Hank hadn't been having a good dream, but he never had good dreams anymore so he still didn't appreciate being woken up. Hank groaned and slammed his head deeper into his pillow, squeezing his eyes shut. The phone on his bed side table continued to buzz angrily, rattling against the wood beneath.
"Fuck off." He rumbled, his voice rough from snoring, and as if the device heard him, it fell silent. Hank sighed in relief and relaxed back into the comfortable embrace of sleep, its dim warmth enveloping him.
The phone started ringing again.
Hank growled and rolled over, seizing the thing, which rumbled in his hand like an angry bumble bee. He answered the call and pressed the screen against his ear.
"What the hell do you want?" He demanded, tossing off the blankets over him and immediately regretting sitting up so quickly. He lowered his head into his hand with a groan.
"Hank, it's Fowler." A familiar voice emanated from the speaker and Hank lifted his head, suddenly very awake.
"Jeffrey, what are you doing calling me?" He asked, turning the digital clock to check the time, grimacing at the 10:23 AM that was displayed. Not that early, but early for him.
"Reed told me he bumped into you at the sex club case he was working, shortly after that we're getting calls from the area talking about some damn car chase, android riding around on the roof of a cab and a van nearly getting hit by a train. Then, I get an anonymous call about a group using androids in the same sex club to kidnap and sell humans on the black market. What do I find when I get to the location but five busted combat droids and a couple-a kidnappers delivered to me practically with a bow on top." The police chief ranted through the phone, and Hank leaned away from the speaker as the volume of the other man's voice was like a knife through his ear and directly into his brain. Hank hoped it was his head injury that was giving him trouble, as opposed to a hangover from two beers and some change, because that would be pathetic.
Just as Hank thought about getting up to get a glass of water and some painkillers, he spotted just that on the bedside table. Four tablets arranged neatly next to a whiskey glass full of ice water. He smiled slightly despite himself.
"Jeffrey, I can explain." Hank began.
"Don't bother. I just need to know if the android people saw was yours and not one working for the traffickers." Fowler stated sharply.
"He's not, mine, he's Cyberlife's and he's on loan to me for a job." Hank explained with a sigh, scooping up the pills and swallowing them down with a gulp of the chilled water. There was a long pause on the other end.
"…he?" Fowler asked, confusion tinting his voice.
"It, whatever." Hank snapped back.
"Alright, that's all I needed to know." The other man replied.
"Great, nice talking to you Jeffrey." Hank said sarcastically, moving the phone away from his ear to hang up. His thumb was hovering over the small, red button when the chief's voice stopped him.
"Hank, wait."
Slowly, he lifted the device back up to the side of his head.
"What?" He asked wearily.
"The men we picked up said they nabbed some old guy, you matched the description." Fowler said slowly.
"Yeah, it was me, what of it?" Hank prompted.
"Are you alright?"
Hank blanked, sitting in his confusion for a moment, as though the question had been asked in a foreign language.
"What?" He asked dumbly.
"It was a mess down there, are you alright?" Fowler asked again, impatience tinging his previously genuine tone.
It still took Hank a moment to wrap his head around it enough to respond.
"I'm fine Jeffrey, a few scrapes, some bruises, nothing that needs worrying about." Hank replied softly, allowing himself to relax a little. He and Jeffrey had been friends, once.
"Good." Was all the other man said, gruffly at that, but Hank knew him well enough to recognize the relief in that word. "So you're working for Cyberlife now?"
"I took a job from Cyberlife, I'm still freelance." Hank replied defensively, earning a chuckle from Fowler.
"Of course, you wouldn't be caught dead working for them. How much did they have to pay you to get you to agree to this job?" Fowler seemed to have relaxed a little as well. They had been friends. Once.
This was probably the first time they'd spoken in a little over a year, and it had been a little longer since they'd spoken with Hank sober.
"Twenty mil." Hank replied with a grin.
"Holy shit Hank." Jeffrey breathed and Hank laughed. "I can't believe Cyberlife has that much money to blow on you."
"Hey!" Hank said indignantly, but his smile grew.
"C'mon, I've worked my ass off all my life and I'll probably never even see that much money outside of a bank robbery or a money laundering scheme, but they're just gonna hand it to you. Figures." Fowler grumbled, but beneath the obvious displeasure was a hint of amusement.
"They're not just handing it to me Jeffrey, I have to work for it." Hank insisted.
"So they've got you investigating deviants?" The tone of the conversation suddenly turned more serious.
"…not exactly." Hank replied, rubbing the back of his neck and drinking some more water. He appreciated the biting cold of it on his insides.
"I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that since what you're implying is illegal." The chief responded.
"Thanks Jeffrey."
"Don't thank me yet."
