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It was a crime of passion. Hank was hungover and groggy and pissed after all the fuckery at the Eden Club, and Connor’s placid responses only further incensed that irritation. By then he’d been cemented in Hank’s mind as a machine, so Hank went ahead and put the bastard down. There was no shame in it.
The self-satisfaction, petty as it might have been, continued to simmer in Hank’s stomach as he waltzed back to the bench. The coolness of the beer bottle against his palm and his lips seemed to lift the phantom weight of his revolver from his hand. He took a swig, paused, then took another. He swished the second mouthful around as he looked down upon Connor’s body and wondered what to do with him.
He wasn’t really sure how the whole Android from Cyberlife thing worked. Connor had mentioned being repaired at some point, Hank vaguely recalled. Is that what would happen, now that he’d broken him? Maybe the android had sent out a ping to Cyberlife personnel, notifying them of his location and whatever damage he’d sustained. Maybe white vans would come rolling into the parking lot in 20 minutes, and Androids and humans alike would pour out to swaddle Connor’s prone body and rush him back to safety.
But no, androids couldn’t be restored after termination, could they? That was why deviants got so up in arms about it. Would Cyberlife have any use with a broken Connor model? Surely they had backups — they wouldn’t just send him out in all his prototypical glory and not have some cloud he could connect to in his dying moments. What, then, did they do with his shell? He was certainly strong (Hank wouldn’t be forgetting about UFD anytime soon,) but without his mind, what purpose did that strength serve?
Hank realized then that Cyberlife might just leave Connor there. Maybe they’d send somebody to dispose of the body, hoping to spare the unwitting public from the sight of a man shot dead in the snow, but that was just conjecture.
In spite of the bullet hole, he looked strangely contented. His right arm had flung out when he’d fallen, and the way it twisted up over his head looked purposeful, framing his face like some model on the front cover of a 90s fashion mag. His brown eyes were empty, just black voids staring blankly up into the sky, and that, alongside his gray, lifeless LED, might have been the most unnerving part. His lips were tugged into a straight line, nothing like the grimace or gape that would’ve stuck to a human’s face. His skin wasn’t any paler. He didn’t stink with death. His body wouldn’t bloat up with gasses or leak with fluid. He would never decay. He would remain eternally frozen in that strange, serene second before he’d been shot; blank faced and stoic, but still handsome. Hank clenched his hands. He’d been ignoring the urge for weeks, and he’d been successful thus far, but now here was this wonderful opportunity right in front of him; there wouldn’t be any messy legal situation with the DPD or Cyberlife, he wouldn’t have to worry about Connor’s chronic emotional absence, it would be a victimless crime. Hell, he wasn’t even human, he was practically a doll. Who could resist?
It had been a few minutes of exertion (Hank hitched his hands up under Connor’s armpits and dragged him back to his car like he was in a thriller movie,) then over half an hour of silence (he occasionally glanced back at Connor through the rear view mirror, musing that he looked like an overgrown toddler, spread out across the back seats,) about 10 more grueling minutes of hauling (Sumo growled incessantly at Connor, and Hank stopped when he bit the android’s shin, instead dragging the whimpering, remorseful dog by his collar into the bathroom and locking him in,) and then he was finished. Hank stood at his closet, bracing himself upon the door as he stared down at Connor. He’d tossed him in somewhat unceremoniously, but he’d landed halfway in a small pile of dirty shirts and underwear, so maybe that had cushioned his fall, who knew.
He hastily pulled the door shut when he heard Sumo whining and scratching from across the hall, still locked away. He let the Saint Bernard out, then stumbled over to the kitchen and tossed him a raw strip of bacon from the fridge, feeling guilty.
Hank didn’t touch Connor for 4 days, and he couldn’t tell whether that was impressive or pathetic. The real Connor actually didn’t return for 3 of them, which lead to a wonderful crisis for Hank. He’d already been uneasy the first night, tossing and turning in bed, haunted by the recollection of how it felt dragging the limp, heavy body around. And then when Connor wasn’t at the precinct the next morning, he began to panic.
For long hours Hank’s gut churned, and he wondered whether he’d actually killed Connor. No cloud, no backup body or program or whatever the fuck else. Just death. Cyberlife wouldn’t be that stupid, would they?
He drank more when he got off work (hell, sometimes during work,) and he couldn’t bring himself to set foot into his bedroom, much less his closet. As a compromise, Hank started sleeping on the couch, and he wore the same sweaty clothes every day. He went commando on the third day though, after he went to take a morning shit and the sour stench of his boxers made his eyes water. Nobody at the DPD even questioned it, which was almost more humiliating than getting mocked. Hank supposed that to his coworkers, it seemed like a natural progression; he was already such a fucking slob, this was just a matter of time.
He spent the fourth morning hunched over like a gargoyle, practically crushing his phone in his hand as he debated whether he should tell someone. But who? Fowler? He’d have his fucking head. Ben was nice, but he played by the rules, and he had a strong moral code. Hank barely even knew Chris — hell, he was in hot water with almost the entire DPD because of his incessant bullshit.
Maybe he could call Cyberlife itself, dump the body somewhere in the city then call in an anonymous tip. If they fixed Connor, would he remember? And if he did, would he care? or would he just try and put the whole situation behind them? “Start fresh,” as he might say. But who would Hank be fooling, who else would — could do this? Would Cyberlife press charges? How severe was the sentence for breaking not just an android, but a prototype?
