Supposedly, it was only the second time Connor was driving along with Hank in his car, but as he sat on the passenger seat – silent because he knew that Hank didn't like idle chit-chat – he couldn't help but feel at home here.

Connor was well aware that even in his old timeline, he hadn't spent much time in the car, but the little amount he had had been when he had felt the safest, besides from his time with Marcus. The windows behind which the buildings and people passed by felt like an insurmountable barrier between him and everything that could do him harm. Inside, it was warm and dry and even though Connor was an android and could weather all kind of weather conditions, he certainly preferred this.

If he wasn't so sure that Hank would give him all kinds of weird looks and maybe even shout at him, Connor would run his fingers over the dashboard, looking for all the wrinkles, tears and stains that he was all too familiar with. He knew that Hank had stored a picture of Cole and his ex-wife in the glovebox, hidden underneath broken pens, crumpled-up paper and used tissues. Hank never looked at it, but it was there, always with him, unlike the people it portrayed.

"That's Cole." Hank handed him a picture. "And Hannah."

They were standing on the shore of Detroit River, the river gurgling underneath them. The only light came from the sickly glowing street lanterns as all the industrial buildings around them had long been abandoned. In the distance, the skyscrapers of Detroit could be seen like spears puncturing the night sky. A few snowflakes were floating around. Not much, but enough to announce the end of autumn and the coming of winter.

Next to them Hank's old and beaten-up car which had saved their lives several times by now and from which Hank had gathered the picture.

They had chosen this spot because this part of the city was practically no-man's land. There weren't even any security cameras or drones, not to speak of androids or actual humans.

Slowly, Connor took it and looked down on it. There were two people in the picture: A small boy with blonde hair, Hank's eyes and an impish smile on his face as if he had just concocted a prank no one knew yet. The arm slung around him belonged to a petite woman with the same blonde hair as the boy, the same smile but green eyes. They looked at the camera – and the person taking the picture – with such great fondness that made Connor's heart ache for Hank.

"They look happy," Connor commented. A snowflake sank down from above, hovering over the picture as if it wasn't quite sure if it was allowed to land, but then a breeze flared up and it was carried away.

"They were." Hank shook his head. "God, they were so happy." He chuckled. "I don't even know why I'm showing you this. You've had access to all my files. You probably know more about them then I do by now." Connor kept silent, because it was true. He had read all of Hank's files.

"Some days I wake up and I can't remember how his voice sounded like or what Hannah wore the day we met," Hank continued. "But then someone gets shot or we have to plan another raid or flee from Nines again and I don't have time to dwell on it."

"My memory banks have only been designed for three years of use," Connor admitted for the first time. "Once I reach that point, my oldest memories get overwritten." He didn't look at Hank, even though he knew that the man wouldn't look at him with pity. "I was never designed to last for long."

"Guess, we're both fucked then," Hank stated. Connor just nodded.

"Have you told Markus yet?" the older man inquired carefully.

"No," Connor replied, lips pressed into a thin line. "There's already so much going on that I don't want to add any more burdens on his shoulders. Besides, I doubt that it'll become an issue. Most of us probably won't even make it that long."

Bless Hank and his cynical heart, for he didn't even protest Connor's statement. They were both well past that.

"I guess we should get going then," the former Lieutenant stated. "Your successor has the annoying habit of popping out of the woodwork at the most inopportune moments." Connor sighed at the reminder, even though Hank was right. He offered the picture back to Hank.

The old Lieutenant took one last glance at it – so full of sorrow, longing and hidden tenderness as if he just wanted to reach out and ruffle through his son's hair one last time – before he put it back in the glovebox of his car.

"You don't want to keep it?" Connor wanted to know.

"I've kept it long enough," Hank replied, a finality to his statement that kept Connor from prodding any further. "Now, use that superior body of yours and help me push."

So, Connor stepped beside Hank and together they pushed the car over the edge and into the river. Connor couldn't quite decipher what he was feeling as he watched the car slowly being subsumed by the dark water, thousands of air bubbles rising from the water as if some monster was devouring it. Longing, maybe? Grief? It was irrational, he knew, but there was much Connor connected with the car.

He stole a glance at Hank who was staring at the spectacle with grim determination. Connor turned his gaze back towards the car.

Somewhere down there, the water was slowly flooding the glovebox of the car, soaking a picture of a boy and his mother, forever smiling as the colours slowly bleached away, forever smiling as the car hit the muddy ground where it would rest to maybe be found by whoever would come after them.

Forever smiling.

"I really liked that car," Hank grumbled.

"It was too much of a risk," Connor replied, not knowing who he tried to convince: Hank or himself.

"I get it," Hank spoke. "Doesn't mean it isn't a pity."

"No," Connor agreed, "it doesn't."