Hank paused, by Fowler's tone he figured he was done sleeping for the day, so he got to his feet and began rummaging around his room for a clean set of clothes.
"Uh oh, what is it?"
"Since we happen to find ourselves hot on the same trail, I figure we can help each other." Fowler said calmly, and Hank was forcefully reminded that this man was first and foremost a member of the Detroit Police Department.
"Cut the crap Jeffrey, what do you want from me?" Hank demanded, pulling a shirt off of its hanger with more force than was necessary.
"Actually, I'm offering this time around, I'll be making demands later." Fowler replied smoothly.
"What do you mean you're offering?" Hank asked, stopping in the middle of his floor and glaring skeptically in the direction of his phone as though he might catch Jeffrey's eye, despite the man not being there.
"About an hour ago we got a call, a disturbance in an abandoned apartment complex. Nobody's lived there for years but when we sent officers to check it out, they got jumped by an android."
Hank stood up very straight.
"Deviant?" He asked.
"We think so. Gavin's down there right now, but I want you to check it out." Fowler said, and it didn't sound all that much like a request.
"You know I don't work for you anymore."
"Yeah, but when you did you were the best cop I ever had, and I think you still are that man, much as you're trying to bury him under the anger and the drinking."
Hank didn't have a reply for that, merely pressed his mouth into a line and waited.
"I'll send you the address once we're done talking so you can get down there and look it over. I know you're going to do whatever you want, you didn't listen to me even when I was your boss, so I won't bother telling you what not to do. My only condition is once you're finished there, you call me and share whatever you learned, got it?" Fowler demanded.
"Can do." Hank replied, still standing in the middle of his room, shirt laid on the bed.
"Alright." The chief finished, and for the second time, Hank moved to end the call.
"And Hank?" The other man asked, his tone softening back into the way they used to talk, back when they were friends. Hank felt a vague longing for that old comradery, Jeffrey had always been a by-the-rules kind of guy, and Hank had respected the hell out of him even as he antagonized him.
"Yeah?" He asked, allowing himself to also slip back into the familiar tone.
"…Take care of yourself."
The police chief hung up. Hank looked down at the phone in his hand, frowning slightly.
"You too Jeffrey." He said to no one in particular, tossing the device aside so he could get dressed.
Fifteen minutes later he was clothed, somewhat cleaned, and had directions to the address he would soon be visiting. Oddly, he hadn't spotted Connor the whole time it took him to get ready.
Hank walked into the living room and glanced around, not seeing the android anywhere. Sumo lifted his big, fuzzy head from his paws and huffed at Hank, his tail lifting and flopping down in a singular wag. Hank shuffled over to him and crouched down to scratch him behind the ears.
"You know where he went?" He asked the dog. More for himself, to quash the rising sensation of unease. Just a few hours ago Cyberlife had been willing to scrap him for a few minor injuries and a failed mission. Could it be they hadn't changed their minds despite the repairs?
"Mr. Anderson." A voice sounded from behind him and Hank nearly toppled over.
"Jesus Christ, you scared the shit out of me!" Hank shouted and turned as he stood to face the android. He looked as good as new in the clean clothes, even his hair looked immaculate. Hank was immediately suspicious.
"My apologies, it was not my intent to frighten you." He stated.
"Yeah, sure. Where the hell did you come from?" Hank asked grumpily, stepping away.
"I returned to Cyberlife to report on recent events, obtain additional thirium, and do research for the case." Connor replied.
"How do I know they didn't replace you?" Hank asked, resting his thumb against the outline of the gun on his hip.
"They didn't, thanks to you." Connor replied, and Hank wasn't sure if he was on the receiving end of blame or gratitude. However, he remained unconvinced.
"Show me your forearms, skin off." Hank demanded.
Connor cocked an eyebrow and raised his hands as if in surrender. The skin disappeared from them and Hank frowned, watching as the android hiked up his sleeves. With some caution, the man stepped forward and read the small printed model numbers on each arm.
Hank let out a small sigh of relief.
"Satisfied?" Connor asked.
"Yeah, arms don't match, you're you." He said, stepping around the android and into the kitchen.
Connor paused, considering the information, realizing that Hank had replaced one arm the previous night, so they shouldn't match, and he smiled to himself.
"Don't get comfortable, we're leaving." Hank called from the other room where he was pouring himself a generous thermos of coffee.
"Where are we going?" Connor asked, walking over and watching Hank from a small distance.
"I got a tip from the police about a possible deviant case, we're going to check it out." The man replied without looking away from where he was stirring his coffee. Abruptly, he turned, scooping his keys off the table and marching toward the door.
"Right now?" Connor asked.
"Right now." Hank confirmed, throwing the entrance open and stepping aside to let the android out past him. Connor walked past the threshold and into the brisk, damp air. "Be a good boy Sumo." Hank called into the house before closing and locking the door.
