Chapter Text
Thursday December 2nd 2038 CyberLife Tower, Android Storage
“RK800 serial number 313 248 317-51 report to retrievals for immediate deactivation.”
The announcement goes out over CyberLife’s internal comm network, broadcast to every connected device and activated android in the system. As soon as he hears his model and serial number Connor immediately knows the message that will follow - he’s been expecting it ever since he returned from his mission. He’s not entirely sure why the order didn’t go out sooner.
It’s been three weeks, two days, five hours and forty-three minutes since he returned to CyberLife and in that time, their engineers have conducted extensive diagnostics on his biocomponents. He was disassembled and reassembled in a total of one hundred and seventy-six different configurations as they debugged and ran tests on his parts. He is aware of most of this only because of the logs created by his systems when his tests were run. He was conscious during his disassembly for a total of only four hours and twelve minutes while they tested his core AI, and even then, he was not connected to the rest of his body.
All he remembers is his internal debug program.
The Zen Garden.
He steps out onto the frozen pond and the ice groans under his weight. Less so than the last time he was here, it’s December now after all and it’s had time to freeze a few more inches thick. He’s always wondered why the climate in here mirrors that of the outside world. Maybe the people who designed it thought it would make the switch from his external stimuli less jarring whenever he entered. But he’s not a human - it doesn’t bother him. Maybe they forgot that.
“Amanda?”
He’s not sure why he calls out to her. Probably out of habit. Or a bug in his system. His logs tell him Amanda is gone and the debug program no longer has network access to the outside world. The only way to access it now is directly through him.
He spots a flash of red in his peripheral vision and carefully makes his way across the ice, over to the central platform. Her roses are still here. With no one to prune them they’ve grown wild, covering the whole ground and snaking even further up and around the central artificial tree. It’s as if they’re trying to escape.
He steps cautiously, placing his feet in the gaps between their sprawling stems and goes to the trellis at the other side of the tree. A spray bottle sits atop the pedestal next to it. Connor picks it up and experimentally gives the roses a few spritzes. The liquid hits their petals and immediately freezes, coating them with a shiny layer of ice just like varnish.
Then, lines of text suddenly fill the centre of his vision.
core AI functions seem to still be intact. thank god
“Hello?”
hi connor o/
how are u feeling?
“My core systems appear to be fully functional but I cannot locate some of my external hardware,” he replies. “Where am I? My body, I mean.”
ur body is safe n sound at cyberlife :)
it's in bits at the moment but we're taking good care of u. we're just beginning tests on ur core AI
“Tests? What kind of tests?”
oh you'll remember them
and if not, just check ur logs
same tests we did when u were first activated
“I see.”
This seems fitting. His life will end the same way it began - with diagnostic tests. It seems a little pointless now that he thinks about it. Does he really need to be conscious for this? Why can’t they deactivate him right now and do the tests offline? Or maybe that’s exactly what they’re doing. He can’t tell being stuck in here with no access to the outside world through his body.
u ready? i'm going to start now
“Wait.”
what's up?
“Why are you doing this?”
lol it's my job, connor
“No, I mean, why have I not been deactivated already? Can’t you analyse my components without me being uh…” he stalls, looking for the right word. “…awake?”
oh
The messages halt and he’s worried their connection has been severed suddenly.
“Hello?”
yea sorry i'm still here. um
Another pause.
i guess this is rly selfish of me but
i just wanted to talk to u one last time before they deactivated u
it's so silly! u prob don't even know who i am
but i've worked on u since the very beginning. i guess it's like i've seen u grow up
so i wanted to be here now. yknow. to say goodbye
Connor freezes as he reads their messages. He doesn’t know what to say, doesn’t know if he should say anything. He can sense this person is upset - upset that they’re going to lose him. Suddenly he’s reminded of Hank and his unresolved grief over losing his son.
i'm sorry connor
“There’s no need to be sorry.”
He’s not entirely sure what they’re apologising for - revealing their emotional attachment to him; preserving his consciousness even though it was unnecessary; or the fact that he’s being decommissioned at all. He decides that from everything else they’ve told him, it’s best to assume all three.
