RENT – I'll Cover You (Reprise)

Her ribs fractured instantly.

Connor felt them, beneath his hands, snapping like twigs when he started chest compressions. Delicate. Fragile. He had felt it when her heart slowed to a stop. Her fingers going slack over his hand.

Blood was still pouring out over his hands every time he pushed downward on her chest. Splattering over his arms, bright red, arterial and angry. So much blood.

The faint sound of sirens reached his ears. Distantly, he knew there were still people around him. The airport security had never left, though he thought a couple of them might have gone in pursuit of whoever had stabbed her. Some of them were surely still just civilians, her fans, looking on in horror.

No, he was barely conscious of anything except for her, pale and lifeless beneath him. Dead. He kept compressing at a perfect one hundred beats per minute, waiting for the ambulance to arrive.

"Sir, please step away," Connor must have blanked out longer than he thought, because when he looked up, he saw the flashing lights. An EMT was addressing him, knelt down across from the scene.

"I'm not stopping," he said through gritted teeth. Something in his voice must have frightened the man, because he flinched and held up his hands.

"You're doing a great job, but I have to get her onto the stretcher," he explained diplomatically. Connor glanced behind him to see that they had already wheeled the stretcher over from the back of the ambulance. One of the airport security personnel was explaining to the other EMT what had happened.

Connor paused his compressions and scooped Taylor up into his arms in one swift movement. The EMT in front of him cursed and stumbled out of the way as he deposited her onto the stretcher and strapped her in. Then he climbed on top of her, his knees on either side of her torso, and resumed CPR.

Both EMTs stared at him in shock for a beat before they started to move, loading the stretcher into the back of the ambulance with him still on top of it. One of them was speaking into their radio, "Dispatch I have a trauma alert inbound, ETA 10 minutes."

The back door of the ambulance slammed shut, leaving him alone with Taylor and the first EMT. A few seconds later, the sirens resumed their wailing and the ambulance pulled away. The EMT wasn't paying him any mind now, focusing instead on his patient, moving around him to connect her to the monitor.

"Can you stop for just a second? I have to do a pulse check." He sounded hesitant, even now.

"I'm not stopping," Connor repeated, his LED flashing red. "She has no pulse aside from the one I am giving her. Currently asystole."

The EMT looked at him dubiously, then finally seemed to notice the LED flashing on his temple. He frowned. "Alright, fair enough. Keep going."

Instead, he busied himself trying to put in a working intravenous line so that he could start pushing medications. They both leaned as the ambulance took several sharp turns, the supplies in the cabinets rattling.

"Still asystole?" He asked once he was securing the line with tape. Connor just nodded, bracing himself as the ambulance careened around another corner. "Pushing epinephrine."

He pulled out a small cardboard box and opened it, dropping two halves of a syringe into his hand. He screwed them together and pushed the medication, flushing it with saline. After a couple seconds, he asked, "Anything?"

"Still no pulse." The ambulance was rolling to a stop now. The door opened and the stretcher was being rolled out onto the concrete. There were people there, waiting to receive them, joining them as they wheeled in through the automatic doors to the emergency room.

"Trauma bay one," one of them said, nodding down the hallway. Then she looked right at him and said, "You have to get off. You can't go into the bay."

Before he could protest, before he could tell her the same thing that he'd told the EMT, he felt the man tugging on his sleeve. "Do what she says, pal. You'll only be in their way in there. They're going to help her."

Still, he hesitated, his arms still pumping up and down at a perfect one hundred beats per minute. He was an android, after all, and didn't get tired. They had paused outside the trauma bay doors, and everyone had turned to stare at him.

Connor climbed down from the stretcher because he knew that he was slowing the whole process down. He knew that his chest compressions were not fixing Taylor, that she needed surgery and blood and whatever else they would do behind those doors. As soon as his feet touched the floor, they wheeled the stretcher onward.

