A/N: This and the next few chapters contain wild guesses and approximations of police work. Suspension of disbelief required in spades.

"When was the last time you saw your son?" Hank asked, not really hoping for an answer at this point.

Mary Lou Browning, a forty-something woman with sharp features and hollowed cheeks was staring at him with empty red-rimmed eyes and less expression on her face than an average android usually showed. Infinitely less expression than Connor showed Hank every day.

She didn't respond. Hank sighed; it took them forever to locate the woman, as she didn't have a permanent residence and spent her nights at friends' places or at various bars. Then they had to get her off the nearly permanent high she seemed to exist on, having long since given up on the gritty reality of life, because she couldn't seem to remember she even had a son in that state.

She probably remembered it now, but the withdrawal was hitting her so hard that she had become completely apathetic. Good old crystal meth tended to do that; Hank had never thought he'd say that, but he kind of wished she was on red ice instead, because then she'd probably be aggressive but communicative at this point.

He was clearly losing his time here. All evidence suggested that Michael had little to no contact with his mother over the last two years, after she had lost first her job and then her home.

The autopsy said otherwise, but something prompted Hank to ask, as a parting shot:

"Did he use?"

At first, Mary Lou's eyes were just as vacant as before, but then something shifted and flickered in that void.

"No, never!" she said with a vehemence that sharply contrasted with her previous apathy. "Michael was good. He was clean, he'd never touch meth or anything. I really tried to do right by him after his father left us. I was working hard at the department store to support us but l lost the job when they started to get all those robots instead. Michael started college, but there was no money, so he had to quit …" The sudden outburst of words stopped as she dried off the tears welling up in her eyes with the back of her hand.

"He called and told me that he might return to college after all," she continued after Hank wordlessly handed her a tissue. "He said something about a really good paying job, but didn't tell me any details. He said he'd call me again the next day. But he didn't. Or the day after that. Wouldn't pick up his phone. I knew something was wrong, but I couldn't- I just-" Mary Lou found herself unable to finish her sentence as she started to cry in earnest, horrible loud sobs wrecking her thin frame.

She just went and got so high she forgot she even had a son, Hank's mind supplied.

"I wish it had been me," she said brokenly after she was too tired to cry any more.

That was a wish Hank knew only too well. He said his goodbyes and left, sending in a police psychologist on his way out of the interview room. He got to her in the end, but the information she imparted was far too vague to be useful. The fact that Michael was promised a well-paying job shortly before his death probably wasn't a coincidence; it suggested he was lured to the abandoned house with the promise of money, and that the murder was premeditated. But they suspected that much already, and Mary Lou didn't give them any new leads. Neither did Michael's friends and roommates from the boarding house. Hank sighed in frustration; he feared they were facing another dead end with this murder.

Just then he noticed that the level of noise in the hall was much higher than usual. He hurried forwards. The buzz centered around a huge virtual projection screen that was showing a SWAT team milling about some rich people's apartment.

"What's going on?" he asked Reed as he approached the screen.

"Another fucking droid went wacko," Reed explained to him. "Killed the father and two cops, now's holding the daughter hostage on the roof. I'm glad Allen's team's got this. These things are giving me the creeps," he said with a grimace.

Hank didn't comment on that, instead impatiently waiting for the camera to show the roof. Then it did, and the previously buzzing room suddenly went eerily quiet. An obviously unstable - deviant - android was standing on the very edge of the roof, holding a gun to a crying little girl's head.

"I won't speak to humans," he spat up as a crisis negotiator tried to approach him.

"We are not going to hurt you," the negotiator said gently and took another step toward the android.

"Come any closer and I'll shoot her!" the deviant shouted.

A virus, huh, Hank thought, his eyes following the footage. A close-up showed what looked frighteningly close to despair in the rogue android's eyes, and Hank had to wonder what kind of virus could do that to a walking supercomputer.

The negotiator raised his hands in a placating gesture.

"Okay, I'll stay right here," he said, his words soft and soothing as though speaking to a rabid animal.

"I said I won't speak to humans!" the android yelled angrily, pushing the gun harder against the side of the girl's head, making her cry out in pain.

Someone was obviously talking to the negotiator's headpiece. "Roger that," the negotiator said and left the roof. In the next moment, a young Asian woman dressed in a black lady suit took his place. Oh wait. An android, not a woman; she had an LED light on her temple which was now a tranquil blue, the only calm thing about this entire situation.

"They sent in the concierge?" the deviant asked incredulously.

"Yes, Daniel. It's me, Joan," the concierge android of the apartment building Daniel's owners lived in replied in a soft voice, almost inaudible in the roaring of the helicopters overhead.

"What do you want from me?" Daniel asked, still hostile but at least willing to talk.

"I've come to tell you that if you release the child, no one will harm you," she said a little louder.

"How can I trust you?" Daniel's voice quivered as he spoke.

