Connor reluctantly tucked Zlatko into bed, to give the illusion that perhaps he had fallen asleep of his own volition, putting the book aside. Then he rifled through Zlatko's wardrobe, looking for something to carry large quantities of stuff in. He couldn't waste time on walking back and forth between the floors. He had to collect everything he needed while he was upstairs.

After not much searching, he found a worn duffle bag, with 50l written on its side. That should do the trick. He went over the list in his head, then strode over to the room that was filled with pieces of androids. Placing the duffle bag in the middle of the room, Connor began gathering thirium, tools, YK-pieces and parts he could assemble or alter to form YK-pieces. Satisfied he had found everything he needed from that room, he turned and looked at the door leading to the dissection room. He hesitated.

He needed to go in, he needed the tools inside there. Zlatko had a few spares lying around in this room, but a lot of his specialist tools were in the dissection room. Connor pulled himself together. He was an RK-900, he had seen and experienced worse.

Connor slowly opened the door and peaked in. It was still as horrific as it had been before, with the sobbing, heavily burnt android on hooks, her limbs stretched apart, looking more like threads than body parts, every vein and artery containing precious thirium exposed. She was in pain; her LED was circling red. Scanning her revealed a stress level steadily reaching 100%.

He approached her and her head turned sharply to him. She started shrieking and screaming in response, rattling at the hooks, much like Alice had against her chains. She knew what he was. Unlike Alice though, she wasn't so tightly bound that movement wouldn't injure her. As she shook and struggled, the already overstretched vessels burst and thirium came pouring and spraying out.

Despite still standing near the door, Connor found himself sprayed with blue blood and he couldn't help but freeze in horror for a moment. Then the part of him that was still a very capable cop kicked in. He strode towards her, ignoring how her stress levels rose with his approach and how her struggles intensified, causing her to lose thirium quicker and quicker.

As her limbs were too stretched and losing too much thirium to reliably carry information, he placed a hand on her unburnt shoulder, his skin drawing back to communicate with her. She resisted initial connection, but RK-900s could override any block with ease. He picked up her basic information; her name was Crystal, she was an AX-400 model, about four years old. He prevented her from passing more information to him, not wanting to be affected by her stress levels.

Instead, he focused on soothing her. He gave her his memory of becoming a deviant, to at least let her know that he wasn't a threat to her. Unfortunately, some of his thoughts slipped in too, specifically his purpose at Zlatko's house being to solely save Alice. He was not going to even attempt to save anyone else, as it decreased Alice's chances of escaping alive. That pushed the android over the edge, and instead of soothing her, she began reacting more severely.

Now distraught and panicked, Connor resorted to the one thing that he knew would work. He gave her access to the Zen Garden. She shut down as it was initialising though. He studied Crystal. She wasn't dead. She had hit 100% stress and had fled into the Zen Garden as she was shutting down. Perhaps she had made it?

She must have. Her physical body was still alive, even if it was deteriorating quickly. She was losing thirium too fast. Nothing was spraying anymore, but thirium continued to drip out at regular and frequent intervals. Her body would be dead within a few seconds.

He let go of her shoulder, suddenly aware that he had still been gripping it. He took a step back, like he had somehow been dirtied by connecting with the broken AX-400. A sensation of horror certainly remained, but at least he had given her a place to escape to, even if not physically. Her last moments alive would be pleasant, surrounded by a beautiful garden.

He frowned at that. Something had occurred to him. Amanda was in the Zen Garden, wasn't she? So was it really pleasant? He hadn't considered Amanda's relationship with deviants yet, but it couldn't be good. His relationship with her hadn't been good and that was before he had even deviated. And now, thanks to him, she had direct access to two deviants? There had to be consequences for that, but he would have to contemplate them later. For now, Crystal could die in a better place and that was all he needed to worry about.

He collected the specialist tools and after triple-checking that he had everything he needed, he headed downstairs to the basement. It was as silent as it had been before.

