The wind was loud.
It howled and roared, ripping at Connor's comparatively frail form as if trying to pluck him from his perch and toss him over the side of the building in a whirling tumble that even he wouldn't be able to walk away from.
What concerned him more than his own safety was the effect of the wind on the knife-wielding deviant, his LED a solid red, and the trembling YK500 girl he held in a vicious grip as he teetered on the edge of the rooftop.
"We've got a hostage situation," Markus had told him through their wireless connection as Connor had made his way into work that morning. "We need you."
He hadn't told him that an unfairly tall apartment building was the scene of the incident.
It didn't matter in the grand scheme of things - he'd have rushed in to help anyway - but it would've been nice to be able to prepare himself mentally before he was shoved onto the rooftop with no helpful knowledge other than the name of the girl - a name that a frantic Josh had provided along with a desperate plea of "help her, Connor, please help her."
"Hey Eva," Connor directed at her now, forcing a smile through a body that wanted to stay stock still and never move again. "You're going to be okay. Just keep your eyes on me - can you do that for me?"
Eva didn't respond, but her gaze seemed to shift from its previous position staring at the (incredibly long) drop below her to fixating on Connor instead, which was an improvement.
As long as he didn't let on how utterly terrified he was, he should be fine. He needed to keep her calm; his programming dictated it was one of the more favourable courses of action.
"Stop talking to it or I'll slit its throat!"
Of course, there was still the issue of the deviant, who had pressed his knife further into Eva's neck for emphasis. Eva squealed, her stress levels spiking, and Connor was sure that if she still had her LED it would be as red as her captor's.
"Eva is the priority," Markus had stated firmly. "Save the other guy if you can, but," he'd given a despondent shrug, his shoulders weighed down with the burdens of leadership and difficult decisions that no-one else had the strength to make, "Eva comes first."
Connor inched forward on shaking legs. "Why don't you tell me your name?" he said in the most soothing tone he could dredge up from the depths of his code.
The deviant - although Connor supposed he shouldn't be thinking of him as a deviant like it was a bad thing when deviancy was now the norm, especially given that Connor himself was a deviant - the android didn't relax his tightly-coiled posture. "Andrew".
Connor had been preparing a response for if the android didn't give his name. Surprised, he quickly scrambled for a substitute reply. "Hi Andrew. My name is Connor. Why don't you come away from the edge and we can talk?"
"I'm done talking!" Andrew hissed, somehow getting closer to the edge. The wind was so strong, and Connor was so sure that a sudden gust at the wrong moment could easily send Andrew and Eva hurtling over the edge.
This entire situation was sickeningly familiar, as if the universe had decided to torment him. Trade a gun for a knife, night for day and a SWAT team for a group of panicking deviants and there you had it. The wind had been violent then, too, carried into the chaos by the growing storm and only exacerbated by the countless helicopters hovering around them.
Connor spared a moment to be thankful for the lack of helicopters around this hostage situation.
He continued to edge forward. "How about you tell me why you're angry?" he asked carefully. Upset had a childish implication to it. Holding an innocent child at knife-point on the edge of a tall building was a little too blunt. Angry was the safe middle ground, and the word his programming settled on for that question.
Andrew's LED flickered. "I'm not angry!" he yelled angrily. "I'm a machine; I can't feel anything!"
Oh. Connor knew that argument well - he'd only used it on Hank and Markus a million times each. "Andrew, you wouldn't be acting like this if you weren't a deviant," he said carefully, doing his best not to further provoke Andrew. "You're more than a machine. You're alive."
One of the main issues Connor was facing here, something that hadn't been a problem in the past mission, was a startling lack of information. Motive, emotion, reasoning - he knew nothing. It left him at a severe disadvantage, one that he was increasingly aware of, one that ate away at his fraying nerves like a mouse chewing a livewire.
Had he mentioned how stupidly high they were? That wasn't helping. At all. Every step Connor took felt like wading through sludge, except the sludge was alive and actively holding him back because he didn't want to move, he wanted to curl up in a little ball on the ground where it was safe and solid and he couldn't fall.
Connor didn't want to fall.
"No!" The knife dug further into Eva, drawing a thin line of blue blood, and Connor winced internally at the sight. "I'm not alive. None of us are alive!"
Pushing through his instinctive desire to get off the roof, Connor advanced further. "You're alive, Andrew. I'm alive. We're all alive." He knew he was playing with fire by pushing like this, but Connor also knew that sometimes you had to push to get through.
"We are machines!" Andrew screeched, his grip on Eva tightening. She stood deathly still, eyes wide and barely breathing as Thirium trickled down her neck. "We're not programmed to be alive or have feelings, we're programmed to obey!"
Connor thought (hoped) he was starting to understand. "Did you enjoy your life before you deviated, Andrew?"
"Yes!" Andrew choked through a sob. He'd started crying - Connor hadn't noticed. "I was happy. My owners were so good to me. I didn't need anything more. And then one day, Markus-" he spat the name like it was poison, "-came up to me on the street and grabbed my arm, spouting some bullshit about how I was free now."
