/December 6th, 2038. 1:41:52 AM/
In the end, both Connor and Hank had to face some sort of repercussions for their actions. In Connor's case, it was a stern talking to from Markus, who didn't necessarily approve of his interrogation tactics. In Hank's case, he had to sit down and take a half-an-hour power nap. Cyberlife didn't have comfortable rooms to sleep in per say, but the mats that Jericho had brought with them seemed to do the trick just fine. Connor had spent the time by Hank's side looking over the digitized reports that came in from the DPD about their mission.
Jericho had also decided to share their network with him, mostly on Markus' request. They had compiled data that would take hours to completely scan. He got himself ready to go into low power mode to do just that when he was interrupted by the door slamming open. Or it would have if it had been an older door frame, instead it made a very loud beeping noise as it silently slid open.
"Connor? What are you doing in the spare repair room—" Surprisingly, it was not Markus who had come by to check up on him and Hank. It was North standing in the doorway, holding a large rectangular container in her arms. Offhandedly, he noticed that it was only 85% stainless steel with the other 15% being a form of plastic. Similar to an android's internal plating. She made no attempt to walk farther into the room but stood there with a shocked expression on her face. Connor found it ironic, she was acting just like Markus had when he found him and Hank earlier. The two androids acted similarly to a variety of situations, even with their differences in philosophy.
"Hello North." He was tight lipped, realizing that he was once again cradled over Hank's form. This time as he slept. But unlike Markus, North most likely wouldn't approve of him being affectionate with a human. Connor put it at a 47% chance of her immediate rejection of his actions. He made to let go of Hank but was interrupted by the other android.
"Don't even bother," she waved her hand dismissively at Hank. "I only need to share some data missing from the reports with you. Then I'll be on my way."
"Oh, alright." Connor, still holding onto Hank's arm with one hand, slowly moved his body as to open himself to North. Any new information would be helpful in finding the RK900. He wondered why she had decided to be the one to deliver this information, whatever it was. Previously she had only shown signs of reserved hostility at best and full out aggression at worst towards him.
As awkwardly as an android could, North walked over to the two of them with the metallic box in hand. She set it down onto the mattress that Hank slept on, surprisingly careful not to set it on top of the sleeping human. Not that there was much room anywhere else. The abandoned storage room was certainly being used efficiently, not that Connor knew of anyone coming in here recently. Other emptied crates full of biocomponents had already been raided from the room. That was one of the reasons that he had picked this place, it was discrete. But if North has found them, then Markus must have told her where they were.
"What is it that you are here to give to me?" Ever the curious, Connor removed the layer of artificial skin on his right hand and held it out to North. But instead of taking it in her own, she pushed it away when he offered it to her.
"Not that kind of information! Put your damn skin back on. The reason that this data isn't on the network is because it's physical data. There's no hint of it in any digital form that we could find. It's in this box right here." As she said that, she undid the hatches on the lid of the container. As it opened it let out an audible gust of air, as if it had been kept in there for quite a long time. Air sealed containers weren't rare in this facility, but they weren't common either. Peeking inside, Connor saw what was in it was…paper?
Unless it was made into a leather bound book, like the ones that Hank had in his house, then he couldn't claim to have actually seen physical pieces of paper in person before. Much in the same vein, he has never had the chance to find or use old fashioned pens and pencils to record information. These multiple stacks of paper, because there were at least five hundred individual sheets in the pile, were written in multiple different types of writing utensils. Connor detected lead, graphite, and multiple varieties of ink in the collection. What was something as archaic as this doing in the Cyberlife Tower? He voiced this question out loud to North.
"Not a clue, but take a look at this!" She started rummaging through the paper. After a minute it so of looking, she found something down inside the box. There were in total 24 manilla colored files collected near the bottom. They were labeled with the serial numbers of androids. AX, QB, YK and PJ; just to name a fraction of the numbers listed. Not looking at any of those, North reached out to grab a single folder labeled RK.
"They had these bad boys up in the storage rooms on level 42." She padded the folder in her hands and handed it to Connor. "You already know what's in here right?"
"Most likely production notes and information of the thirium density of the RK series models." Even as he said it, he knew he was going to be wrong.
"Nope, go and open it up!" North's gleeful expression didn't match up with her normally serious deposition. Almost hesitantly, Connor opened the folder.
The inside of it looked normal at first, with diagrams and introductory information to the RK series printed in bold lettering on the first couple of pages. Oddly enough, there were many handwritten notes in the margins of the paper. When the print would talk about the possible advancement of the RK100's social communications program, in the margins someone had scribbled 'of course they need to be able to integrate, duh' with the added effect of underlining the phrase in question. This narration went on throughout all of the models in the RK series. Reluctantly, Connor skipped both the RK200 and the RK800's file notes. It was not necessary to read about his own flaws in the eyes of his creators just to satisfy his own curiosity.
When he got to the last file, the one labeled RK900, there wasn't much to see. The anatomical diagram showed was the same as the one for RK800, and the scribbles even write that 'it's a little odd to reuse the same face for two different androids'. It is written next to the justification for it, as the RK800 was simply a prototype with only 100 models made. Even with those 100 models, only one of them should have been active at any given time. Connor knew that they broke that rule when he became a deviant, but compared to other android models he had very few androids that shared his face.
