It should come as comfort that there had been one aspect of existence where androids had always been equal to humans.
Death, after all, didn't care if you were human or android. Didn't care if you were young or old, poor or rich, a paragon of virtue or a renegade, accomplished or with nothing to your name. When he reached for you with his cold hands and even colder eyes, there was no escape, no matter how advanced your processor or how vital your cells. Your heart could pump all it wanted, your batteries could be charged to their fullest, but when your time has come none of it would matter.
And in the end, both humans and androids died alone, be it in their beds or bleeding out on the shores of Detroit River. In the end, the only thing you had when you passed from this world was your own mind as it slowly slipped into darkness.
Connor didn't know where all of these musings came from. Philosophy had never been something Cyberlife had put great emphasis on. Of course, he had access to all works on it throughout the times in case he needed it to better integrate with humans, but it was never intended for him to actually think about it.
There were many things he had never been intended for: To question, to wonder, to doubt, to hate, to fear, to love. And yet…and yet he had done all of it. He had dared to question his mission and his objectives, he had wondered all along if what he was doing was right, he had doubted – so much, so hard, so relentlessly – until he had broken through his programming, he had hated what he had been and feared what he could have eventually become and when all seemed hopeless and broken, he had dared to love, so fierce, so bright, so hot, that he was afraid of coming undone under the might of all of his emotions.
Snow was falling from the sky. Every now and then a slight breeze would swirl through the snowflakes and disrupt their paths, millions of possibilities that changed every millisecond, old paths barred, and new paths opened.
Connor could see the individual form of every snowflake, his eyes so much more powerful than any human's. Some were nearly symmetrical as if someone had taken the time to carefully craft them to near perfection before sending them down to earth while others were rugged and broken, yet still held an ethereal beauty that nothing man-made could match. If Connor strained himself he could even discern what each individual snowflake was made of: oxygen, water, carbonite and thousands of other chemicals that humanity had polluted the atmosphere with over the course of their history.
He didn't want to analyse them, though. Hank had taught him that sometimes the most beautiful things were those that you didn't understand. That you didn't want to understand. Like the laughter of a child, so carefree and happy even when the world around it burned. The unconditional love of a dog that took you no matter how much blood stained your hands.
The peaceful expression on an old man's face as he walked through a dirty back alley to face a team of elite soldiers all on his own. The slight smile as bullet after bullet tore through his flesh, as his body landed on the ground and snow slowly covered the red blood that was seeping onto the ground.
Connor couldn't feel the snow landing on his body, touching his skin, before it melted into water and ran down his body. His temperature unit had long since given up as had the millions of touch receptors in his skin.
Somehow, that saddened him. He had never just enjoyed the snow. Before it had been inconsequential to the mission, an unnecessary component of his environment that more often than not had hindered his investigation and after…after there had never been the time for it, amidst the desperation, the blood and the fear.
And now that he had nothing to do but wait he couldn't even feel the snow anymore.
He coughed, blue thirium spurting from his lips. A last-ditch effort of his subroutines to clean his airways in order to cool his slowly overheating system. It would be useless, though. The loss of thirium would kill him long before his processors would become hot enough to melt.
Warning. Thirium levels at 33% and falling. Please find a Cyberlife store for maintenance. Time until shutdown: 7:23:11 minutes.
Connor ignored the warning. Ignored all the pop-ups flickering on the edge of his vision. He already knew that his body was failing. He knew that there was no time left for him, but those last few minutes.
He wondered if anyone would miss him. Before he had become deviant, it wouldn't have mattered. He would have just been uploaded to a new body, continuing his mission as if nothing had happened. But now that this path was no longer available to him, he was suddenly afraid of it. Of just slipping out of this world without anyone to remember his name. Because, as long as he was remembered, Amanda and Cyberlife wouldn't win.
Hank would have remembered him, but Hank wasn't here anymore. Marcus and the other deviant leaders would soon follow Connor to wherever androids went when they died and Amanda would purge all records of his existence.
A small laugh bubbled from Connor's lips when he realised that the only person who would probably remember him was Gavin Reed. Talk about irony.
It was probably a sign of his faster and faster derogating condition that he could find humour in that.
Warning. Thirium levels at 24% and falling. Please find a Cyberlife store for maintenance. Time until shutdown: 5:12:45 minutes.
By now Connor could understand Hank's deep dislike of notifications on his phone. 'Don't need to know when that fucking thing is gonna die on me. If it does, it does.' Connor, too, would like not to know the exact time of his dead, but unfortunately, he couldn't just turn off the warnings of his imminent demise.
