There was this thing about being in the police that all cops knew about: the danger of death. Unless you were stuck behind a terminal waiting for shit to happen or filling goddamn paperwork for the tenth time in two days, you were going to put your life in danger. Criminals were all over trying to get away with their crimes: if it meant killing an officer or two to evade it, then they'd probably do it.
Everyone was aware of these dangers when androids started to become a thing. Housekeeping and making stuff in huge hangars in what used to be the desert part of Detroit hadn't been enough to contain the "epidemic": in the end, that one corp named CyberLife had managed to slip some of policer/detective/whatever robots in the police forces to fight against other robots having gone deviant/defective/however they called it.
In a way, Hank could say his career changed the day he had gotten a partner assigned to him in 2018 Anno Domini (and he only knew what "AD" stood for because he once had gotten through a torrential lecture about it, holy shit that had been boring as balls). A non-human partner. A plastic prick assigned to him because now he was investigating androids or something. Wished he had been warned about facing these assholes before Fowler had slammed them in his face. Would have been nice to get prepared, y'know.
The thing was awkward to look at. It looked goofy with puppy eyes, a haircut which seemed to have dated back from when he was born and with a weird-ass voice with a weird-ass accent. "CyberLife androids are conceived to work harmoniously with humans", sure. It kept trying to do some fake small talk, including such classics as "I like dogs" and "Can I ask you a personal question, Lieutenant?".
It wasn't like it wouldn't follow him around all the goddamn time. The thing was tenacious as fuck: no matter how many times he'd tell it "don't go there, you're gonna get killed", it'd still do so. Fucking prick. Drinking himself to death? It'd break his window. Eating lunch? It was there, commenting on his street friends taking part in illegal gambles. Getting shot in the fucking head? It'd come back the next day as if nothing had happened, "My predecessor was unfortunately destroyed, but I was sent as a replacement".
After a while, though, Hank noticed himself warming up to the fucking robot. In fact, he started to refer to the latter as a "he" instead of just "it". In a way, advanced androids showed: at times, Connor was more human than he would have liked his artificial partner to be. It was too real when he had had to slam his heart back into his chest as it bleed blue everywhere in a staff room.
Way too real.
In the end, deviant androids weren't in the wrong and lead a peaceful revolution. Bigotry was still there (when wasn't it? Being an asshole was a part of being a human being), insults and slurs were still there, deviants hating humans and vice-versa were still there. The world would change, he figured. It always did, so why wouldn't it change this time? Androids had claimed back the tower in which they had once been conceived, built and stocked: it was already changing.
It was easy to perceive: instead of just having some kind of plastic partner crossed with a poodle trying to sound human, he had a workmate with just a different colour of blood and way to express himself ("androids cannot die, we get shutdown", "androids cannot get sick, Hank, they can get infected", yada yada yada). In a way, Connor was the son he had never gotten the chance to see grow up, but he'd be damned if he ever spat that in front of the kid.
It wasn't about hunting down deviants for the sake of making them go back to being machines anymore, at the DPD. Now, it was about hunting down violent deviants, find missing androids scared by deviancy, or arresting even more assholes killing androids. Hank wished he didn't know android sex trafficking was a thing, but it was a few cases too late. It was better than before: he didn't feel like he was being an ass just for making his job. Connor still licked blood off the floor as if it wasn't any big deal (God, that was still gross as fuck), but it was better.
So now, he was teamed with a sentient android investigating android-related cases and it wasn't even swerving his hate nerve anymore. Getting over what had happened to Cole was finally going somewhere thanks to him not being a blind piece of shit about it anymore. How things had changed in such a short span of time.
All this had brought him to this day. They had been assigned to the case of the disappearance of an SR300 which had apparently gone deviant and fled the place with a similar model, a JL900. Both were android models specialized in education and teaching, and had fled from the high school they were used in.
"I guess being a teach is only slightly better than findin' corpses on the ground," Hank grunted as he turned on the car. "These two must have fled because the brats weren't worth the shitty-ass wage."
