Lana Del Ray – Gods & Monsters
Taylor blackened the screen of her phone as Alex's name popped up again. She held the power button and slid the icon on the screen until the device went dark for good, completely off. She knew she couldn't avoid him for too long or he would be on the next flight to Detroit to throttle her, but she wasn't ready to talk about it.
Slipping her lanyard over her head, she ducked into the staff entrance of the precinct while avoiding eye contact with the people waiting in the lobby. Thankfully, no one noticed her, and it was the only stroke of luck she'd had all day.
"Miss Kolbeck!" She winced as she sat her bag down on the desk next to Hank's. Glancing up, she met the angry gaze of Captain Fowler. He was standing in the door of his office, glaring down at her. "My office! Now!"
She could have shriveled up and died on the spot as everyone in the office turned to stare at her. Straightening her spine, she walked toward the glass office avoiding their sympathetic gazes. They had probably all gone through this walk of shame at one point or another, she mused.
Fowler was already seated behind his desk when she entered the room, so his glare was at maximum effectiveness as she crossed the room to sink into the chair across from him. He let the silence permeate for a few moments before he spoke.
"I told you when you came here not to turn my station into a media shit show."
"Captain—"
"Shut up." His tone silenced her immediately. She felt like a child being scolded, like she had been called to the principal's office. "You are going to listen. For once. I have had to assign officers to stand outside and turn reporters away. Not only are they here for you, now they all want to know the details of these deviant cases."
He paused, pinching the bridge of his nose as he sighed. "Meanwhile, there are real crimes going on in this city. I can't afford to play ringleader to this circus and I certainly don't have the manpower to be wasting cops. Do you have anything to say for yourself?"
Taylor ducked her head, staring at her hands for a moment, before she looked up and locked eyes with the police captain. She could see the lines in his face, the hard set of his jaw, and could almost feel the exhaustion in his bones mirrored in her own. She wondered how long he had been a cop. She wondered if he knew about her history with Hank. She wondered how much he knew about her childhood.
"I apologize." She said finally. His eyebrows twitched upwards for just a moment, the only tell that she had surprised him. No doubt he had expected her to start listing off excuses. She had none.
"Give me a reason why I shouldn't take that badge you're wearing and kick you out of my police station." Taylor opened her mouth to fire back, to say that she deserved to be here, that she had been instrumental in finding the deviants on both crime scenes she had been on, and that she had to do this.
Instead, she said, "I don't have one." She sensed that Captain Fowler didn't want to hear any of her reasons. He leaned back in his chair and considered her again.
"You're lucky," he began, arching an eyebrow at her, "that I hate that asshole. He always makes my cops look bad on the news." She felt the smile stretching over her face, even as he noticed and scowled at her. "If you purposely draw attention to this case again, I will kick you out. Don't test me again."
"Yes, sir." She exited the office as quickly as she could, while she was still ahead. As she descended the steps from Fowler's office, she found that Connor was standing near the bottom, waiting for her.
"Good morning, Connor." He must have been drawn out by the Captain's yelling; she hadn't seen him when she'd walked in. He nodded.
"Good morning, Miss Kolbeck." She was still smiling over her small victory in the office as she walked for their desk. Connor trailed after her.
"Are you ever going to call me Taylor?" She asked, raising her eyebrows at him as she took her seat. One look at Hank's desk told her that the lieutenant hadn't arrived yet. The same arrangement of mess was splayed across it as her first day at the precinct. Connor hesitated at the end of the desk, glancing between her and his own seat.
"Taylor," he amended, his LED flickering yellow for the briefest second. She grinned as he took a seat.
"Better. So, Connor, what are we going to do while we wait for Hank?"
"You seem to be in better spirits today." Connor observed. Taylor watched his eyes as they moved back and forth over her face, knowing that he was probably scanning her again for stress levels or heart rate or however he knew how she was feeling.
He had accompanied her in the taxi home yesterday and talked about the deviants that had gotten away because Hank had refused to let him cross the highway, then continued speaking about other deviant cases he had noted that might offer them a lead on the case, filling up the silence until they reached her house and he informed her that her stress levels were down to an acceptable range. At some point while he was talking, her hands had stopped shaking. She had stopped remembering the knife pressed to her throat over and over again.
"I didn't get fired from the case, so there's that." She shrugged. "Hey, you said you downloaded the blueprints to this place when we first met, right? We should explore."
"There aren't a lot of areas that we have access to." Connor told her, watching her as she stood and stepped back around the desk.
"Then it won't take that long. It's better than sitting here and staring at the computer." She placed her hands on her hips and stared at him expectantly. He stared back for just a moment before giving in and joining her.
Connor led Taylor around the station, though they made slow progress. She stopped to talk to nearly everyone that they passed, so much so that Connor was starting to suspect that it may have been her primary objective from the start. He stood a step or two behind her and observed her conversation with a multitude of Detroit police officers.
She made it seem effortless, greeting each person with a smile, shaking their hands and asking them about themselves. Her face was perfectly attentive as they told her all manner of things, from perfectly mundane small talk to details about their personal lives. She was delighted when they came across Chris Miller again and asked after his wife. When she found out he also had a three-month-old son named Damian, they spent a few moments bent over his phone looking at pictures.
"Sorry if I'm boring you," she said a little while later as they circled back toward the desks.