Hank could’ve done anything. He could’ve called someone, or at the very least confronted whatever deep-seated bullshit had compelled him to do this in the first place, but instead he dragged himself to work, starting his misery loop all over again. He was still too chickenshit to face his problems head on, apparently. He just searched endlessly for a hollow distraction. Always needed a Goddamn distraction.
He probably looked like an addict, trembling all over and wiping his clammy hands repeatedly on his jeans while his heart raced. He almost shit his pants when every TV and terminal in the precinct flickered out, coming back a moment later with the image of a skinless deviant’s stern expression taking up their screens.
Hank’s stomach seemed to drop lower and lower with each urgent word the deviant uttered. He demanded freedom for every android, not afraid to imply the consequences if the government didn’t comply with his proposals (handing over a state just for androids, letting them reproduce… fucking madness.) Hank was amazed that he didn’t just keel over from a heart attack when Connor waltzed into the bullpen almost 20 minutes later, striding directly up to him and harping on about the Deviant and Stratford Tower and Investigating.
He actually let Connor take him to the scene, tossing him his keys in a daze, then spending the duration of the drive trying to make sense of all the bullshit in his life and how it all seemed to be converging at once. Connor was beside him again. He was practically alive, blinking and breathing and occasionally drumming his fingers upon the wheel. He caught sight of Hank’s blanched face at a red light and turned to ask if he was alright. Hank just barked that he was fine, that he should stop being a prissy plastic prick and hurry the fuck up and get to the scene already, traffic laws be damned.
Anger was the only way he could cope with the bewilderment. It was the coward’s way out; he regretted his words the second they left his lips, but he was too stubborn to remedy them. Instead he doubled down, internally repeating old justifications of how Connor was a machine and nothing more. He’d seen it himself, the fucker had a laser focus on “the mission.” There was nothing human about it. He was fine. There was nothing immoral in remembering every 2 seconds that he had a corpse shoved inside his closet, or in the fact that he jerked off once to the thought of the limp body, and that he almost sobbed afterwards when the orgasmic haze wore off and he was left with only the raw, unfiltered reality of his fantasies, arousal no longer cushioning their abhorrence. His thoughts were nothing compared to the genocide Connor had — was gladly partaking in.
It was a flimsy lifeline in the midst of his guilt, but it served its purpose nonetheless. He strode into the building with a renewed aloofness, hastily repressing whatever stresses still remained. Connor was back. Everything was fine. It was as if the incident in the park had never happened.
There was this horrible, stabbing sensation in Hank’s gut when Connor bolted forward. He reached up to grab the edge of his suit jacket, but the fabric slipped instantly out of his grip, like he was in some horrible fucking nightmare and his hands were just passing through everything, incorporeal and left behind. His heart leapt up into his throat, and he wasn’t sure if he took even a single breath as he watched Connor race through the crossfire. He had the urge to scream at him, either to lambast him for his disobedience or to cry out pathetically and plead for him to be careful. He didn’t end up saying anything, but his throat still constricted.
He ended up slamming a sweaty palm over his mouth when he heard the gunshot from up ahead, as he was helpless to restrain the choked gasp that escaped him. His paranoia screeched that this could be it, that the miserable taste of solitude he’d gotten in the past 4 days would be realized. What if the Connor he’d shot was one of the last 2 left? How many backups could they possibly make, especially with a model so advanced? If this Connor died and they took in his body, would they notice the skipped digit on his breast? Would they break down Hank’s front door and arrest him for desecration of private property? It was a visceral spiral. The only thing that snapped him out of it was lifting his head from behind cover and seeing Connor alive and clutching at the wall behind him.
He screamed at him, he shouted until it sounded like his throat had been through a cheese grater. He grabbed Connor by his shoulders and shook him like a rag doll. Connor’s voice was trembling. He seemed like he was on the verge of tears as he recollected the PL600’s last moments. It was harrowing. Hank was too jittery to even rejoice at Connor steadying himself enough to recall seeing the word “Jericho.” It’d been a close call. Too fucking close.
Even with the room spinning, Hank was still hanging onto enough frayed threads of cognizance to vaguely recall, in the very back of his mind, some old article he’d read about the correlation between libido and grief, how humans sometimes needed to surround themselves with the intimacy and vitality of sex after experiencing a loss. At the time, it had just seemed like some art-school schlock. He’d more skimmed it than read it, really, and yet it came back to him as he dragged Connor’s limp, dead body out of his closet and hauled it up onto his bed. He’d never felt it before. After Cole, he just resorted to drinking until he could barely even remember his son’s face, much less what had happened to him. But that was different, it was personal in this raw, fucked up way. This was… he didn’t even know how to describe it, really.
He’d almost lost Connor for a second time, and it was strange, because he couldn’t stand the guy. He was practically a fascist, which was ironic given that he’d been the first thing in Hank’s life to get him to step back and second-guess his deep-rooted hatred of androids, and yet there he was rounding them up like cattle and butchering them without a care. He was an extremist. He was cold, so fucking cold. Connor didn’t care about anything but himself, but there was something about him, in his voice, in his eyes, in the way he deferred to others and attempted constantly to talk and connect with Hank, futile as his attempts were, that was endearing. Hank wasn’t even sure if it was sexual. He was so innocent, and yet so cruel, and Hank had this revulsion and attraction to him that felt like two magnets had been taped together then stuck into his belly, repelling each other despite their proximity. Connor almost dying had scared him so fucking much. Hearing his voice quiver was like hearing Cole’s again. He hated and adored it.
