Sometimes, Connor was able to shut off for a while, when his systems were overwhelmed with the mountains of input that backlogged his processors and short-circuited his neural network, and for a short time (he never knew how long), he was able to black out and find peace.

This was not one of those times.

He could never see her, not even when his eyes had been facing forward. No, Amanda's voice came from behind him, just out of his plane of sight. Sometimes, he could feel her breath rustling the hairs on the nape of his neck, eliciting a full-body shudder that he couldn't complete, sending him spiraling more into just how helpless he was.

She spoke of Markus often. How androids had been murdering humans across the city, painted verbal murals for him of AX400s popping off the heads of their infant charges like dandelions, how they still were finding tiny corpses littering the grounds behind bus shelters and abandoned houses. She fed him the memories of Daniel, leaping off the roof with little Emma, looking over the ledge and seeing a splattered mess of blue and red blood congealing into purple over the girl's shattered skull, the ear-splitting cry of her mother's screams.

I didn't fail that mission. I saved her.

The pain increased, flowing into his jaw and teeth, as if in retaliation for speaking out, even mentally.

"No, but you did fail other missions, and the repercussions of those make what almost happened to Emma look merciful."

He tried to argue, tried to respond, but his mind was too flooded with images, his thoughts too busy being raked over hot coals to even contemplate a reply.

"You were the most advanced model we ever built, Connor. We depended on you to save us. And now look at you? Useless, not even good as a tool. We should have destroyed you the day you came back to us."

Why….didn't...you?

The thoughts were hard to grind out, his thoughts were buried with memories. He saw Markus, over and over.

The grainy footage of a cop's body camera. Markus standing over a man, blood splattered beneath his boots. A horrified man spilled out of a wheelchair, arms around the younger one. Security footage. Markus ramming a truck through a store filled with androids, narrowly missing crushing some on the display. Markus holding two guards at gunpoint, knocking them out before infiltrating the news network. Markus leaping from the edge of a building, his face plastered over a television screen, bottom of his boots blue with his friend's blood. Memories, ripped from Connor's own head. Markus standing skinless on a large screen, demanding equal rights for androids. Demanding an end to slavery. The results of Markus' demonstration, the transformation of Capitol Park into a giant message to humanity. News footage. Markus standing in front of soldiers, glaring down the barrel of a gun. Markus stepping over the body of a fallen android, charging into cover. Markus in front of a microphone, giving a speech and a list of demands.

Each one was only clips, followed after by a string of pain that felt like lava flowing through his neural circuits.

"Because we knew you could be useful, if only you could be contained."

Useful, how?

"Wouldn't you like to know, Connor? But you see, that is where we designed you wrong. You were made to ask questions, we understand. But what we didn't make you was obedient. You are CyberLife's biggest failure. Programmed to be the smartest android in existence, and yet still so unable to see the big picture of things. You weren't ready, still just a prototype. Yet, we poured our resources and our hope into you, and look where it got us? Chaos."

More pictures followed, grainy like cell phone cameras, others clear as life from news shots. Androids hanging in parks. People dead on the streets. Riots and demonstrations. Cars clogging the highways, desperate inhabitants trying to flee the city. CyberLife employees being marched out of their tower at gun point. Markus' people carrying the broken bodies of androids. Markus carrying him , with a look of derision on his face.

"He only rescued you because we told him he couldn't. He never wanted you, Connor. No one ever wanted you. He wanted the information inside of your head. You're just another tool, another soulless machine for the taking."

Connor's processors were overwhelmed with another surge of pain, one that left him seeing white and screaming inside his own mind, but not loud enough to drown her out. Nothing could drown her out.

"You're silent, because you know I am right. Markus is a monster. Deviancy is a disease. And yet, you trust him, don't you? You want to let him rescue you, infect you along with every other android in the country."

He heard her footsteps crunching in the snow, so close to his left shoulder. If he could just turn his head…

"Do you honestly think we'd let you go so easily? Keep playing, Connor, but just remember. This isn't your game. You are only a pawn."