"I don't get bored," he responded. Taylor glanced away. His LED flickered yellow, and he had the feeling that he'd had at the Chicken Feed the day before, that he'd said the wrong thing. But she turned back with a smile just a moment later and excused herself, saying she had to call her agent.
"32 messages, Alex? Really?" The blonde's expression was full of amusement as she leaned her elbows into the desk. She balanced the phone in the crook of her neck as she continued to dig in her bag. "Please tell me you aren't getting on a plane."
She finally extracted her ear buds from the purse and busied herself with transferring the call to them. She didn't notice that the bag was halfway off the edge of the desk, absorbed in whatever Alex was now yelling in her ears, but Connor did. He tried to reach around her to catch it before it fell, but the strap slid through his fingers anyway.
Taylor turned with a groan when she heard the thump. She leaned over and started shoving items back into the purse while Connor collected the few that had rolled away under the desk. He returned with a tube of mascara, two pens, and a pack of gum. Kneeling, he caught sight of another object that had rolled all the way to the edge of the desk.
Alprazolam 1 mg PO TID
Take as needed for anxiety
The bottle disappeared from his hand so quickly that it took a moment for him to realize that Taylor had snatched it away, shoving it back into her purse. He glanced up to find her staring back at him, blue eyes wide, her face blanched white.
"So someone on the crew was recording after the cameras were off and posted the video?" She was still listening to whatever Alex was saying in her ear, but she followed him with her gaze as he stood and took the seat beside her. "I'm not sure what you want me to say. I'm not sorry."
Connor's LED was a solid yellow ring as he continued to consider the bottle of medication He was thinking back to the previous morning and Taylor's encounter with Detective Reed. Later in the afternoon, her state of shock after being threatened by that deviant. When she had told him about her mother killing herself.
"I'll think about it. Send me the information." The conversation seemed to be drawing to a close. Connor studied Taylor's side profile as she swiped through the screens on her phone, nodding along to whatever her agent was still saying on the other line. He tried to place the pieces of the puzzle together with the always smiling blonde he had come to know over the past couple of days but couldn't reconcile the two.
Lieutenant Anderson had many personal issues. He had figured that out very quickly, and though he didn't know the details of why he hated androids or distracted himself by drinking, he was working on it. Now he was starting to suspect that Taylor had her own personal issues that weren't quite as obvious.
"No, I'm staying in the house." She paused, closing her eyes with a sigh. "It's fine. I'm fine. Thanks, Alex. I'll talk to you later. And I'm going to listen to every single one of those messages."
Taylor ended the call and turned her chair to face his, startled when she found him still staring intently at her face. "Your agent seems concerned about you." Connor observed, thinking she might offer more specifics if he started the conversation.
"He's been my agent for a long time. He's more like family. Which means he likes to worry about me for no reason." Taylor flashed him another smile, but Connor had been watching her smile all morning. He was starting to detect the subtle differences in them, how sometimes, like now, they didn't reach her eyes.
"Why would he be concerned about you staying in your house?" Connor asked. Her expression faltered.
"It's my childhood home. It's weird being back there." She said nonchalantly.
"My programming allows me to detect when people are lying." Connor responded conversationally. Taylor stared at him in disbelief, her eyes wide, lips slightly parted.
"Why are you asking me this? What does it matter?" Taylor shifted and turned her chair away again. Connor's LED flickered, but he was unsure of what to say to backtrack over his mistake now that she was angry.
"Are you two going to be like this every time I come in?" Hank grumbled as he walked past them to his desk.
"Not if you'd come to work on time." Taylor smiled into the disgruntled look that Hank sent her way. Connor watched again as the blonde seamlessly changed her expression, all the turmoil from just a moment ago evaporating as she sat forward in her chair. "It's not like we can go look for deviants without you."
"You won't be coming with us next time." Hank said as he fell into his chair. Taylor was stunned into silence for just a moment, before she scowled at the older detective.
"What do you mean I'm not coming?"
"It's too dangerous for you to be at active crime scenes. You aren't a cop. You don't even have a gun." Hank said dismissively as he looked over the files that had been left on his desk, clearly avoiding her eyes.
"Then let me carry a gun." Connor could detect the blonde's stress levels rising, her posture shifting to aggressive. Hank stared at her, deadpan. "I have my concealed carry license. I know how to shoot."
"Absolutely not." The lieutenant was shaking his head.
"Taylor's expertise has been essential in locating deviants at previous crime scenes." Connor spoke up as the two glared each other down. She blinked at him in surprise. He had said the same thing to her yesterday afternoon before he took her home. She smiled at him now, the anger from his questioning a moment before now forgotten.
"Thank you, Connor." She turned back to Hank, "I also have permission from CyberLife and the Captain to be here. You can't leave me behind."
"What do you think they're gonna do if you get murdered, huh? Maybe they'll post it on social media for you so you can get some more likes." Taylor flushed, red coloring her cheeks and her neck. Both hands were clenched on the arms of her chair, but Hank wasn't finished. "Hell, CyberLife will probably throw a party since you won't be around to talk about how much you love deviants anymore."
"I have received a report of a deviant in the area." Connor's announcement threw a blanket of silence over the two. "We should go."
"We should." Taylor agreed, standing from her chair and staring down at Hank in challenge. He continued to glare at her for another moment before sighing and standing as well.
"Let's go."