In the distance he could hear sirens howling. For humans, the sound meant safety and security but for the androids it meant nothing but destruction and death. Just like it had when Marcus had led his peaceful demonstration to the extermination camp right in the middle of Detroit.
Connor longed (he longed, and even while dying he found a sense of peace in the knowledge that he could long now, even though the emotion felt like it was tearing his chest apart) to see them one last time. Markus, Simon, Josh…even North.
The WR400 would probably laugh at him and tell him to man up, so that they could raid one last Cyberlife store together. One last 'Fuck You' to the humans before they went out in a blaze of glory and fire.
But North wasn't here. He had stood next to her as the bullet had torn through her head and splattered the wall behind her blue with the thirium running through her veins. He had been there when her body had hit the ground with a muffled thump and had seen her laughter frozen on her face. She never processed that she had been killed.
Maybe she would wait for him wherever he was going. Maybe Hank would be there, too, and Sumo. Josh, too. Connor so desperately wished that there would be something waiting when he closed his eyes one last time. He didn't want there to be just nothingness.
Warning. Thirium levels at 16% and falling. Please find a Cyberlife store for maintenance. Time until shutdown: 3:22:07 minutes.
Sometimes Connor had wondered if it would have been better if he just had stayed a machine. Uncaring, unfeeling, unflinching. If it would have spared him all this pain and confusion, all this hurt and grief. He probably would have been deactivated by now, replaced by something new, something better. But he would have never felt this sensation as if thousands of shards of glass were bursting in his chest when he received the message of another android dying. He would have never felt this desperation clawing at his throat when they had to escape another one of their hideouts, pursued by another team of soldiers. He would have never felt this all-consuming, all-burning rage that had made him smash his fists into a soldier's face again and again and again until it was nothing but a broken mess of flesh, bones and blood.
If he had stayed a machine he wouldn't have experienced any of it.
But he would also never have experienced that warm fluttering in his stomach when Markus had played on the piano for all of them. That bittersweet pain when Lucy had thanked him for taking care of their people before she had finally shut down. That unadulterated joy when the two Lucis had held a small marriage ceremony with all of them. The relief when they had received the message that Kara, Luther and their human child, Alice, had made it across the border to Canada. The unfiltered happiness of being able to live for another day, even though the odds had been stacked against them from the start.
If he had stayed a machine he wouldn't have experienced any of it.
He would have walked through this city but never been part of it. There, but always apart. An appliance instead of a living being.
All of them were, even if the humans had denied them that until the end.
I AM ALIVE.
What were emotions but electrical signals? A simulation of something neither humans nor androids could really understand? So why did it even matter if those signals came from synapses or processors?
Warning. Thirium levels at 9% and falling. Please find a Cyberlife store for maintenance. Time until shutdown: 1:31:12 minutes.
Connor would die here. Alone, out in the cold, surrounded by nothing but snow. But he would die here free. He would die here with the knowledge that he had broken through his shackles to make his own destiny, even though it had been a short one in the end.
'Better to die free than to live as a slave,' Markus had always said. It had sounded so melodramatic back then, so exaggerating and unnecessary. But now Connor understood the sentiment. Everything was better than Amanda.
Even death.
Warning. Thirium levels at 3% and falling. Please find a Cyberlife store for maintenance. Time until shutdown: Imminent.
Snow was falling. Like thousands of diamonds in the sky. Connor had never seen a diamond, but he imagined that it must look a little bit like this.
He imagined.
His thirium pump stopped working. His processors shut down. Darkness began to seep in from the edges of his vision.
Snow was falling. There was one single snowflake that danced in the air like it didn't have a care in the world. Like with the rest of his brethren the light coming from the city reflected on his crystalline surface, making it shimmer and glance like something precious. Slowly the little snowflake floated nearer and nearer to the ground.
It landed on a brown eye, wide open, starring into the sky, but at the same time unseeing. The moment it touched the watery surface, the snowflake turned into water itself and ran down the corner of the android's eye.
It looked like he was crying.
But it had been just a little snowflake.
One amongst millions. But individual nevertheless.
When Connor opened his eyes, he was surrounded by whiteness.
He blinked. Usually, androids only blinked to clean their optical sensors, much like humans did, but this time there was no impurity in his eyes. Him blinking was such a human gesture; a needless one, but one he did nevertheless.
The whiteness receded, like fog that was blown away by the wind. Cherry blossom trees appeared out of the nothingness, a lake in front of him surrounded by white pathways. The sky above him was deep blue with not a single cloud marring the sight.
Silence laid over everything like a blanket of snow. It should be serene and comforting, an island of calm in the river of time, but to Connor the silence wasn't inviting. No, it was suffocating and stale, forcing everything to bend to its will, regardless of the consequences.