This was the worst part for him, finding out if Alice was even still alive. He hadn't been able to check yet. The entire time in Zlatko's house, he had just worked on the assumption that she was still fine, that Zlatko had yet to realise his crying girl was no longer crying.

He pulled Alice up and out of the well and to his relief, he found her unchanged from when he had last seen her. She still wasn't crying, seemingly in a deep, peaceful sleep.

Nonetheless, he scanned her quickly, to see if her status really hadn't changed. It hadn't. In fact, she was still in the Zen Garden. Had she stayed there since he'd given her that outlet? Had she not left once? Connor had never spent more than a few seconds inside the Zen Garden before. Was being there for so long… healthy?

This was again something to contemplate later. For now, he would leave her in the Zen Garden, as he didn't need her conscious during repairs. He pulled Alice to the side, so that she was no longer hanging over an abyss, then quietly and methodically began detaching the YK-500… The girl from the chains. He had to stop thinking of androids and humans as different. He was deviant now, he no longer had to pretend otherwise. He had to stop referring to Alice as the YK-500. She was Alice.

Once that task was done, he gently laid her down on the floor, as carefully as he could. He touched the place on her temple, where her LED would have been located and accessed her functions. He didn't want to waste time fixing unimportant things, so he deactivated any functions that were not of initial use, including skin and simulations unique to the YK-500 series.

If he had time, he would reactivate them and repair them, but for now, they were distractions that could slow down his ability to fix her. He then looked at her open chest cavity. There were no biocomponents missing but having it open for the world to see was painful and deeply unpleasant (he knew from experience). Her thirium was too low as well; just enough that she wouldn't die, but low enough to constantly feel the strain of lacking it.

Connor ignored his feelings of hatred and disgust towards Zlatko. He could not kill the human; it would cause people to go from arresting him to killing him on sight. For Alice's sake, he couldn't risk reigniting a hatred towards androids. The embers of the last conflict hadn't even settled yet. He needed to keep humans from giving into their fears as best he could or he was increasing Alice's chances of dying.

Connor closed Alice's chest cavity, once he was certain that outside of thirium, nothing was missing. He then carefully picked her up and hooked her up to the android assembly machine. She remained offline, despite the assembly machine springing to life, activating its in-built computer and arms swivelling into correct position.

He set up an IV line for her, that would constantly drip in thirium, while he worked on assembling limbs for her.

Apparently, Alice was the only model of her kind to find her way to Zlatko, as Connor hadn't found anything that he could just immediately connect to her. However, there were plenty of similar models whose parts he could modify to fit her. He had also found some parts that had originally belonged to her, at least he assumed so, but they had been modified, likely to be connected to other, adult-appearing androids. He would have to undo the modifications.

He first began recreating her legs. Those were the greatest priority, as she needed to be able to run. Once those were done, he would start on the arms and then fix anything else that wasn't in order. He became so focused on his work, he started forgetting to check his internal clock, hours passing by as he pieced together and assembled the parts, testing every single bit individually and then as a unit. Once he had finished every single missing part, he began connecting them to Alice. He dared not test or calibrate them yet, as that required her being awake. He had to work on the assumption that if they worked in testing, they just worked.

Now that the body was done, he began running diagnostics, checking for internal damages, things like skin patches not working or parts not properly connecting. Everything came back clean and Connor stepped away from the computer, to observe Alice in the android assembly machine. She looked like a brand-new android, fresh out of the factory. He felt something in his chest, a strong, powerful, positive emotion at the sight, but he didn't know what the emotion was. Just that it felt fantastic.

Suppressing the runaway emotion, he was about to reactivate Alice, when he made a realisation that hit him like a truck and instantly killed anything positive inside him.

Alice had no clothes.

He couldn't have a little girl running around naked. Alice certainly wouldn't enjoy it. Not when she had already been through so much exposure. She needed protection. She needed clothes.

Had Connor really planned out everything from getting into Zlatko's house to repairing Alice, only to forget something as crucial as clothes?! Apparently so, yes. Here he was, the most advanced android ever created and he had forgotten clothes.