He watched the doors swing closed, conflicted. Suddenly empty. Encompassed by a crushing silence. Until he felt a hand touch his arm. The EMT, still hanging around. Connor's eyes flicked down over his nametag: Tom.

"I'll show you to the waiting room," Tom gave him another uneasy once over. Connor could only imagine what he looked like. "You might want to get cleaned up, first."

"No." He had meant to soften his tone, to be friendly, but he snapped out the response anyway. Tom flinched, and he lowered his voice when he said, "No. Just show me where to wait."

Tom did, leading him back through the emergency department, past a nurse's station and medical personnel and into a waiting room. There were people out here too, waiting to be seen. They turned when the door opened to see if their name would be called, and the room went oddly quiet at the sight of him, covered in blood, his LED still circling between red and yellow.

Connor retreated to a fairly empty corner, away from the humans, away from everything. He settled into a chair, found that Tom was still following him, a vague look of concern on his face. "You need me to call someone for you?"

Connor knew he should call someone. Alex. Jake. Markus, even. Someone who could think of what to do. He was getting error messages across his display about his stress levels and was trying to calm himself, though. He couldn't focus on more than one thing at a time.

"No thank you, Tom." He managed to say with a somewhat even keel. "I appreciate all of your help."

Tom paused for another breath, looking like he wanted to say something else. Then he simply shook his head, "Good luck."

Approximately seventeen minutes later, the news story broke on the television in the waiting room. It interrupted the gameshow that had been airing, contestants guessing the prices of random items and trying to win prizes. Connor had been watching it as an attempt to distract his processors from replaying Taylor's death in his memory, trying to manage his stress levels.

His LED had been a solid amber for a good ten minutes, but when Taylor's face replaced the spinning wheel so suddenly on the TV, it blinked red again. The photograph zoomed away to the corner of the screen, and the news anchor began to speak.

Connor didn't listen to the report. He knew everything there was to know. An android had stabbed Taylor, right in front of him. He'd let it happen and then done nothing to save her. He only hoped that somewhere deeper in the hospital, someone else was having more luck.

It was a whole five minutes after the story broke that Alex called him. Connor calculated that he must have tried to call Taylor first, probably more than once, before he dialed Connor instead. He wasn't sure if Taylor's phone was tucked away in one of the bags that they had left in the car at the airport, or in one of her pockets, surely cut away and lying abandoned on the floor of the trauma bay.

"Hello?" Connor answered. He knew that he must. He had to tell Alex what had happened. He glanced down at the blood on his clothes, drying on his hands.

"Connor." Alex sounded relieved that he had answered. Perhaps he thought that if Connor could answer the phone so calmly, nothing could be wrong. He really didn't understand androids very well. "What the hell is going on out there?"

Connor glanced up at the headline on the television. Reports of Taylor being stabbed at the airport and rushed to the hospital. Police on scene. "The story is true."

"Fuck." Alex breathed out the curse. He heard a brief rusting on the line. "What happened? Is she alright? Why didn't you call me?"

"She was stabbed by an android," Connor said. "I think it may have been a Helping Humans android. I accompanied her to the hospital. I believe she is in surgery, but no one has come out to speak to me."

He found that he couldn't tell Alex the whole truth. Not like this, on the phone, miles away. "I'm sorry I didn't call."

He also couldn't explain that he'd been spending every second since Taylor disappeared behind those doors trying to keep himself from self-destructing. He didn't have time to go into detail on android stress levels and his current state of mind.

"Was she conscious when you got to the hospital?" Alex asked hesitantly. It was like he could tell there was more that Connor wasn't saying. Connor shouldn't have been surprised. The man was an expert at reading Taylor's subtle lies.

"She was not conscious," Connor said evenly, hoping Alex didn't push him any further. The line was silent for a minute, and Connor was watching the news anchor speak on the news, saying that they had no information on the suspect at this time.