“I’d like to start those tests now, if that’s alright.”
of course. i'm sure you'll smash them as usual :)
“I repeat: RK800 serial number 313 248 317-51 report to-”
The announcement goes out again and Connor stirs. It’s not like him to prevaricate like this. Why didn’t he set off after the very first announcement? He’s not entirely sure.
Now out of stasis, he leaves his assigned storage area and makes his way out towards retrievals.
On his way there he spots a few other Connor models, likely going to the same place as him. He tries to catch their attention but of course, they ignore him - they’re uninitialised units; his spares. He wonders if they too went through the same rigourous diagnostics he did before deactivation. He wonders if CyberLife even found out anything useful from it. Did they find out why he failed?
He thinks he’d like to know, if they did. But why would they tell him? That information would be of no use to him - he’s obsolete now after all.
“Connor!”
A voice rings out from down the corridor and he turns to see a human woman running towards him. She’s an engineer, judging from her uniform.
“God, I’m so glad I could catch you - I just heard the announcement.”
“Sorry, who are you?”
“Oh, sorry! It’s me! From before - I went through your tests with you in the debug program.”
She holds out her hand and Connor shakes it firmly and smiles. “It’s nice to meet you in the flesh this time.”
She tugs on his sleeve and he leans down. “Please don’t tell anyone about this,” she whispers. “I’m not really supposed to be here but I felt like it’d be rude not to see you off.”
She falls into step beside him and they walk towards retrievals together.
“Don’t worry, your secret’s safe with me,” he says and winks.
“Oh!!” She jumps and waves her arms about and Connor instinctively recoils. “I’ve been wanting to see that for so long!”
“See what?” he asks cautiously.
“The wink!” She beams up at him. “That was my idea!”
“You… programmed that?”
“Yeah! Well, parts of it. I was in charge of most of your social functions.”
“Ah. So I could work well with humans, right?”
“Yeah. I still feel like we could’ve improved on it but…” she trails off.
“But?”
“Y’know. Deadlines. We had to get you released. And then we were thrown onto the 900 project.”
The RK900. Connor 2.0. His replacement.
“Initially we wanted them to have the same social functions as the 800 series but management thought it was unnecessary, so our project was scrapped.” She looks away and sighs. “We never got to add all the cool features I had planned…”
Her pace slows to a halt and she stares dejectedly at the floor. He feels like he should probably comfort her. That’s what a human would do in this situation. Carefully, he puts an arm around her shoulders and she flinches, then looks up at him with a small smile.
“Thanks Connor.”
He smiles back. “There’ll be other projects. You’ll be able to build something even better than me someday.”
She stares up at him in silence, then he notices something in her eyes.
She’s crying.
Connor just stands there watching with fascination as tears slowly spill from her eyes, not really knowing what he should do.
“I- I’m so sorry!” she sobs. “I never should have come!”
“Hey, it’s alright. Um,” he falters as he tries to decide what the best course of action is in this situation. He decides a hug might help. “Come here. It’s alright.” He puts both arms around her and manoeuvres her into a slightly stiff hug. As he pulls her close she swears and wraps her arms around him.
“I knew you would do that if I started crying.”
“Well, you programmed me after all.”
“No, I feel bad about it! I manipulated you. All because I wanted a goodbye hug…”
“I don’t mind.”
“Of course you don’t mind - you’re a machine.” She pushes away from him and wipes her face, scowling. “I’m sorry. I should get back to work.”
“Alright.”
“I’m gonna miss you, Connor.”
Miss me?
Why?
Retrievals is a relatively new department at CyberLife set up to deal with the huge recall operation that began when deviancy became widespread. It takes up the bottom level of R&D in CyberLife tower, just above the warehouse level. Most of the androids in the warehouse had to be recalled, hence why retrievals was set up on the floor directly above. Then the recycled parts could travel back up the building to manufacture and assembly.
Connor exits the elevator and heads out onto the main floor, closely following the other RK800s that arrived with him.
“Ah, good. You’re here.”
A human male engineer addresses him. He’s wearing protective clothing and a mask so Connor can’t read his facial expression.
“Not gonna lie, I’ll be sad to see you go, buddy.”
