Welcome!
Ever wondered, "Huh, what would have Perkins done when faced not only against the androids, but a human as well?"
Well, I'm here to answer that question.
Disclaimers: - I don't own D:BH or any of its characters, just my OC and interpretaion of the storyline.
- This is the story I have the most motivation for right now, but I'm also a perfectionist so I'm sorry for sporadic updating and many chapter edits, I promise we'll get there eventually!
The snow swirled by in flurries around where she hid. Lights erected by the army shone bright around the giant structure in the middle of the square, but they seemed to only be fixated on who was inside. She watched the deviant leader, Markus, leave the safety of the barricade to talk with the man from the FBI, reflections of the surrounding glow rippling on his tense form.
Her heartbeat thudded loudly in her ears.
Her sharp eyes flickered away from the negotiation, back to the barricade. He was in there somewhere, assuming he hadn't been killed in the initial protests. She shook the thought away before it could take root, she had seen his coat flash by when the journalists began filming.
She looked back at Markus when he flinched, his multicolored eyes cast downward in a rare demonstration of pain. She could almost see the smirk begin to form on Perkins long face and she clenched her fists to keep from running out before it was time.
But the face of determination was back a mere moment later and she caught a snippet of his final words: "-rather die here, than betray my own people."
She closed her eyes with a shaky sigh. It was now or never. She opened her eyes to see Markus alone, turning back towards his people. She waited. Waited. Once Markus had climbed back over the wood and into relative safety, she rose from her frozen crouch and stepped forward into the snow.
"It's no use Professor Josh, my brain just isn't hardwired for this kind of stuff," she mumbled, glaring down at the Jane Austen novel. "Nonsense", the android scoffed in reply, "you're one of the brightest students here, I see no reason for you to not complete this assignment."
She glanced up at him - him not it, as her peers liked to refer to him - and raised her eyebrows. "Maybe I am, but there's a reason I got a full ride for engineering instead of writing essays on ancient books." she countered, her glare softening
"Miss this book is hardly ancient, it was only published in the early-"
"Yeah, yeah, you know what I mean." she interrupted him, holding back a smile at how his LED turned yellow before realizing yes, he did know what she meant.
This was where she usually found herself on a weekday evening, tucked away in the library of Wayne State in Detroit with one of the library's resident androids assisting her with pointless homework. Most often that meant Josh, one of her college's lecturers who was surprisingly good at writing English Literature essays.
She was just trying to hold out until the golden light outside the giant windows grew dim and she could finally call it night. Her friends had promised a fun night together with help from an upperclassmen party and she was anxious to see what all the fuss was about.
Josh brought her back from her head by shoving her laptop closer in a weak attempt to get her to focus. She sighed, turning back to her book and trying once again to sound like she knew what the author was talking about.
Her steps brought her farther into the bright light, farther from the safety of the shadows and the city. Farther into danger. But she couldn't stop now, those people inside the barricade were alive and as much as she hated it at the time, history class had taught her all about these kinds of mistakes.
Flashes of light began to accompany each footstep as the journalists caught sight of her. She took a deep breath but didn't falter, continuing forward even as she drew towards the army and saw guns begin to train on her form.
She felt small out here.
Now she was in the empty area between the barricade and the men with guns. The gasps of shock from the journalists and FBI suits were almost drowned out by the chopping of a helicopter from far above, it's spotlight racing to enfold her within its brightness.
She could hear echoes of Markus speaking to his people as she brought up her arms as though to shield the androids from their demise.
Her lips trembled from the cold for the first time, the gusts from the helicopter and the sight of more guns being raised to position cutting right through her layers. She saw the man who had talked to Markus raise his hand in what she recognized as a signal not to fire.
She closed her eyes in relief for a heartbeat, snapping them open when she heard footsteps approach. A person in uniform stood across from her, their features obscured by their mask. They held up a device to her body, and she raised her chin defiantly when she recognized it as a temperature scanner.
They turned and jogged back to their superiors, not before she caught the flash of green come from his scanner.
More gasps began to ring out from behind her, and she realized she could no longer hear Markus's voice echoing around the plaza. She glanced behind her towards the people she was defending, protecting. Watched as they pointed with shock and confusion. Watched as a group of androids rose up to the center of the wall. Watched as Josh, Marcus, and Simon recognized her.
Watched as Marcus and Simon held Josh back from jumping over the barricade.
She watched as a couple of her friends emerged from the front door of the grand house. She, Lilly, and Jonathan saw them wave goodbye to the dancing figures and slip into the backseat. "Ooh, what do you have there?" Lilly squeaked excitedly as Jonathan maneuvered the car out of the neighborhood and back to their dorms. "Some beer, a bottle of vodka, and this type of strawberry champagne they had in the back." Eli, one of their friends in junior year, answered Lilly.