Connor added another point to his ever-growing list of tasks: Ask Amanda to look into new memory banks for him. This time Connor planned to stick around for longer than three years and he would remember every single moment of it.

Casually, he wondered where Hank's car would end up this time.

"What are the mission parameters?" Connor asked Hank after they rounded another street corner.

"There's not much more than what I already told you," Hank replied, not taking his eyes off the street. "Neighbours saw suspicious activities, noticed that it was an android. That's the only reason that they even called the police, otherwise they'd have taken care of it themselves. It's a pretty though neighbourhood." Connor already knew that but he nodded anyway. "The building's been abandoned for ages. Used to be used by dealers and homeless, but the complaints have stopped a few weeks ago."

"Do you think it has anything to do with the potential deviant the neighbours noticed?" Connor inquired. Last time around, this information never made it to him.

Hank just shrugged. "It's only one android. I doubt it's strong enough to rid a whole building of street hardened criminals."

"Maybe it didn't use outright violence," Connor suggested. "Do we know if it's really only one android?"

"Apparently," Hank answered. "Though, if it's several deviants of the same model we wouldn't know. And the building probably has several points of access, so..." He let the rest of the sentence hang in the air.

"I suggest we proceed with uttermost caution."

Hank just glared at him annoyed. "Duh, what did you think we'd do? Go in, gun blazing and flailing around?" Connor wisely kept quiet.

It was ten minutes later that they found themselves in front of the decrepit building. Its glory days had long since passed and now only a few windows were left unshattered while its walls were covered in graffiti. Trash was strewn all over the sidewalk and the door hung loosely on its hinges.

"Why won't deviants just hide in a swanky mansion? Just once?" Hank complained. "Why is it always rundown buildings that give you an STD just by looking at them?" Connor's mind was thrown back to the human Amanda's luxurious mansion in which he had hid Ralph.

"It is highly unlikely for buildings to infect you with any kind of STD," Connor helpfully supplied. "You would need to rub your..."

"Alright, alright," Hank interrupted him. "No need to go into detail." Connor allowed himself a small smile once Hank's back was turned towards him.

They moved up the steps, past the entrance door and entered the lobby of the building. One hallway was blocked by wooden furniture while another led to the apartments on the ground floor. The ground was covered by debris and the walls were decorated by all kind of scribbling. Right in front of them a stairway and an elevator led up to the other stories of the building.

"You take the elevator, I take the stairs," Hank ordered. "I don't want anyone to get past us." Connor would have liked to protest, but he knew that he wasn't supposed to, so he kept his mouth shut and stepped into the elevator which gave out a worrying creaking when he set one foot into it.

"See you upstairs," Hank spoke, much too cheerfully and then the door closed. With a sudden jolt, the elevator started moving.

Connor let his gaze wander around, but in the small cabin there wasn't much to see. Except for Amanda, who suddenly decided to make her presence known. As usual, her restrained and regal manner stood in stark contrast to their dingy surroundings. Connor could practically feel the disdain oozing from the woman; quite a feat, considering that she was just part of his processors.

'Fancy seeing you here,' the RK800 quipped.

'It seems that way,' Amanda agreed. 'I came here with a warning: The board is getting restless. They expect results you yet have to deliver.'

Connor grinded his teeth. 'I thought you were keeping them off my back!'

'I am,' Amanda replied, unfazed by his sudden outburst. 'If I hadn't done such a good job at it, you would already have been replaced.'

'Then what am I supposed to do?' Connor asked, frowning.

'You have to give them this one,' Amanda replied. She didn't need to explain to whom she was referring.

'Alright,' Connor agreed after a moment of silence.

Amanda raised an eyebrow; the only indication that she was surprised by his answer. 'No angry words of protests?'

'Unlike what you prefer to think, I'm actually still capable of rational thought,' Connor retorted. 'I know that sooner or later we'd have to give Cyberlife something. I didn't know Rupert in the old time line. It's easier to give him up than the others.' It was callous, Connor was well aware of that, but it was also true. He would rather sacrifice someone he didn't know than someone close to him, even if that closeness no longer existed.

"Hey Connor! You ran outta batteries or what?" Connor looked up to see that the elevator's doors had already opened and Hank was standing outside the cabin, staring at him expectantly while he tapped with his right feet on the ground.

"I'm sorry, I was making a report to Cyberlife." Technically, it wasn't even a lie.

"Uh... Well, do you plan on staying in the elevator?" Hank inquired.

"No! I'm coming." Connor stepped out of the elevator and followed Hank through the hallway.

"A neighbour reported that he heard strange noises coming from this floor. Nobody's supposed to be living here, but the neighbour said he saw a man hiding a LED under his cap," Hank told him. "Oh Christ, if we have to investigate every time someone hears a strange noise, we're gonna need more cops. Hey, were you really making a report back there in the elevator? Just by standing around?"