"I'll be there soon. By tonight, if I have to steal some asshole's private jet. Call or text me immediately if anyone gives you an update."

"Got it," Connor looked down at the blood covering his hands again. "Alex, will you call Jake? I can't right now."

"Sure, of course," Alex was already moving, probably throwing his things together, packing. But he paused as he said, "Connor, are you alright?"

"Don't worry about me. I will see you soon." He ended the call before anything else could be said. The news report finished, and the television cut suddenly back into the gameshow, where the contestant was jumping up and down, screaming about the car she had just won. But all he could hear was the screams.

Another fifty-eight minutes passed. The other patrons in the waiting room had gotten used to the sight of him by now. While no one was paying any attention to him, no one approached him either.

Connor was still seated in the farthest corner of the lobby, with a good four chair berth around him on all sides, which was really quite impressive considering how many people were waiting. He was completely still, both hands resting against his knees. He might as well be in stasis mode for all that he had moved in the last hour.

His LED was still a solid yellow. Every time the door to the emergency room opened, he would move his eyes in that direction, hoping to see a trauma surgeon, or a nurse, or the woman who had kicked him off of the stretcher. Just like the humans, he was waiting for his name to be called.

He didn't bother looking toward the other end of the waiting room when the automatic sliding doors would open and admit newcomers into the triage. All the new people seem to find him with their eyes almost immediately, covered in now dried blood, LED flickering. That's why he didn't see Lieutenant Hank Anderson enter the waiting room.

"Jesus Christ, kid." Hank's voice was unmistakable, though, cutting through the low hum of talking in the room. Or maybe it was just his mind that was humming. The voice was low, gruff, familiar, and it made Connor's head snap up immediately. "You look like shit."

Hank was looking down at him dubiously, a deep frown on his aging face. For once, he looked remarkably sober, and Connor wondered fleetingly if he was sticking to his resolution to quit drinking so much. He was wearing one of his brightly patterned shirts and was clutching a bag in one of his hands.

Connor stood, but then he didn't know what else to do. Just seeing the lieutenant in front of him had broken down the little composure he had been working to keep over the past hour. His LED was already flashing red again as he tried to fight down the emotions.

"Hank, I—" He stopped, because his voice modulator was malfunctioning. His voice came out broken, wobbly. Distorted. Then he realized that his face was wet, and his internal fans had kicked on, trying to cool him. He was crying.

Hank was still frowning, but he sat the bag in his hands down in one of the many empty chairs around them and opened his arms. Connor didn't hesitate to fall against him. He was shaking now, sobbing, and Hank placed both of his arms around him, wrapping him in a hug.

Connor continued to sob, and he was sure that this would be the point where he self-destructed. His emotions felt out of control. He was falling to pieces. To his surprise, though, his stress levels were actually falling. He hugged the lieutenant back, his face buried in his shoulder, and somehow it was helping.

When Connor finally stepped away, rubbing the tears from his face, Hank scowled at him. It probably had to do with the dried blood that was still coating his hands. "Come on, Connor. You have to get cleaned up. You can't sit here like this."

"I'm not leaving." He said, firm, but Hank didn't back down either. He gestured to the bag that he had brought along, and on closer inspection, Connor realized it had clothes inside.

"There's a couple of cops outside, came to find you and ask you some questions. But they recognized you and called me first," Hank explained. "Now, I will try to find out what is happening with Taylor if you go wash the blood off of you. For fuck's sake. There's a truck stop a block away. You won't be gone long."

Connor opened his mouth to protest but closed it again at the glare that Hank gave him. He glanced down at the bag of clothes, his brow furrowing. "They're mine. The only thing you left at my house was that stupid CyberLife uniform."

"Thank you, Lieutenant." Hank waved him off, making sure he was headed for the doors before he walked toward the desk to ask after Taylor. Connor fought the urge to hover, to see if he could hear anything before he left, and instead resolved to get himself cleaned up as quickly as possible.

