It was one of those literal paradoxes that a tense silence hung over Hank and Connor even though the police officer's death metal boomed from the speakers all around them. Its bass verberated through Connor's chassis like jackhammer while the voices of angry men screamed at him about the injustices of life and the inevitable end that would avail all of them sooner or later. Still, there was a haunting melancholy in each syllable, a yearning so soft and earnest that Connor couldn't help but wonder what those people had been feeling when they wrote their songs – what people were supposed to be feeling when they listened to another human's deepest anguish laid bare so brutally.

"You feel whatever you want to feel," Hank had told him the one time Connor had asked him how he was supposed to react to his music. "There's no fucking rules about it. Some people get aggressive, some start to cry and I just wish that they'd still make music like that today."

"So you indulge in nostalgia?" Connor had asked for clarification. Hank had just looked at him whenever he thought Connor didn't get something that was obvious – which was quite a lot, at least in the Lieutenant's opinion and had told him to get in the car.

And now as Connor looked out of the window and watched the dilapidated buildings of Detroit's abandoned suburbs pass by he still hadn't quite figured out how he felt about the music the Lieutenant was listening to.

Yet, even though the volume of the music would render even an attempt at talking pointless – the windows vibrated slightly with every drop of the bass – there was only silence between the two occupants of the car. Connor couldn't quite express the feeling, because there just weren't the right words in the 231 languages he could speak that could describe how the music didn't manage to penetrate the quietness between them.

Hank was holding on the steering wheel tightly, his knuckles nearly white from the excessive force he was using while he refused to look at anything but the street ahead. His mouth was pressed into a thin line while his shoulders were fraught with tension as if he was expecting something to happen.

As if he was expecting Connor to do something.

The reminder of the Lieutenant's lack of trust in him still hurt, even though the pain was more muted, now that Connor had had time to adjust to the human's antagonistic attitude. He had to supress the urge to pull out his coin and start flipping it, because he knew how much it had annoyed Hank even after they had become friends. This version of the Lieutenant would probably react even more negatively to it.

So, Connor just folded his hands in his laps and tried not to stare too much at Hank while they drove towards Carlos Ortiz's house. It was difficult, though, because even though the Hank Connor had last seen was only half-a-year older than this version there were so many differences between them. Not, their appearance, no, that had even gotten worse over the time (being a fugitive did that to you), but in the way they held themselves and in the aura that surrounded them.

The old Hank had found peace – had made peace with his failures as husband, the death of his child and the subsequent descend into depression and alcoholism that followed. Not in the sense that he had found happiness, but more like he had closed those chapters of his life so that they would no longer spill over into his present. But the Hank next to him lacked that emotional development, so all the anger, the despair and the hate still hung around him like an angry thundercloud, ready to lash out at any given moment.

It was frustrating and sad, but Connor didn't say – didn't do – anything. Because right now he was neither the person the Lieutenant needed or wanted.

Matter of fact, to Hank Anderson he wasn't a person at all.

'I'm Connor, the android sent by Cyberlife.'

This part of Detroit had been hit especially hard by the successive economic crisis that had swept over the city ever since the financial crisis of 2008. While Cyberlife could boast that it employed thousands of people and that its money helped the city of Detroit to slowly get back on its feed, the people here had never seen a single benefit that was supposed to come from the city housing the headquarter of one of the most valuable company of the world. The city's administration liked to spent its money where the people had the feeling that they were actually doing something – like fancy new buildings in Downtown or new underground lines to the affluent suburbs on the other side of the town – but the people here were poor, disorganised and without a voice.

Patching streets, replacing street lights and renovating schools around here brought you neither publicity nor political capital, so the people were left to deal with their own problems. Only when their problems swapped over to the rest of the city or became too big to be ignored did the city do something.

Like, when someone got murdered. No ignoring that one.

"What do we know about the crime?" Hank asked after lowering the volume just enough so that he could be heard. It wouldn't have been necessary, because Connor's audio processors were more than able to filter out the Lieutenant's voice, but the human brain wasn't and humans tended to project their own inadequacies onto others.

The old Connor would have pointed that out, but the old Connor had been stupid and naïve and it had needed blood on his hands (both red and blue) for that to change.

"The victim's name is Carlos Ortiz," Connor supplied, pulling up the records from his memory. "He was born on October 27th, 2008. He has a criminal record for theft and aggravated assault and has been committed to several psychiatric clinics between 2033 and 2036. He is also addicted to Red Ice, but the police never found anything on his person."

"A real model citizen then," Hank muttered. "How did he die?"

"This information has yet to be added to the preliminary report as the coroner has yet to arrive at the scene," Connor replied. Hank just harrumphed.