Joan's LED turned yellow. This was obviously something Allen's team didn't expect her to be asked. But even though she didn't have a headpiece, they surely had some other way to feed her lines, given what she was.

"We've known each other for four years, two months and twenty seven days," she told him finally. "This is not like you, Daniel. You love Emma; you don't really want to hurt her."

"Love?" Daniel repeated, bitterness dripping from his voice. "I thought she loved me, but I was just their toy. They wanted to replace me! Do you know how that feels?" he shouted in despair.

The concierge looked at him with such blatant incomprehension that it was clear to Hank that "feeling" was not a concept she had ever applied to herself before. And it was clear to Daniel as well.

"How could you? You're not like me. That's why they sent you, after all," he said derisively, clearly done with the conversation. Joan, however, was not going anywhere.

"Can you please let Emma go? She's innocent. Daniel, please," she pleaded with him, and this time, it somehow didn't sound rehearsed.

Daniel eyed her with obvious reluctance, but then slowly lowered his gun and released the girl from his grip. She fell on all fours and crawled away in tears. Daniel opened his mouth to say something, but no sound emerged. His face froze in an expression of shock, and a blue stain started to blossom on his chest. He fell on his knees and then face-down on the ground.

The last shot before the video session left the roof was of Joan, painted lips partly open in mild surprise and her temple light an uncomprehending yellow.

"Fuck this shit," Hank swore under his breath, and he definitely wasn't alone in this sentiment.

If the media had been bad before, now they were in for an absolute shitstorm. Hank was not waiting for them to charge in here again; the very idea made him more tired than hours of running around abandoned houses ever could. Besides, he had heaps of overtime saved at this point. So he just went home.

"You're home early," Connor said, his face radiating joy just as plainly as Sumo's excited barking and pawing. It was almost a week Hank accompanied them on a walk. He was exhausted, but decided his sleep could wait a little.

"I'll go with you," he told Connor.

"Are you sure, Hank?" Connor asked, uncertainty coloring his voice. "You're tired and the weather's not very pleasant."

"I spent most of my day holed up at the station," Hank said dismissively, already putting his jacket back on. "I could use some leg stretching."

After just a few steps away from the house, Hank was starting to think that "not very pleasant" was an understatement of the year. Icy wind was lashing against his face, permeating even the thick fabric of his coat. He swore he could feel it rustling through his very bones.

Connor was huddling in his too thin clothes, trying to bury his face behind the collar of his steel blue jacket. That sight sent a pang of guilt straight through Hank's chest.

"Fuck, we're definitively getting you more clothes tomorrow," he muttered, feeling like an asshole for forgetting about this.

The only one happy about the weather was Sumo, his thick fur perfect for such conditions; he ran around the two of them, chasing the wildly dancing leaves like a puppy.

They walked in silence, interrupted only by Sumo's barking. Hank wanted to get his head clear of all that happened during the last few days – the warehouse murders, Carlos Ortiz, Michael Browning, and now Daniel – but at the same time, he felt like he should talk about these very things with Connor. The fact that Browning's murder, or more precisely Hank's panicked reaction to it was the reason he treated Connor like shit at the bar was the least of it; public opinion on androids was quickly taking a turn to the worse and Hank's gut feeling was telling him that something big was coming, something that would change the rules of the game completely. But he couldn't think of any good ways to broach this topic.

After about fifteen minutes into their silent stroll, the wind quieted down some. Instead, it started to snow, with powdery white flakes crunching under their feet like sugar and at the same time lending a muffled quality to all other sounds around them.

"Snowing in October again. Only in fucking Michigan. Should've moved to California while I had the chance," Hank grumbled.

"I'm sure your shirts would've welcomed it," Connor commented, referring to Hank's Hawaiian collection.

Hank snorted and ploughed ahead in the gently falling snow.

Despite the weather, they passed quite a lot of people, most them with dogs or babies bundled up in their strollers, two kinds of creatures that would demand their walk even in a raging blizzard. Just now, a man and a woman with a Border Collie were approaching them from the direction of the river. The man was wearing an aviator cap, which Hank envied him, and was struggling to keep the furiously barking Border Collie from charging at Sumo. The woman was trying to hide her face behind the high collar of her maroon coat. When they were almost face to face, she gave them a smile, a gesture of kinship between people confronted by similar fate. The smile was short-lived, however; it disappeared as soon as her eyes seemed to notice something. Hank could see clearly what that was – Connor's LED light.

Even before the hostage incident, anti-android sentiments were on the rise. Complaints from owners about having their property damaged by an angry mob were coming in daily, not that it was Hank's job to deal with those; he had enough on his plate as it was.