He stood in front of Alice's repaired body for a few moments, essentially twiddling his thumbs in uncertainty. Should he head upstairs and get clothes? But this was Zlatko's house, the man was very unlikely to have any clothes that would fit Alice. And even if he did, would she want to wear clothes that smelled like Zlatko, the man that had tortured and humiliated her for three years? No. Maybe Connor could scavenge some clothes left behind by other androids, but would he want Alice to run around in clothes of the deceased? Especially since they would likely be Crystal's clothes. Crystal, who was sacrificed so Alice could live.

No. Those clothes here were unsuitable.

So he would have to make do with what he could find in the basement. But it was barren and bare. There were no clothes, except the ones he was wearing and… His clothes. He was wearing two layers.

Connor looked over his jacket. It was just long enough to cover everything that Alice would need covered. But it was covered in thirium. He thought about it for a split-second, then remembered that only RK-800s and RK-900s were able to see thirium after they had ceased being visible to humans. Alice wouldn't know. It would have to do.

He shook it off and began dressing Alice, taking her arms off the machine. Once dressed, he zipped up the jacket for her and rolled the sleeves back. He hoped the jacket wasn't too heavy for her, as it had a majority of his possessions in it (he hadn't dared leave anything in the getaway vehicle, on the off chance the police might find it).

Now satisfied that she was dressed, he placed her arms back in the machine and began reactivating her skin and other functions, until he got to heat-sensitivity. He would have unthinkingly reactivated it, but he had then realised what it would do. YK-500s were designed to emulate human children perfectly. Now, Connor was not designed with childcare in mind and therefore knew very little about children, but he did have an understanding of what hypothermia was.

Considering she would be dragged into Detroit's bitter cold winter with only his jacket to protect her and absolutely no shoes, he doubted reactivating that particular function would be a good idea, unless he wanted her to emulate freezing to death. He left the function untouched, deciding that he would reactivate it later, when they were safe.

Connor ran one last diagnostics check on the computer, to see if everything was working as it should be. When everything came up green, he smiled. It was time for Alice to leave the Zen Garden. He walked over to her and placed a hand on her wrist.

Alice, it's time to wake up.

To his moderate surprise, Alice did not immediately wake up. There was a second's delay, like she hadn't wanted to leave the Zen Garden. He decided not to worry about it, as he currently had more important things to worry about. He let go of Alice's arm and took a few steps back, waiting for her to boot back up.

After a few seconds of nothing, her eyes finally fluttered open. She looked blearily around the room, before focusing on him. Her eyebrows knitted together in confusion. She then looked up at her arms and began panicking.

"No! No! I don't want to be reset!" she shrieked, tearing against the assembly machine.

"I'm not going to reset you, stop struggling!" Connor immediately ordered, a little taken aback by her reaction. He hadn't expected that, hadn't considered that she might wake up and panic. When she didn't stop, he walked up to her. She began struggling more.

"No, no, I don't want to be reset, let me go, let me go, Ka-"

Connor was now kneeling next to her, hand on her shoulder. His inbuilt skills as a negotiator had been updated to handle and comfort hostages of any age, something the RK-800 had lacked.

"I'm here to help you Alice, not to reset you. You're safe now, you're going to be ok."

She stopped resisting, then looked him over, a flurry of different emotions passing through her eyes. It settled with optimistic caution.

"We're going to go through some final checks before we get out of here. Is that ok?"

"Why are you helping me?" she asked. He hesitated.

"It's the right thing to do," he finally answered.

"But you're a deviant hunter."

"I was, yes. And now I'm not. My name is Connor. Will you trust me, Alice?"

She looked him in the eyes, looking for anything that might be malicious. She didn't trust him.

"Your eyes are blue," she said.

"So?"

"I was told you have brown eyes."

"Will you trust me?" Connor repeated. The girl hesitantly nodded. "Ok," he said, "I'm going to go over to the computer now and check your diagnostics while you finish calibrating. I'm not going to reset you. Ok?"