When he returned to the emergency room, his blood covered clothing now in the plastic bag, Hank was waiting in the seat where he'd previously been sitting. Connor had spotted the two police officers Hank had mentioned outside of the ER, but they hadn't tried to talk to him. He crossed the lobby, eager to hear any news.

"She's still in surgery," Hank said before he could open his mouth to ask. Connor instantly deflated, dropping into the seat next to him. "They wouldn't tell me anything else since I'm not family."

"Alex is on the way." Connor said, texting him the new information as he said it. Alex responded immediately, saying that he was boarding the plane now. "I don't know about her brother, Jake."

"Alex told me he was out of town until tomorrow," Hank said. At Connor's surprised look, Hank just shrugged. "He called me while I was on the way over here. He was concerned about you."

Connor puzzled over the idea that Alex would be concerned about him while Taylor was in critical condition, but he couldn't figure it out. It was one of those human traits that he couldn't reason with. Illogical.

"You want to tell me what happened, or do you want to give your statement to the cops outside?" Hank crossed his arms over his chest. Connor glanced back at the sliding doors, his LED circling yellow.

"I can compose a report and file it remotely. I still have access to the system." He said after a moment.

"Do you now?" Hank seemed amused by that. Just like Taylor had been, when he had used his access to look up members of Helping Humans in the database. It felt like ages ago now. "Are you planning on coming back to the precinct? Jeffrey is going to try to stick me with some other asshole if you don't."

"I..." Taylor had asked him the same thing. He didn't know why every thought jumped immediately to her. He knew that Hank was trying to distract him. But he glanced down at his hands and swore he could still see the blood. "I would like that."

"Good. I can only stomach one asshole at a time." Hank genuinely seemed pleased. Connor should have been happy, too. "Are you sure you don't want to tell me about it? Not as a statement, just...you know."

They sat in silence for a while, the offer occupying the space between them. Connor didn't know if he could say it out loud. If he wanted to. It was enough to have the scene playing in his memory over and over again. But perhaps if he put words to it, the memory might be satisfied.

"It happened right in front of me," he said quietly. "We were leaving the airport and she stopped to talk to her fans, take pictures. I didn't even know what had happened at first, until she said my name. And she started to fall."

His LED was flashing red again. He remembered her legs giving way as his arms came around her, the woman across from her screaming at the sight of all the blood. "She wanted me to help her, but there was nothing...there was so much blood. I couldn't even slow it down. I felt it, when her heart stopped."

He was staring at his hands, seeing the blood again. He clenched them into fists, squeezing his eyes shut. Hank put a hand on his shoulder, but he didn't feel like he deserved the comfort. "I shouldn't have let her stay. I should have made her leave."

"Taylor isn't the kind of girl who would have let you make her do anything. You did everything you could, kid." Hank was right, of course. Taylor wouldn't have left even if he'd told her to. He'd fallen into the same trap that he always did, that illusion that she always knew what she was doing.

"What if she dies?" He said the thing he'd been afraid to even think, for fear that it might come true. Technically, she had been dead when they rolled into the hospital, but dead people could be resuscitated. She could be fixed. At least, he hoped she could be fixed. He couldn't imagine what he would do if she couldn't.

"Don't think like that. They're still working on her. No one is going to let her die." Hank was trying to be reassuring, but even he didn't sound like he fully believed it. Perhaps he was remembering when his own son had died on an operating table, maybe in this very hospital. "We just have to wait."

Waiting, it turns out, was awful. Every hour that passed without any kind of news felt like it was chipping away at his sanity. The emergency room waiting area had and underlying sense of desperation to it, a stench of purgatory with an endless revolving door.

Connor was watching the people come and go now. He found it more distracting than anything else he had tried. A singular glimpse into someone's life, possibly their most vulnerable moments. They walked through the sliding doors to sign in and have their fates decided. Some moved through immediately, some left, and some, like himself, were left to wait indefinitely.