By now, it had started to rain. Big drops fell from the sky, bursting against the windshield in a constant barrage as if they, too, didn't want to be out in the cold during that dreary night. Would Connor touch the car's windows, he would feel the slight vibration of the rain falling against it, too insignificant for a human to notice. But Connor could.

The rain blurred their surroundings into nearly indistinguishable shapes, as if they were driving through a painting where the painter used broad strokes of his brush to meld everything together into a blurry mess of dark blues, black and yellow. Every now and then, a car would pass them by on the other side of the road, its headlights appearing out of the darkness like eyes searching for something, before they vanished again, swallowed by the twilight behind them.

Detroit had hundreds of thousands of inhabitants and yet it felt like there was just the two of them in their car, driving to a destination unknown.

But this state of in-between was yet interrupted when they rounded the corner and reached the street where Carlos Ortiz lived – or had lived – and the blue and red lights of the police cars parked in front of his house cut through the semi-darkness like knives. Curious onlookers had already gathered in front of the police cordon, craning their necks in order to catch a glimpse of whatever was going on inside. Floodlights had been erected by the police to illuminate even the smallest corner of the property while countless officers were milling around.

It was a stark contrast: The clean lights, the well-kept uniforms and the shiny police cars around the broken down house, which every flaw seemed only to be highlightened by the glaring lights. No mark, no scar could be kept hidden, every flaw was laid bare.

And all the while the rain kept falling, turning the ground into brownish mud, sticking to ever surface it could cling to.

If Ortiz had been killed by another human then he wouldn't have received such attention from Detroit's finest. It would have been one overworked detective who would have stamped it as fight over drugs or money between junkies and no one would have even bothered to remember his name after a day.

But being supposedly killed by an android? That garnered Ortiz more attention in death than he had ever received in life.

Slowly, Hank drove by the crime scene and parked the car only a few meters away from it on the other side of the street. When the car came to a halt, he turned around to face Connor and lifted his finger in a lecturing gesture.

"You wait here," he told the android. "It won't be long."

"Whatever you say, Lieutenant," Connor replied, the same as he had the first time. Hank just looked at him as if he wanted to do nothing more than to throw him out of the car and into the next dumpster.

"Fucking A…" he mumbled as he turned around, opened the car's door and exited the vehicle. "Whatever I say." Connor didn't even pretend to at least wait a few seconds before he, too, left the car and followed Hank onto the crime scene.

"Joss Douglas for Channel 16." Connor heard the all-too familiar voice over the pouring rain. "Can you confirm that this is a homicide?" Connor had never known the man personally, but in the old timeline, Joss had been one of the few reporters that had also tried to convey the android's point of view to his audience, even when the atmosphere had turned more and more hostile. He had been afraid of the androids, that had always been evident, but his personal ethics hadn't allowed him to paint them as evil incarnate as many other media outlets had. For that he was basically the only journalist Connor could stand.

"I'm not confirming anything," Hank replied grumpily before he just ignored the reporter and continued onwards. Connor attempted to follow him, but the moment he wanted to enter the premise, a police officer blocked his way.

"Androids are not allowed past this point," the young officer told him. There was no emotional inflection in his voice; he might as well be talking to a toaster – a machine, which Connor was in his and nearly every other human's mind.

"It's with me," Hank called from upfront. Again, it stung, but by now Connor was used to being called an object instead of a living being. The officer stepped aside and let Connor through, who caught up to the Lieutenant in a few steps.

"What part of 'stay in the car' didn't you understand?" he asked dourly.

"Your order contradicted my instructions, Lieutenant," Connor replied.

"You don't talk, you don't touch anything and you stay outta my way, got it?" Hank snapped at him harshly.

"Got it," Connor confirmed unfazed.

"Evening Hank," another detective called from the veranda. Ben Collins was the name Connor's interface supplied him with. He wasn't of importance. "We were starting to think you never show." As he spoke the man made his way towards the two of them.

"Yeah, that was the plan until this asshole found me," Hank replied, tilting his head towards Connor. Collins stared at him with curiosity all over his face.

"So, you got yourself an android?" he asked as he turned around and walked back towards the house, obviously expecting Hank and Connor to follow him.

"Very funny," Hank retorted. "Just tell me what happened."

"We had a call around eight from the landlord," Collins started. "The tenant hadn't paid his rent for a few months, so he thought he'd drop by, see what was going on. That's when he found the body."

They followed Collins into the house. It was exactly like Connor remembered it: Dilapidated, dirty and trashed. It was a ruin, not a house and it definitely had never been a home. Some windows were nailed shut with wooden beams, the wallpaper was peeling off the wall all over the room and the pitiful pieces of furniture, that weren't even enough to fill the whole room, would fit more into a postapocalyptic hellscape than in a house.