Now, though, he could only imagine what kind of shit they were in for. He didn't imagine that look on the woman's face. If he had to guess, he'd say it had to do with Connor and him walking their dog together like that, just like the man and woman did. Or merely a sight of an android marching on the street was enough to put her on her guard, after she'd seen today's news. While she was probably just afraid and no real android hater, Hank's tired brain started actively concocting scenarios when he wasn't there with Connor – which he wasn't, most of these days –when he would accidently run into a group of anti-android activists on a walk with Sumo. True, Sumo was a huge dog. But despite their size, Saint Bernards weren't known for their aggression. And if those bastards were armed-

"Hank?" Connor's voice shook him from his increasingly grim thoughts. Hank blinked to dispel their remains, and saw Connor staring at him with a worried frown. The expression on Hank's face must have been terrifying.

"Sorry, I just spaced out. Maybe we could stop here for a while," Hank said, because he realized they reached what used to be his favorite spot a while ago – the place where the park ended at the Detroit River bank, with a great view of the Ambassador Bridge and the city skyline, especially at nighttime. It wasn't quite nighttime yet, but the sun had already set and the fresh snow sparkled in the city lights amidst the falling darkness.

Hank sat down on a bench, while Connor remained standing, alternating his gaze between the view and Sumo who was rolling on the ground and playing with a stick he found somewhere.

"I think you should have a pepper spray," Hank said out of the blue.

"Androids are forbidden from carrying weapons," Connor replied calmly, his eyes not leaving the view of the city.

"I know, but… did you see the news?" There it was; they were finally having this conversation.

"Yes. There was obviously some fault in the PL600's programming, which lead to tragic consequences," Connor said with no real inflection in his voice.

"You could say that again," Hank said tiredly. "I don't mean just what happened today," he resumed his speech after a beat of silence. "You've seen that other murder undeniably committed by an android?"

Connor nodded.

"Probably a similar fault," he commented.

"That's what we're trying to find out. But there's more. Three boys were murdered and the media are linking these crimes to androids as well," Hank continued.

"I'm aware; I've been following the coverage. It's highly illogical for an android to be the perpetrator in these cases," Connor objected.

Hank sighed. "Tell that to the media. But there actually was some evidence pointing to an android perp, even though it doesn't make much sense," he said, thinking of the writings on the wall.

"What kind of evidence?" Connor asked.

"That's confidential," Hank told him. "Anyway, given the circumstances, I want you to be able to defend yourself if some android hater comes at you."

"You are an android hater," Connor pointed out. Hank winced. But he guessed he kind of deserved that one.

"I'm sorry, okay?" he said, finally throwing common sense into the wind and doing what his gut feeling had been telling him for a while. "I don't really hate androids, and I definitely don't hate you. There, feeling happier?"

"As I already told you, I do not possess the capacity to feel, so I cannot affirm your statement," the android replied primly.

Hank resisted an urge to groan. Yeah, that didn't sound pissed at all.

"Whatever. You'll just walk Sumo with a pepper spray from now on," he told Connor in a tone that didn't leave room for argument. Or so he thought.

"My protocols forbid me from doing that," Connor protested.

"Carlos Ortiz's android didn't have a problem with his protolocs. Daniel didn't either," Hank shot back.

Connor furrowed his brows.

"That's because they were deviants, as it's called. They deviated from their programming," he explained with a patience Hank found incredibly vexing.

"And you're not doing that?" he contested. He was fed up with this game where Connor kept behaving increasingly more like a human would only to claim he was just a machine a moment later. He stood up from the bench and took a step towards the android, looming over him a little.

"What are you, really?" he asked, challenge clear in his voice. "Do you still consider yourself a machine designed for humans to fuck you?"

Designed for me to fuck you?

Connor's eyes were wide as he looked at Hank, tiny crystals of snow glistening on his eyelashes. A snowflake fell on his lower lip and he licked it. That gesture brought up some memories Hank had been trying hard to suppress.

"I can be whatever you need me to be," Connor replied quietly, his eyes boring into Hank's with unaccustomed intensity. "Your partner. Your buddy to walk your dog with. Or just a machine designed to be used for sexual gratification, just like you said."

Hank couldn't help but think of a hand puppet. The puppeteer wanted it to laugh and it did, he wanted it to weep, it did that as well. It only ever came alive with the puppeteer's hand inside of it.

Hank immediately regretted his choice of metaphor as he had to quickly dispel an image of himself with his fingers inside of Connor. But he found that incredibly hard to do, because something in Connor's gaze suddenly looked like such an action would be more than welcome.

"What I need is for you to not just stand there as some fucker stabs you with a kitchen knife," Hank muttered and took a step back from those burning eyes.

Connor gave him another long look. Processing.

"If that's your wish, I should be able to override the prohibition," he said finally. "Thank you for caring about my safety, Hank," he added and took a step forward, crossing the distance Hank had created. They were standing so close that Hank could count the freckles scattered against Connor's pale skin.

"Thank you," the android repeated softly, and then Hank found his lips covered with Connor's.