"According to witness accounts, the two have taken shelter in a nearby abandoned school, of which the current school is a rebuilt one," Connor stated, looking through window to a decrepit building barely standing.
They both got out of the car, making their way to the old building. It was a disaster to look at: shattered windows, rotting walls with tags all over them, shards of glass and wood on the concrete, weeds starting to take over the entire place and a few animal corpses to sell the thing. It seemed like little shits liked to come here to get a quick laugh by being assholes to innocent animals.
"Look at this. Isn't it a place where ya wanted to spend a nice afternoon, Connor?" he asked his partner who looked way more serious than he was.
"We usually visit unpleasant locations such as this one," he replied with an unnatural seriousness. "I don't see how this is any worse than our usual investigations."
"Ain't wrong."
They walked into the building through its busted doors, glass breaking even more under their footsteps. The walls weren't just about to collapse under the weight of four abandoned floors: they were also covered in incoherent, compulsive writings.
"The words on the walls were both written by humans and androids. They used a standard font to write about rA9 again…" Connor seemed to mutter to himself as he scanned the walls.
"So both have been there, huh. That's just fantastic. We're trying to find androids and we're faced with the possibility of humans having put their dirty noses in there."
The ground floor was at times inaccessible, huge chunks of wood and concrete having long since blocked most corridors to what seemed to have been administration-related rooms. Oh well, was for the best: the less places to access, the less to actually investigate. Moreover, it blocked most of the staircases, which meant there was no risky stair climbing today. Hey, if the place wasn't so creepy and such a hazard, it wouldn't be too bad of an investigation.
But there was a catch to it (there was always a catch to things anyway): there were two ways to go. They'd have to either split up and cover more field or remain together but lose time. He couldn't tell all by himself what thing to do, even if he was more inclined to split and spend less time in this goddamn debris of a place.
"Which way is the most likely to have these deviants, Connor?" he asked, thinking some fancy-shmancy scan ability could maybe make that easier.
"I can't tell. The writings on the walls seem to be very similar on both ways."
His LED cycled to yellow, a sure sign he was scanning something, perhaps simulating, if he wasn't wrong about these specificities that was.
"I'd go as far as to say the two androids could have gone either way and could have split at some point."
"Fuck. Let's split too then. I'm going left, you're going right, got it?"
"Got it."
Gun in a hand and a flashlight in the other, Hank made his way into the left corridor. It was everything an abandoned school would be in a clichéd horror movie: blood dried on the walls, broken wooden floor tainted in red (from what, he didn't want to know), incoherent tags filled with penis crudely drown on former paint job… Truly the "work" of some shitheads.
Doors to classrooms were completely busted, revealing most of the furniture had either been moved to the new school or had been stolen. Because of the state of the building, these rooms were all identical: dark, smelling like wet red ice, rotting and just unpleasant to look at for more than three seconds.
Eventually, his eyes stumbled upon two blue diodes shining in the dark. The deviants were in the last room of the corridor (of course). Making sure to have his gunned hand lowered (if seeing Connor act upon deviants had told him something, it was that being unarmed was better in these cases) and the flashlight more visible. Violent confrontation wasn't really his cup of coffee these days.
He shined his light onto the two female androids, revealing them to have been sitting still on top of a desk. They didn't look that scared or surprised to see him, as if they had expected him to come in at some point. He wasn't the stealthiest cop around, to be fair.
"Detroit Police," he told them as he put his gun in its holder for the moment. "Stay put."
They didn't say anything back, just stayed there. They were still dressed in their factory uniforms, looking undisturbed enough to seem like they had never gone deviant in the first place.
"What? You're not reacting or trying to kill me or something?"
The SR300, a brown-haired one with blue eyes, got up and walked closer to him.
"We don't have to fear anything from you. We already know who you are and who you came with."
"Guess info does spread amongst deviants. Look, I'm not good at negotiating, especially compared to my partner, but I still wanna know why you fled the place like that. Was it the brats?"