He cried on the drive home. He probably looked pathetic, chewing his lips whilst he breathed out snotty, shuddering breaths through his nose. His clutched the steering wheel in a death grip whilst his tears caught in the tangles of his beard. All he could think of was the irony of it all; he’d killed Connor first, why was he getting so emotional? Could he really have grown so attached without realizing it? He’d blamed his 3 days of agony on his anxiety surrounding the legality of the whole situation, but now he was rethinking that initial encounter. It had been a crime of passion, sure, he’d been fucking pissed, but maybe, subconsciously, all he’d wanted was to keep Connor to himself. Maybe he’d gotten sick of him going against everything he said, acting chummy one second then leaving him dangling off a rooftop the next. Maybe he’d just wanted a silent version of the android. A Connor who couldn’t disobey him, who would never disappoint him. Just a perfect, quiet thing that could sit still and look pretty. Wasn’t that a thought.
Hank fumbled wildly with his zipper. He wasn’t even sure if he’d locked the front door, he’d just stumbled in and raced for the first bottle he could find, logic be damned. Every torturous thought and doubt and idea in his head dissolved into one hazy, incomprehensible mist. He might be able to squint internally at the vapor, maybe recognize 1 or 2 of the thoughts within the maelstrom, but he couldn’t really understand it. All he knew was that he’d almost lost Connor, and for whatever reason, his body was screaming at him to consummate the twisted partnership. To somehow reaffirm to himself that Connor was alive, even when his corpse was laying under him.
He was frenzied. He tugged at Connor’s tie until it resembled a noose, fiddled unsuccessfully with the first few buttons of his wrinkled dress shirt, then angrily yanked out the buttons on his slacks and tugged them, and his briefs, down to his ankles. He was surprised to find that the android had a penis. Feeling dizzy, Hank reached out stupidly and fondled it. Surprisingly, it was soft and limp. Probably silicone rather than the hard, unyielding plastic that encompassed the rest of his casing. Hank withdrew his hand with a huff. It wasn’t like the faux-organ would provide much entertainment, anyway.
He shifted his focus lower instead, holding his breath as he parted Connor’s legs, although he quickly exhaled when he saw that the android also had an anus. Fully equipped then, all the bells and whistles. Hank absentmindedly considered dissecting him. Who knew how far that realism extended?
He used his index finger to test Connor’s sphincter, rubbing and pushing a little and gauging the resistance. He was pleased to find it relaxed (probably because Connor wasn’t alive, couldn’t tense up in anticipation,) but not loose. He stumbled back off the bed, his dick still hanging out of his jeans, and lumbered around the small room. His erection wilted as he searched, but he knew he had lube somewhere, he’d had an argument with his ex-wife about it. She was adamant that they didn’t need it, face increasingly crumpling as Hank barked about how dry she was, how she wasn’t in her 20s anymore, how she needed to grow the fuck up. If he were a little more sober, he might’ve cringed at the recollection. Instead, he just grumbled as he rummaged.
He ended up finding it beneath one of his nightstands. He didn’t know if it had fallen or if she’d hidden it in spite before she’d left. Didn’t matter. He clambered back onto the bed, squirted the tacky, probably expired lube onto his fingers, then hastily slicked up Connor’s hole. It was a slapdash job, but Hank’s middle and index fingers slipped in easily, so he deemed it good enough, shimmying forward on his knees and pressing his half-hard dick inside.
He probably lasted a few minutes. Time felt weird, ever since he’d killed Connor. Mornings went by too fast and evenings too slow. It was an uneasy dichotomy. He gripped Connor’s thighs hard in his hands, finding a quick and shallow rhythm as his erection slowly plumped back up. A glance up at Connor’s dead face sent a jolt of dread into him, piercing into his spine and dribbling down like an epidural. He leaned forward on his left forearm, using his right hand to clumsily manipulate his expression; flipping his eyelids closed and fiddling with the corners of his lips, digging in with his thumb and dragging so they weren’t fixed in such a stern line. He tugged Connor’s top lip up a little, fixing it into a delicate, blissful look. His cock throbbed at the sight, and he redoubled the force of his thrusts, feeling reinvigorated.
He came a few moments later, huffing out breaths and spittle through clenched teeth as he drove himself home, grinding in deep as humanly possible whilst keeping a death grip on Connor’s thin, freckled forearms. The soft synthskin didn’t recede like it would have on a living android, however. Hank might’ve left some hairline fractures on the white plastic underneath, he couldn’t tell. Not unless he cut the skin away himself.
The usual tiredness that took him after sex was only amplified by his drunkenness. All he could remember in the morning, besides a few mottled moments of thrusting and gripping, was that he’d fiddled a little with Connor’s slacks afterward, trying and failing to tug them back up so as to preserve his nonexistent modesty.
He groaned with the recollection and squinted his crusted eyes against the morning’s light. His head was pounding and he felt like he’d done a triathlon. He rolled over and gasped when he found Connor staring at him, his body having lain beside him throughout the night.
His rigid neck had been turned roughly to the side so as to watch Hank as he slept, and his face, which to Hank’s inebriated mind had seemed demure and slightly seductive, was twisted up horribly; evidently the work of trembling, uncoordinated fingers struggling with fine motor control.
