The ride back to CyberLife was largely uneventful, quiet as they stood at the back of the vehicle. The Android did not need to be encaged and instead obediently trailed in front of him at Connor's prompts and barely uttered so much as a word in protest. Or at all in fact. Connor was used to the silence, the familiar tone where his mechanic heart was the only sound. The ride back by himself was void of loneliness, content with his own company - and the presence of the others' memories just at the edge.
He did not tell anything to Amanda, did not step into the Zen Garden nor even feel a prompt from her. His room was absent of personality, quiet and things set neatly aside orderly. He roomed closeby enough to the debriefing room that they could recall him verbally if they needed to, enough for them to find comfort and solace in the fact. He sat on his bed, let his fingers twine together as he rested his elbows atop his knees. He should inform Amanda of the Deviant's choice, his subsequent choice to accept it, but he hesitated.
Connor stared down at his hands, the tiny tendrils of blue that raced across his wrists, the subtle pop of artificial bone against his skin, such a warm tone from the usual grey that he has witnessed. Connor has always - always - only viewed things in monochrome. He overrode this easily, his visuals would report and deduce the colour easily for him with an informative line of code. But he has never seen it for himself.
He could see now the baby blue of the walls, the flat tiled grey beneath his feet. The dark navy curtains as they blocked the full intensity of the sun out - made of some sort of soft material, both for show and comfort if he moved his hand across it. He could see a sliver of pale waxy sunlight as it filtered through the curtains and cut across the floor. The shadows took shape, form, a clarity that he hadn't truly paid attention to until now.
All because of you.
He closed his eyes, let himself exhale softly and slowly. A notion that he didn't truly need but brought him comfort then. To think of the way you looked, sprawled there as you did, the copper tone of your blood against the breast of your shirt. The torn flesh, ruddy and ragged. The touch of warmth that lingered beneath your skin, the heavy press of the knife in his hands.
He could not have missed you if he had never met you. That was an assured fact, something that he knew with an assured clarity. No, perhaps that was not what he felt towards you - perhaps it was a reluctant longing, an undeniable curiosity on who you were, why you had done this to him. So many questions that he couldn't hope you would answer but perhaps something that someone else could.
Connor could not remain negligent of his own duties, could only feign innocence for so long - the fact that he hadn't initially done it spoke volumes but nothing that he could not handle. He has already been shipped back once after all.
He sent back a notification message, let it shift through the folds that made up the Zen Garden. Amanda would wish to talk with him, there was little room for doubt of that fact, but his curiosity has always been his most damnable offense. Connor reviewed his battery life, surmised that he could handle a couple hours of footage before he was required to recharge. He carefully settled into a more relaxed position. It wasn't much of an adjustment - perhaps, on some subconscious level, his processors had already made the choice for him.
[Video and Audio Retrieval: success. Processing … success. Confidential information detected. Removal complete. Footage ready. Footage commencing.]
Connor has only reviewed memory recalls a handful of times at best outside of initial start up and even then though memories were of other RK800 units. It did not disorientate him overly well as his mind usually calculated and adjusted to compensate. However the downside to the situation had been that his body would otherwise go into a sort of stasis until he had finished.
His memories were of Alex, of course - a given that that was who the memories were from - but it had been Alex as he was before. There wasn't even white noise for that fraction of time, not even the inner beat of thirium as it coursed inside his veins. Pure and utter silence - it stifled him, set his caution alarms on high alert. His vision was solid black for a moment before it settled in. His visuals kicked in first.
The couch was rough, coarse from years of use and the socks on his feet saved him from the few dust bunnies that he saw scattered about. He could even smell the permeance in the air, the subtle shift of edible to slightly burnt. The place was small, in the midst of sizes between tiny apartment and a condo. The walls were a musty brown, more vivid in colour than he had ever seen. Even when he viewed another's memories before, colours didn't blink through as they did, so something had undoubtedly changed since he had met you. It had been a problem that CyberLife had dropped on their attempts to solve before. It hadn't really interfered before with his success ratings.
Sunlight touched the specks of natural dust in the air as they spiraled lazily around, curtains drawn back to reveal the full of the sun. Connor wanted to turn to towards it, to inspect the rings of light as it filtered through. He did not, could not. Immobile as Connor was, he was trapped within the actions of memories long since set. History cannot be adjusted.
"-with some cheese, is that okay?" The audio had clicked in then, not even subtle in its intensity. It switched dramatically, silent as the grave then embodied with life and frivolity the next. Somewhere, from the dark recesses of his mind from where he dwelled as spectator Connor breathed in surprise.
Detroit has always been noisy as far as he had known and peaceful moments were far and few in between. Nothing quite like this tranquil atmosphere. He could still hear it now, the roar of buses and vehicles outside. The barking of a dog. Connor has always liked dogs, the vibration of their barks in their chest, the smattering of fur along their bodies, how happy they were to see him, even when the humans weren't. They had held no judgement for Androids like him.
"Yeah, that sounds good," Alex spoke as he turned his head.