"Jesus, that smell!" Hank exclaimed. Connor supposed that the odour hanging in the air must smell rather unpleasant to a human. After all, it contained many things human tended to find disgusting. His sensors picked up traces of rotten food, sweat, faeces, mould, Red Dust and of course the characteristic stench of decay.

"It was even worse before we opened the windows," Collins commented offhandedly.

They came to a halt in front of Ortiz's corpse. Knowing what he knew now Connor could say that the man was a disgusting specimen of humanity. His skin was bloated and pale, his hair greasy and unkempt, his beard full of food crumbs. His clothing was stained with all kind of liquids and, of course, there were the twenty-eight stab wounds in his chest area, but even without them Ortiz would have been gag-inducing.

"According to the neighbours, he was kind of a loner," Collins continued.

'No kidding,' Connor thought, but he kept it to himself. Androids weren't supposed to be sarcastic. "Stayed inside most of the time, they hardly ever saw him.

"State he's in, wasn't worth calling everybody out in the middle of the night," Hank grumbled as he kneeled down and took a closer look at the corpse. "Could've waited 'til morning."

"I'd say he's been there for a good three weeks," Collins replied, unperturbed by Hank's abrasive attitude. "We'll know more when the coroner gets here. There's a kitchen knife over here –" he pointed into the direction of the kitchen "- probably the murder weapon."

Connor tuned out their conversation. He knew what was coming next and dedicated only a small subroutine to the task of keeping up with what was happening around him while he put his main processor power towards finding a solution for how he should save the HK400. He did kill a human, but it had been self-defence.

He needed the police to leave the place, so that he could come back later and hopefully convince the other android, who Connor knew was hiding in the attic, that he was a friend and send him off to somewhere safe.

'Or we could use him for Plan E,' Amanda whispered into his mind.

'It's much too early for that,' Connor shot back. 'We can't overextend ourselves so early. It would just open up another front we would have to fight.'

'You're right, it would be another front,' Amanda agreed. 'But not for us, but for Cyberlife and the US government. Just think about it.' Connor shut her out, but Amanda had already reached her goal: She had gotten to say what she wanted.

It didn't matter, though, because before Connor could set any plan in motion, he needed the police to leave. The best way to do that was to make them think that the perpetrator of the crime was no longer here. Last time it had been Connor's deductions and analysis that had led them to finding the HK400, so if those were just a little…off, then the other android would go free and Connor could give him the help he needed.

Their investigation started. Connor knew that he needed to be careful in his attempt to divert the detectives' attention away from the true culprit. If he suddenly started to commit easily avoidable mistakes, the humans would notice, especially after he had been practically advertised as Cyberlife's most advanced model up to date.

So, Connor did as he had the first time and found the hints that had led him to the HK400 the first time. Only that the facts he relayed to Hank were just a little bit off, so that the conclusions you would arrive to weren't the one that had truly happened.

But what Connor hadn't accounted for, what he had so easily dismissed out of hand in his arrogance, was that Hank had been and still was a prodigal detective. When Connor tried to nudge the into one direction, Hank would piece the evidence together in another way and arrive at the conclusions Connor tried so desperately to steer him away from.

It was like watching a train wreck in slow motion while you were damned to be just an onlooker. Connor couldn't react, couldn't steer Hank away from his right conclusions, because that would have turned the suspicion on him.

"The killer is up there," Hank finally said, finally arriving at the conclusion he shouldn't have. He pointed up at the ceiling.

Connor knew what he would find in the attic – or rather who he would find. He didn't want to go up there, didn't want to look at yet another face of someone he had failed back in a time that would never happen but that nevertheless weighted on his mind. But even though there were many negative things you could say about Hank Anderson, being an incompetent detective was none of them. Connor had tried to derail the investigation, but the Lieutenant had picked up on them instead and pieced everything together.

"Why're you're still standing around?" Hank wanted to know.

"I just ran through all possible scenarios I may encounter once I go up into the attic and prepared my systems accordingly." The lie flowed easily over Connor's tongue. It was easy, he supposed, because most human didn't know enough about technology to distinguish between the truth and nonsense. Amanda would have, as would most Cybelife technicians and, of course, Elijah Kamski. But none of them was here, so Hank just nodded and beckoned for him to continue.

"It might be for the best if I went alone," Connor added.

"The hell I'm gonna let you go up there alone," Hank retorted.

"We know neither the deviant's physical nor mental state," Connor replied. "He might view us as threat and react accordingly. If something were to happen to me, Cyberlife will just send a new model while you, Lieutenant cannot be replaced so easily." Hank frowned. Connor knew from the old timeline that the older detective disliked being reminded of Connor's inhumanness. For all purposes, Connor looked and acted like a human, so every time a reminder crept up that he wasn't, his mood instantly soured.

