"Sleeping on the job eh, Connor?" One officer laughed to the other. "I guess he does sleep." The other replied as their voices drifted off into distances, heading towards the break room.
His arms crossed on the desk, his head resting on the side of his arms, he blinked awake, his eyes squinting at the lights of the DPD office. He took a moment to rub them, yawned and then stretched before he came to the realization of what he was doing. He felt strange, he didn't remember falling asleep or how long he had been asleep for, he never had to sleep before and wondered what had suddenly prompted his sleep mode. His vision was strangely clear, he couldn't see his normal statistics like his Thirium, energy, or heat levels.
When he tried to run a diagnostic, nothing appeared in his vision. This left him feeling particularly confused, looking at his hand, he couldn't synthesize with the computer terminal nor make a call to Cyberlife to report this major malfunction he was experiencing. Casually, he got up and went to the men's bathroom, hoping to use the mirror and spot the possible reason for this malfunction.
The bathroom was quiet, which was normal considering how few human officers there was in the precinct. Looking in the mirror, he noted his LED was completely missing, which was strange but aside from that, he looked normal. He leaned on the edge of the sink as he thought. He could just walk back to Cyberlife but without his internal GPS, he had no idea how he would get there. If he couldn't synthesize his hand to interact with the computer, then he couldn't do it to pay for a taxi either.
This was a problem, the only option he could think of was trying to convince Hank to drive him there and considering they had only been working with each other for a few days and weren't on the best of terms, it would be an interesting challenge. He hadn't checked the time yet but he estimated it to still be early morning, which would prove to be a long wait given Hanks late tendencies.
As he expected, the wait felt like an eternity, on the occasion, he had been pacing back and forth between to doors of the department, giving him something to do. It felt strange, he wasn't normally restless but getting repaired was a top priority and the longer he wanted the worse the restlessness got. For the most part, he tried standing still, nodding at the officers he recognized either returning from a shift or coming to sign in for the day but got little attention otherwise.
Finally, he spotted Hank walking up the steps, with a coffee in his hand as he left the building to greet him. Before he could say anything, Hank had interrupted him. "Aw geez, don't tell me you're going to start lecturing me for being late before I even get into the building," Hank remarked, unamused.
"No... Lieutenant, I need your assistance. I'm experiencing a malfunction and need to return to Cyberlife." He explained.
"And you're telling me this why? You could have left me a note on my desk or something." Hank dismissed and begin heading back towards the building.
"Lieutenant wait! Please, I need to be driven there." He pleaded, clasping his hands together in front of him.
"Why can't you take a taxi like you normally do?" Hank inquired.
"It's part of the malfunction, I don't have access to anything, I can't even contact them. Otherwise, I would have already been there and back by now." He explained, hoping that would be enough to convince Hank into doing him this favor. It looked like Hank was weighing his options as he took a moment to think.
"Fine, what did Jeffrey say?" Hank asked.
"Uhm..." He replied, he hadn't considered speaking to Captain Fowler about this, Hank was the one he was assigned too, thus being the one that was in charge of him.
Hank rolled eyes. "I'll go clock in, tell Jeffrey about your problem and then I'll drive you back to Cyberlife. Go wait in the car." He stated, tossing Connor the keys to wait.
He caught the keys with ease and headed towards the police's car parking lot. It wasn't hard to spot Hanks car, it being one of the few models that stood out like a sore thumb compared to the newer self-driving models. He unlocked the door and sat on the passenger side as he normally would, feeling partially relieved that Hank agreed to take him back. He couldn't shake this weird feeling he had and tried to figure out the cause of this malfunction.
It was strange that he was still functioning and could do something but couldn't do others. Being able to catch Hanks keys should fall under the same line of programs that allowed him to know exactly where he was going but despite not being able to pre-calculate how to catch the keys without dropping them, he was still able to do it. He crossed his arms confused.
After about ten minutes, Hank finally arrived back at his car, opening the driver side door and got in. He noticed Connor had already placed the keys in the ignition and turn it on. "I don't understand why you didn't just talk to Jeffrey, he would have called you a cab back to Cyberlife." Hank remarked, pulling out of his parking spot and heading towards the gate to leave.
"I... I didn't think of it. I'm assigned to work with you, it was only logical to report to you about this problem considering I couldn't take care of this problem myself." He answered, feeling a little worried and he wasn't quite sure why. Was it because he didn't understand the problem he was experiencing? Maybe it's because he felt bad knowing that Hank was probably less than thrilled having to take time out of his day to deal with this. Maybe-
"So, am I just taking you to a repair shop or do I have to take you to Cyberlife Tower?" Hank inquired before leaving the gates and heading onto the main road.
He had to think about it for a moment, he wasn't sure since this was the first time he was experiencing such a major malfunction. "Cyberlife Tower, I was activated there, they will definitely be able to fix me there. At worse case, my memories from this unit will simply be transferred into another RK800 unit but don't worry, you won't need to wait, once I'm at the building, I can take it from there." He confirmed.
Hank simply nodded and headed towards Belle-Isle. "So, they are just going to replace you?" Hank questioned. "Well, if it's not a quick repair, it would be quicker to put me into another unit, considering its a direct transfer and not an upload, I should retain all my relevant information. That way, they can take the time they need to repair this unit and I'll be back in service." He explained.
