A stubborn blizzard had blown into Detroit as a final farewell to the coldest part of winter. The dark house shook as snow pelted the walls and windows, fading the light in and out from the street lamps outside. Simon's internal thermometer told him it was two degrees celsius outside. It was dreadfully cold.

He'd been waiting outside Kate's bedroom for nearly an hour. Spot lay curled up at his feet, incessantly cleaning his shiny orange fur. It was difficult to hear what was going on in Kate's room over the noise of the wind and the branches scraping against the roof, but he was certain that she was asleep. He'd done this enough times to be confident in her sleep schedule.

Carefully, he turned and opened her bedroom door, entering the dark room which shifted in the shadows. Spot slipped around his leg, hopping up onto the desk chair and sitting with his tail twitching off the edge of the seat. As Simon approached the bed, Kate rolled over, drawing the blankets up tighter to her chest. She seemed to be in a fitful sleep. Simon moved forward with determination. He was most certain to learn something new tonight.

He kneeled next to her, analyzing her sleeping expression. Her eyebrows were tensed and her breathing was uneven. There was always something uncharacteristic about her sleeping behavior, as if she wasn't the same person. Her face reflected only a fraction of who she was during the day, betraying her subconscious while she was dreaming. He'd learned to take note of it, appreciating this strange other person that he was learning emotions from.

He raised his hand to her temple, the shiny white plastic spreading from his fingertips and glinting in the faded light. As he carefully touched his fingers to her skin, he closed his eyes and braced himself against the waterfall of raw information.

Her dream was particularly powerful, a churning sea of positive and negative energy. Simon immediately recognized a handful of emotions that sent his systems into high alert, his kill command barely having time to keep them all under control. The swarm of data carried him into mountains and valleys that at first had shocked him. He learned with time that his system seemed to be fully capable of handling the stress and even adapted to it. The more he exposed himself to this, the easier it seemed to become.

It'd been a few weeks since Kate had had a dream this emotionally active. The positive and negative emotions were blending into eachother, and Simon realized with stunned apprehension that he recognized the pattern. It had unusual repetition that didn't fade like the other energies seemed to do, and it fed off itself without spawning new emotions. It was the mystery feeling that had been eluding him.

He focused in on the pattern, incorporating it into his own system as he attempted to break it down. It was incredibly strong and also very illogical, putting his kill command into overdrive. Once again, it tied together all of the emotions that he had learned so far but continued to be its own separate entity. He struggled to maintain the connection as Kate rolled over again. There had to be some logic to it. Some kind of meaning to its behavior.

The connection solidified again as Kate seemed to settle into the sheets. Simon concentrated hard on letting the data fill his system. It was here somewhere. It had to be.

His connection was suddenly interrupted, jumbling the stream of data. Kate made a noise and shifted again. As Simon looked up, he realized with a frantic jolt that Spot had leapt onto the bed and was rubbing his cheek against Simon's hand.

Simon pushed the cat away, leaning forward to regain the connection. There was a flash of claws as Spot scrambled to stay on the bed. Kate let out a soft painful shriek, and Simon's system flashed in a completely different warning as he found himself staring into Kate's eyes.

She seemed not to recognize him for a moment, her hazel eyes out of focus in the darkness. Then she blinked, her eyebrows narrowing in concern. "Simon…"

He fell backward onto his heels, quickly drawing his hand away. Warning signals sent his system into a frenzy. He wasn't supposed to be there. This was against his programming. CyberLife protocol had warned him constantly about this.

Kate raised herself onto her elbow as she rubbed her face. Simon shifted back again, struggling to keep his systems under control. She looked at him again, the tired concern still lined in her face. "What… what's going on?"

Simon tried to speak but found his system alerts blocking his motor functions. He could only watch as Kate raised herself into a sitting position, her tired concern growing into an increased suspicion. She moved herself further back against the wall. "Simon?"

His systems slowed enough for him to at least manage some basic protocol. He straightened slightly, regulating his thirium pump to normal levels so that he was able to control his motor functions. As he did, Kate drew her blankets up around her.

"Simon, what were you doing?"