"Good haul man." Jonathan nodded from the driver seat. He turned to her in the passenger seat next to him, winking, "You're gonna have a great night if we got all this." She rolled her eyes at his teasing, turning away so he wouldn't see her smirk.
"Go easy on her Jon, she's just going to have some light beer to start." Isabelle reprimanded her little brother, "And it's just going to be that for a very long time, got it? We wouldn't want to ruin her perfect college life." Issa shot a grin at her and she groaned, putting her head in her hands.
They arrived at Issa's senior dorm, talking animatedly about each other's classes and gossiping about Eli's supposed girlfriend all the way up the stairs. Eli and Isabelle claimed the vodka for themselves once they were finally settled around the TV, leaving the beer and champagne for Jonathan and Lilly. Jon tossed her a beer, warning her despite all his jokes to "take it easy with this stuff, especially since you're only 19."
She rolled her eyes at him but grudgingly agreed. Isabelle was right, she couldn't afford for her brain to make the stupid choice the one time it might matter most.
The alcohol burned the first couple sips, and it took several trips to the bathroom for fear of throwing up and fits of laughter from the older kids to finally stomach down a can. She could see why her father avoided the stuff at all costs.
The champagne was only slightly better, so she spent the rest of the night laughing at the increasingly silly games and being there for when Issa or Eli took a sip too quickly.
It was nearly 3 in the morning when she left, supporting a wilting Lilly on her walk to their dorm. At least she didn't have class until 3 that afternoon. It wasn't a long walk, and thanks to the city's androids it was a clean one. She wished she could tip some of them sometimes, but they always had refused, spouting their "androids don't require monetary compensation" line.
They were approaching the doors to their building when she heard a crash in the nearby alley. Lilly glanced up from her daze and pushed off of her friend, making her way inside the doors. She made to follow but paused again when she heard the laughing.
She'd heard laughing like that before. It wasn't borne of amusement, fun, or even love. It was a cold, hard thing.
She hardly needed to think before she changed course, straight for the alley. As she got closer she could hear more laughter, men yelling, something crashing. She stuck to the wall of her building stepping lightly, though she guessed the men might be drunk enough to not notice her creeping up on them. She finally reached the edge and glanced inside, expecting to see a bunch of her classmates using a trash can as a punching bag or throwing each other around in a not so silly drinking game.
Oh, how wrong she was.
With blue bruises already forming on his dark skin and blue blood seeping from underneath his uniform, Josh was looking a little worse for wear.
She caught North's eye before she went running to Josh's side, managing to flick her eyes toward Josh and give an almost imperceptible shake of her head. The woman nodded in understanding before running in front of Josh and pushing him back.
She tried to ignore the sounds of him shouting for her.
She turned her eyed back towards the men with guns to find the man who had spoken with Markus walking towards her. She involuntarily took a few steps back in retreat, before gathering her resolve and raising her chin to meet the man's steely gaze.
She kept her arms spread protectively, not daring to look back and check on Josh.
The man stopped a ways ahead of her, regarding her with a cold curiosity. She spoke before he could order her away, "You will not kill these people." She was proud, her voice didn't shake even a little bit. He showed no signs of surprise or acknowledgment, merely glancing behind her to where Josh was still struggling against his friends.
He brought his gaze back to her before speaking, "Hello miss", she tensed at his casual tone, "my name is Richard Perkins, I'm leading the case against deviants and you happen to be in the middle of a crime scene." His face became colder before continuing, "I'm going to ask you to allow us to escort you from the premises."
She almost raised her eyebrows at him in disbelief. Did he really think that would do it? Humoring him, she tilted her head as though considering. His pleased look at her action was quickly wiped off when she finally responded, "No can do mister, those people in there are alive and there is no way I'm leaving them behind."
Perkins long face finally contorted into a glare, his eyes flickering back behind her once again. "That android there seems to know you," he remarked conversationally, "how about you come with us willingly, and we don't shoot him down." Her heart clenched at the thought, but again she pushed it away before it could show on her face.
Ever so slightly, she flicked her fingers down, then her arms came down a fraction. Hopefully, Markus and the others would understand what she meant.
Perkins finally allowed a smirk to flash across his features, ordering two soldiers forward with a flick of a finger.
Her mouth popped open in a silent gasp at the sight of her friend bleeding in an alleyway. The men around him each had drinks in their hands and were taking turns swiping at Josh, most with their bare hands but a select few had knives on them.