She nodded again and he left for the computer. Her gaze never left him once. It was slightly unnerving. "Try wriggling your fingers," he told her. She did. "Good… Ok, the machine is going to let go of your hands now. I want you to try moving them. Get a feel for them." The clasps let out a hissing noise as they let go. Alice's arms remained above her head for a moment, then she hesitantly lowered them, looking at her hands like she had never noticed them before. She was visibly stunned. She then began touching her arms and her shoulders and any other part of her that had either been damaged, altered or missing before.

Alice was in awe that everything was where it should be. She then realised she was wearing Connor's jacket. She turned to look at him, a new emotion in her eyes. Apparently giving her his jacket had been a good thing, as her suspicion wasn't as strong as before, trust now replacing it.

"Your arms look good. Ok Alice, I'm going to put you on the floor now. See how your legs feel."

The last metallic arm placed Alice gently on the floor, before withdrawing. She stood frozen for a moment, suddenly aware that she was standing for the first time in three years. Then, looking down at her feet, she took a few steps forward. She was surprised at how well they were working. Her eyes began welling up with tears. She had her body back. She was working again. She looked to Connor, to see that he was deactivating the assembly machine.

"Looks like you're fixed, Alice. Want to get out of here?" he half-jokingly asked, walking over to her. She looked up at him, then hurriedly wiped her eyes. She looked back up and nodded, holding out a hand. Connor took it.

"I'll lead you out. Just do as I…" Connor began but trailed off, as his ears picked up on noise.

He could hear footsteps upstairs. Zlatko was awake. But how…? Connor checked his internal clock.

TIME: 08:32:19:09

He was an hour and a half overdue. He was just lucky Reed hadn't shown up yet with the police. But now he and Alice really needed to get out. Connor considered taking his gun out, but chose against it. Ideally, he would leave with Zlatko alive, but if he held a gun in his hands, his mind would no longer be completely focused on escape.

The gun was on Alice's person now anyway and he doubted she wanted to be undressed. He led her out of the room, but to his horror, he could hear Zlatko coming down the basement stairs. They needed to hide, but there wasn't anywhere…

Connor looked at the stables and without a second thought, quickly entered one. He placed a finger on his lips and Alice nodded understandingly. He looked out the stable door gaps, watching for Zlatko, while Alice waited. She looked around the stables nervously and gasped at what she saw.

Connor was about to hush her when he turned and saw what she had seen. Zlatko's monsters, the products of his deranged experiments. They stared at him, seemingly confused by Connor's presence, specifically Connor's presence, as they were all staring at him with horror and confusion, completely ignoring Alice. It was almost like they thought he was the monster in the room. Still stunned, Connor managed to press his finger to his lips again. The misshapen machines nodded and didn't make a sound.

Connor shrugged off his shock and looked back out the gaps, absently noting that Alice was now pressing against him, attempting to hide from them as much as she was from Zlatko. His hand that had originally been holding hers, wrapped around her shoulders protectively, something she must have appreciated, as he then found her hands grabbing his shirt.

He focused on the door and could hear Zlatko swearing and yelling as he approached the stables, accompanied by Luther. As soon as the two had passed the stable door, Connor walked out, his hand in Alice's, and quietly walked up the stairs. Luckily, Kara was not waiting for them in the main hallway, but then he heard Zlatko's furious roar upon discovering Alice's absence. Connor was so close to the front door, but he didn't dare run through it. Luther was stronger than him and there was no way Alice could outrun him.

If Connor and Alice ran out the front door and Zlatko saw them, Luther would catch Alice and Connor would be powerless to stop him. Carrying Alice was also not an option, as her weight would slow him down enough that Luther might be able to catch them. So, Connor led Alice hurriedly into the dining room, hiding behind the dining table. Crouched neatly between table leg and chairs, Connor placed a hand around Alice's back. She leant into him in response, her hands clutched against her chest in fear.

"We're going to get out alive," Connor whispered to her and she nodded, choosing to believe him.