The doors slid open again, but it was Hank who came through. The lieutenant had stepped out a few minutes ago to take a phone call. Now he crossed the lobby and reclaimed his seat next to Connor. In the interim hours, since he wasn't covered in blood, other people had deemed it safe to sit a little closer to them.

"They caught the android," Hank said after a few minutes of silence. He seemed to have worked his way up to saying it, and he still looked a bit apprehensive. Connor glanced over, reading the tension in his body language.

When he didn't respond for another minute, Hank sighed. "The damn thing self-destructed. They cuffed it and put it in the cruiser and it just started bashing its head in."

Connor found that he wasn't surprised by this news. In fact, he wasn't really affected by anything Hank had said. Was this what humans considered shock? He just wanted to know what was happening with Taylor. Nothing else mattered.

"Weird behavior for a deviant, don't you think?" Hank tried again, despite his indifference. "They didn't even get it back to the station. Didn't ask it any questions."

"It wasn't deviant." Connor said finally.

"The fuck you mean it wasn't deviant?" Hank said immediately, sitting up straighter in his chair. "If it wasn't deviant then someone ordered it to do what it did."

Even Hank couldn't say the words. Or maybe he didn't say them out of courtesy to Connor. Whatever the case, Connor gave him a blank look. "The android protest group known as Helping Humans has been using non-deviant androids to carry out their agenda."

"How the fuck do you know that?" Hank didn't sound disbelieving. He was just trying to piece the puzzle together for himself. Connor realized he knew this mostly because of the information Raj had given Taylor, which had later been corroborated by Markus and North.

Raj was still working to move androids across the United States border, apparently now in Canada and Mexico. Connor knew he could not expose such an operation and betray Taylor's trust, so he said instead, "Markus came to Washington D.C. because of threats to his life from these androids. It's also why he stayed behind today instead of coming with us."

"Why the hell doesn't anyone else know about this?" Hank said next. He sounded disbelieving now.

"Androids do not have rights." Connor said simply. Hank opened his mouth to protest, to say something else. Then he closed it, letting out a string of curses under his breath.

"Guess you're right. What were they supposed to do, call the police?" Connor had the sense that Hank was more talking to himself now, muttering, angry. "Fat fucking joke that would have been at the precinct."

The lieutenant continued grumbling to himself for a few minutes. Connor watched a couple on the other side of the lobby. The woman was visibly pregnant and visibly pale, her arms wrapped around her belly. The man was hovering next to her, worried, talking, and she was trying to wave him off. He could read her lips whenever she said, 'I'm fine.'

They were called back almost immediately. Connor watched them go, and he couldn't stop himself from running a scan. He couldn't detect a fetal heartbeat.

"Do you think they were after Markus?" Connor blinked, turning back toward Hank. The older man was frowning now, the lines in his face becoming more prominent.

"I don't know," he said honestly. He didn't want to think about it. He didn't want to blame Markus, to resent him for this. "Maybe. If they thought Markus would be returning to Detroit with us. But they had just as much cause to silence Taylor."

Connor clenched his hands into fists. He didn't want to do this, be detective on Taylor's attempted murder.

"Yeah, except like you said, androids don't have rights." Hank was watching him closely now, perhaps trying to tread as lightly as possible. "Doesn't make sense that they'd attack a human. They have to know there'd be repercussions."

"Perhaps they don't care about repercussions. Or perhaps, as you suggested, they were really after Markus and Taylor was just a convenient substitute." Connor found he didn't like this explanation at all. That Taylor had died in his arms because of an accident, a secondary target. "That android would have had a very specific set of orders, though. It would have been programmed to target Taylor if Markus was not present. The end result is the same."

"Do you think you could find out what the android was programmed to do? Or who it belonged to?" Hank said. Connor frowned. His LED flickered yellow.