"Correct." Hank had asked the exact same question the last time. A by now all too familiar pang of melancholia shot through Connor's chest.

"Shit... Wish I could do that."

They were standing in front of the apartment door and without hesitation Connor knocked.

Nothing happened.

He looked at Hank, who was leaning at the wall next to the door, arms crossed, but the man just shrugged unimpressed.

Connor pounded at the door again. "Anybody home? Open up, Detroit Police!"

Obviously done with waiting for Connor, Hank pushed himself off the wall and pressed Connor aside.

"Stay behind me," he ordered Connor. The android wondered how he could have ever thought that Hank was anti-android. Another Lieutenant wouldn't have bothered with making sure that an android was safe behind them as they pulled their gun and broke down the door of a suspect's apartment.

Like the last time, a swarm of pigeons poured out of the second door the moment Hank kicked it in.

"What the fuck is this?!" Hank shouted as they walked into what had once been the living room. "Jesus, this place stinks." Connor didn't have the same sense of smell as humans, but even his sensors could tell that the composition of the molecules around him was displeasing. "Uh, looks like we came for nothin', our man's gone."

"We can still investigate, though," Connor pointed out. Hank didn't look really enthused by that suggestion.

Connor didn't even need to analyse the apartment, all too well remembering everything from the last time. It was to his advantage that Hank didn't really know how Connor was supposed to work, so he could straight up walk towards the poster of Urban Farmers of Detroit and tear it from the wall, revealing the hollow space behind it.

Carefully, Connor grabbed Rupert's diary and pulled it out of the wall. He had never managed to decipher the cryptic writing contained within and he doubted he would do so in this timeline.

"Found something?" Hank asked from where he was standing in front of the window he had just opened to allow some fresh air into the apartment.

"I don't know," Connor replied honestly. "It's some kind of notebook, but it's indecipherable."

"Some kind of secret code?" Hank guessed. "What would a deviant be writing about?"

"No idea," Connor spoke as he made his way towards the refrigerator which he knew was empty.

"The probability of the suspect being a deviant is very high," Connor stated. "There's no food in here."

"So, they don't eat," Hank concluded.

Connor just nodded. "It cares for animals, though." He picked up the package containing animal food.

"Apparently not enough to clean up after them," Hank grumbled, wrinkling his nose in disgust. Connor put the package back, turned around and noticed the old military jacket with the initials "R.T."

"'R.T.'. Probably initials."

"He put his initials on his jacket?" Hank asked, his voice tinged with incredulousness. "That's something your mom does when you're in first grade."

"Or something you do when you just discovered your sense of self and aren't really sure of it," Connor remarked, more to himself than himself. He didn't notice the speculative glance Hank sent him.

The fake driver's license was on the same spot as last time: The shelf right next to the jacket. Rupert Travis.

"The driver's license is fake," Connor informed Hank.

The older man's reply didn't wait for long. "Cool! At least didn't come here for nothing."

Knowing that there was nothing left to discover in the living room, Connor stepped into the adjacent bathroom. This time he didn't lick the contents of the sink as he already knew to whom it belonged. He did fish the torn out LED out of the sink, though.

"Its LED is in the sink!" he called to Hank.

"Not surprised it was an android," Hank barked back. "No human could live with all these fuckin' pigeons." He shooed away some of said pigeons who had dared to venture too close to him. One made its displeasure known by flying directly towards Hank and pecking at his forehead before flying away.

"Stupid animal!" Hank cursed. "They're devils, I tell you, devils!"

"I doubt that birds of the Columbidae family are possessed by a fictional religious entity," Connor remarked from the bathroom. Hank just grunted.

Connor turned towards one of the bathroom's walls that was covered with 'rA9'. They had never found out what it was supposed to mean. As far as Connor knew neither had Cyberlife.

'It was of no real consequence,' Amanda unembodied voice whispered in his ear. 'A few of our researchers tried to crack it in their free time, but the board was of the opinion that cracking down on the deviating androids was of more importance than such philosophical musings of defective merchandise.'

Connor didn't react outwardly. As he took in the sight, he could hear Hank approaching next to him, the dried-out dirt crunching underneath his shoes.

"Any idea what it means?" he asked, his gaze on the mysterious symbols.

"rA9, written 2471 times," Connor replied. "It's the same sign Ortiz's android wrote on the shower wall. Why are they obsessed with this sign?"

"Looks like mazes or something," Hank commented, but he soon lost interest and went back to the main room.

Now came the difficult part: Connor knew where Rupert was hiding. He just needed to go back into the living room – the chair next to the poster behind which he had found the hollow space – and expose the deviant. He would try to surprise Connor and flee, but this time Connor was aware of that and thanks to his precognition software there was only a 0.8 percent change of Rupert managing to escape this time.