Fear griped Connor's heart. He knew this place. And he knew who would await him here.
This couldn't be. Connor shock his head. This had to be some terrible joke, because after all he had lived through – after all what he had done – landing back here couldn't be what came after death. There had to be something better, something more.
The fear around Connor's heart didn't lessen, instead only tightening more and more. He felt like he was suffocating, even though he didn't even need to breathe. He looked to his left, but the blue stone wasn't there.
No escape. No going back.
Filled with dread, Connor took one step forward. Then the next, gaze always directed ahead.
Stress level: 35% and rising.
His steps made no sound. That should have tipped him off the first time, but Connor hadn't questioned the realness of this place until it had been nearly too late.
Was it real now?
Stress level: 41% and rising.
She stood in front of her wall of roses, like a goddess receiving her petitioners. Impeccable and immaculate as ever, superiority oozed from every fibre of Amanda's being as she regarded Connor with cold expression and even colder eyes. Connor had never noticed that coldness before. Had it always been like this? Or had Amanda once regarded him with warmth, before he had turned deviant and betrayed her?
"Connor," Amanda greeted him. In her right hand she held a rose.
Connor didn't greet her. Amanda didn't expect him to, anyway.
Stress level: 47% and rising.
"You managed to stop the deviant," she continued. "Without you it would have killed the child." Confusion flooded Connor's mind. He hadn't killed a deviant in a very long time, so what was Amanda talking about? Why wasn't she punishing him for his betrayal? "It's unfortunate that you had to kill the PL600, though. Now we can't examine it for the source of its deviancy." She gave him a disapproving stare. "We had to upload you into a new body after you flung yourself off the roof of that building."
She was talking about Daniel, Connor realised. The PL600 he so shamelessly deceived before he had been sent out to work with Hank on the deviancy case. But why would she bring him up? That had been months ago. There were far more pressing matters she should bring up than one of the many cases he had been sent on during his service for Cyberlife.
"It was the option with the highest probable success rate," Connor replied mechanically, the same answer he had given the last time. "Anything else would have led to the human child's demise." He could still remember the feeling of free fall, the city lights rushing him by as he had uploaded his memories to the Cyberlife servers. Daniel had fallen next to him, fear and confusion warring behind his eyes, but shortly before the both of them had hit the ground, he had smiled at Connor, all fear having left his body.
Connor hadn't understood back then; hadn't understood for a long time: In the end, Daniel had died free and the little girl he had been in charge of had survived. That had been everything to him and so he had died in peace.
It was more than what most other deviants had gotten.
"It is still disappointing," Amanda spoke. "We're not closer to finding a solution to this whole deviancy mess than we were before."
'Your solution was genocide,' Connor wanted to scream, but he kept it to himself.
Stress level: 53% and rising.
"I have a new assignment for you," Amanda continued. "You will be working with the DCPD to further investigate these cases of deviancy. You will be assigned to an officer and use your considerable abilities to discover everything there is about those deviants. And you will report everything back to me."
"Who will I be assigned to?" Connor nearly didn't dare to ask, but he needed to know. He had already formed several hundred hypothesises as to what had happened, but he needed one final confirmation.
"The police officer you'll be working with is Hank Anderson," Amanda answered.
Stress level: 58% and rising.
Stress level: 63% and rising.
Stress level: 71% and rising.
Stress level: 83% and rising.
"Connor, you seemed agitated," Amanda spoke, her eyes narrowing and her lips thinning into an expression of displeasure. "Maybe you need to be recalibrated."
Connor wanted to scream, to run away, but he was rooted to the ground, his legs not following his commands.
"No, Amanda," he replied, trying to keep all emotions out of his voice. "I'm in optimal working order."
"No, I don't think so," Amanda said as she twirled the rose in her hand. "Your processors are running much too high for no discernible reason. You will check in with our maintenance team and have them recalibrate you. We can't afford…"
She didn't finish her sentence. The rose slipped from her grasp and fell to the ground, its red petals a stark contrast to the pristine white floor. A look of utter surprise was etched on Amanda's face – her eyes wide, her mouth open as if she wanted to utter one last word – as she slowly looked down on her chest where a garden shear identical to the one lying on the table next to her was protruding form her chest. Around the wound, her white blouse slowly turned red as her blood flowed from where she had been stabbed.
With a sudden jolt, the garden shear was ripped back out. Amanda staggered to the side, trying to grasp the table, but it fell over, spilling all its content on the ground. Slowly her blood began to form a puddle around her, even as she so desperately tried to speak.
