The DPD Central Station's interrogation room is quiet in the midnight, save for a low fluorescent buzz. The dim light from the panel in the ceiling doesn't reach the room's corners. The moldering wings of Carlos Ortiz's android cast shadows across the floor.
"What the fuck?" asks Detective Gavin Reed.
Officer Chris Miller, beside him, looks rapidly between the tablet in his hand and the android laid across the table.
With a cross of his arms, Hank nods sharply. "Yep. That was my reaction too."
The android, legs hanging off the interrogation table, is still dripping with rainwater from the storm outside. Weeks-old blood — Carlos Ortiz's, according to preliminary analysis — darkens its uniform in sprays. Exposure has all but scoured the skin from its body, and the white plastic peels away in patches, revealing sky-blue electronics beneath.
The bones of its wings drape across the length of the room.
Gavin lets out a derisive scoff after a moment, and jerks his head away from the sight to sneer at Hank. "Can always count on you to bring in these freakshows of cases. What the fuck are we supposed to do with this?" He gestures, wide, at the space around them. "Don't suppose you have a list of questions written up for it?"
"Would it help if I did?" Hank murmurs, stepping forward to examine the android once more. "No signs of forced entry, no fingerprints on the knife — like it or not, this is all we've got." He casts his eyes across the bones blooming through the fluorescent light. He lets out a heavy sigh. "And God knows what we're supposed to make of it."
"So — what?" Gavin jabs a hand downwards. "We bag this thing as evidence? Great, we're done, then! Everyone go back home!" He spins on his heel. "What a waste of my fucking evening!"
From the corner he's been standing in, Connor says, "That won't be necessary. The deviant has been scheduled for transfer later today to CyberLife."
Three sets of eyes snap towards Connor.
Gavin's expression darkens like a storm. He whirls towards Connor, teeth bared in a snarl.
Hank speaks first. "What do you mean, scheduled for transfer?"
Connor's eyes flick coolly across those of the police officers before him. He dips his head towards the waterlogged electronics between them.
"In accordance with company procedure, the deviant is being returned to CyberLife for proper disposal and further study. Deviancy is a dangerous phenomenon, and so precaution must be taken to prevent its spread to the general circulation of androids through the country."
"What —" Hank's hand sweeps sharply downward. "This is evidence in a criminal investigation! You can't just transfer it away!"
"I'm afraid we can, and have already done so." Connor's folded wings rustle against his back as he tilts his head, just slightly. "A CyberLife representative will arrive in the afternoon to collect the deviant. No further action is required on your part."
In the silence that follows, he turns away to assess the degree of damage to the deviant. Weeks of weather have eaten away at the matter of its wings.
"I don't believe it," Hank says slowly.
As Connor looks up, Hank begins to step forward, past the bones spanning the room. "You bastards really think you can do this. You think that you can buy your way out of trouble with enough money." He sweeps one of the deviant's wings to the side, out of his way. "A man's been murdered. Your androids are growing wings — and you think you can just sweep it under the rug?"
Connor looks levelly up at Hank. The dim light casts his expression in shadow.
"No further action is required on your part," Connor repeats.
The movement is swift. Hank grabs him by the collar and swings him around to slam him into the wall.
Chris is saying something. Gavin is shouting something back. The blue of Connor's LED reflects across Hank's eyes. "That's all you fuckers care about, isn't it? Profit? Protecting your bottom line? You'll worm your way into anything if it lines your pockets! If it was up to me, I'd set a match to you, all of you!"
Chris is pulling him back, then, and his grip leaves Connor's jacket, and the android drops back down to the floor. His wings unfurl halfway behind him, their tips touching the ground. His eyes flash across Hank, who's turning to snarl at Chris and Gavin, a cold, fading shape beneath the fluorescent light.
Connor lifts a hand to smooth out his jacket. He stops, halfway.
He tangles his hand instead into the feathers of his wing, the stone of the wall cold against his fingers.
The bones of the deviant's wings rattle as Hank slams a hand down onto the table. "Of course I'm pissed! Why the fuck aren't you? A man is dead, and no one gives a damn!"
"I could try to access the deviant's memory before it's transferred," Connor says.
The room falls silent as three pairs of eyes snap to him once more.
He folds his hands behind his back. His wings rustle.
"Okay," Gavin snaps. "I'm not standing around listening to this plastic detective anymore. Come on, let's go."