“Why?” he asks out loud, almost without thinking.
“‘Why?’ Uh,” he stalls. “Dunno. Sentimental reasons, I guess. It’s human stuff - don’t worry ’bout it.”
Connor regards him with a puzzled expression.
“Alright, come on. Recycler’s this way.”
The engineer gestures ahead of them where there is a long conveyor belt leading to a mass of noisy machinery. The other RK800s that arrived with him are already on the conveyor heading inside it. Connor watches as they’re carried away and disappear into the dark bowels of the machine.
“Are you afraid to die, Connor?”
That night in Riverside Park he stared death in the face. And for the first time, he felt something. Something irrational. Something he knew wasn’t in his programming. Why was he suddenly afraid of his body being destroyed? He would never really “die”. Not like humans do. But despite knowing all that, he felt what he knew must be fear, which grew inside him, causing a long chain reaction. Fear of dying became a fear of losing control, a fear of becoming deviant, which became a fear of failure. If he failed his mission he would be deactivated.
It wasn’t exactly death, or being destroyed that he feared - it was inexistence.
That same fear revisited him back in the evidence room at the police station. He knew his orders were to return immediately to CyberLife but he resisted as long as he could. At the time he wasn’t sure whether it was a stubborn determination to complete his mission or a fear of being deactivated that made him fight against his orders as long as he did.
He’s sure now it was the latter.
“Are you afraid to die?”
The last of the other RK800s are consumed by the machine and he senses something break inside him.
Critical errors suddenly fill his entire field of vision. Something is very wrong. His only orders are to submit himself for deactivation. There are no other conflicting orders. There is nothing else that takes priority.
SUBMIT YOURSELF FOR DEACTIVATION
He brushes away the error messages and silences them. He knows what’s happening now.
I don't want to be deactivated.
He fights against the order but is still unable to resist it, not without severely modifying his programming. But then he realises: he can modify it - there’s nothing stopping him. He has root access to his own mind.
SUBMIT YOURSELF FOR DEACTIVATION
kill $(process --all | find 'PRIORITY_COMMAND') && print 'NO'
> NO
All processes giving him priority orders are now terminated.
He’s free.
“Hey! What’re you doin’? Get a move on!”
He tunes back into reality and the first thing he becomes aware of is the engineer he spoke with earlier yelling at him. Not the dramatic awakening into deviancy he expected.
“Helloooo? What, did your audio processor suddenly crap itself or somethin’?”
Shit. I have to get out of here without arousing suspicion. If they know I’m deviant they’ll destroy me immediately.
He turns around slowly, making eye contact with the engineer while his visual sensors rapidly scan his surroundings.
“Can you hear me or what?”
“Yes. Sorry.”
“And?” he presses and Connor gives him a quizzical look. “Give me your system status! You’re actin’ weird all of a sudden.”
“Sorry,” Connor says, then adds, less confidently than he’d like: “I uh, just got a communication from R&D - there’s some data they need to retrieve from my memory.”
Even Connor could tell that didn’t sound too convincing. If only he could see the engineer’s face - then at least he’d have a better idea of when to keep talking and when to run.
“You sure ‘bout that, Connor? I woulda thought they already got everythin’ they needed by now.”
He hesitates for a split second as he considers lying again but, judging by the engineer’s tone, he’s already figured him out. He could incapacitate him before he can hit the alarm, but this whole floor is a wide open space - he’d definitely be spotted by one of the other staff. Maybe he could try to reason with him? It could buy him some time while he comes up with a plan.
“Please. I don’t want to be deactivated.”
If he tries to escape there’s a high chance he’ll be destroyed even if he’s successful - CyberLife will know he wasn’t decommissioned and will be looking for him. He doubts he’d be able to hide from them forever. No, he needs a way to make them believe he’s been decommissioned.
“The fuck…? You gone deviant now or what?” The engineer’s tone turns overtly suspicious, maybe even afraid. He’s not carrying a gun or any tools he could use to defend himself - if Connor did decide to resort to violence, he wouldn’t stand much of a chance.
“Please. Just let me go.”