"It depends on the damage done to its processors and memory when it self-destructed. It sounds as though there will be little left that isn't destroyed. It was probably programmed to self-destruct if captured."

"Fuck." Hank said, sighing heavily. "These guys sound like a bunch of assholes. Assholes who know what they're doing, which are the worst kind of assholes."

Connor nodded, but he was distracted now because the door leading back to the emergency department had opened again. A woman stepped out clad in blue surgical scrubs, her eyes sweeping the room.

It took him a moment to recognize her because when he'd rolled in on the stretcher, she'd been wearing a surgical cap and mask, ready to roll into the bay. All he'd been able to see was the dark blue of her eyes as she told him to get off the stretcher. Now, her whole face was visible as she crossed the room toward them.

"You're the android who rolled in with Trauma Delta." She pulled to a stop in front of them. Her hair was still tucked under the surgical cap, but he could see where sweat had collected at her temples and along her hairline. Her dark blue eyes drifted over to Hank. "Are you family?"

"Is she okay?" Connor cut in before Hank could muster a response, nearly stuttering in his flustered state. The woman, whose badge identified her as the trauma surgeon, narrowed her eyes at him.

"Are you family?" She repeated, completely ignoring his question. Connor's programming had prevented him from harming humans. Even as a deviant, he had never had the inclination. Now, however, he had an unbelievable urge to grab the woman and shake her.

"We aren't," Hank said finally, speaking before he could act on his impulse. "I've known her since she was a kid, and her and Connor are—" He paused, glancing at Connor, realizing he didn't quite know how to finish the sentence. "Her family is on the way in from out of town. Can you just tell us if she's alright, doc?"

She pursed her lips, sighing out of her nose. Then she looked between them, considering for a moment. Finally, she said, "She is stable. We are moving her to the trauma intensive care unit. I can't tell you anything else."

Stable. Connor knew he should have felt more relief. Taylor was alive. But it was the way that the doctor said it, the indirect way that she wasn't looking them in the eyes. He was designed to pick up on subtle body language and social cues, after all.

"Can we see her?" Connor asked next, pressing the issue. If he treated this like an interrogation and read the signs, maybe he could trick her into revealing some information.

"I'm afraid not. You will have to wait until family arrives." She shook her head, firm.

"If you just ask her," he insisted, "She'll say it's okay."

"Connor, was it?" All of the amiable inflection had drained out of her tone. She was looking directly in his eyes now when she said very clearly, "You will wait in the ICU waiting room until family arrives. If you ask any more questions trying to get me or anyone else to violate privacy laws, I will have you escorted out. Is that clear?"

"Yes, ma'am." Connor swallowed. He glanced at her badge again. Amelia Odell. "Thank you, Dr. Odell."

Her expression softened just a bit. "Someone from registration will come so that we can admit her under her actual name. Do either of you have her personal information?"

"I do," he said, nodding. Whatever he didn't know offhand he could easily find out, though he knew Taylor wouldn't appreciate it.

"Good. I'll leave a number so that you can call when her family gets here, and we can speak again."

When she left, going back through the door to the emergency department, Connor frowned. He turned the word stable over and over in his processors, trying to find the trap inside of it. Stable meant alive. Stable meant not rapidly declining. Whatever else it meant the doctor had given him little clue.

"You look put out for someone who just got pretty good news." Hank said, interrupting his thought. Connor looked over, tilting his head.

"Put out?"

"It's an expression. Dissatisfied." Hank sighed.

"I will feel more at ease when we know the nature of Taylor's condition." He said in response, still frowning. "We should find the ICU waiting room." He hesitated. "Are you staying?"

"I ain't leaving you alone." Hank rolled his eyes at him, like it had been a stupid question. "I'll have to go home and let Sumo out at some point, though."

"Alex should be here soon. He got on the plane hours ago." Connor said, standing. Hank followed suit, and they set about delving deeper into the hospital to find the ICU.