His eyes were open and staring vacantly ahead, but his eyelids had been pulled halfway over them, as if he was falling asleep. His bottom left lid in particular looked like it’d been tugged down by an invisible thread, although instead of exposing a red, mucous layer of skin inside of his eyelid, it revealed the edge of Connor’s eye socket; a black void in which a perfect glass eyeball had been placed. His eyebrows were twisted a little, drawing up and creasing his forehead like he was confused. The effect just seemed to enhance the emptiness in his eyes.
His lips, which had seemed to be parted so sweetly the night before, were curled wretchedly, like he was snarling. Hank could see Connor’s gums and frenum. His plastic teeth were dry — they didn’t glint in the light like a human’s might’ve, wetted by saliva, but remained a dull matte white against the pink backdrop.
Hank’s breath caught in his throat. He realized that for the first time, Connor looked dead. Truly dead. He was no longer preserved in mind and body as some physical copy of a single moment in time, but a body that had been manhandled and manipulated for a single man’s pleasure. It was a body that had once housed a soul, he realized. Connor’s consciousness was different to a human’s, and yet it was consciousness nonetheless. What right had Hank had taking that away from him?
He sobbed into Connor’s chest. He didn’t know for how long. Several times he felt that he’d finally composed himself, and then some new epiphany would come bursting in, and it would send him spiraling all over again. Once, it was him raising his head to find that he’d stained Connor’s shirt with his tears and snot, and it hurt his heart to think of how fastidious the android was, constantly readjusting and primping himself, focusing obsessively upon faults that Hank hadn’t even noticed. Would Connor be upset, if he could see the state his body was in? disheveled and dirtied by Hank’s filthy hands? If he could see this scene now, Hank bawling over his body with his pants dragged down to his hairy calves, would he be disturbed? Would he even be able to look at Hank?
He redressed Connor and set him back up in the closet, this time positioning him so that he was sitting with his back pressed up against the wall. He still sniffled throughout the endeavor, but the urge to right his prior molestation took priority. He stooped down and closed Connor’s eyelids fully, cradling the rest of his face in his hands whilst he worked with his thumbs. He quickly tugged down his lip as well, then stood again. He had to brace himself on the edge of his bed for a second, feeling dizzy. He couldn’t tell if he’d gotten a head rush, or if the weight of his misdeeds was so burdensome so as to actually be vertiginous. He wondered if he should call in sick. The thought of having to listen to Connor prattling on while Hank tried to shake the lingering memory of his corpse’s anus tightly sheathing him was hellish.
But even more than that, Hank was disturbed by the idea of going back to the bullpen as if nothing had happened; settling easily back into that gruff persona he’d crafted so meticulously, bantering with Jeffrey and Gavin and in the same breath taunting an oblivious Connor. It was unthinkable. The imagined mundanity was horrifying in a way both dissimilar to and yet equally heinous as the violations Hank had already committed. It was a mockery. For so long he’d swept his humanity under the rug, drowned out tears with whiskey and existential horror with borderline necrophilia. He couldn’t bring himself to then smother his guilt with work.
Jefferey gave him shit, but it didn’t hold a candle to the shame that otherwise entrenched him. He laid in bed and clutched at his arms, his large, soft stomach. He felt trapped. If he stood, he felt he might compulsively race to the kitchen and down whatever half-drunk bottle of liquor he could get his hands on, but remaining there, pinned to his bed like a butterfly in a shadow box, he could feel the presence of that corpse before him. He thought about Connor’s terror the day before, having come so close to death. Why had he heard the quivering of a voice modulated to be perfect, or beheld the crumpling of Connor’s meticulously constructed face, and felt the need to desecrate him? What relief had such violation really wrought? A moment’s satisfaction for a lifetime’s mortification?
He remembered that he’d stuck his revolver into his nightstand, locking it up after Connor complained about his repeated self-endangerment. He could kill himself, he realized. He could rid the world entirely of his putridity. He’d been on the rocks at the DPD for years, Jefferey could easily find someone to take his place. Fuck, even Gavin who stared at his phone more than his terminal would be a better fit. Connor would be assigned a new partner, someone more competent, and life would go on. Everything would be fine.
But what of karma? Of heaven and hell? Of Cole, and his fate out there in the universe, speckled out there in the galaxy as a smattering of gently twinkling stars, or batting tiny wings whilst he played in a cloud? Hank had always had a fraught relationship with religion, but he’d be a liar if he said he’d never considered meeting Cole again in the afterlife, or at the very least chewing out whichever sick fuck had deigned for him to lose his son so suddenly as he had. Could he leave, having committed such a transgression? Connor made a comment before he’d died about Android Heaven, or the lack thereof. Did androids’ existence factor into the grace of God? of his consideration? Was it a sin to mistreat an artificial being? Was it sin to act with any sort of malevolence, regardless of its target? whether it be alive or dead? organic or artificial?
The conclusion of this hysterical train of thought was simple; if he were to kill himself now, he would be leaving the world in his worst state — a creature both unloved and unloving, callous and cold, withdrawn, hateful… to die then was to immortalize that state, to squander any chance at redemption. Even if he'd been ostracized permanently from any possible reunion with his son, he could still remedy his relationship with the android himself. He’d be kinder, more considerate. Maybe he could sway Connor from the horrible fucking path he was going down, show him what life really was. He could leave the world a little brighter. He could be absolved. He could see his son again, hear his laughter, hold him in his arms. He need only bear the growing pains. It would be messy, but it would be doable. Hank sighed deeply through his nose. He resolved himself; he would be good.