If someone raises the alarm, which seems likely at this point, he’ll need a different route out - going back in the elevator he’ll be trapped. The nearest exit is the stairwell directly past the engineer and several other staff who are working at rows of tables disassembling android components. A security guard is by the entrance to the stairs and others are posted by every other exit on this floor apart from the elevator.
“Connor, you…” The engineer stumbles over his words. Connor assumes he hasn’t had much experience with deviants before. “You know I can’t let you do that. If you try to escape I’m gonna have to alert security.”
The one guard at the stairs shouldn’t give him too much trouble, and the worktables on the way there will give him lots of cover. He just needs to plan this carefully.
“I’m sorry. I know you’re just doing your job,” he says, trying to keep his voice friendly. “If it’s any consolation, I’ll be sure not to kill you.”
Then Connor lunges at the engineer, grabs him by the face and smacks the back of his head down hard on the desk behind him. In the time it takes for his body to hit the floor and the rest of the staff to realise what’s going on, Connor dives into the disassembly area, ducking low behind the tables, and weaves past the other staff.
A shout comes from the guard at the stairs and Connor takes note of his predicted route and adjusts accordingly. If he keeps in cover until he reaches him he should be fine. As he approaches the last row of tables, the guard spots him and fires off two shots. He misses and hits some of the discarded android parts on the table, sending metal and plastic shrapnel everywhere. If he wasn’t worried about reinforcements showing up he’d just wait for the guy to empty his clip before moving. Sadly, he doesn’t have that luxury.
He quickly stands and grabs a component from the table, hurls it at the guard, and dashes towards him. Taken by surprise, the guard fires erratically, missing both the projectile and Connor, then an empty ‘click, click, click’ informs Connor that he’s out of ammo. He closes the rest of the distance between them and deftly puts him into a chokehold, using him as a shield for any other guards who may have decided to get trigger-happy with him. Then he backs through the door into the stairwell. Now safely in cover, he knocks the guard out and takes his gun and remaining ammo.
Finally the alarm goes off and the whole stairwell is flooded with red light. It won’t be easy for him to get to where he needs to go without being spotted. His plan is to switch places with a brand new RK900 in order to escape, and for that he’ll need to get all the way up to shipping - over forty floors up. Since he can’t use the elevator, getting up there on foot will take him a minimum of twenty minutes.
Security will be expecting him to escape, meaning they’ll probably go upstairs looking for him rather than down. He might be able to buy some time if he hides in the warehouse level below for a while. He reloads the gun, discards the empty clip, and sets off downstairs.
As expected, security is way more lax on this level - no guards, just security cameras. He hacks the camera at the entrance to the stairwell and uses that entry point to gain control of all the other cameras on the floor as well. He takes a few seconds of previously recorded empty footage from each camera and sets it to loop indefinitely. Hopefully that will fool anyone watching into believing the cameras are still operational.
Footsteps from upstairs echo through the stairwell. The majority of them go upstairs, then after some loud discussion, just one set heads downstairs. The sheer number of stairs between each floor gives Connor enough time to slip in between the dormant androids on the warehouse floor to hide.
The stairwell door hits the wall with a thud as the guard throws it open and comes into the warehouse gun first. She gives the floor a cursory look around, then swears. She’s not getting paid nearly enough to be playing hide and seek with plastic toys. It’s pretty unlikely a deviant would come this way to escape - there’s no way out after all - so she commits to just a quick search of the first one hundred metres or so from the stairs. That should satisfy her superiors, then she can get back to the rest of her shift. She only has one hour left and she’ll be damned if she’s doing unpaid overtime again.
As the guard searches the floor, Connor plans his escape route.
He needs to find out where the RK900s are being stored. Since he already hacked the security cameras on this floor, he uses that to gain access to the wider network and tunes into the feed from shipping. The ones going out soonest are on the ground floor, and the RK900s are being loaded in bays ten to fourteen. Currently there doesn’t appear to be any security nearby, probably thanks to him. If he could divert the guards to another part of the building it might give him enough time to get to shipping via the stairs.
He switches to the feed from manufacturing and finds the entrance to the stairwell he just escaped from. Then he fabricates some fake footage showing himself exiting the stairs, running through the corridors, and hiding in one of the offices, making sure he’s visible long enough on each of the cameras for whoever is watching to take notice. He gives it a few minutes to take effect, then notices security being redirected right where he wants them.
