processing her own actions and choices. 

And Connor, processing damage he didn’t truly deserve to receive.