With Traffic, the ride to Cyberlife's gates only took fifteen minutes. Aside from Hank playing his usual music, no more words were said between them. When Hank pulled up to Cyberlife's gate, there were only two human guards in service. One of them walked over to the driver side door and Hank rolled down his window.
"Do you have an appointment?" The guard asked, leaning down to view both occupants in the vehicle.
"Connor model, #313 248 317. I'm experiencing a malfunction and have returned for repairs." He stated, giving a questioning look when the guard didn't immediately allow them in. Instead, he walked off to the side and held a conversation with the other guard before returning back to the driver's side window.
"I can't confirm your identity, if you don't have an appointment, I suggest you turn your car around and return when you have one." He guard stated, turning back to his post. That's when Connor for out of the car.
"What do you mean you can't confirm my identity? It's on my jacket! I'm the first android granted permission to work alongside the DPD as a detective to play an active role in cases, currently those involving deviancy. I'm experiencing a malfunction that's knocked several key programs offline and I need to be repaired." He explained, confused and a little irritated that this was even a problem.
"Look, I'll admit you have an uncanny resemblance to the model but we aren't stupid, we have scanners to tell whether you're an android or not. So, even if you could pull off the look flawlessly, by the way, did you just forget that Androids have LED's? We can tell it's just a costume. Now I suggest you leave before we call the police." The guard adviced, not very amused.
"What?!" He said extremely confused. "You, you can't be serious?" He retorted taking a step forward. He wasn't sure what to say or fully understood what the guard was implying, this was just ridiculous.
The guard took Connors action as a holistic one, placing his hand on his gun while the other guard did the same. That's when Hank stepped out of the car and doing the same, pulling out his badge and holding it up for the guard to see. "Hey, hey, hey. I'm Lt. Anderson from the DPD at central. There is no need for us to draw our weapons out." He stated, trying to defuse the situation.
"I don't know what game your both are playing at but if you don't leave now, I'll be filing a report with your superior officer." The guard warned once more.
"Okay, we're leaving. Connor, get back in the car." Hank ordered. "But?" He tried to argue. "Now." Hank yelled, annoyed that Connor still wasn't following his direct orders and got into his car.
Connor paused only for a moment longer before getting back into Hanks car. He was extremely confused, trying to come up with some logical reason for what was happening. Hank turn his car around and headed back over the remainder of the bridge before pulling off to the side and putting his car in park. They sat in silence for a few minutes, Hank mostly watching Connor seemingly struggling with his thoughts as he reflected on what he had heard of the conversation from the car.
"So, this malfunction, do you think it's a server thing? Even if your broken, they should still be able to read your serial ID, right?" Hank questioned, trying to make sense of this situation.
"I... I don't know. He should have been able to tell I was an Andriod at the very least, but... He seemed to be implying I forgot what an android looked like?" He questioned, remembering of the off-handed comments about him forgetting they had LED's.
"So, he thinks your human?" Hank questioned confused, scoffing at the thought. "I don't think so? Maybe? I, I don't know, I don't know what to do. I... I can't think. I don't know what to do." He repeated, coming a little overwhelmed, he didn't know what his next step should be and he needed to get back into service if he wanted to solve this deviancy case and find Markus. Cyberlife won't be happy about this interruption, they might even deactivate him at this point as a failed product. This wasn't fair, this wasn't his fault, his mind was beginning to race. He had worked too hard to get to this point for a malfunction like this to derail all his plans.
"Connor, relax. Take a breath, if that would even help you." Hank stated, looking a little concerned. He had seen his fair share of anxiety attacks and it almost looked like Connor might have gone into one but could an android have an anxiety attack? That thought prompted his next question.
"Are you a deviant?" Hank questioned, which had pulled Connor out of his own thoughts. "What? No! I'm not a deviant!" He said adamantly.
"But, is it possible? Reports say when an Android becomes a deviant. Trackers and deactivations codes stop working. You're experiencing something similar, they couldn't get your serial number on their scanners." He commented, a little amused.
"I'm not a deviant! When I dealt with deviants before, I could still see their serial number and other information. This isn't the same thing." He argued, almost insulted Hank would even imply such a thing but Hank wasn't far off the mark, he did want to deviate. Even though they had only been working together for a few days, each case had given him a new perspective. He was realizing what he was doing was wrong and now was playing a dangerous game of pretending he was still driven to solve the case while he bought himself time to figure out how he could survive this war without being killed by his own kind or deactivated by Cyberlife.
"Okay, okay. So we have to figure out how to prove to Cyberlife that your malfunctioning and that their scanners need to be fixed as well." Hank commented.
"And how do you propose we do that." He huffed, crossing his arms over his chest, leaning back in his seat, clearly annoyed.
Hank chuckled, he wouldn't admit it out loud but it was interesting seeing this side of his so-called partner. The state of the art supercomputer capable of taking over his job without a second thought. That was probably smarter, faster and stronger than him when he was only a detective was at a lose without most of his programming, rendered almost useless in this predicament. He couldn't come up with answers and stubbornly refused to acknowledge logical answers. If Hank didn't know better, he almost thinks Connor was human with how lifelike they build the damn things.
"Well, I can think of one way." Hank stated, putting his car into drive and heading towards his destination.