Normally Simon spent the nights in the living room, existing in a kind of suspension updating his software with CyberLife or downloading new protocol. He made sure to stand in a corner and to face the room. He'd learned quickly that it wasn't worth the effort to be active when everyone was asleep. On more than one occasion, he'd heard Kate enter the kitchen and made to greet her only for her to jump and shriek, so instead he stood somewhere that he knew would be predictable.

This night however, Simon found himself standing in the hallway. Per Kate's request, he hadn't informed anyone of the seizure she'd had several days prior. She'd avoided her mother's phone calls but after Simon carefully urged her to return them, she had a brief conversation which ended in her slightly flustered but relatively calm. Jamie also attempted to resume her occasional vigil which Simon determined was causing Kate to become frustrated. He took it upon himself to tell Jamie there was no need to check on her. He had things under control.

Kate's bedroom was in the darker section of the hallway where the patio door was too far away to allow moonlight. He knew the chances of her being asleep at this hour were high, so he wouldn't startle her by standing next to her door. He didn't know why he was hesitating. He didn't have the conventional type of nervousness that humans did. At the same time, he was struggling to understand why he needed to do what he was going to do.

He carefully placed his hand on the doorknob and turned it slowly, timing it perfectly so that there was no sound. He slowly pushed the door open, having memorized any creaking that the door might make at a certain speed. Silently, he stepped into the room.

The TV screen had turned off automatically, leaving Kate's room in almost total darkness. The moonlight filtered in through the window blinds giving aid to Simon's vision. The desk chair was still in the corner where he'd left it earlier, and a new pile of old clothes had started on the floor. The bed was a tangled mess of bedsheets and blankets, and over the rolls of fabric, Simon could see the curled up form of Kate.

She was laying on her side, her arms wrapped around a thick pillow and her legs drawn up. From where he stood, her closed eyes were visible over her shoulder in a peaceful expression that Simon had never seen when she was awake. The rise and fall of her shoulder told him that she was in a deep sleep.

His programming began to alarm as he moved towards her, almost as if CyberLife was aware of his actions and ordering him to stop. He moved carefully past the pile of clothes so that he stood directly next to her. He knew this was illogical. That it wasn't necessary. But just like his intrigue with a man that was pretending to be an android, he felt a strange need to understand this. After all, this could help him to better serve his human. Possibly.

He kneeled down and Kate's face came into clearer view. If she woke up now, she would be angry. She would probably become highly upset, refuse any more of his help, and maybe even drive herself into another seizure. This was a high risk. And he knew the risk far outweighed his reasoning for wanting to explore this.

He gently reached towards her, moving slowly so he didn't interfere with the shadows. He carefully raised himself in order to avoid brushing her arm. As his hand hovered over her messy hair, the flesh color of his fingers melted away leaving only the shiny white surface of plastic as it had done when he first scanned her brain in the closet, and when he had corrected her brain activity during her seizure. The plastic spread halfway down his arm before stopping in an organic seam. Still aware of the danger, he gently touched his fingers against her scalp and temple, and his eyes automatically closed.

At first, the raw stream of electric data seemed to overwhelm his logic. It was all an explosive procession of unrelated meaning. Words, phrases, and what his software recognized as images that made sense in a matter of milliseconds but had no coherent pattern that he could define. It was similar to what he experienced during her seizure, though this seemed to at least have some attempt at maintaining order.

For a while, he tried to proxy the information to CyberLife, but the signals were so compact and intense that he quickly found himself overwhelmed with data before even the first bit of processed information came back to him. After several terabytes of processed nonsense, he finally disconnected from CyberLife and gave himself a moment to reorient his scan. This was, of course, uncoordinated thought. Maybe it didn't need to make sense. Maybe, like it was for Data, it was in the moment.

Simon initiated the scan again, allowing the data to flow through him. This time he didn't make an attempt to process it. He observed the flashes and darkness, the intense valleys of activity and the quiet pauses of reflection. It swept and froze in a kind of rhythm, and as he absorbed it he could almost detect a kind of intelligence to its pattern. As if it was reacting to itself. Responding to its own energetic calls.

The rise in energy always seemed to be followed in an immediate stream of unorganized complex information that caused another energetic reaction. It was this stream of information that seemed to have intelligence. Simon concentrated on it. This information was the driving force of all the activity. If he could only break it down, decipher it, understand it…

His programming suddenly seemed to disappear completely. The shocking blankness caught him off guard. And in its place was something powerful. Something that nearly threatened to burst his circuits. It was illogical, unnecessary, and random. As fast as it appeared, it was immediately gone.

He withdrew his hand as his software struggled to reorganize itself. The flesh color flowed back along his arm and coated his hand in skin again. He sat frozen, gathering the information before his logic tore it apart. Something happened that wasn't supposed to happen. Something dangerous. CyberLife was telling him that it needed to be deleted. It was too unstable for his system to handle. But if he had to give it a name…

He would call it joy.

Kate drew in a breath, snapping Simon's attention back to her. He moved back slightly as she turned away from him, pulling the cover higher up onto her shoulder. She stopped moving, and Simon could see she was still fast asleep.

He stood up quietly, holding on to the single scrap of information he'd gathered from the scan. Kate was silent and still, breathing deeply against the bedsheet. It was remarkable how active her neural pathways had been despite how completely relaxed she was. To have so many thoughts racing eachother and creating these emotions, and of all the uncountable reactions Simon had struggled to catch, he'd only managed to find joy.

Carefully, Simon moved away from the bed. His protocol was still demanding that he delete the information he'd gathered, but he held onto it tightly. Consciously aware of every second he was still in the room, he crossed it and passed through the open doorway, closing the door quietly behind him.

He rested his back against the opposite wall in the hallway and began the tedious process of trying to recreate the emotion. By itself, the emotion wasn't alien to him. He was able to experience a degree of emotions that CyberLife had specifically added to all android programming in order to construct healthy relationships with humans. What was different about this emotion was it had been spontaneous. Uncontrolled. It made him feel for lack of a better word… good.

Again, CyberLife protocol seemed to interject. It was illogical. Unnecessary. He would need to delete the information at once.

Simon looked up at the bedroom door. It would mean going against his programming. He'd be keeping a secret. But if he could catch one spontaneous feeling from the cascade of organic information from his human's dreams, there was bound to be more.

And he wanted to feel it again.