Your head appeared around the corner and Alex took quick note of your appearance as his eyes roved your face. Hair dishevelled and bags were prominent beneath your eyes, dark bruises of lack of sleep. The points of interest flagged up, recorded as they were, and Connor could only watch as it listed: [Still not sleeping well.] "Anything I can do to help?"
[Status: uneasy.] Apparently the words were said with too much meaning, too much crass emotions behind the blow. Connor felt Alex's mouth muscles twitch up in response, a submissive tactic meant to disarm. Your arms crossed and you leaned more against the full of the door frame. Your nervousness didn't fluctuate but it hadn't lowered a great deal either.
"If you want to get some ice cubes out of the freezer, sure." You words were probably an appeasement to find middle ground - to plead as Switzerland - but your eyes flit, genuine and curious and vulnerable. Connor knew how to placate people. It was written into his coding sharply and precisely; it was what was supposed to make him an excellent negotiator. Connor knew better than to push in such a tentative situation.
"I can do that," Alex spoke and stood up, the visual feed skittered down to the floor for that split second but Connor noticed enough. A relaxation of your shoulders, a thankful smile. Perhaps he had noticed the edges of your expressions in a different manner than Connor had.
The audio cut out first as his footsteps moved muffedly across the floor and with it all that Connor had seen. The room faded into an intense black. It hadn't even been grainy or pixelated like bad footage but rather just a solid emptiness. The next memory was introduced far more easily, a slow descension into the scene, slightly muffled but not outright blunt until it came through clearly. He wondered if that was his sensors as they adjusted to the foreign input.
Connor recognized the surrounding area as one of the schoolyards in downtown Detroit. He could spot a few instructor Androids as spoke softly to some adults nearby. A couple of children kicked a ball back and forth, void of markings typically attributed to sports balls. Both Connor and Alex had focused on the sway of the grass, the subtle bend where sneakers once tread across dewed blades. "You told me you wanted to know more about me, didn't you?" Your voice was pleasant but unsure and they both turned their attention to you.
You stood there with your fingers interwoven with the chainlink fence. Your brows were pinched together and mouth quirked pitifully. "Yes." More breath than word, a question. An answer.
You licked your lips, a slow motion that spoke volumes of your nervousness. Your fingers tightened around the links a bit more forcefully and only at his prompt did your gaze flick over towards him. "It's all easy in my mind, how I want to say this. How easy it could be - should be. I know it is. I know it is." You let out a hurried breath, as if you might not get the words out fast enough, "The children didn't like me, not that they had any reason to. But I … tried to befriend them. It didn't work out."
Silence was the only option here it seemed. Connor would have chosen different, would have spoken up, brushed the tentativeness aside, blunt in his way to find the truth. He had tact, of course he did, but things were easier when the truth was out there. This he knew. Alex apparently thought differently. No wonder he was a Deviant, Connor thought suddenly. If he acted this way. Medical 'droids would have picked up on these things.
"Children can be cruel," Alex's voice spoke and Connor dropped all thoughts. "They can be unkind. What did they do to you?"
A slower blink, more question than actual hurt. Your jaw clenched, unclenched, before you let out a shaky sigh. A rumble of a laugh weakly skittered past your lips. Red-rimmed eyes turned on him, irises shadowed by eyelashes. "They promised to befriend me if I could tell them what colour the sky was."
"The sky?" The world shifted with the head tilt. Connor felt a question bleed through his mind about questions that needed answers. The truth behind why you mattered so much to this Android, this Android who had insisted to rest alongside you. Why the colour of the sky mattered so much.
"It has always been grey to me."
Alex had not looked towards the sky then, not even so much of a glance. He hadn't needed to. Beyond you, where the sunlight torched your hair with golden light, he could see the fragile patches of blue beyond. For Connor, it had also been grey before he had met you.
Amanda, in the end, was the one to draw him out. He could feel her presence there, at the ebbs of what passed for his consciousness. Even within someone else's memory he could feel the touches of her nearby. What CyberLife did with the files were of little concern to him. That was his passing thought before he, as Alex, turned his head - and the memory fractured, disrupted by the action that was never performed and Connor found himself in the Zen Garden.
His posture was reminiscent of the one he had assumed on his bed. Far too casual for the likes of Amanda who was all properness and etiquette. She turned, expression as still as a lake. He could tell that she knew by the subtle inclination of her head, the arch of her mouth. A petal spiraled down, skidded past the swell of her cheek.
Connor watched it, attention diverted just long enough to notice it - before, it had always been grey for him, colour cataloged by the processors and links that CyberLife specially outfitted him with. It was another matter entirely to witness it with his own two eyes. It was especially beautiful.
"Your progression in missions could be quicker," Amanda intoned and despite the warm smile that she expressed, both voice and eyes were dead and flat. "Especially for that last one."
"I perform my best at the bequest of CyberLife." Connor made a small motion of a nod, such a humanlike gesture that he had had to pause afterwards. Amanda's eyebrows rose, her mouth scripted with a firm neutrality, almost borderline mutinous if he didn't know better.