That was soft coming from him, but he didn't feel threatened by two female androids smaller than him.
The second android got up too, revealing herself to have brown eyes, darker than Connor's he'd say, even if the shitty lighting of the place didn't help.
"We didn't know what they'd do with us once they knew we were deviants. It was starting to look too obvious."
"Who, the brats? I don't think they'd give two shits. Kids are usually nicer than adults about that kind of stuff."
If he remembered one anecdote from Connor before the latter had deviated, it was the one about the little girl who was taken hostage by the family's android she loved.
"No, the school staff," SR900 interjected. "Discrimination against androids is still a thing for us deviants. These dicks wouldn't want us to think too much. Ironic, considering that's what school is supposed to teach the kids."
An android who cursed freely. Felt like talking to a real human for a second over there.
"We escaped so we wouldn't be chained to our original, programmed mindset," JL900 added. "Being free is being able to think for ourselves and being able to teach how we want. For once, the students aren't the issue."
"So ya escaped because ya wanted free will, right? Seems like a cool motive. Ya killed people while ya were at it?"
"We're supposed to be teacher androids, Lieutenant." JL900 seemed offended at this. "We wouldn't kill people. I don't think we've even unlocked that."
"Now, if you want a killer deviant, there's one in the building," SR300 said as she glanced towards the corridor. "We were about to leave the place anyway, it was just so they'd lose track of us. Now, if I was you, I'd leave too."
Wait, how did they know he was a lieutenant? Huh, no, wait again. There was something worse about this.
"There's another deviant in there?!"
SR300 didn't seem this disturbed.
"Yeah. A deviant with a knack against other androids and humans alike. He calls himself Brandon, if you ever come across him."
JL900 didn't seem this tranquil with it, though.
"Sarah," she said as she looked at the other android, "isn't Lieutenant Anderson always accompanied by an android?"
"Oh, yeah, he is," she replied looking at the ceiling, before starting at him again. "You should go check on your partner, Brandon may have found him."
That smelled like shit. The calmness of that swearing android was pissing him off beyond reason, to the point he wanted to scream at her for not telling him earlier, but Connor was a priority there.
Not even saying something again, Hank hurried to the other end of the corridor he had gone in and into the one he hadn't been in before. As he did so, he armed his other hand with his gun, determined to make it to where the deviant was and shoot him in the head if it meant having his partner alive and perhaps saving the two pacifist androids in the back over there.
As he did so, the stench of the place had changed. It smelled much, much more like plastic and machinery. It was probably his mind playing tricks on him, considering he was getting concerned and almost scared of finding Connor in pieces by that point.
Getting breathless, he stopped running, trying to catch his breath as soon as possible. Heart beating against his ribcage, cursing himself for having tried to attract death glass after glass, his hand dropped down, lighting the floor. There was this weird ambient noise of someone dragging something on the floor,
His eyes went wild when he noticed there were drops of blue. Whatever Connor had to get his parts functional was spilled on the floor, his or not. Considering the short timespan during which it'd stay wet, it had to belong to one of the four androids in the building. Also considering the pristine condition of the two female androids he had just left, despite the place where they were, it had to belong to either Connor or the deviant. He needed to act fast.
As he was about to continue delving into the corridors, something grabbed his ankle, almost making him fall.
"Goddammit! Don't pull my legs, for fuck's…"
His heart skipped a beat.
"Jesus Christ!"
The hand clutching his ankle belonged to Connor, whom he kneeled in front of. There was blue blood all over the android's fingers and dripping from his mouth, ragged breathing also coming out from it.
"Goddammit, Connor, you're okay?! What happened to ya?!"
"A deviant… shot me in one of the classrooms… He's armed…"
"God fucking dammit…"
Putting his partner's head on his lap, Hank put the gun back in this pocket and shone the light on the android. It wasn't too hard to spot the wound: there was a blue hole right in his chest from which liquid oozed, tainting everything it touched in cobaltic tones. The damage seemed to have been enough for Connor to cough up even more blood, all contributing to tainting even more of the place blue.