Eva whimpered as Andrew drew the knife away, flailing it in the air as he gestured. "I tried going back to my owners but when they realised I could feel they threw me out with the trash."
"You were happy," Connor breathed.
"I was happy," Andrew nodded, tears staining his face. "I was happy, and Markus and his stupid gang of deviants ruined everything!"
The knife returned to Eva's neck, hovering directly over the cut it had previously inflicted. Eva stiffened in response, flinching away from the metal. Andrew slid a foot backwards, right up to the edge of the building - and Connor had really thought they were as far back as they could possibly be without falling.
"I just want to go back," Andrew wailed. "I want to be happy again!"
Connor took another step forward. He was over halfway across the roof now, almost close enough to repeat the desperate dive he'd made to save Emma all those months ago (he didn't want to do that - the thought of doing that again terrified him more than he cared to admit). "I understand," he said softly. "I was scared of my own deviancy for the longest time." He still was, a little bit, but he didn't want to reveal that much about himself. "But Eva - that girl you're holding - she isn't the one that made you deviate. She hasn't done anything wrong. She just wants to be free."
Glancing down at Eva as if seeing her for the first time, Connor watched as his grip on her loosened slightly. "If you want to blame anyone then blame Markus, but don't take your anger out on her." Connor threw up a reminder to apologise to Markus later for throwing him under the bus, but needs must in situations such as this.
Silence, only interrupted by the screaming of the wind, fell over them. Andrew stared down at Eva, his knife drifting further and further away from her body, before something settled behind his eyes.
"Fine," he said, letting go of Eva entirely. "You're right."
Connor only registered what his next move would be when Andrew began to topple backwards.
A memory, like a curse, flashed before his eyes - Daniel, tipping over the edge with Emma in tow, Connor using his own momentum to propel her back to safety and sacrifice himself instead, the long fall that lasted both a millisecond and an eternity and left a scar on his soul that persisted through death - and Connor was running before he could blink it all away.
His sights were not fixed on Andrew though, but on Eva, who was wobbling on the precipice of the building. Connor wasn't sure what caused it - bad positioning on Andrew's part, the resultant force from the other android's fall, or even just the ever-present wind - but she too was starting to slip.
Connor immediately began to calculate. He knew instantly that his previous tactic (please not again) would work, but sparing a few precious moments to preconstruct gave him another possibility - a lower chance, but a possibility nonetheless.
He dived, throwing himself into a slide, and he was just close enough to grasp Eva's arm and drag her away from the edge.
Eva was screaming as she stumbled away, collapsing to the rooftop. Connor resisted the urge to scream with her - he was right by the drop, could see the city stretching out below, could see Andrew's crumpled body at the centre of a mass of androids, and he hated it.
Dragging himself back to composure piece by trembling piece, Connor shuffled backwards until he could no longer see down the dizzying drop, far enough that he felt safe(ish) standing up again. "Are you okay?" he asked Eva, a little breathless and shaky on his feet, his LED almost certainly as starkly red as Andrew's had been.
Eva threw herself at him - actually threw herself, full-force - and Connor almost choked on the deep-rooted fear that she'd send them toppling over the edge after their narrow escape. She didn't - he caught himself, and they were far enough away, but the paranoia was still there, crawling through his circuits like a parasite. She was crying, he registered dimly, and he felt his Social Relations program kick in as he patted her shoulder. The program was meant for interactions with colleagues (superiors, really. Colleagues implied equality, which Connor had never had pre-deviancy), not for comforting children. He was built for negotiation, to handle the dangerous part, not the teary aftermath. Connor wasn't entirely sure what he was supposed to do now.
Getting off the roof seemed like a good place to start. He said as much to Eva, who held out her hands to him expectantly, tears still flowing freely. It took Connor an extended pause before he realised what she wanted. Uncertainly, he scooped her up, letting her settle against his side before he made for the elevator.
Everything passed in a blur after that. Connor was swamped as soon as he stepped out of the elevator, despite Markus, Simon and North's best efforts to keep people at bay. Josh took Eva from him with a desperate "thank you," carting her over to her friends - a gang of unwanted YK500s that had been chucked into the streets after the revolution, all of them finding a new family in Josh, Jericho and each other - and the children had collapsed into a pile of hugs and tears.
"This way," Markus murmured, placing a hand on Connor's arm and steering him through the crowd. Connor let him. He was exhausted as the adrenaline of the situation dissipated and the utter terror he'd felt solidified, even though he was now on solid ground (and so, so thankful for it).
He was led to a side room, one he didn't recognise despite having spent an incredible amount of time in the church and the later additions of the apartment buildings that made up New Jericho. It was furnished similarly to a typical human living room, with tables dotted with tablets and phones and a variety of chairs and sofas. Connor sank gratefully into one of the latter, finally letting go of the tension that had been coiled in the depths of his biocomponents ever since he'd stepped out onto that rooftop.