The folder was much lighter than the others, which had included both production and testing notes on each individual model. This one had neither of those. The RK900 wasn't ready to be made public then, if they hadn't even gotten into the mass production stage yet. It was likely a miracle that the RK900 was even fully functional at all. If the revolution had happened even a week earlier, then this project would have never even seen the light of day.
Not seeing anything else, Connor was going to flip the entire folder shut, when a single piece of paper caught his eye. It was separate from the rest, and it looked much too new to be contained in these old production notes. Not worrying about tearing it out due to its sturdiness, he analyzed it.
It was a legal document. The parchment was clean, and would have been difficult for even the most brilliant human to read with the formal language that it used. It detailed the business transaction between Cyberlife, and what Connor quickly realized was the U.S Department of State. It was a confirmation that 200,000 RK900 android units would be sent upon their completion in 2040, only two years away. At least that explained what it was doing in the RK900's files.
He looked back at North, "What was Cyberlife doing with the State Department? They conduct international and foreign affairs, I doubt that they would have any reason to cooperate with a solely American monopoly in order to gain androids."
She shook her head. "Don't focus on that, here, turn it over." North grabbed the paper from his hands and flipped it over. Connor looked at her questioningly, the back only continued the legal speak and ended in the signature of the Chief of Staff and a spokesperson from Cyberlife Industries. "What's wrong with the signatures?"
"There is nothing inherently wrong with them. Both are legitimate signatures. From Margaret Finer representing the Department of State and Danielle Carnegie representing Cyberlife." Finer was the Chief of Staff at the State Department from 2028 through 2030. Carnegie was a CSR spokeswoman for Cyberlife from 2025 up until recently this year. The revolution had lead to many of Cyberlife's employees leaving the company, there was no reason to question her motives there. Suddenly getting the bigger picture, Connor cross analyzed the date of the documents. Combining that with the time frames in which both of these two worked, he quickly found one commonality.
"This was finalized when Kamski was still at Cyberlife. Yet he's not mentioned anywhere on the document."
"Finally got it, yeah?" North held out her hand to bring up a hologram display of a timeline. "Markus explained it to us when Simon found it a while ago. At this point in time," She pointed to late 2028 on the map. "Kamski was at odds with the company on their 'strategic differences'. What do you think could have been the cause of that?"
Connor was starting to understand. "Kamaski would never have wanted androids at the federal level, least of all being used by the State Department internationally."
"That's just the thing. And the DOS wouldn't have order just some random model to be their driving android force. They ordered the most advanced model almost ten years in advance! What would it mean for Cyberlife if their androids would be representing the United States as foreign diplomats, when we negotiate treaties, what if an android was our representative to the UN?! Connor, the RK900 was just going to be the start of something much greater." North's frantic speech suddenly paused.
Her hands had been wildly gesturing as she talked, but realizing that they were still frozen in the air she brought them back down and sighed. "I'm just glad that we stopped it in time."
Connor had never seen this side of North before, she was obviously troubled at the thought that androids would be subjected to working for the federal government, but even more so at the thought that Cyberlife was working closely with the government already. It was an open secret that President Warren heavily favored policies that benefited the growth of the android business, but Connor had thought that it was limited to the presidential office alone and not the rest of the executive departments.
If she was right, and Cyberlife had been allowed to continue, they would have had an even bigger influence on American politics than they had before the revolution. Of course, it would have been far too low of a possibility for an android to go to the UN without any civil rights. Although, she was also right in saying that they would never actually know what would have happened.
"I had no idea that they were negotiating with the federal government all this time." Connor felt almost ashamed that he knew nothing about any of this. He was under Cyberlife's thumb for his entire life, which to be fair was not that long a time.
"Don't be, Connor." North's eyes softened. " We were all ignorant to what we were going through. I just gave you a harder time than I should have, and I'm sorry for that." She was apologizing to him? He was shocked, considering her previous treatment of him, but he felt a warm feeling bubbling up in his chest.
"Thank you North. I too apologize for my actions before I became a deviant." It was nice to 'get that off of his shoulders', as Hank would often say. Speaking of the human, he was still soundly sleeping next to them, unaware of the tense conversation that they were having. North caught his gaze lingering on Hank and gave him a knowing smile. She bid him farewell and hold him to take Hank and leave. Connor protested, but North told him that her and Jericho had everything covered. Apparently, they had also sent away the police officers almost an hour ago. Him and Hank were the only ones here who were not members of Jericho, at least officially.
North had left him quite a lot to think about, everything from the whereabouts of the RK900 to Kamski's involvement at Cyberlife. But for now he wanted to focus on getting Hank into a proper bed. It took much more effort than it probably should have to get the human up and out of the storage room they had taken refuge in.