It was a storm inside Hank's head. Should he try to stop the haemorrhage the same way he'd so with a human, with red blood? It didn't cost anything to try. He put his hand on there, trying to use pressure to his advantage, when footsteps arrived next to him.
There was no LED light around the footsteps' noise. A "shit" escaped his mouth as he realized this wasn't any of the two girls from before, but the last deviant in the building. The one with the homicidal tendencies and a lack of empathy to his fellow androids. He needed to get rid of it before it got rid of him.
Regretfully targeting his flashlight towards the deviant, other hand already moving from the wound to his pocket and to his gun, he noticed there was a barrel pointed right between his own two eyes. This was going to end in a bloodbath, wasn't it.
"Sorry, son," he whispered under his breath as if Connor could hear it, ready to shoot and get shot, until the barrel disappeared from his immediate vision.
Two lights had appeared in his field of vision.
"Sir!" SR300's voice rose from the darkness. "Get away from here as fast as possible! We're gonna keep him in there long enough, don't worry for us!"
He wished he didn't have to resort to that, but seeing Connor cough up some more blue blood was giving him the urge to leave as soon as possible.
"We… we can't leave them here…" Connor said with echo in his voice and liquid pouring out as Hank was putting him over his shoulder.
"We can't wait around here, or you're gonna die! No officer dies on my watch!"
It was a chore to get moving with someone barely able to walk weighing down on his shoulder, but it had to be done. His partner was attempting to speak despite the leak continuing. Hand on his phone, phone to his ear, ear twitching, he was barking into it to request backup and some kind of medical assistance for androids, whatever that was called.
"Hang on there, we'll get you to safety and repaired in no time. Just… don't die on me."
Connor attempted to speak, only for more blue to come out from it, spilling on the ground.
"And don't speak, Jesus Christ! You're gonna make yourself even worse if you do that!"
Sirens filled the air, lights blinded the eyes, backup deafening sounds and visuals alike. That had been tougher than expected… Of course it'd be. Why did he have expectations of anything going right, again? At least, question solved, right?
If there was a thing Hank hated deep down, it was waiting for something to happen whenever things turned to shit. He was covered in blue, staring at the wall in a fucking waiting room because he couldn't focus on anything else. Order from Fowler himself, he didn't need to add another page to the goddamn bible that was his behaviour history.
The kid had been shot in the chest and he couldn't have done much about it. He knew he couldn't have guessed, couldn't have known, but it still felt like his fault nonetheless. He didn't care if Connor was supposed to just be robotics with a humanoid face, he was still alive and he had almost died right in his arm for the second time. Fuck this deviant, he deserved the bullet in the head he got from the backup.
He had seen the two female androids from earlier pass by him, apologizing for not telling him earlier. One of them, the SR300 if he wasn't mistaken, had almost been shot too, but it only grazed her instead. They had seemed to be adamant to join society as functional members, albeit deviant androids by default. They weren't bad persons, he supposed, so it was only fair that they had survived the ordeal and had left that decrepit school straight out of Satan's asshole.
That still didn't make that shitty situation okay. He hadn't been here for long and he knew that: at best half an hour, at worst a couple minutes, the time to want to punch something and throw coffee at Gavin for the tenth time in the week. It was pissing him off to dick around like that waiting for something to happen.
"Lt. Anderson?" a voice called for him, unfamiliar and neutral all the same. Some random technician, he figured.
"Yeah?" he simply replied, before realizing it could be important. "Did the kid make it?" he proceeded to ask, a bit more concerned about the entire ordeal.
The small smile on the guy's face betrayed the answer.
"He did indeed make it. You may visit his room now."
The lieutenant obviously followed. In all silence, yet sighing internally in relief because never again, he made his way in the room. Closing the door behind him and leaning against the wall, he looked at the unconscious (or so he assumed) man in the bed in front of him. A smirk crept up on his face.
"Never do that again, kid, got it?"