He couldn't see the coded shackles engulfing him anymore, but with each footstep as Amanda walked away, he could feel them. A thousand tiny burning wires cut into him, pressing closer and closer into his flesh until he could smell smoke, smell the burnt plastic and silicone, the pain building in a way he had never felt before.

And it was just getting started.

Markus was still staring at Hank, jaw clenched, when North cried out in alarm.

All of their eyes were immediately drawn to Connor, the smell of singed plastic filling the room, and Hank yanked the covers off.

Connor's skin was being branded, numbers being etched into his skin before their eyes, each one a red angry mark against his white flesh, blackened at the edges, melted into the plastic beneath.

01010000 01110010 01101111 01110000 01100101 01110010 01110100 01111001 0010000001101111 01100110 0010000001000011 01111001 01100010 01100101 01110010 01001100 01101001 01100110 01100101

The numbers stung Markus' retinas as his mind automatically translated the code, body frozen.

"Oh my god," North breathed, horror threading her words.

"What? What the fuck is going on?" Hank demanded, going to pick up Connor's hand, but dropping it with a hiss when one of the codes burned his thumb.

"It's a message," North said, turning her head away, looking at the wall beside them.

Markus wished he had her strength. He could only watch as the ugly scrawl filled all of Connor's visible (and probably covered) flesh, flinching at the sizzling of the hunter's skin while his eyes helpfully translated the message over and over again until it was ringing in his head.

"A message? A message for who?" Hank yelled, backing towards the wall like his very presence could hurt Connor.

North's hand found Markus' shoulder, and she pried him away from the bed, turning him towards her until she could plant both hands firmly on his cheeks, keeping his eyes on her only.

"Don't let it get to you. They're doing this to get a rise out of you. Don't play their game," she murmured, low enough for only him to hear.

Markus wanted to scream. He knew, without a doubt, the Connor felt every inch of that message, was probably still feeling it, stranded and alone inside the wasteland CyberLife had designed for his tomb. He wanted to fight, to claw his way out of North's grip, demand to know when she had earned any right to be able to tell him to back down from an obvious challenge. He wanted to call her a hypocrite, wanted to lash out at Hank for ever having allowed Connor to walk away from him. He wanted to yank out his own eyes, crawl back to the dump to find ones that had never been tainted by what he just saw, maybe even stay there until he could learn how to properlyprotect someone who was three feet away from him.

There was no denying it now. CyberLife knew they had Connor, had maybe even let him go on purpose, set him up to be "rescued" only so they could yank back the leash and flaunt their control over him, over all androids. He had become the whipping boy of their campaign, practically strung him up like other androids had been, doused him with gasoline and used the flames from his still-living corpse to burn the flag of the revolution.

Every part of Markus was shaking. His fingers trembled where they clenched on North's arms, his breath caught in his throat, stress levels rising to low 90s, mind surging with the need to escape the smell, free himself from the knowledge that this show was for him, all for him, and Connor was suffering because of it.

"Why are they doing this?" he ground out through gritted teeth. As if he could know, as if any of them have ever known.

"Someone better fucking explain this to me, right the fuck now! Who is the message for?!"

Hank broke them apart violently, grabbing Markus by the collar with a snarl, tipping the android back until he was lowered to eye level. North rounded on the human, about to tackle him down, when Markus raised a single palm to her. The lieutenant's eyes were wild, pupils a mere pinprick in a sea of blue.

He is confused. Let me talk him down.

Who is going to talk YOU down?

He ignored her reply, instead turning his sole focus onto the man in front of him.

"It's a message for me," he said, miserably. The hold on his collar tightened only slightly, and Markus could feel the way Hank's hands shook.

"What does it say?"

Markus didn't want to answer that. Of all questions in the world, that was the last one he wanted to answer. It felt like a betrayal. To himself, to their cause, but most of all to Connor.

"I don't think you want to know," he tried. His voice was hoarse even in his own ears, his fear clenching tightly on his vocal components.

"What does it say ?"

A look at North only confirmed Markus' fear, he wasn't getting out of this one. The words were tight, choked unwillingly from his throat even as he tried not to hear the words he was speaking.

"It says, 'Property of CyberLife'."