She pulled away from the gap and hid behind the wall. He's just an android. she repeated to herself, He's going to be fine, he can be replaced, he can be fixed, he's just a machine, just an android just an android just an android. But the more she said it to herself, the more she knew that it wasn't true.
Not at all.
So instead of following Lilly inside and helping them both to bed, she grabbed her pocket knife and rounded the corner of the alley. At first the men didn't notice her, small and dark-haired as she was she almost blended right into the night. Josh recognized her first, his LED blinking red and his mouth opening to say something before he was slapped across the face.
The sight made her flinch, and the sudden movement finally clued the group in that she was there. She quickly counted the 7 men, some of them she knew from classes and others she didn't. "Get away from him." her voice shook as she brandished her knife.
They all glanced at each other, surprised at first until the biggest began to chuckle. Soon they all joined in and the alley echoed with their cold laughter. Her hand had begun to shake. One of them brought his empty beer bottle against the wall next to him, the glass breaking until he held a jagged-edged weapon. He took slow, deliberate steps toward her, only stopping an arm's length away.
"Oh yeah sweetheart?" his breath stunk of alcohol, and she wasn't sure if it was just the cold she was shivering from anymore. The group around them continued to laugh as the man in front of her reached with his free hand to touch her hair.
She jerked away, bringing her knife up again to cut him if he tried anything. Her flinch had brought another round of raucous laughter, and the man smiled at her, coming forward her again before being stopped by something from behind.
His smile fell off his face, and the laughter died off around her.
The man turned around to find Josh behind him, standing with a hard glare on his face. Blue blood seemed to coat his actions. Soon red seemed to coat his hands.
After the man who had touched her was on the ground and was no longer fighting, she grabbed Josh's wet hand and tugged him away from the alley. The rest of the group would come to their drunken senses soon enough. She ran to her building with him in tow, glancing around the otherwise silent campus for any prying eyes.
Seeing none, she turned back to Josh as he let himself be brought inside. His eyes were trained on her form, but he seemed to be in shock. But androids don't feel shock. She took another look at him once they made it to the elevator, his LED was still on red even with the danger past and his hands were shaking.
"Josh." she said calmly, waiting until his eyes had focused on her before continuing, "Are you okay?" His LED flickered to yellow as he looked down at his bloodied hands, and then back to her face. "Yes, I- I am… Are you?" he suddenly looked very concerned, his eyes checking to make sure she had no injuries before his LED finally returned to blue.
"Yes I'm fine," she assured him, "you're the one who's going to need medical attention." Josh looked up again, jumping a little as though surprised to find they were already in her room. She was already moving around, gathering some towels and a water bottle before bending down to wash his hands. "I'll go tell the school about this tomorrow and they can-" "NO!" he shouted, and she jumped back in surprise. "Don't tell the school, please, they'll send me to cyberlife to get fixed and then they'll know I'm- that I'm a-" "Shhh, shhh, hey it's okay, I won't tell them," she reassured him, bending down beside him again. His LED had returned to red and he was shaking.
He looked to her in confusion, "You... won't? You won't tell them?" he seemed appalled, he seemed… human. She recognized the signs, they had been learning how to avoid this in their models in her engineering course. Software engineering.
Josh was a deviant.
"No of course not," she soothed him, relieved when his LED went blue again, "I promise." He nodded, casting his eyes down when she went back to wiping the blood - of both kinds - off of his trembling arms. She noticed his eyebrows crease in confusion and waited patiently for a question to be asked. "Then-" he started, glancing up at her again, "What are you going to do?"
She paused her ministrations, staring at him blankly. What was she going to do? It wasn't as though she had a plan right now, and she had barely known what she was doing when she brought him into the safety of her dorm. He noticed her hesitation, shaking his head sadly and moving as though to scoot away from her.
She panicked, coming back to herself just in time to grab his arm before he shifted away. "I'm going to help you, dummy." she heard herself say. She had no idea where the words had come from or what made say them but there they were. There she was.
She turned away in embarrassment when his incredulous eyes found hers, throwing the dirty rag she was using in the trash.
She was shocked when she turned from getting him another towel to find his bruised face streaked with tears.
"Thank you, Amelia."
If there was one thing humans were, it was predictable. Amelia had seen some source code of the new Connor prototype in her software class, a CyberLife representative explaining how the very base of its- his- code revolved around the mission.
Ingrained in that base code was the mission to save or protect human lives by any means necessary.
Now if Amelia let herself be carted off to some holding facility, away from the protest and the barricade, all the androids would certainly be killed. If Amelia put herself between the humans and the androids, however, the humans would have no choice.