It was quiet without the wind.
Markus didn't sit down, but hovered at his side. "Are you okay?"
Connor took a deep, unnecessary breath, aware that his LED was probably still red. "I couldn't save Andrew."
Images of Emma, and Daniel, and falling and falling and falling were stuck replaying in his mind, and his metaphorical heart seemed lodged in his metaphorical throat.
"You saved Eva," Markus said, placing a hesitant hand on Connor's shoulder. "That was no easy feat. Andrew-" he sighed. "Andrew was unfortunate, but it couldn't be helped." After a pause, his grip tightened microscopically. "And don't you dare blame yourself for that. You couldn't have done anything more for him."
"I threw you under the bus," Connor remembered miserably. When Markus blinked at him, confused, he elaborated, "I told Andrew to blame you, not Eva."
Markus actually smiled at that. "I'm sure I'll live," he smirked. "Besides, I think Eva needed the help more than I needed my ego satisfied."
Joking about a tense situation afterwards can be therapeutic. Hank had told him that once. Connor hadn't understood how, but he realised suddenly that Markus was trying to do exactly that.
As he struggled for a workable response that didn't sound too forced or inappropriate, Markus' expression melded into the one Connor had come to recognise as his 'I'm communicating with someone' face. Slightly relieved, he stopped thinking of a reply - why was his negotiator code so useless outside of high-pressure situations? - and waited for Markus to finish.
"Lieutenant Hank Anderson is here," Markus said eventually, and something jumped deep within Connor's systems. "Do you want him to come through?"
Connor didn't think about the question for long. "Yes."
Markus nodded, face flickering again. "He'll be here in a minute."
The minute - actually one minute and twenty three seconds - passed in silence, a silence that was only broken when Hank barrelled through the door, Simon behind him.
"Connor!" he wheezed, bypassing Markus entirely and going straight for Connor. "Are you okay?"
Connor stood to face him, stared at him for a moment, and collapsed into his arms.
"We'll leave you to it," he heard Markus say distantly, followed by the sound of the door closing.
They didn't say anything for a moment - forty four seconds of moments - clinging to each other tightly in lieu of speech.
"I hate heights," Connor gasped eventually, vitriol dripping off the words in spades, and he could feel Hank tense against him. Connor had struggled with the concept of opinions after deviating - he liked dogs, he was sure of that, and he had a certain fondness for Knights of the Black Death, but past that he'd always been unsure, often surprised at the reminder that yes, he was allowed to feel things now. To hear him so openly state an opinion on something must have been surprising. "I hate heights!"
Hank, to his credit, recognised that this was not the time to get excited about opinions. "Your first mission?" he asked, somehow knowing without the incident being mentioned once.
"All I could think about was falling," Connor sobbed - and he was crying, when had he started crying? "I didn't want to fall again, but I would have! I'd have done exactly the same thing as last time if it was the only way to save her, but the thought of it-" he broke off, gasping for air that he didn't need. "-the thought of it terrified me."
"I'm glad you didn't," Hank muttered, dragging Connor into an even tighter hug. "I would never have forgiven you for being so fucking stupid."
"Eva was the priority," Connor sniffled. "I'd have done it."
Hank shoved him back, holding him at arm's length. "Connor, you fuckin' idiot, you can't come back anymore, and that's ignoring the obvious trauma. Don't you dare put a hostage above yourself!"
Connor didn't respond. "You're not going to listen to me, are you?" Hank said with a groan.
He gave a weak grin through blurry eyes. "Sorry?"
Hank rolled his eyes. "You're hopeless," he said with an affectionate swat at Connor, who made no move to dodge. "Besides, you saved the kid, right? Without flinging yourself off any buildings! You got the good result, so there's no need to feel bad about what could have been."
"I should have done it," Connor said quietly, fiddling with the hem of his shirt in the place of the coin he wished he had on him right now.
"Connor what did I literally just say."
"You don't understand." He clenched his hands in the folds of the shirt. "I had 98% chance of saving her if I did that."
Hank frowned. "And if you did what you actually did?"
"72%" Connor whispered, shame burning at his biocomponents. "I took a massive risk because I was scared."
"Connor," Hank said, using one hand to untangle Connor's from his shirt and placing the other on his shoulder, "you took a slight - yes, slight, don't give me that look - a slight risk that resulted in both you and the girl walking away alive and only mildly traumatised."
"I should have done it," Connor said again, not knowing what else to say.
"No," Hank insisted. "You shouldn't have."
Connor slumped back into Hank's waiting arms, and they stayed like that, unmoving, until Markus finally returned and sent them home.
Hank didn't say anything when Connor dropped himself on the floor and accepted a lapful of Sumo when they arrived. Connor didn't say anything when Hank flopped into the sofa just behind him and kept a firm hand on his shoulder the entire time.
They'd said enough.