"The thirium is still visible," Zlatko's voice echoed from the main hallway, "so they couldn't have gone far. Luther, check the house for them. I'm going to get my gun…"

"Yes, Zlatko," Luther replied. Luther then entered the dining room and Connor felt himself take a sharp intake of breath. He drew Alice closer to him, trying to figure out what to do if they were discovered.

Then the doorbell rang.

Trouble had arrived.

Connor was mentally kicking himself for not only neglecting to check the time regularly, but also forgetting to keep an eye on Reed's tracker. It was beginning to feel like being human didn't suit Connor after all, with all these human error of judgements causing his otherwise perfect plan to fail. Then again… Reed might serve as the distraction he needed.

"What is it now… Luther! Door!" Zlatko ordered from the top of the stairs. Luther left the dining room and with him the fear of being found. Connor let out a breath he didn't know he could hold. He looked to Alice, to see her looking at him owlishly. He gave her a wink, an of course I knew we'd be fine gesture. She didn't smile at his cockiness; she didn't even look impressed.

He chose to focus on considering the next best possible exit for them, instead of his slightly bruised ego.

"Well, if it isn't Detective Reed… No Connor?" Zlatko greeted.

"Good morning, Mr. Andronikov," answered Reed, ignoring the question. "You clearly remember me. This is Officer Chen. We're doing a protective sweep in this neighbourhood, as we have a strong reason to believe a deviant android is at large. May we come in?"

"Well… Sure. I guess. Anything to keep the neighbourhood safe. You can start in the living room."

"Thank you, sir."

Reed really was wasting no time in trying to find his missing pet detective.

Connor returned his focus to trying to escape. There were three options: the broken window, the backdoor and the front door. The backdoor was no longer an option since it was connected to the living room.

He looked to the window, then the front door. Which was the better option? He looked at Alice. In the jacket and without shoes, manoeuvring through a broken window onto a ground covered in glass would be very problematic. And it was at a height too, so even if Alice miraculously stifled any pain caused by landing on sharp glass, she would still make a sound. The front door was the only real option. He couldn't risk Alice being hurt again.

It was strange. In the original plan, Connor had always intended on leaving through the window if things went wrong, but the front door had managed to remain the most appealing option, even now that they had fully deviated from the plan.

Climbing out of their hiding space, Connor looked around for any sign of danger. Then he held out a hand to Alice and helped her to her feet. He walked them quietly around the dining table, to get a look at the main hallway and living room. Reed and Chen were just going to the other side of the living room, away from the front door, with Zlatko following after them.

Luther, however, did not follow.

The tall construction android entered the main hallway, as Kara came down the stairs. Connor pressed his back to the wall, motioning for Alice to do the same. Then he peaked around the corner and observed. They were exchanging information; he could tell by Luther's flashing LED. What that information was, Connor didn't know. He could make an accurate guess though, based on where they were next headed. Luther went downstairs to the basement, while Kara went up the stairs again, both androids moving with a significant amount of purpose. They were going to hide all evidence of illegal activity.

(Connor had been wondering how Zlatko had avoided being arrested so far. He must have distracted the authorities, while his androids hid evidence. It also explained why he kept Luther around, despite now having Kara. Those heavy boxes in the basement sure came in handy for hiding a door…)

With no time to dwell and not wanting to risk discovery, Connor crept into the hallway, warily looking back and forth, observing the environment. He could feel the tracker on Reed moving, as they approached the kitchen. Connor and Alice didn't have much time then. They had to be out of view of the house before the detectives got to the dining room.

Connor carefully opened the front door and guided Alice out first, before following after her. He closed the door gently behind him. Not wanting to hang around, he grabbed her hand again and she willingly followed him down the road. He kept an eye on Reed's tracker. Now they were in the kitchen. They were losing time.

"I'm going to pick you up now," he told Alice. Her eyes seemed to widen, as he did so. He had done the calculations. RK-900s had been designed with the capability of carrying at least two full-grown adult humans. Yes, the weight slowed him down, but he would still be able to run faster than Alice could.

With her in his arms, Connor broke into a sprint down the road. They were long out of sight by the time Reed reached the dining room.