This was too goddamn much. First, the kid was dying and couldn't be woken up. Now, he was awake already, and trapped in some virtual dungeon. Every time Hank thought he understood androids, they threw him for another loop.

"What the fuck do you mean, my promise? I didn't promise the kid shit!"

Markus loomed over Hank's chair, all determination and righteous anger.

"He told me to, 'Tell Hank I miss him, and to remember his promise…. He will be able to help.'"

"Fuckin' hell, stop that," Hank muttered, wincing at the sound of Connor's voice coming from Markus' mouth. Alive or not, that shit was fucking creepy.

"There must have been something, maybe you just aren't remembering?" North pressed, sidling closer to Markus' side.

"I told you, I got nothing. Unless…. Fucking kid!"

Hank remembered, vaguely, a night where Connor had come to pick him up from the bar. He'd been too damn wasted to drive, and the android had only managed to get him to hand over his car keys after he threatened to make him take an autocab and leave his car parked in front of the bar. In fucking Detroit.

"I was giving him a hard time about driving my car, and I promised him that if he scratched it, I was going to upload a virus into his brain", he chuckled. North and Markus did not.

"So, what," North said, "He wants us to compromise his systems?"

Markus shook his head, scrubbing a hand over his face before turning around to watch Connor's resting form. Hank tried not to think about what was actually happening to Connor, it was easier to just pretend he was asleep. But there was a tension in the room, now that they knew, that had made them all a little desperate.

"No," Markus said finally, turning back to look at Hank, "No, I think he is saying that his systems are already compromised. When I found him, his code was tampered with. I thought it was just CyberLife's insurance policy against further deviation, but now I'm not so sure. What if he wasn't trying to destroy his code, but was trying to destroy a virus mixed into his code?"

"Then why wouldn't he just tell you that? What's with all the secrecy?" North asked.

Hank snorted, causing both androids to refocus their gaze on him. He shook his head. They had all the knowledge of the world at their fingertips, and still had so much to learn.

"It's obvious, isn't it? He had to know he could actually trust you."

Markus' face was inscrutable, but North just looked more confused.

"That doesn't make any sense."

Hank was about to respond, and try to explain the enigma that was Connor, or any cop for that matter, to her, when Markus spoke up.

"No, it makes sense. If we were some trick by CyberLife, trying to make him give us information, then there would have been no way to know what was going on unless we contacted Hank. Connor trusts Hank, and knows he wouldn't give away any information to someone he didn't trust. By doing it this way, he made sure that we were telling the truth. Even if they'd somehow managed to get the quarter, they couldn't have known about Hank's memories."

Now it was Hank's turn to be confused.

"A trick by CyberLife? Why would CyberLife need to know that there was a virus in his code, weren't they the ones that put it there?"

His head was spinning, trying to keep up with all these twists and turns. Sometimes, Hank wished he had Connor's mind. No doubt the kid had every possible outcome mapped out and ready to roll in his head. He probably had a pull-in-case-of-emergency plan too. Meanwhile, Hank was floundering to keep up with Markus thinking out loud.

"Of course they would, but would they know that he knows that? As far as CyberLife was aware, Connor was immobilized. Yet, somehow, he'd managed to break free enough to try and free himself from the inside. It was only when I distracted him that the virus took him prisoner again."

"So how did he break free in the first place?" Hank questioned.

It seemed nobody had an answer to that, at least not until North approached Connor's head, eyes holding a strange light as she contemplated his LED.

"I can answer that one, at least. He broke free because he died," she said softly, "That's what will need to happen again. If he goes offline, so does the virus, and when he powers back on, he might be able to break free again."

"No, absolutely not!" Hank growled, shooting out of his chair to place himself between Connor and North. She had a hungry look in her eye, like solving the puzzle had ignited something in her. Whatever it was, he wanted her as far away from Connor as possible.

"He's right, North, it's too dangerous. And what if he can't overpower it this time? He's been fighting it for weeks, if it's been since he shut down. There's no telling what kind of toll that exhaustion will take," Markus said, shaking his head.

"So, what, you're just gonna let him die? Let him stay in there until the virus eats whatever soul he has left? I'm pretty sure anyone would take death over this anyways. Not being able to move, having no control over your own body, over your own mind? That's worse than dying," North snapped. In the bright lights, her eyes were glazed, and something told Hank she wasn't just talking about Connor.

"North, this isn't like that," Markus tried, laying a gentle hand on her shoulder. She backed away so violently that she nearly tripped over the edge of the bed, wrenching herself bodily away from any contact with Markus.

"Like hell it isn't. He's stuck in there, in agony and with no control over his body. Do you have any idea how painful that is? It's like having someone bind your soul. It's like being dead, but forced to witness and feel everything anyways."

There was most definitely a history here, and Hank was certain he was not supposed to be witnessing it.

"North…"

The brunette ignored Markus, and instead turned to Hank, eyes bright.

"You were ready to pull the plug on him when you thought he would never wake up. How is this any different?"

"Because he is awake," Hank snapped.

"He's suffering . And yet here you both are, making choices for him like he's not alive!"

The vehemence behind her words bit into his heart. One angry tear rolled down her face, but she never moved to hide it. North had waded into a minefield, armor off, flashing her vulnerabilities like a flag, for the sole purpose of helping an android she had never met.

"Fuck."

Markus nodded along with Hank's assessment, eyes flickering down to Connor.

"So, what do we do?" he asked.

North, who used to look at him like he'd hung the moon, now stared at him like she couldn't fathom someone so stupid.

"You ask him."