They buckled into the car and got on their way. Hank waited before turning on the music, he had something to ask.
"So, how'd Cyberlife feel about the events of last night?" He asked, a little worried.
"They are allowing both of us to continue working this job, but the cost of the android you destroyed will be taken from your reward." Connor explained. Hank was glad to hear they'd gotten away with the whole repair stunt, more or less.
"How much am I losing?" He asked, failing to conceal a pleased smile.
"Four million, seven hundred eighty thousand, two hundred dollars." Connor recited and Hank nearly slammed on the brakes.
"Four million!?"
"Nearly five."
"Jesus fucking Christ, seriously?" Hank kept glancing to his side with wide eyes.
"Indeed." Connor replied, a small grimace tugging at his lips, as though he wasn't pleased with it either.
"Holy shit, you better not get damaged again." Hank muttered while shaking his head.
"I am worth a small fortune." The android said, throwing Hank a small, smug smile from the passenger seat. Hank huffed out a laugh.
"You call that small?" He asked.
"Cyberlife does." Connor replied, and Hank laughed again, louder this time. "They have also informed me of a slight change to our mission objective."
"Oh?"
"More and more cases of deviance have appeared all over the city, too many for us to handle on our own, so Cyberlife is utilizing their combat personnel to deactivate the deviants they can." The android explained.
"And let me guess, while Cyberlife's trigger-happy thugs are taking the easy cases, we're supposed to deal with the tricky ones?" Hank suggested.
"Correct, and possibly identify the source of deviance itself." Connor finished, and Hank's eyebrows lowered.
"The source?"
"Yes."
"Jesus, that is tricky." The man replied with a shake of his head.
"Your investigative prowess was one of the primary reasons for your assignment to this case." Connor explained.
"Let's hope it's enough." Hank said. With that out of the way, he flipped on the sound system and started blasting some metal.
It was a longer drive, taking them the better part of an hour to get across town to the address Fowler had texted Hank. The further from the downtown area they got, the more abandoned the city looked. Grey shells of houses and apartments rushed past, canvasses for peeling paint, mold, and bleak graffiti.
Connor didn't fully understand why a human would choose to spray paint messages of doom onto empty walls when the doom was so readily apparent. "This is the end of humanity" a message read. Why put it there if it was indeed true? What good would it do to write it in messy red scrawl if there wouldn't be anybody to read it?
Perhaps it was the vague permanence of it, knowing that even if the writer vanished, the words would still be there for a while to come. A mild form of immortality.
They drove on, the buildings abandoned during the near extinction by the dead and those fleeing death slowly bled into buildings abandoned before that time. Old factories and failed businesses, crafted from red and tan bricks.
Connor thought about bringing up the research he'd done, but was hesitant to mention that he hadn't exclusively researched deviancy. A good portion of time had been spent looking further into their encounter with the kidnappers and the possible implications of it.
Connor chose to remain silent instead.
They made it through an album and a half of heavy metal before slowing to a stop outside an apartment complex. It was falling apart, wood rotting under the microscopic teeth of molds and mildews, windows broken, roof collapsing, and doors hanging crooked.
"Fowler told me he called you." A voice called as Hank and Connor stepped out of the car. It was Gavin Reed, standing on the far side of the holographic crime scene tape, arms tightly crossed and glaring from under his eyebrows. "For the record, I think it's a bad idea."
"Well you'd know all about those, wouldn't you Reed?" Hank bit back with a cocky, but tired, smile. The detective's frown deepened.
"Just keep your boy toy away from me." He snapped, glancing to Hank's side at Connor, then he turned away and stalked into the building, his repaired android right behind.
"C'mon Connor, let's get this over with." Hank grumbled. Connor didn't say anything, but he mirrored the sentiment.
They entered the building, floor crunching with dirt beneath their feet as they followed Gavin up three flights of creaking stairs to the apartment. As soon as Hank peered through the rotten doorframe his mouth twisted with disgust.
"Are those fucking pigeons?" He asked, glowering over at Reed.
"Yep, android was feeding the damn things." The detective replied, leaning against the wall to the right of the entrance. "Go on in, crime scene's all yours." He finished, gesturing to the room with mock courtesy and a smug smile.
Hank grunted in displeasure, but wasted no time in entering the apartment. Connor followed, and noted that it was just as decrepit as the rest of the building, with the added filth of the waste of dozens upon dozens of pigeons. The floor was almost a solid white-grey from their excrement, and Connor felt it beneath his shoes.
He was briefly grateful for the lack of an ability to feel disgust. Hank wasn't so fortunate and began rather violently shooing away the birds, with little effect, lifting his feet high in response to the nasty flooring.