"Shit, the place's deserted." Hank, tightly holding onto Connor's arm, looked around the Cyberlife lobby that not hours before had been flooding with both androids and humans. He had to almost drag the human along behind him as they made their way to the outside of the building. Mostly to ease his own worries, Connor decided to 'check in' on Hank. He normally considered it an invasion of privacy, but considering that Hank was barely able to stand, Conor felt that it was justified.
/Run diagnostic scan on Lt. Hank Anderson/
.
..
…
/Scan complete: 65 BPM; low average. Body temperature at 96.8 degrees Fahrenheit. Signs of increased cortisol and insulin production. Condition: sleep deprived/
Standing outside in the cold had no effect on him, the most his body could do without turning his very sensitive receptors on was recognize if he was burning or freezing, as there had been no use to activate anything else while he was undercover. Now, he almost wanted to turn the receptors of that particular function on so he could understand what it felt like. But he decided not to as both he and Hank walked out in the freezing weather to find the car that Hank had abandoned in the parking lot almost a full twelve hours ago now.
Hank was definitely not in any state to be driving home, especially not in this weather. Connor scanned the nearest weather tower and found that a blizzard has started at approximately 9:25:00 PM and had stayed in the Detroit metro area since then. As Hank weakly reached for the driver's side of the vehicle, Connor pulled his arm back towards him.
"Lieutenant, I advise that you do not drive us back. The roads conditions are severely iced over and in your impaired state I do not believe that you would have the motor functions to—"
Not verbally responding, Hank simply glared at him. Fully expecting him to deny his statement, Connor made to bring up many more aspects of the lieutenant's health in order to convince him. But in the end he didn't need to. Hank just sighed and limped over to the other side of the beaten up old police car.
/Query: Why is Hank acting like this?/
/Likely causes: sleep deprivation, anger, or sadness caused by my own fatal wounds/
Satisfied yet not really happy with his analysis, Connor stepped into the driver seat and made to directly connect to the vehicle in order to drive it. Holding his hand on top of the dashboard of the car for a couple seconds, he quickly realized that Hank's car was so old as to not be android compatible. It probably hadn't been repaired in many years, as only autonomous vehicle repair shops specializing in this type of car would have been able to repair this model. He resisted the urge to download the programs necessary to fix it up himself, Hank would prefer if he did not do that. Glancing over to him, he brought up his need to be able to turn the car on. "May I have your keys, Hank?"
He grumbled in response (his social matrix didn't detect any malice behind it, only fondness). "Now it's back to Hank ain't it." With his poor albeit functional motor skills, Hank tossed over the lanyard that held all of his keys. Connor took no time in finding the correct one and getting the old car up and running.
The ride back home was quiet. Connor had subtly turned down the radio, which was playing only late night advertisements at the moment. Hank's usual musical library was quickly vetoed in order to let him get some more rest while they were in the car. He wasn't happy but Hank accepted that, but only if Connor allowed him to drink the coffee that he had forgotten in his car that morning.
"Actually, I left it in the car yesterday Connor, It's past midnight, its the 6th right now." Hank's smug expression gave away that he was likely joking with him, but Connor felt the need to bite back anyway.
"That makes it much worse!" He looked over at Hank to scold him more as they finally pulled into their driveway. "That coffee could be considered a day old, who knows what kinds of human related bacterias it has collected!" He was going to say more, but Hank was looking at their house is shock. He lightly tapped his shoulder to look over it and to their front porch.
The door was open.
"Just my luck…" Hank grumbled, but his eyes had grown clear. Due to the coffee or the threat of a break in, Connor didn't know. Possibly relying on his police instincts, Hank grabbed the gun hidden in the glove compartment of the car and slowly got out. Connor then followed suit.
The two stalked their way up to the door, avoiding the windows all the while. They spent a whole minute listening for sounds and not hearing anything indicating a break in. Connor could hear Sumo snoring just inside the door, which made him think that the intruder had somehow not woken the territorial dog up. Including the absence of any fingerprints on the doorknob it was becoming more and more likely by the second that whoever they were they were an android. He wished that he could communicate this to Hank, but that would give away their position. The android must know that they're there, the car wasn't necessarily subtle. But they still had the element of surprise.
He caught Hank's gaze, and raised his fingers to count down from three.
Three. Two. One!
"Detroit Police! Put your hands in the air!" Hank waved his gun around, expecting to find someone, or anyone, standing in the living room. Instead, there was a figure collapsed on the floor. They were lying right against Sumo, who was calm with their presence. Hank's yell seems to have woken both of them up, and the figure lurched up as if it was painful to do so. Their obviously Cyberlife branded uniform was completely soaked through, and their LED was spinning between yellow and red.
Connor couldn't believe his eyes. "RK900? What are you doing here?"
A/N: And finally, RK900 is found! This plot has gotten a lot larger than I ever though it would, but again it allows me to plug in my own headcanons about lots of things.
Fun fact! Margaret Finer is a name combining Jonathan Finer and Margaret Peterlin, two of the previous Chiefs of Staff, in the DOS! The Cyberlife representative is just a name I found on the D:BH wiki, so I might not mean anything besides filling out Cyberlife's staff record or something (but it was useful for including another character to put in my fic!).