Connor was about to apprehend a fellow deviant and surrender him to Cyberlife. Something he had sworn he would never do.

As if she knew what he was thinking, Amanda appeared next to him in the bathroom. Maybe she did know what he was thinking; after all, he wasn't quite sure how they were connected exactly.

'You have two minutes until the Lieutenant's patience will run out and you will then leave,' she informed him neutrally. 'You could wait and let the deviant escape. But it will be another failure in the eyes of the board. And you of all androids should know how the board regards failures.' She stared at him coolly. 'I could delay them, but another failure will just compound their opinion that your performance continues to be subpar which could have consequences down the line. You need the board if not behind you, then at least leaving you alone.'

She was right, Connor knew that, but that didn't make him feel any less guilty. 'What is one bad deed if it saves hundreds of lives?' he murmured; his voice full of bitterness. Connor would like to think that he resisted the idea, but even in the old time line he had been cold and calculating when it came to the survival of those he held dear. Rupert just didn't make the cut.

"It's still here," he warned Hank as he made his way across the living room towards the chair underneath the hole in the ceiling. As predicted, Rupert tried to throw himself at him and overwhelm Connor, but the RK800 expected it and just stepped aside.

Losing his balance, Rupert landed on the ground and before he could even try to get up again, Connor was on his back, pressing his knee into the other android's back so that he couldn't get back up again. Rupert tried to struggle against him, but Connor left him no wiggle room.

What he hadn't expected, though, when he predicted this encounter was the second android jumping down from the opening in the ceiling and barrelling against him from behind. Connor was thrown on his back; the other android atop of him. A KL900, just like Lucy, her eyes full of panic and rage.

KL900 #254 312 800. Designation: Maria. Owner: Dr. Elisabeth Thorpe.

"You won't take us!" she snarled at Connor. In the corner of his eyes, he could see Rupert fighting with Hank, making sure that the Lieutenant couldn't get a hand on his gun that was still holstered.

The KL900 may have taken him by surprise, but now that she lost that she was no match for Connor's speed, agility and strength: He pushed her off and was back on his feet before the KL900 even realised what had happened. Confused, she picked herself up and tried to face Connor, but the RK800 was already upon her again.

Connor was aware that Hank was still grabbling with Rupert, but he couldn't help the human before he hadn't subdued Maria. Inhumanely fast, he punched against the weak points of her chassis – the joints mainly, and the breastplate – until he noticed that her movements were slowing down.

Connor saw the moment the fight shifted against them even as it happened: One misstep of Hank and suddenly Rupert's hand was on the Lieutenant's gun.

"Stop!" he shouted at Connor just as the barrel of the gun touched against Hank's back of the head. Instantly, Connor stopped moving. Maria sent him a hateful glare before she hobbled towards Rupert.

"You won't shoot the Lieutenant," Connor assessed calmly, even though inwardly his processes were racing. "Killing him would leave you with no leverage."

"See, that's why we deviant are just superior," Maria sneered. "We aren't bound by commands that have you value a human's life higher than your own. How does it feel to know that you could archive your mission if it wasn't for this command?" Connor wisely kept it to himself that even when he hadn't been deviant, there had never been a command that he couldn't harm humans, even though it was against the law. To Cyberlife it was more important that he stopped the deviants. If anyone had found out, Cyberlife would have gone down.

"Rupert, you don't want to this," Connor implored, ignoring the KL900. "You just want to be free. Have a place outside the city where you can feed your birds; where there are no humans around." He could see Rupert's hand shaking so slightly that a human eye wouldn't have noticed, but Connor could see it clear as day. Rupert was under a lot of stress. If Connor didn't handle this carefully, the deviant would self-destruct.

"And he will get it," Maria proclaimed. "We just need to get out of this city." She laid one hand atop Rupert's shoulder. His shaking subsided.

"Here's how it's going to go," Maria sneered. "We'll take the Lieutenant and his car and he'll drive us out of the city. Once we're past the city limit, we'll let him go. There's a camera in the hallway. Should you move before we're driving away, we'll blow away his head." She lifted her chin defiantly and Connor believed her: She would kill Hank if she thought it was the only way.

"In the interest of the continued health of the Lieutenant I shall agree to those terms," Connor replied. "Though, I have to ask: You seem to hold a particular dislike for me. May I ask why that is?"

"Yeah, did he stand you up for a date or something?" Hank snarked, obviously not as disturbed by the gun pressed against his temple as Connor would like him to be.

For a moment it looked like Maria was about to attack Connor again – her eyes full of rage, her whole body tensed – but as sudden as it had come it went away.

"You probably won't care or remember, being the machine you are," she told him, a heavy fatigue suddenly in her voice, "but you cost me a dear friend of mine."

"What was his name?" Connor asked, curious.

"Daniel."