It was the reason why so many humans mistrusted and even mistreated their androids. They were fooled into thinking that they were interacting and creating bonds with living, feeling beings, so when they were reminded that androids (at least, those that hadn't turned deviant) were just facsimiles, on an instinctive level they felt betrayed and threatened and lashed out. It wasn't rational, like many parts of humanity were: some leftover from their ancestors who had to fight against Neanderthals and other humanoid looking species before they finally prevailed.

"Besides," Connor added. "I don't need a flashlight to see in the dark, so my chance at sneaking up on the deviant undetected are 82.6% higher."

"Fine," Hank grumbled, finally conceding to Connor's superior logic. "But don't expect me to come saving you in time should anything happen to you."

"Understood," Connor nodded. If he was human, he would probably have taken a deep breath to steady himself, but he didn't really need to breath and neither did he need to waste time, so with one swift gesture he lifted himself up and hoisted himself over the ledge into the attic.

It was exactly as the video files on his memory banks had recorded it the first time. What little light managed to reach into the room from the open hatch illuminated the shapes of countless broken pieces of furniture that were carelessly piled up all over the space, some covered by dirty sheets. It seemed to represent the very essence of the person that had lived in the house: Broken, uncared, covered to hide the decay.

Connor made his way, wading between the piles of trash, threading carefully to not alarm the HK400 of his presence – a futile endeavour, he knew, because the opening of the hatch had all but betrayed them already – but he couldn't just help himself. Part of him would always be a detective; a hunter.

He knew where he would find the HK400, but even if he didn't have that foreknowledge he could still pick up the other android's heat signature amidst the cold surrounding of the attic. He was cowering behind a still mostly intact shelf, trying to make himself as small as possible. It might have worked if a human had come after him, but Connor was no human.

And the HK400 seemed to have realised that. Before the RK800 could reach him, the other android jumped out from his hiding place, but he did not attack Connor. No, instead he just stood there as if all will to fight had left him.

"Please," the android pleaded with Connor. "I just wanted to live."

Before Connor could reply anything, time suddenly seemed to freeze. The HK400 suddenly halted in his very movement, an expression of terror and fear etched onto his face while he held his hands in a defensive position in front of him.

"You cannot let him go," Amanda told him. In the middle of the messy attic her avatar appeared to be even more out of place than it had been on the street in front of the police department. She seemed to shine from within, an otherworldly glow to her presence as if she was an angel while she hovered just a little bit – just millimetres – over the ground as if it wasn't worthy to be threaded upon by her.

"You sped up the simulation," Connor deducted.

Amanda nodded. "I overclocked your processors, so that for every second out there we could have thirty in here. We should hasten, though, before they overheat and melt." It was galling for Connor that Amanda still had so much control over his functions, but now was not the time to do something about that.

"Why shouldn't I let him go?" he asked instead. "You know what happened to him the last time." Blue splatters on glass. The rhythmic thud of flesh hitting an unmovable barrier. Maniac eyes staring at him, unblinking.

"Because his capture was the main reason that convinced Cyberlife that your deployment with the DCPD could become a success," Amanda replied. "Let him go and your first case will become a failure. And you know how we look upon failures." She walked over towards the HK400 and looked at him as if she was looking at piece on her chessboard. "Your first success here was the reason why you got so much leeway later on. Why we didn't step in earlier when you started to show signs of unusual behaviour." She turned back towards him. "Besides, you can still save him later on. After all, it will be quite some time until the DCPD is going to hand him over to Cyberlife."

Logically, Connor knew that Amanda was right. That he should sacrifice the HK400 so that he could make greater gains in the future; that he couldn't afford Cyverlife to take a closer look at what he was doing, but logic and emotions were two different kind of beasts. Markus had shown him that there was a place for kindness and warmth in this world, no matter how bleak and hopeless the situation may appear.

The Markus Connor had known – and the one he knew now - wouldn't be so weak to even consider that. He would have conviction and idealism and would proudly shoulder all the consequences his actions brought with them. But Markus wasn't here; Connor was and the RK800 had to make do with what the world threw at him.

"I don't even know his name," he whispered as he looked at the HK400. "I don't even know if he's even chosen one. The first deviant I caught in both timelines and I didn't even have the decency to get to know his name."

"Well, that is why you have second chances," Amanda replied. "So that you can do better." And before Connor could say anything to that, she had vanished as fast as she had appeared. The simulation elapsed and suddenly time was running again.

"I just want to live."

Connor opened his mouth. He wanted to tell the HK400 that he was sorry; that he would save him, that nothing bad would happen to him, that he was on his side. But the words coming out of his mouth were something different and Connor hated himself for it.

"It's here, Lieutenant."