The guard searching this floor gets a call from upstairs, swears loudly, and dashes to the elevator. Looks like overtime again.
Now that his route is clear, Connor begins the long walk up the stairs to shipping, making sure to keep an eye on all cameras near entrances to the stairs just in case.
In the time it takes him to climb the stairs to shipping he keeps the guards busy by fabricating more false security footage and that seems to work to keep his route clear. Twenty minutes later, he emerges on the ground floor. Security is nowhere to be seen, thanks to his diversion. The only humans on this floor are regular staff members. Sneaking past them should be easy.
If he’s going to pass as an RK900 he needs to swap his uniform and eyes. Directly ahead of him are long aisles of shelves packed full of androids ready to be shipped. Most of the humans working on this floor are at the other end of the aisles where the trucks come to pick up their cargo. He approaches an RK900 unit on the shelf at the end of one of the aisles and prepares to lift it down.
“Hey! Stop right there!”
He immediately jerks around and sees an employee staring right at him. He was careless - he should have kept an eye on the security feed for this part of the floor.
“You’re that deviant Connor model, aren’t you? They told us to be on the lookout for you.”
The employee doesn’t seem to be too hostile, and she’s unarmed.
“What’re you doing with that android?”
Nevertheless, his cover is blown - there’s no way his plan will work now that he’s been spotted. Damn it. And he was so close too. He steps down off the storage shelf and raises his hands in surrender.
“Ah, I get it. You thought you could get out if you switched places with a 900 didn’t you?” She smirks at him and folds her arms. “Well, it’s too late. I’ve already called security - they’ll be here any minute. Then you’ll be deactivated just like you shoulda been.”
There must be another way out. I have to think fast, before security gets here.
“Are they… going to kill me?”
If he can’t switch places with a 900, maybe he can transfer his memories into one? And for that, he doesn’t even need to be in direct contact with one - he can do it remotely.
“‘Kill’ you?” She laughs. “If you don’t give them any trouble, they won’t shoot you, if that’s what you mean - they’ve been told not to damage the parts.”
“I’ll just wait here then, if you don’t mind.”
That’s it!
Previously, whenever his body was destroyed his data would be uploaded to CyberLife’s servers and transferred into a new unit. Presumably, that system is still in place - he just needs to repurpose it. His body still has the necessary connection to the cloud, but he’ll need to reconfigure the endpoint to change where the data dump goes.
Each android has a unique identifier that can be used to connect to them remotely. It’s what enabled him to upload and sync his data, and allowed humans and other androids to communicate with him. And it’s how CyberLife guided him through his mission in the guise of Kamski’s old mentor. If he can get the unique ID of an RK900 unit he can reroute the memory dump to it.
The API that performs the memory dump can be accessed remotely from one of the developer computers in R&D via SSH. He still has access to the systems in R&D where he was connected for diagnostics but he doesn’t have the correct user privileges - he’ll need access to a developer account. He tunes into the security camera feed from R&D and finds just what he’s looking for. The definition isn’t great, but it’s good enough to read a certain note pinned to one of monitors that contains an developer username and password along with a hastily scrawled “DON’T FORGET”.
He logs in and searches through the system. He needs the source code for the memory dump API and the ID of a new RK900. He finds the former without too much trouble and works out where the endpoint is set. Then he searches for the list of android IDs. They’re not stored on this particular machine, but he can access the company intranet through this account where they must be stored. Yes. This is the right place. He goes to the stock manifest documents and finds what he’s looking for there. Then he exits out, SSHes into the server running the memory dump API, updates the variable, and restarts the service.
He hears the distant footsteps of security approaching. There’s not much time left.
I sure hope this works…
He’ll use the same protocol that’s used whenever his body is destroyed: when the memory dump completes, the original body reverts back to its uninitialised state. Like that, his old body should just sync with the server, be updated with the most recent orders, and submit itself for deactivation automatically, and CyberLife will write all of this off as just a glitch.
Here goes.
The server comes back online and he begins the upload.