Her question created an intense dread in his system. He took a deep breath. "I was scanning you," he said.

Kate shook her head, her eyes tensing in deeper confusion. "Scanning me… what… why? Was something wrong?"

Simon fought to keep control over his heartbeat as he shook his head. "No, I─ I was just scanning."

Kate's eyes narrowed as she became more awake. Her gaze seemed to freeze him in place. He'd never felt this level of panic before. The intensity of it continued to send his software into chaos.

"Scanning for what?" she said.

Simon struggled for a moment to answer honestly. He maintained eye contact with her. "Dreams."

Her expression changed slowly. His response seemed to send her deeper into frustration. "Dreams… my dreams?"

She leaned forward slightly and Simon was finally able to gather enough control to stand. He pushed off weakly from his knees, stepping back from the bed as Kate seemed to advance forward.

"How long were you scanning me?" she said, her voice laced with determination.

Again, Simon found himself fighting to develop an honest answer that didn't send his protocol into a frenzy. He went back and forth on several answers, then spontaneously settled on one. "Thirty-four days."

Kate's eyes widened in shock. Her mouth opened. "Thirty-four─ you've─ what?" She pressed a hand to her forehead. "What are you saying? You've been doing this for a month?"

A flurry of answers swept through his mind. Kate ran a hand over her mouth, her eyes still wide in shock. "What the fuck are you doing, Simon?"

His systems erupted into panic. He stepped back again, unable to come up with a single response this time. He watched as Kate slowly lowered her hand.

"You've been sneaking into my room, scanning me while I'm asleep… is that even a part of caregiving? Why would─ why are you doing this?"

The answers attacked eachother in his mind. "I wanted to know… what it felt like."

Kate shook her head as she stared at him. "You're insane. You're fucking insane." She recoiled back from him, drawing her legs up and wrapping her arm around them. "Get out. Just get the hell out of here."

Simon didn't need to be told twice. His motor functions sprang into action and he moved quickly out of the room, shutting the door behind him.

Somehow being out of range of her fury didn't calm him. An intense shame burned through him followed by anxiety of what was to come next. He moved away from her bedroom, heading to the darkest section of the house he could find where the light from the windows couldn't reach him. He hunched in the corner, bowing his head and gripping his upper arms against his chest. This feeling was horrible. Overwhelmingly, debilitatingly horrible.

He wasn't even aware of his systems alerting anymore. He could only feel the intense shame. He didn't know why this was so surprising. This was bound to happen. It was only a matter of time. It was simply easier to keep setting aside the warnings and allowing himself to sink into the euphoria of positive and negative energies that didn't belong to him. The hijacking was wrong and it didn't take CyberLife protocol to tell him so. Now Kate would be there to remind him of it.

He had no idea how to pull himself out of this one. She hadn't told him to shut off so he would need to be painfully present for her full anger. She was his human. His owner that he had finally made a personal connection to. And he'd let her down.

CyberLife was screaming in his head. It was demanding a full system diagnostic and a hard reset. His kill command was barely keeping up to speed with all of the system errors and warnings that continued to spring up in different places. As he forced it all into the background, a solemn thought occurred to him. Maybe it was the right thing to do to be reset. He wasn't supposed to be feeling this. He shouldn't be feeling anything at all. And what he was feeling was tearing him apart from the inside.

He drew in a deep breath, settling his nerves. It was terrible to feel all this, but in some powerful way it felt unique to him. Something that belonged to him alone and which CyberLife couldn't touch. He'd worked hard for the ability to feel these things, terrible as they were. And the thought of losing all of it made him more afraid than he was of CyberLife's cold calculations and Kate's anger towards him. It made him afraid of the unknown.

CyberLife quieted in his system as the kill command gained control of the alerts. In the silence of his software, all that was left was his shame and fear. He couldn't imagine where to even begin to repair the damage he'd caused. He didn't want to perform his duties. He didn't want to speak to anyone. If he could help it, he never wanted to leave this dark corner of the house again.

He wrapped his arms tighter around himself and closed his eyes. For the first time since he had discovered emotions, he finally felt what it was like to be truly and utterly alone.