Hold off, or let the world see that humans would kill their own kind to accomplish their mission.
So Amelia did the most logical thing to do in her situation.
Run.
She looked to Perkins smirking face, giving him a smirk of her own before punching him square in the nose and turning on light feet. She was a lot braver than she had been just three weeks ago when she had struggled just to hold a knife against a group of drunk idiots.
Amelia ignored the shouts of surprise and rage behind her, finally being able to check on her friend. He still had Markus and Simon holding him, but he had quieted down until he saw Amelia racing straight for him. His face was panicked with fear for her as he once again struggled against his friends.
Amelia ignored him, running for the section she had seen Markus climb through. North seemed to know what Amelia had in mind, she ran around the group holding Josh and knelt down at the edge of the wall, thrusting a hand out for her to grab.
The footsteps behind Amelia seemed like a stampede: harsh, threatening, and gaining with every step. But she wasn't on her college's track team for no reason. She finally reached the wall, reaching out a hand for the woman and finally hearing the deafening cheers of androids coming from inside the structure.
She felt a tremor as one of the soldiers behind leaped out to grab her, but it was too late. His gloved hand barely brushed her jacket before she was pulled up, over, into, down, and finally, finally into the arms of Josh. Josh who was safe and she was finally safe.
Josh abruptly pulled his warmth away from Amelia, his hands resting on her shoulders as though he could hold her in safely on his own. The small action reminded her of another time he had done this, so long ago now. He shook her lightly, "What are you doing here?" he demanded. "Why are you not safe, at home?"
Amelia could barely see her friend through her tears, much less talk through them. She just shook her head in defeat, bringing him back forward to hug him. He wrapped his arms around her in turn, and she could feel his cheek resting on her hair.
A voice cut through their reunion, "Josh, sorry to interrupt, but what is Amelia doing here?" Josh raised his head to look at Markus's stern expression. Amelia suddenly remembered where she was and what she was there to do, and pulled herself away from Josh.
She turned to Markus as well, taking comfort from the warmth of Josh's arm still around her. She took a deep breath, steeling herself for disagreement, before speaking to the android leader. "Perkins was about to launch an attack, despite all the reporters." she began, shifting her eyes to the ground below, "I knew they wouldn't hesitate to stop the threat, as long as they could do most whatever they wanted without any consequences."
"However," she brought her eyes back up, relaxing when she caught Simon, beside Markus, nod for Amelia to continue, "if there was something in the barricade that they couldn't attack, couldn't destroy." she felt Josh tense beside her, "They might be forced to hold back." Amelia couldn't turn to her friend beside her, choosing instead to watch Markus's steady face consider her words. He looked up at her, his mouth dropping open, "So what you're saying is-"
"The Connor prototype's base code ordered that he value, protect, and save human life at all costs. If an android is held to that standard, the humans who created him should feel the same way."
She continued, "I'm a human." North's eyes narrowed. "As long as I'm in here, and the reporters out there saw me enter willingly, there's no way the army will be authorized to attack. If my life is on the line and they still risk trying to kill you all, there could be even more of a civil war on the military's hands."
Amelia finished explaining, anxiously watching as North stepped forward to her. "She's… a human?" she asked suspiciously, turning to Josh for an answer. Amelia felt him nod beside her and felt the cold of the air around them concentrate in North's gaze. She glared at them for a second more before turning back to Markus and whispering earnestly, "She's a human Markus, we can't trust her." Markus barely glanced down at his friend, keeping his piercing eyes on Amelia.
"She's probably been sent here by the army to attack from the inside, you saw her talking to Perkins. I thought she was another android finally fighting for our freedom but-" "But she's a human." Markus interrupted her, finally taking his eyes off of Amelia. "She's a friend of Josh's, a good acquaintance of mine, even you worked with her to fight for our cause, and I trust that she's here to protest the camps as well."
He phrased it as a question, flicking his eyes back to Amelia and giving a small nod when she murmured her agreement.
North sent one more glare at Amelia before stomping away in defeat.
Well there we go, chapter one is done!
I hope it left you with some questions, and I hope they all end up getting answered. Also feel free to review with any questions or comments, I promise it'll all be appreciated!
Special thanks to the wonderful emmagnitised for taking the time to read and give their thoughts on this, it's an honor! And also to my 'hon', they read the earlyyyyy draft for this and despite not playing the game and being utterly confused helped me shape this into something readable!
Yes, the late name reveal was intentional, yes it was hard to write, yes I still think it's cool, no the other chapters won't have it (thank gosh).
(edited 11-7-18)