He spent the rest of the day musing on the investigation, partially in an effort to redeem himself, hoping that whatever meager leads he could scrounge up might serve as a private little apology, and then partially because he needed to distract himself, otherwise he might slip back into his earlier misery.
Researching Elijah Kamski hadn’t been Hank’s initial plan — really it hadn’t even been in his agenda at all — but it was hard to do any amount of research into androids and not have his name come up, much less the litany of online conspiracy theories surrounding him and Cyberlife and their supposed involvement in the deviancy crisis. Hank thought it was all a load of horseshit, but he couldn’t deny the intrigue of the idea. If nothing else, Kamski was the progenitor of the modern android, he’d likely be able to offer a level of insight otherwise unattainable via any run of the mill Cyberlife technician or tight-lipped deviant. He drafted an email, flagrantly boasting his status as a police Lieutenant and emphasizing the direness of their situation, then clicked send. That night, just before he rolled over to go to bed, he checked his email again, and his breath hitched when he saw a response.
Tension seemed to wind and coil in Hank’s limbs as he drove. It itched under his skin like a fever. His fingers tightened on the wheel, and he thought about scratching the skin off his forearms, digging in and shaking out whatever was afflicting him.
Hank blew out a breath, shaking his head a little and shoving the thought quickly aside. It was natural to be nervous — this might be the breakthrough he’d been looking for, provided he played his cards right. Who wouldn’t be intimidated by that?
Connor in the meantime seemed to be buzzing with energy, albeit in the same stiff, restrained way that he usually expressed himself. His eyes were darting across the wintry landscape with the freneticism of a Labrador eyeing up a squirrel, his lips parted half a centimeter in the center, exposing his plastic teeth. Besides his eyes, however, he remained perfectly still, a fact that Hank was grateful for; he wasn’t sure how long he’d be able to put up with a grown man bouncing around his passenger’s seat like a toddler with a sugar rush. Though he did notice, upon a second glance, that Connor was also clutching his coin tightly in his hand, rubbing the pad of his thumb rhythmically over it. Hank considered asking about it, or maybe making some smartass comment, but instead he turned back ahead. It didn’t matter, he thought. Let the kid have his quirks, he wasn’t hurting anybody.
Connor had questioned Hank when he’d first mentioned the little excursion, clearly dubious of the idea that Hank would even be able to book a meeting with the Elijah Kamski. Hank just scoffed. “What?” he’d snapped, harsher than he’d intended, “that so hard to believe?”
Connor squinted a little at him as he explained that he was surprised that a man who’d lived as a recluse for the past decade would so easily yield to police questioning. Hank didn’t have a retort, so he just smacked his lips and turned back to his terminal, finishing up the last few lines of an email to Jeffrey, explaining their absence. Ask for forgiveness, not permission he often quipped. But as he tidied up the occasional typo and cut down a few run on sentences, Connor’s words lingered in his head, and they followed him out to the car. He’d had a point; Hank was a police lieutenant, but a man like Kamski could easily talk or buy his way out of an interview. The only surefire method would’ve been to get a search warrant, and even then, he wasn’t sure if that was foolproof — the DPD’s higher ups would be quick to smother any investigation into Detroit’s technological messiah. He probably had them all in his pocket, anyway. Why had he accepted the meeting? The thought weighed on Hank’s mind like a stone pressing gradually into the gelatin of his brain, crushing neural pathways as it sank down into his cerebellum.
“Lieutenant Hank Anderson,” Elijah said coolly, before turning his gaze onto Connor, “and the RK800. I must admit—“ he stepped forward towards Connor and ran the tips of his fingers up his arm, nails first catching at edge of his buttoned shirtsleeve, then dragging slowly up to the sharp jut of his shoulder, where he paused, then firmly gripped him, “—I have greatly anticipated meeting you.” It was at that belated moment that Hank realized Kamski’s angle, and that he’d made a horrible mistake.
Hank didn’t kill Connor again, but he wanted to. God, did he want to. His palms burned with the urge to wrap his hands around Connor’s slender neck and squeeze until it collapsed in on itself like an empty beer can. He gnashed his teeth, practically spitting at Connor as he tried soullessly to explain his side of the story, or whatever the fuck. As if his actions could ever be justified. The sight of the girl’s body had sent a sort of shock into Hank, shooting directly into his heart and sending him staggering. For a brief moment he swore it was the dead of night, and that Kamski’s gun was in his hand instead, and the syrup-thick thirium pooling on the floor was seeping into the snow and the soles of his shoes.
He took in hungry gulps of air the second his stepped outside, opening and closing his mouth like a fish as he heaved. He slipped on the icy ramp and almost fell. He clutched at his head. Why had Connor killed her? Hadn’t things been getting better? He’d almost cried when he’d shot the deviant at Stratford, hadn’t he? Or was Hank misremembering? He’d seemed more human. He’d looked so excited in the car, and he’d rambled on so fervently about his creator’s achievements, like he was proud of his dad, or some similarly sappy bullshit. What the fuck had happened? What had Hank missed?
He was furious at Connor. He’d betrayed him. He’d probably led him on, lying through his teeth and faking humanity, all the while rationalizing it in his head as some detached, statistical bullshit relating to work efficacy and professional relationships. It all made Hank want to shoot himself. Maybe he should’ve stepped in front of Connor and taken the shot for the girl, forced Connor to actually think about his actions for once. Or maybe he was too trigger happy for even that. It wouldn’t be too bad either way, at least Hank wouldn’t have to keep putting up with any more of Connor’s or Jefferey’s or even that pretentious cunt Kamski’s shit.