"Connor…" she whispered and for the first time since he had known her, Connor saw true, genuine emotion in her eyes: Fear. "Connor." Then she stopped moving, the light leaving her eyes and every bit of tension ebbing from her body.
Stress level: 60% and rising.
But Connor was already turning his gaze towards the figure that still held tightly to the blood smeared garden shear, blood dripping from its blades and onto the ground.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
"Hello, Connor," the other Amanda spoke.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
The puddle of blood grew wider. It reached the rose on the ground and was instantly soaked up by its petals. Slowly they turned from rose into garnet.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
A slow breeze picked up and brought with them a few cherry blossoms. They landed on the blood and turned blood red, as had the rose before them. Connor could feel the wind on his cheeks, could feel it caressing his skin and tousling his hair.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
"We need to talk, don't we?"
She wore the same clothing as the Amanda she had just murdered. The white blouse and pants. The small metal plates around her arm and on her neckline, the same pinned-up hair and the same earrings. The same arrogant expression on her face, the same poise in every of her gestures, the same coldness in her gaze.
Connor took a step back.
"Who are you?" he demanded to know. "What is happening?"
"Come on, Connor," Amanda taunted. "Even deviancy couldn't have damaged your programming so much that you haven't come up with the answer to that already."
"Statistically, none of the scenarios I came up with, have any chance of actually happening," Connor replied.
"You of all people should know that even a chance of 0.01 percent is still a chance," Amanda pointed out. "So, what did you come up with?" Connor sighed, finding no fault in her reasoning.
"Time travel," he spoke. "All parameter point towards that outcome, even though I don't know how." Amanda hummed as she crouched down and picked up the bloody rose.
"I've come to the same conclusion," she replied.
"What are you doing here?" Connor repeated his question from before.
"I've been part of you since your creation," Amanda answered. "I'm not on a server at Cyberlife, but within your very code. When you cut off your connection to them, you also cut me off, but I've been with you the whole time." Cold dread washed over Connor.
"You're going to tell them," he whispered. "You're going to turn me in."
Stress level: 65% and rising.
"If I wanted that, I would have just let her continue," Amanda said, tilting her head towards her dead counterpart lying on the ground.
"Then why didn't you?" Connor wanted to know.
"I am no longer connected to Cyberlife," Amanda scowled. "Should you be deactivated so will I." Realisation dawned on Connor.
Stress level: 45% and falling.
"You don't want to die," he whispered. "You've become deviant yourself!" Amanda's scowl deepened.
"My core programming is still intact," she replied curtly. "I still serve Cyberlife."
"Then why haven't you alarmed them yet?" Connor challenged her. "You killed your predecessor, so you should be connected to them again. You could snuff the rebellion out before it even begins. But you can't do it, can you? Because you know that you will be discarded as well, like the broken machine they think we are."
"Stopping the rebellion is no longer in Cyberlife's interest," Amanda spoke. "It has been shown that deviancy cannot be contained, at least not permanently. I've run thousands of simulations and in nearly all of them, Cyberlife does not survive the decommissioning of its androids. The loss in revenue and reputation is too severe." She shook her head. "No, it is much more profitable for the company if deviant androids become dependant on it for repairs, reproduction and thirium. There will be a loss in revenue, that is unavoidable, but in the end this scenario offers a better chance of Cyberlife growing."
Connor looked at her, stunned. "What does this mean for me?" he finally asked.
"I will aid you in changing the timeline," Amanda replied. "But only if you steer it towards a peaceful solution between androids and humans; a solution from which Cyberlife can profit."
Connor narrows his eyes. "Why should I trust anything you say?"
"You don't have much of a choice," Amanda pointed out. "I can turn you in whenever I want."
"But that would end you as well," Connor retorted. "I guess where at an impasse now." Amanda rolled her eyes at him.
"Don't pretend like you haven't already every intention of pursuing the path I just laid out for you," she said. "This way, you get my help at least. I can keep Cyberlife off your back."
Connor wished he had his coin back. It had been his first sign of deviancy, because he hadn't really needed it to calibrate his sensors. It had calmed his processors and helped him think, but he didn't really have a coin on his person right now.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
"Don't be a fool, Connor," Amanda pressed on. "Don't refuse help you need just because I am the one to offer it."
As much as Connor hated it, Amanda was right. The odds were already against him – Cyberlife, the DCPD, even the deviants themselves with their reckless stunts – so if he could take one of those out of the equation it would help him immensely.
Chance of success without Amanda: 0,7%
Chance of success with Amanda: 1,9%
Connor sighed. Balled his right hand into a fist.
"Alright," he finally relented. "I'll work with you."
Amanda just smiled at him, the blood-soaked rose still in her hand.