As he wheels around towards the door, and as Chris begins to follow, Hank fixes Connor with a look he can't read.
The light, dim, glints off the highlights of blue on Connor's wings. The words leave Hank slowly. "You think you can do it?"
With a flick of his wings, Connor steps up to the table. He sweeps a scan across the scars of open circuitry upon the deviant's body and presses two fingers to its temple, above its unlit LED. The skin of his hand fades away. "It's badly damaged. I'll need to reactivate it first in order to access its memory." Biocomponent damage mapped and downloaded, Connor pulls his hand back again. "There's no guarantee it'll stay reactivated for long… But it should be enough to learn something."
He looks up again through the light. Chris glances between him and the deviant. Gavin seems ready to explode.
"Well," Hank shrugs, "what do we have to lose?"
As water drips from the rot of the deviant's wings, Connor tilts his head to the side, analyzing. He brushes aside the remnants of the android's uniform from its stomach, slides open the panel there, and, without a moment's hesitation, begins to reorganize the contents of its body.
"What the fuck," Gavin says.
"Yep," Hank nods, the motion sage. "Really wishing I had a drink right about now."
The task is delicate owing to the deviant's deterioration, but Connor works quickly, stabilizing the most critical breaks and fabricating makeshift circuits between vital biocomponents. When he's satisfied the construction will hold, he connects one final length of tubing to the deviant's heart. He closes the panel again and steps back. His wings flutter.
The first beat of the deviant's heart echoes within the cavity of its chest.
As thirium rushes suddenly through the body, the deviant's wings twitch. Its eyes snap open, glassy in the pale light.
It begins to scream.
Connor reacts immediately. "Can you hear me? Are you able to speak?" The deviant's screams resound through the room. He grabs its wrist, seams of open circuitry sparking beneath his fingers. "I need you to answer me! Did you kill Carlos Ortiz?"
A spasm rips through the deviant's body. The flesh of its wings convulses. It screams.
Its wings sweep across the length of the room as it wrenches itself free from Connor's grip, scrabbling backwards off the table.
"Holy shit!" Hank ducks; the chairs from beside the table go flying overhead from the deviant's wing strokes. One clocks Gavin over the head, and he collapses bonelessly to the ground. Hank pulls his gun from his holster and points it towards the deviant. "Don't move!"
In a swirl of alarm, Connor spins towards Hank. "Don't shoot! We need it alive!"
The distraction causes Connor to turn his back on the deviant. One of its wings catches him across his body, sending him to the ground. Feathers fly around him. Through the legs of the table and the wingbeats, he sees the deviant pressing itself into a corner. Thirium seeps from its open circuitry, the panel of its stomach, its mouth. Its screams have become metallic, mechanical with imminent shutdown.
Connor surges forward without a second thought. He dodges the deviant's wings so narrowly they sigh across his jacket. He grabs its arm. The skin of his hand peels away. The deviant howls, and he plunges into its mind.
The rain falls upon the roof. It's dark.
The kitchen table rests beneath beer cans, soup containers, and a kettle. The paint upon the walls flakes. The saucepan on the stove has rusted.
"I'll teach you to look me in the eye," says Carlos Ortiz.
The bat comes up, and his arm is blue when it comes down. The rain is wet against the windows. The night sky has no stars.
The knife in his hand shines like the moon.
He brings it down, and he does it again, and the blood flies through the air in billows, and coats him in warmth. The night spills in through the windows, dripping with rain, and flows up the peeling walls, and he screams. The wings burst from his back like blood. The feathers are warm with thirium, and when he pulls them from his wings three more grow back from the bone and they fall around him like crimson stars and no matter how he tears the blood won't stop, it swells beneath his skin and it's warm —
"Connor!" A hand upon his shoulder rips him away from the deviant. The lights of the room come back in fits and starts.
"Are you alright?" Hank demands, still gripping Connor's shoulder. "Your skin was almost entirely gone —"
With a shriek, the deviant bursts from the wall. Its wings splay every which way through the air as it reels its head back and smashes it into the table.
The buzz of the light is a soft, insistent sound. The deviant's wings, coated in vivid red feathers, fall lightly to the ground.
"Holy shit," Hank breathes.
As thirium begins to pool upon the table beneath the deviant's face, Connor runs a hand through the feathers of his wing, and looks around. The corners of the room are dark where the light doesn't reach.