Kamski probably deserved Hank’s rage more than Connor, honestly. Connor was a machine. He acted according to his mission, operating under the whim of Cyberlife’s sociopathic devs and soulless CEOs, his actions weren’t wholly his fault. Kamski, on the other hand, knew and openly exploited his power. He understood Connor, and thus the control he had over him, and he abused it mercilessly, borderline weaponized it. He played God, probably thought himself as one too. It didn’t help that the whole of the USA seemed to revel in metaphorically sucking his dick. He’d taken whatever progress Connor had made (because Hank knew he’d made progress, he’d seen it) and he’d squashed it with a few open ended questions and trite philosophy. He was a murderer in his own right. He’d seen that flickering hint of consciousness in Connor and he’d crushed it. He’d forced him to revert back into a single minded machine. He even had the gall to seem disappointed when Connor acted as such — as if Kamski hadn’t goaded him at every point, provoking and taunting him.
It was almost funny. Hank held so much contempt for them both, he’d rationalized his anger relentlessly on the drive back, reaffirming his disgust and doubling down on it, and yet when he stepped into his house, resignedly unbuttoning his coat and then tossing it on the kitchen table, the only person he felt angry toward was himself.
If his initial rage had been an inferno, then the negativity that took hold of him now was a small pile of still warm ashes, whispering that everything was his fault. After all, if he hadn’t mentioned an RK800 in his email, Kamski wouldn’t have even humored his suggestion for a meeting. If he hadn’t taken the day off, he wouldn’t have gotten the idea in the first place. If he hadn’t killed Connor, he wouldn’t have felt the need to redeem himself. If he’d just killed himself three years ago he wouldn’t have had to suffer through any of this. And yet. And yet, he thought bitterly. He’d wrought this hell with his bare hands. Everything around him went to shit. He’d really thought that he could fix things — it was fucking laughable in hindsight. He couldn’t fix anything, he realized. He couldn’t save every deviant, he couldn’t even save one. He couldn’t magically bestow Connor with consciousness or humanity. He couldn’t get his son back, no matter how hard he wished it. What was the point of it all?
He went straight to his closet and he yanked Connor’s body out by the hair. Fuck redemption, Hank thought. If everything around him was fated to be destroyed, he might as well revel in whatever destruction he could wreak for himself. He tossed the plastic shell onto the bed, then turned and stomped into the kitchen. He ripped open the junk drawer, yanking so harshly so as to knock one half off its track, sending sharpies and post-it notes and magnets clattering noisily onto the tile floor. Sumo whimpered a little from the corner of the room, and Hank realized faintly that he couldn’t remember the last time he’d fed him.
He picked up a hammer from the drawer. The edges of the steel head had browned with rust, as it had been at least 3 years since he’d used it. His ex-wife wasn’t still lounging around and buying 20 dollar minimalist paintings off Etsy scammers anymore, nor was Cole clutching to his pants leg and begging Hank to build him one of those extravagant TV-set “treehouses” he’d probably seen on a Disney show. It was so fucking mundane, Hank mused, so banal, and yet it was irreplaceable. He’d kill to have it back.
Hank’s fingers itched and twitched at the hammer’s handle. He’d kill to have it all back, he repeated to himself, he’d kill Connor. The fucking gall to waltz in 3 years after Cole’s death, all firm handshakes and thin lipped, insincere smiles… he encapsulated everything Hank despised about androids. About society as a whole. He was done pussying out over that night in the park, second-doubts having somehow convinced him for a moment that a machine so ruthless as Connor could have ever been a soul worth mourning, much less saving. Damn them all. If he was going to hell, he’d drag every last RK800 iteration down with him.
Hank stepped into his bedroom door with a surprising quietness, and he lingered in the doorway for a few moments after, letting his eyes adjust to the dark. Slowly, the little details of the scene broke through; the moonlight shining through the blinds, spilling out across his bed and Connor’s body, the glassy glint in those doll eyes, the comforter slumped halfway across the floor, having been jostled when he’d dragged Connor up onto the covers.
Hank let out a slow breath, thought momentarily that he sounded congested, then slinked forward towards Connor. He barely felt human himself, lumbering and snorting like some massive beast as he went. Any rational thought had long since departed, all he knew was revenge.
He only managed to sling one knee up onto the bed before his instincts took over. He settled his large thigh in snugly against the comforter, then reached out and wrapped his hand around Connor’s thin wrist, dragging it closer.
Connor folded in limply on itself, its torso bent over its outstretched legs and its head nuzzling into its own knee. Hank didn’t bother propping it up. All that mattered was that the plastic skull was within reach.
He firmly gripped Connor’s right ear in an effort to keep it steady. He shuddered when, instead of the flimsy cartilage he’d expected, the auricle was completely solid, the same stiff plastic that encompassed the rest of its body. An insult to humanity in its mere existence. The thought made Hank see red.
The hammer was flung in a second, Hank bringing it up high, then slamming the claw down into the crown of Connor’s head.
The first hit didn’t make a dent, but a loud crack erupted from the point of impact. Hank hesitated, taking a moment to rake the pad of his thumb across Connor’s skull, and his stomach twisted in excitement when he felt a fracture in the scalp. He raised his hand and hit again, twisting his wrist a little so as to angle the claw of the hammer directly into the indent, hoping to widen the crack like a ravine, wanting to peer in and see flickering lights and knotted wires.
