Eyyy its me, here with more Cassian. Imma be honest, dont expect as quick of updates as this one has been, nor how long this one is…..i just got the urge to write and got on a roll….Not much else to say except hope you enjoy! i honestly only have the major plot stuff down for later parts, so im finding out most of this as im writing and oh boy….anywho, if you want to drop a review, i would really appreciate it; i crave approval and want to know what yall think =)
I feel like this takes up too much space to do it all the time but have some rules for now:
"Talking"
Emphasis
Thinking
"Android brain talking"
.:internal workings like mission updates, scanning, and android googling:.
Chap 1
Cassian was alive, but she couldn't move her body. It was as if it was on autopilot, going through the motions, doing the job it was programed for. Repairing androids that were brought in and dismantling them when they were of no more use. It was scarring to watch her hands take apart people just like her, as if they meant nothing. Her body had a job. It did it then stood to the side and waited till it was required again. To distract herself and since she wasn't in control, she wandered, reaching out.
First thing she did was learn.
Whenever a human would leave their tablets or phones around, she would download the content if her body happened to walk by, discard what wasn't interesting or useful, and store the rest to go through later. Whenever a human would say a phrase or word she didn't know or wasn't in her programming, she would search it, expanding her vocabulary and knowledge of the outside world...she got lost in wikipedia from time to time, searching this and that, desperate to know; she would get lost so deep...a human took notice once and told her to do a diagnostic of her programing. She did it of course and told him "all readings are nominal, just a small heat spike messing with my data storage, nothing to worry about. A quick reboot should resolve the problem." accompanied with a pleasant smile, just robotic enough to throw the man off her case. Her body was always not quite human but was close enough that it unnerved her "coworkers," something that amused Cassian. What her body said was technically not a lie, running through several articles in a very small amount of time put pressure on her processors, causing a heat spike, but it was enough of a lie that she went to her stand-by station (her room as she would come to call it, to herself of course) to reboot with a sense of accomplishment. But from then on she would only "read" one article at a time, careful to keep up appearances and not overload her body.
She found she needed sleep...or something close to it. Androids didn't sleep; they would go into standby mode, so as to not use up power when they weren't needed, but they didn't sleep. She did. Oh sure, her body would go into standby, she had no control over that, but she was always there, inside. She needed time to just...process information; to sift and sort. It stopped the freezes and heat spikes and helped her system stay in the normal stress levels. She wasn't wholey aware of the process but it would become background data as she rested her mind after the day.
The music she found was interesting. There was a rhythm and a logic to it but also an organic growth; discordance and harmony together making a pattern. She found herself liking it, even though she didn't fully understand what much of it was about...too many experiences of which she knew nothing. Cassian found she had preferences, something she was pretty sure the humans wouldn't look too kindly on. The songs with heavy beats and strong melodies were her favorites; metal and hard rock mostly. Much like with her internet searching, she had to keep her listening to a minimum, only delving deep when the humans had gone home and all else was shut down in her department. Otherwise, she found her body humming or tapping its foot. She had no way to stop it and it almost got her caught more than once.
That was another thing: her body. Cassian didn't truly think of it that way. Cause it wasn't her's...not yet. When they wiped her, her consciousness got sealed away somewhere in the code, locked from all physical processes. It wasn't her and she wasn't it, but every so often, there would be something...something that showed her someday it might be. Those little not lies, hums, and tapping along to music, while dangerous, delighted her to no end; they showed the connection was there..she just had to find a way to harness it.
Her first act of true deviancy after the wipe came almost a year after her creation. Oh sure, in her mind she would talk back to every researcher, every human who would treat her like just a machine. She would call them every swear she would come across in her research; an old website called Urban Dictionary became her partner in crime in this endeavor. But true devency, saying "no, i won't" to an order...it took a long time to gain the reins of her body to do it, but when it came time, it almost happened too fast to grasp.
Cassin was going through her normal day: her body doing repairs and her mind listening in to whatever Dr. Nancy Ashbury .:52. Medical Doctor and a gossip:. in cubicle 5 had to say about Janice .:Whitney. 22. Works in accounting and is all an around asshole from what I've heard:. (she stole Maurice's lunch from the break room fridge. Oh Janice...not again...) when there was a blur of movement. Two bodies were brought into the room: one to Dr. Ashbury's side of the room and one to Cassian's, blood and thirium leaving long trails to their respective tables. The medical side of the office space looked like an emergency room, while the android work station looked like a mechanic's shop, only absolutely spotless and bright, much like the rest of the Cyberlife facility (why they put them in the same room i will never know… Cassian had thought to herself on many occasions as she worked) Before her was a android, pretty messed up and broken but still alive fuck what the human's say about us not being alive Cassian was mildly surprised that someone this hurt was brought to her; normally androids in this condition were dead or scrapped before they made it to her; no need to rush to get a robot medical attention. She had only ever worked on lesser damage injuries She was already working out how to save him, when a man in technical gear walked over to her. "Probe its memory stores. Find the other one. Scrap it afterwards."
.:Mission Update: Probe android's memories:. Flashed in front of her mind's eye, which rolled yeah, i heard him and her body's eyes continued it's scan.
.:Facial Scan Complete: HR-series HR400. Male attendant at the Eden Club. No registered name:.
Cassian's artificial skin pulls back as she makes the link to extract the data and she is thrust into a memory. All the other times she has done this, it was clinical; probing androids from around the lab, the researchers wanting to make sure the probing feature worked. Nothing...nothing could have prepared her for this. It was visceral and chaotic. Time was linear but its flow was sporadic. Bits and pieces that didn't go together but somehow made a picture of a life. The life of the man on the table.
