A cell, cold and dark, with a mattress on the floor, the only door has a barred window out into a hallway, but Connor is far too small to reach it from the floor. He holds a bag filled with clinking coins, turning it over in his hands.

Were those his hands? They were too small to be his hands, too weak. They were a child's hands, but they had a similar pattern of freckles that felt passably familiar. He took a coin from the bag, a 1975 Michigan state quarter, and moved it back and forth in his hands. It was imprecise the way he fumbled with the metal, nothing like the practiced ease the android usually handled coins. A tangy, metal taste danced across his taste buds as he brought the coin to his mouth.

Why did Connor put the coin in his mouth? Was he looking for a clue in this coin? Was he trying to analyze its components? No. It was just to feel it on his teeth, to taste it on his tongue, to feel something in this cold, empty cell. He got no information from it, just the taste. The sting on his teeth felt like the ringing of bells, distracting from the crimson red blood stains on the wall to his right.

Where did it come from? What happened here? Connor can't place it.

"Come on, you fuckin' abortions!" The walls quiver with the force of pounding fists accompanying the commanding voice.

Connor put the coins in the pouch and hid them tucked underneath the single sheet. His hands shook together in front of his chest, his heart, not his pump, his heart, pounding in fear.

The door opens, and a tall, shadowed spectre opens the door.

"Good morning, Sergeant Gordon." Was that his voice? A child's voice?

"Good morning, Connor..."

"Connor."

"Connor."

Hank's voice calling his name pierces through the vision, putting him back in the kitchen with a broom tight in his fists, still shaking madly. The weight of a hand on Connor's shoulder keeps him grounded.

"It wasn't me. It wasn't me." Connor reassures himself, still slowly coming out of that foreign body that felt so much like him, but not.

"Come sit down, kid. Here." Hank puts an arm around his shoulders and pushes him towards the couch where Sumo sits expectantly. The touch of thick fur and nuzzles brings Connor completely back to Hank's house, their home. "What was that?"

"I...I don't-" The images start to feel like a dream. Is that what dreaming feels like?

"Sorry, Connor. Don't worry about it. I can turn something else on for you, if you'd like?"

Connor slowly relaxes into Sumo, the warmth slowing down his processes. Since he became a deviant, emotions have pulled him in more directions than he ever thought possible, but it wasn't until that vision where he truly felt such deep, gnawing loneliness with such intensity to make him rendered utterly speechless and dysfunctional.

He shouldn't be feeling like this.

He may be a deviant, but he should have more self-control than this.

Something is changing in him, but at least Hank seems to know what to do to help him calm down.

"I don't know what's happening to me, Hank." Connor whimpered, "The voices, the visions-"

"Fuckin' abortions, right Connor?"

"What?"

"Emotions. Human stuff." Hank explained, "When you aren't used to feeling things and you suddenly do, it's a disaster."

Connor must have misheard. His auditory processes must be glitching from whatever that was. Even as a deviant, androids don't mishear things, or see things that aren't real. "Do humans see things that aren't there, mishear things?"

Hank must know. He is his closest insight to human behavior beyond just the physical, what he can see and mimic.

"I mean, sometimes." Hank said, "My head can wander to some really bad places sometimes. In terms of hearing things, well, some people don't have very good hearing."

Connor nods, thankful for the insight but unsure of what it meant for himself. Did he need to get something fixed? But what would he lose?

"Sergeant Gordon's cold case files are a fuckin' dumpster fire!" Reed grumbled, papers in beige folders rustling on his desk. "The old fuck didn't even put them in the database before he left for Havana."

"What a bastard." Hank absently continued pouring through paperwork. It's a rare slow day at the precinct. Hank dared not say it outloud in case it turns around, but there are dry leads with very little to go on lately. It's like the world has frozen over, but there's something moving beneath the ice. Connor's absence from the force doesn't help matters after the revolution. Lots of corporate red tape and training requirements before he could get back on the field. Such a waste of talent, having Connor just living at home cleaning up, making meals, taking care of the dog. It felt wrong, the empty desk, an aching void in Hank's day. Working alone used to be the best way he worked, but Hank wasn't the man he used to be five months ago.

"Shit." Gavin's eyes stare at a single case file for a long time.

"What the fuck is it, Reed? Did Gordy leave a going away present?" Hank's only enjoyment at the precinct on days like this was Reed's annoyed grumbles. It helped him take a break from seething.

"You don't-"

"C'mon, Reed. It can't be that bad."

"You don't need to know."

Hank moved swiftly out of his chair towards Reed's desk. "Fuckin' hell, I've seen more shit in a decade than you have in your whole goddamn life. Now hand me the damn file if its so fuckin' scary!"

Hank looked over the files, and saw a pile of pictures of kids, barely older than Cole was when he died, all missing. All cold cases in one file, with barely any case notes. He knew Gordon was a cold bastard (you had to be a little cold in this profession to survive being exposed to the worst parts of humanity), but did the guy even fucking try? His chest tightened further as he saw a little boy around seven, brunette, big doe eyes, freckles, and gappy teeth.

"Miranda Stone's Special School for Special Needs! What a load of horseshit!"

Esther's voice hits Hank right in the gut. "It's just to help Cole acclimate better, Hank. I don't want him to just stumble through life like I had to just to seem like a competent adult."

"All they teach kids at these places is how to pretend to be something you're not. He does enough of that already. No matter what you think about yourself, at least let Cole decide who he wants to be."

Reed moved the papers away from Hank's gaze. "I tried to-"

"I can handle a couple missing kids, Reed. I've gotta move on sometime."

"By going head-first into a list of decades-old case files that'll probably just lead to dead bodies? I guess you're right. It sounds like a fantastic way to get over a dead kid."

"You're not my therapist, Reed. Quit acting like it." Hank grabbed the file and took it to his desk. "I'll take a stab at it; maybe I'll find something."

Hank scans the picture, finally placing where he had seen the kid before. He and Cole were in a cold waiting room as he clutched his Sumo stuffie that was torn in places from constantly carrying it around. He remembered how Cole used to chew on its ears, and had to tell him to use the chewie around his neck and not toy Sumo.

The kid in the file was playing with a ball tracker, watching it roll, click, roll, click down the wooden track, ignoring everything else around him. The file listed him as Connor Ray Bennett, a foster kid that bounced between homes after being removed from a neglectful household. If only he knew back then, the poor kid, but what would Hank have done if he did? The best he could do now was give somebody some closure, if he can find anybody connected to the kid. At least get some sort of face to spot him, see how he's doing. Hank's breath catches in his throat, the software morphing the kid's face into an adult estimate. He pauses before he could get to the actual chronological age based on his birth date.

It's Connor. That's his Connor, android Connor, blue-blooded Connor. Very different freckle pattern, sure, he looks more naturally attractive, but the resemblance was still uncanny. The kid's name was Connor, he had his face, his eyes, has more freckles, he was human as far as Hank could tell.

The question is, why?