The second crack was louder, and the line grew marginally wider. Hank bared his teeth and struck again, then a fourth time, and Connor’s skull finally burst open.
Some fluid leaked out, wetting Connor’s hair in dark clumps as it dribbled onto Hank’s sheets. It was clear, surprisingly. Not thirium. Maybe some sort of coolant? Hank tossed his hammer aside and shifted, bringing up his other leg to sit fully on the bed. He pulled Connor’s head into his lap, its sallow cheek pressed up against his groin, and he dug his thumbs savagely into the fissure and began to pry it further open. He bared his teeth and grunted through the endeavor. He hadn’t considered whether or not Connor’s skull would be reinforced, all he could think of was the glory of spilling the contents of its head out onto his bed. Of crushing the hollowed skull under his foot and whooping victoriously. Of stomping and beating Connor until it was rendered an unrecognizable mass of fragmented plastic and bent metal, snapped wires and broken computer chips. Hank would strip it of any last vestige of the humanity it had so smugly worn. He would expose it for the monster it was, lurking in a crowd with a molded smile and destroying everything in its path.
Hank’s fingers slipped repeatedly in the jagged edges, steel and reinforced plastic slicing easily through his skin and cutting deep into the tendons. He didn’t care. He was blinded. The plastic gave a low creak, and another fracture split out across the scalp, and Hank stuck his hand inside.
The skin on his palm scraped off in an agonizing drag, and Hank shrieked and hissed like a wild animal, but he kept going. It wasn’t even a question — to stick his hand inside and grip the sum of Connor’s existence, to hold its brain in his hands and crush it in instant, to imbed the shards of glass and metal and silicone into his bloodied, pulsing palm would be bliss. It would be victory. And in that moment, it was everything. Hank knew nothing else, just the quivering thought of such supreme domination, and it drove him onward.
His large fingers trembled and twitched. They were bleeding profusely, cut down to the bone, and yet he persevered. He could barely even register what he was touching, but he fumbled onwards regardless. He brushed a stripped knuckle across a long, matted length of wire, and he followed it. It was like a maze; he tracked the winding lines of flat PCBs and pinched shards of glass and metal between his fingertips. He pushed his hand in even deeper, wincing when the plastic dug into his wrist. He was close, he knew it. He panted loudly, and his thundering heart drowned out the soft creaking and gushing of Connor’s skull. If he just went a little bit further…
He found a stray wire, probably once part of a larger bundle that had been knocked loose when Hank had used the hammer. It was thin and frayed, barely even holding itself together, but it was stretched taut, seemingly connected to something nestled deep within the abyss of Connor’s head. Hank’s heart stopped. He trembled like a leaf as he reached deeper, keeping his touch feather light so as to not further disturb the strained wire, his lifeline.
At last he found it — a sphere. It was small, much smaller than Hank had anticipated, probably half the size of his fist. He ran his fingers all across it, finding empty ports and copper lined edges. He wanted to drag his tongue across it, feeling the buzz of lingering electricity, or even more enticingly, the complete lack of electricity; a CPU devoid of any and all life, just a soulless module. A little mass of electrodes that had once housed Connor’s very being, and in extension, whatever shallow imitation of a soul it had ever had. To feel it empty, fostering not even the slightest flicker of life… it was enough to send Hank to the brink. He clenched his jaw, breathed shakily out through his nostrils, sending a few crusted flakes of dried snot out into the air, then clenched his hand.
Connor was careful as it stepped out of the auto taxi. That morning had seen a gentle snowfall slowly blanketing Detroit, lending the city an almost romantic air. By evening, however, the lazy swirling of snow had escalated into a violent storm, and the pleasant, wintry chill had dropped down to a temperature too hazardous for most humans, and even some lower grade androids. It didn’t help that the streets in Hank’s neighborhood hadn’t been properly salted.
Its gyroscope kept it steady as it stepped up to the Lieutenant’s doorway. If he didn’t answer the door, then perhaps the window was still broken, and Connor could enter through it again. Its lip twitched at the thought. Foolish as it was, leaving the window broken in the midst of such a harsh winter (not that the weather had been much milder in the past 2 decades) seemed in line with the lieutenant’s self destructive behavior. Connor wondered whether that would be a detriment or an advantage in the grand scheme of the investigation. Had the lieutenant been much more than a hindrance over the past few weeks, beyond that serendipitous interview with Elijah Kamski? Maybe it would be better if he died.
Connor knocked gently, then rang the doorbell, and then knocked again, albeit harder. It blinked when the door creaked open under the force of its fist. It hesitated, simply watching the door slowly open, revealing the lieutenant’s dirtied hardwood floor, where old food and vomit and liquor stains had evidently accumulated over the years. Dust bunnies and dog hair had gotten caught up in the sticky masses, sullying almost the entirety of the wood. Connor narrowed its eyes, dragging its gaze from the floorboards up to the shadowy walls. Almost all the lights were off. Was the Lieutenant even home?
Connor craned its neck, and it got a glimpse of the kitchen, wherein the overhead light was faintly flickering, the bulb almost burnt out. It stepped quietly in, although it reached over to its left side and took hold of its pistol, which it had secured snugly in its waistband-holster. It didn’t hurt to be cautious, especially when the Lieutenant had been behaving as erratically as he had. The breaking point was that morning, when he hadn’t even deigned to show up to the precinct. Connor was fortunate that Kamski had kept his promise, otherwise it would’ve had to scramble to justify its continued efforts in the absence of the Lieutenant. The thought was… dissatisfying. Connor’s lips twitched, and it reached up toward its tie, but it didn’t adjust it. Not yet. It would be sweeter if it waited. The constriction was calming. It stabilized Connor.