"And yet it is not your best, Connor," Amanda spoke again with a sigh as she walked forward. She sat on the bench across from him. Connor had once admired it for its elegance, bewitched by its gentle beauty - even now it remained the same. The marble it was coded from had been grey. He had known that originally, of course with the previous alerts of [colour located: grey]. It was entirely another thing to completely witness colour and then be reminded of his original monochromatic sight again and again with each blunt glint of it that he saw. Connor didn't much like the shade. "You should not have accepted that Deviant's memories."
He lifted his eyes from the bench to her hers. "I thought it might have helped with the success of the mission."
Disapproval marred her face, at the edges of her eyes and the very slant of her mouth. Connor could even read it in her body language, the sharp and angular way that she leaned forward as if to disarm him. "You succeeded, yes. But it was still an unnecessary course of action." Her eyes judged him, harsh and cruel but only if he believed himself to be better than what she offered. He knew that this was the only life that had been scripted for him. He could not - would not - follow any other.
"The memories - I don't believe they root the cause of deviation. They're probably unimportant." Connor straightened what passed for his spine to run his fingers along his tie, to press the knot tighter up into the base of his throat. He hastened to add, "They only contain information on the human."
"The Deviant was a service Android," Amanda finally offered. "Government issue. What he must have sent you would not have been the full of it - you cannot view it without authorization." She steepled her fingers together, formal and businesslike. Her eyes were downright predatory however, accusatory in how she watched him shift even the slightest. "You had no right to those memories."
"I will hand them over promptly then."
That was when her posture shifted and her spine straightened and in her eyes Connor saw the truth. "We do not want them. We have our own copies - the originals. Do with them what you will. Do not do it again - nothing you accept from a Deviant will be good." She leaned back and a tumble of her hair fell across her temple, as dark as Connor could imagine even colourblind. It had barely changed, only grew deeper in intensity now that he saw the dark shimmer of brown. "You may go. I will inform you of your next mission." She waved her hand and the Garden shimmered out of sight.
Connor came to on his bed. He could feel the unyielding pressure on the balls of his feet, not enough to be painful nor even discomfort him but enough to be noted. He shifted his weight and felt the buds of relief flash through him.
He had spent enough time in review of the recordings and in conversation with Amanda. His sensors were tired. He tapped his fingers at the space above his kneecaps, a tick he had inserted to better create the illusion of normalcy. Even when he hadn't been nervous he still did it at times.
Cases where Deviants were involved were once far and few in number but were steadily on the climb. Connor could only estimate that his next mission would be in a few days or at best in a week. Until then - well, until then he could figure out the truths about why you had given him colour.
He settled down to ease himself into standby until his energy was repleted. His eyes flicked to the curtains one final time. The slight part gave way to the setting sun, and with it the clear blue of the sky. A muted grey-black above had already begun to swamp what little he could see as it descended into twilight.
"It has always been grey to me." … But had you known it had been the same for him?
Connor knew what to expect from humans, what sort of results their actions would take. Their own emotions were less predictable, less likely to be interpreted. He had thought that he had understood them on some sort of level but evidently not. The humans moved about their desks and made light jokes towards each other, even when hours ago they had stood around a corpse.
He had been called in because of a report of an Android - one who was ordered to stab another human but hesitated in the face of the order. In the end, the Android had alerted a police officer in the square to the scene. Connor had analyzed the situation, the moments that lead up to the Android's owner's death and ruled them as non-Deviant. They hadn't wanted to hurt a human, no matter what their owner requested. He had no doubt a memory wipe would be issued all the same.
What had left Connor with a lack of understanding was that a human who held no ties whatsoever towards either parties went into hysterics. "He said them - he said them-" she had frantically repeated to herself and clutched her hand to her bicep with loud screeches. Connor hadn't been able to intervene, unable to comprehend the situation.
"Soulmates," a fellow officer had shaken his head, voice low but not low enough because she howled after. "The last words he's ever said I'd bet you."
It wasn't brought up again and Connor did not question his superiors or his orders. However what he did upon his arrival at the station was seat himself down at one of the Android-limited couches with the request of a police-issued tablet. The search engine provided proved more valuable than what he was equipped to use in his own apartment.
His colour blindness was rare mutation - or that was, enough of a divergence from the main cause. A disease, a strange birthmark, the universe's divine hand - nothing was exactly agreed upon for the cause or definition. Soulmates. Another person, another entity, an object or place - anything and everything. Rare as it was, less than 39% of the population had it in studies of 2028. It came with a wide flurry of possible combinations so it hadn't been well documented and still wasn't. Who was to know if it was a soulmark or just another natural mark or defect?
He was not the only known Android to be afflicted with it, the third in fact, but the others shared less than stellar fates. Dismantled for one and memory wiped for the other. Connor was the only one to be colourblind among them. Soulmates never differed on what bound them - whether that was first words, tattoos that matched, an echo of the other's heartbeat in their ears. It meant that the both of you had been colourblind - that you had likely known that he was too. It had been a trait that you both shared.
Connor was not sure what to do with this information - it settled thickly inside of him like a sludge, like a muscle misplaced somewhere along his heart-pump. There was one piece of information that stuck inside his sourly. The other soulbound Androids had been called Deviants.
And that had had made a world of a difference.