It was a small space, meaning it didn't take long for Connor to make his way through it and examine the evidence. The most intriguing and confusing aspect was the bathroom. An LED in the sink, confirming the presence of an android, almost definitely a deviant as well. Not only that, but the adjacent wall was littered with components. They were arranged painstakingly on the wall, on shelves and hooks, almost tenderly displayed.
Connor scanned the pieces, noting that while they were designed specifically for androids, none of them were standard or essential. They were all custom modifiers built from scraps and created to attach to the default components of an android, and they were all for combat.
"Holy shit." Hank muttered from behind Connor, having entered and taken in the macabre wall of android machinery.
An arm piece designed to turn into a spinning blade, a chest compartment rigged with a flash-bang type device that could render an android temporarily blind and deaf, a custom jaw piece built with razor sharp teeth and the ability to be dislocated, and several more.
"I've seen parts like this before." Hank muttered, and Connor turned to look into his face, where a dark certainty had settled. When the man did not elaborate.
"Mr. Anderson?" Connor prompted him.
"I see this kind of crap on lots of the androids I'm paid to take out. Rich folks pay extra for souped-up machinery, especially if they keep more than one android on them at a time. It's a power play, their droids either look scary or are scary to make the owners look stronger than they actually are." Hank explained, stepping up to the wall. "But I don't know what this stuff would be doing here, or who might've been using it." The man trailed off, and Connor went back to analyzing the wall.
Perhaps…
The thought was cut off by a throat being cleared. Both Hank and Connor looked over at Detective Reed who was standing in the doorway.
"Got something for the tin can to take a look at." He said, glaring lazily at the android. Connor looked to Hank, who gave him a nod of confirmation before going back to the wall.
The android stepped away and approached the detective. Gavin turned without another word and walked out, obviously Connor was meant to follow, and he did. They exited the apartment and went down the hall, out onto the roof.
It was sunnier that day than it had been previously, the fog having cleared from earlier, but Connor's temperature gauge informed him that it was still chilly. There wasn't much across the rooftops aside from the unkempt gravel and the unused ventilations systems.
"Over here." Reed called and led Connor to the edge of the building. He was looking down at something in the wide alley. Connor joined him and followed his gaze.
"What is it detective?" The android asked, scanning the area for anything relevant to the case.
"Karma, you son of a bitch." Was the reply.
Before Connor could react to the statement, Reed and his android, which had joined them at the ledge only a moment before, shoved him with all their strength over the edge. It was a three story drop onto the hard concrete below, and there was nothing in sight for Connor to slow his fall with.
Connor thought about how all protection-qualified androids were equipped with a few functions that exist only to save humans in dangerous situations. Human protection was not his primary function, but he was qualified, so he came equipped with all standard abilities. Including:
1. The formation of a kind of shield out of paneling. If an android is close to shut down and their human remains in danger, the android's paneling, reinforced plastic and Kevlar, will rearrange to create a barrier around a human against the nearest surface, like a small fort. This exposes the android's biocomponents, but the human is protected in the event their android is deactivated. The shielding cannot be removed by anyone except the android's owner or a recognized authority. It's colloquially known as an 'android coffin.'
2. A small supply of human needs or the ability to generate them. Higher-quality androids can 3D print food and pull water from the air, simpler models come with non-perishables. Most also contain some basic first aid supplies. This way, and android can meet a human's needs in dire situations.
3. A program specifically designed to prevent a human from harming themselves. Where an android is temporarily enabled to ignore commands from their owner and forcefully restrain them until help arrives. Stronger and more resilient, an android can pin someone down to prevent human-on-human violence or an attempt at suicide.
4. The impact mitigation function. A human hit by a vehicle or jumping from a burning building can be saved by their android standing between them and whatever they're going to be struck by. The android undergoes a minor explosion that instantly destroys them but provides a cushion for their human, like an airbag.
Connor considered activating the fourth function as he fell, a partial detonation would allow him to survive so long as he carefully selected the parts of himself to sacrifice as cushions. Hank's demand for him not to get hurt again ran through his mind. However, as he performed some preconstructions, his body turned in air and he was able to recognize that in the shadows of the alley below there was the bed of a garbage truck, and it was lined with the pillowy padding that Connor himself was planning on deploying
He landed with a soft thump, taking no damage. The android turned to examine his surroundings with some confusion. The cushions had been androids, Connor could make out limbs and faces amongst the inflated padding. Then the open roof of the truck slid closed. The light above was compressed until there was none left, leaving Connor in the plush darkness of the vehicular prison.
He heard the growl of the engine and registered movement, falling back into the cushions from where he'd tried to stand. He was being taken away, and Connor had no idea where. He felt, and it was difficult to deny that it was indeed a feeling, afraid.