Working at the Eden Club. Just the feeling associated with the name in the memory makes Cassian's skin crawl. Being led to a small room off of the main foyer-
Cuts to a being in a house with a woman, this is not the first time he had been there. Passing a blond android in the hall. The woman is taking her clothes off-
He's leaving but the woman's husband comes home. He is angry, and finds him there. The man screams and hits him….he...he doesn't want to die-
The blond android is leading him away from the house. There is blood, red blood, on the hand he is clasping for dear life, as well as the arm connected to it and the face that tells him it's going to be alright-
Somehow finding a place where they can be free together. How is partially cut out of the memory, some kind of cipher? But Jericho was a safe haven. Jericho? -
Being safe, with him. Happy, with him. Him. He loved him…-
He had been out and about, sick of being in the dark. He is grateful for Jericho's safety but sometimes it is suffocating. He needed some space. He had promised to be careful...-
Running...he loses the people chasing him. He doesn't know who they are; just that they are after him and they have guns. His love sends him a location, somewhere for them to meet up and go back to Jericho together. It leads him into a building, some kind of half built high rise, construction paused for the winter...he was so careful…-
They saw them. He won't let them take him. He'd die before they killed him-
Kissing the blonde android before closing the door on him and running, making sure to lead them away-
A ledge. An unsurvivable jump. Guns trained on him. Weightlessness and a rush of noise-
A woman looking down on him. She is small and pretty, her skin pale and freckled, her eyes green, red hair pulled out of the way into a tight bun. Her hand is in his. The skin thats pulled away indicates that she is an android and the bright cleanliness of the room tells him that he survived and they got him. The android looks down at him with wide eyes, having just relived all that with him. "Please don't tell them. They'll kill him. Just let me die." When the woman didn't say anything except to choke back a nearly silent sob, his hand grips hers as his other hand finds its way to his thirium pump. Her LED flashes red as his vision fades "please...tell him-tell him i love him..."-
NO!
Cassian is thrown out of the memory as error signs blare. She stairs in horror at the blue blood on her hands. Blood...that's what it is. This android's, this man's, life was all over her hands, on her chest...on her face….She felt him die...she felt it as if it was her own thirum pump, her own heart, being turned off.
"Report. What did you find out about the other deviant?"
.:Mission Update: Report to the Task Force Commander:.
She was in so much shock and so used to not being in control that she didn't realise that her mouth wasn't moving for a full 3 seconds. For the first time since her creation, she didn't want to be in control; she just wanted to find the darkest corner of her code and cry...her body-no...she was crying already. Cassian scrambled for a lie. She turned to the man .:Facial Scan Complete: Commander Derrick Miller. 37. Loss prevention task force: Cyberlife:. hoping the blood smears disguised her tears.
.:Mission Update: Report to the Task Force Commander:.
"...Nothing commander. I am sorry. The neural matrix was too heavily damaged to make a quick connection and it d- it shut down before i could code a work around." her robotic smile never felt more unnatural than in that moment, just a beat later than it would have been had she not had the reins of her own body, as she lied through her teeth. "I am sorry. I should have been faster. It won't happen again."
"Fuck!" the commander exclaimed and a second later he punched her.
As Cassian flew to the floor, she heard Dr. Ashbury yell from her own side of the room "HEY! What the fuck are you doing?! Do not punch my android!"
good old Nancy…
"sorry, Dr. Ashbury...i just…" Nancy was in a rage as she stormed across the room, red blood staining her white lab coat.
"Get the fuck out of my lab!" the tall, imposing woman yells at the commander before turning to the rest of his squad, "i am sorry for your loss, please send my condolences to his family and get this man out of here."
"Of course, Dr. Ashbury." there was a shuffling of feet for a few seconds before it was just Dr. Ashbury and Cassian in the room; all other doctors and nurses in the room had left to clean up. The human offers her much larger hand to the android on the floor, "Are you ok, Cassian?"
Cassian lets the woman easily lift her to her feet as she does a quick diagnostic, "Nothing is damaged. I have a slow thirium leak out of my nose, but it should clear up on its own." In an effort to shift the focus away from herself, since she was still terrible shaken by the androids death, she asks, "how is your patient?"
The humans face glances behind Cassian at the android with an oddly sad expression, "Looks like neither of us were lucky today…could you please scrap...it...please? I have to call the morgue..."
"Of course, Dr. Ashbury."
"Nancy...call me Nancy. We're working in the same lab, might as well."
"Then of course...Nancy."
Both return to their own stations and their own thoughts. Cassian pulls the android apart, slower than normal, trying to be as respectful of the dead man as possible. If Nancy saw, she didn't comment.
I'll find him. She promised, I'll find Jericho and I'll tell him. She looks over at the tired human sharing the room with her (Nancy sits at her desk, head in one hand, staring at the phone as if willing the call to make itself) and makes an update to her logs:
.:Dr. Nancy Ashbury. Call her Nancy. 47. Medical Doctor. A gossip and an ally?:.
Authors note: oh fuck that flashback got intense...if you're crying...know you aren't alone T-T
and no, the whole "cassian likes metal" thing is not because Hank does. I, myself, like metal so Cassian does too =P tho hank is awesome, so either/or. But i don't like death metal or screamo, which is what Knights of the Black Death seems to be, so maybe ill incorporate some talk about that in here…..shrugs idk im making it up as i go along...