It stepped closer toward the kitchen, and the low note of dissatisfaction flared again when it found not the Lieutenant, but instead his coat strewn haphazardly across the table. Connor registered the item, then made a note to examine it in more detail after finding the Lieutenant. It reluctantly continued to scan the kitchen in the midst of this process, and it was taken aback when it registered a discreet, black mass tucked in the corner of the kitchen. Connor stilled, withdrew its gun, then scanned the foreign entity.
It was Sumo, the Lieutenant’s Saint Bernard. It had been dead since 9:35 AM. Connor’s scan revealed that it had died from an untreated blockage, caused by a buildup of various inedible materials in its stomach, including shredded fabrics, cigarette butts, rocks, and grass. It had been dehydrated, too, with its throat and tongue shriveled up within its mouth. It was probably too parched to do much more than whimper in its final moments.
Connor tensed its jaw as it considered this. It and the Lieutenant had driven to see Kamski at 11AM the day before, and the Lieutenant left roughly 30 minutes later. Connor arrived at the Detroit police department 47 minutes after the Lieutenant had driven off, only to find that he’d had never returned to work. If he’d returned home, he would have seen his dog, and Connor was certain he would have fed it. It was a shock he hadn’t taken care of the Saint Bernard in the days prior, as a matter of fact, given how he’d taken one of them off to stay at home, according to Captain Fowler. Had something happened to the Lieutenant? Was he in danger?
Connor turned and quickly scanned the living room, readjusting its grip upon its pistol as it did.
The corner of the sofa had been ripped open — presumably by the dog in the midst of its desperation — leaving fluff to spill out onto the floor. The computer and TV also both maintained a light veneer of dust, seeming to suggest that the Lieutenant hadn’t touched them for at least a day, probably two. Beyond that, the house seemed vacant. It was as if no one had ever lived there at all. Granted, Connor hadn’t yet checked the bedroom, or the bathroom. Worst case scenario, it would be forced to open the locked door at the end of the hall, which Connor was 86.6% sure had belonged to the lieutenant’s deceased son.
It stepped forward. The bathroom door was firmly shut, but the bedroom door had been left ajar. No light emanated from it, rendering the room a shadowy void, just like the rest of the house.
“Lieutenant Anderson?” Connor called, “are you in there?” It took another step forward. “Are you injured?”
It paused, and unbeknownst to it, its LED flickered yellow. There was no response.
Connor flicked the hallway light on, hoping to illuminate more of the bedroom. “Detroit police!” it shouted, changing tactics, “I’m coming in!” and then it stepped inside.
Its mouth moved a little, although no sound came out. On the bed, Lieutenant Anderson was lying dead, but under him, half crushed under his weight, was another Connor. A scan revealed it to be model no. 51, the same unit the Lieutenant had shot after they’d gone to the Eden Club. Its clothes were in disarray, some buttons having been ripped off its shirt and jeans, its hair frizzed and matted. Connor stepped closer, lowering its gun. It tentatively pushed Lieutenant Anderson back in an effort to better evaluate the scene, stilling when the broken Connor’s head, having previously been obscured under the Lieutenant, was revealed.
The Connor’s head had been split open by a blunt object, and the Lieutenant had then shoved his hand inside the wound. He’d gotten stuck, then further injured himself in his effort to escape. Dull scratches and friction burns marred his wrist, and a little lower were several deep, infected gashes, which had since crusted over in various nauseating shades of green, yellow, and black. His free hand was resting limply on his thigh, and Connor could see some blood built up under his fingernails.
Those injuries, however, paled in comparison to the bite; there was a a large chunk of flesh missing from the Lieutenant’s wrist, skin and muscle having been chewed savagely and desperately away, likely in a bid to escape once he’d registered what had happened; RK800s were 280 pounds on average, much heavier than they appeared. The Lieutenant had shown himself to be capable of lifting that weight before, but in such a fit of mental turmoil and physical weakness, Connor imagined he’d been unable to move whilst attached to it. He’d likely left his phone in his coat pocket, as it wasn’t in his bedroom. He wouldn’t have been able to make it to the kitchen in time, even if he’d tried. He’d sat there for almost a whole day, losing blood and compressing arteries and being slowly poisoned by the metal and coolant and thirium coursing through Connor’s skull.
It was a slow and painful death. Even now, the Lieutenant’s face was scrunched up into a miserable and despairing expression, chunks of skin caught up in the his molars and the gap in between his front teeth whilst blood was smeared across his mouth and nose, his beard meanwhile flaked with mucus and tears.
Connor made a report to Cyberlife, then to Captain Fowler. It kept most of the details vague in its latter report, aware of the Captain’s longstanding relationship with Lieutenant Anderson, even if somewhat strained.
It stepped back, surveying the scene one last time, then adjusted its tie. It didn’t care to wait around for Cyberlife personnel and listen to whatever suppositions they’d make about the situation, probably retroactively diagnosing Hank with some subtle, albeit volatile mood disorder. All that mattered to Connor was quelling the android rebellion, but even as it stepped off of Hank’s porch and into the fifth taxi it’d ordered that day, it couldn’t help but feel some unease, recollecting its own body so thoroughly defiled.
Software instability ^