Chapter 05: Dismantle Part 2
Summary: Hank and company fight for their lives while Connor tries to steal from Amanda.

In the next blink, he was upright and standing in snow. A countdown from 10 minutes blinked in front of him.

His eyelids fluttered a few times before he forced them to stay open, his head quickly turning left, right, up and then behind him. He was back on a familiar winding stone path, the plants and ground frozen and covered in six inches of white. There was no snowstorm this time, but the Zen Garden simulation was still locked in a state of winter.

Hank! Markus! There was a security breach and he needed to go back. Where was the exit?! They had been careful, he thought. Jericho had arrived pretending to be delivery men for Kamski's new sofas. Hank and he had come in the guise of asking questions about a suspicious death involving a long-time employee of CyberLife. Even Chloe had approached him at the Chicken Feed appearing to socialize with him; anyone watching would have noticed the kiss and believed it - even Hank had fell for it. Had Amanda figured out their plan despite all this? Or was it someone else? Markus had plenty of enemies, so did Connor once he became publicly associated with Jericho and the DPD.

In the distance, past the island he saw the faint glow of the hand scanner. There, the emergency exit! As his feet softly crunched the snow on the path, he looked around him for any threats, anything that would indicate that Amanda was present. The urge to sprint across was nearly overwhelming, but Kamski's warning forced him from going any faster than a hurried creep over the frozen grass.

The garden was still beautiful, representing human appreciation and desire to have mother nature controlled, trimmed and molded into the ideal. Despite his discomfort of the Garden, a small part of him wondered why this place was kept at all. To his knowledge, no humans visited or used this space. For machines, all this rendering of a manicured landscape was useless, wasteful; only humans would care about the art and beauty here ... and maybe deviants.

He was back in enemy territory, a place he didn't think he'd willingly return to, and in the simulated morning light and out in the open, he couldn't have felt any more exposed than he did now, not even his suicide mission back in CyberLife Tower felt as dangerous as this. At least he could hack the cameras there, here he couldn't even trust his own eyes ... he paused when he felt a tingling down his back.

He whipped around - nothing there - then looked down on himself. Gone were his jacket and the wool scarf that Hank had gifted to him just a week ago for Christmas, in their place was his original gray jacket and thin tie once issued to him by CyberLife.

No...

Warning!

Alarms started to populate his vision.

Warning! Stress levels increasing.

Warning! Extreme cold detected.

He shivered as an automatic response and tucked his arms in an effort to keep warm, to help shield his biocomponents - he realized a moment later how his right hand covered the blue triangle patch and his left went over the fluorescent arm band. He forced them away.

Warning! Biocomponents #8456w, #1995r, and #9782f reaching below functional temperature. His timer plummeted from 09:21 to 07:03 in an instant.

It wasn't this cold the last time he was here! Desperate to take back control, he read several lines of more failing biocomponents -

Something suddenly weighed down his right hand, inserted itself within the curl of his fingers. Instead of dropping it, Connor instantly lifted his hand to see what it was. It was a metal handle, his eyes followed the wooden shaft to the end. A shovel - and sense came rushing back to him.

His timer froze at 06:59.

This wasn't real! Of course, none of this was real. This cold, these clothes, these warnings, they were all information being fed to him by this place. His physical hardware wasn't here, it was back where Hank and the others were in danger. It didn't mean he could completely disregard all the error messages, his movements here were still restricted by the rules of the Zen Garden, but it looked like he could cheat a little.

He straightened up, clenched the handle tightly in his hand, and wiped his vision clean of the red warning messages. So Kamski hadn't lied about having some control of this garden, given the suspended countdown and the comforting weight now sitting in the android's hand. Connor would never think the man was trustworthy, but in spite of all his games, he was still a man of his word. He had delivered the tools Connor needed to access the root system.

But he couldn't stay here, Hank and the others were in danger ... weren't they?

The sudden appearance of the tool and frozen timer - albeit a little later than he'd anticipated - indicated that Kamski was still in control on his end, pushing Connor to finish the mission.

He had a choice.

Rush to the exit and gain nothing here or detour to the island in the center to steal the information they needed. This might be the best chance they get to enter the Garden so quietly. He knew what he wanted: wanted to slam his hand on that scanner and return to make sure that they were safe, but ...

He stared at the shovel. Hank always complained that Connor didn't have enough faith in people, adamant about going on missions for Jericho alone, not trusting anyone to finish a job unless he was involved.

His hand gripped the handle, the plastic creaking around the metal. With a desperate wish that he wasn't wrong, he decided to trust his partner and Jericho to keep themselves safe, to keep his hardware safe.

It was a goddamn battlefield. Whoever they were, they had blown the front door off its hinges and smoke prevented a clear view of their faces. One thing was clear, they moved like soldiers.

A bullet brushed past Hank's head and he instinctively ducked. Three more flew through where his torso had been and landed with a thud, thud, thud in the wall behind.

"Shit!" Hank crashed onto the floor of the lobby and scrambled for cover behind the upturned coffee table as his hand snapped down to draw out his handgun. For a moment he thought he had made a terrible mistake in hiding behind what practically amounted to a wooden board against a hail of bullets, but when he felt the impacts, but nothing punching through the wood, he grabbed a corner of fabric nailed to the bottom of the table and tore it away.

He whistled appreciatively. He had to give credit to that creep Kamski, he knew how to pick his furniture. It was lined with bullet-resistant ceramic plates - the shit even held against armor piercing rounds.

Beside him, the AP700s - one of them limping - tossed a dining room table to extend their barrier behind the front door. Simon and two Chloes immediately ran from the swimming pool room to take up positions next to Hank.

"Can you see anything?" Hank yelled out, hoping their android eyes would do better. Fighting through the stitch in his side, he pulled out his phone to call for back-up. No signal out here, shit.

Simon popped up his head for a moment to identify their attackers and - "Ugh!"

Hank tugged him back down, clamping a hand to Simon's fresh shoulder wound that was spurting blue. "Fuck. We need to - "

"It's alright, it'll stop leaking and self-repair." Simon pushed his hands away, paused for a moment to look at the AP700s and shook his head.

"What?" Hank tried to hear over the ruckus.

"No, none of us can see past the smoke!"

Hank read Simon's lips more than he heard the words. "Shit. What happened to this house having some kind of super security system?"

One of the Chloes answered, "Defensive only. The smoke, the windows and doors are reinforced to facilitate a retreat -

"The smoke? That's you guys?"

"Yes, it's probably the reason why they haven't charged in here yet. As for the offensive systems ... they are indiscriminate against androids."

Kamski was crazier than he thought. "What? Why would he do that?"

Hank wiped his hand on his pants, less his fingers slip while holding his gun. He only had this one weapon and if that was all they had against what sounded like at least ten automatic rifles, then they were fucked.

"Amanda. If she's gotten this far into the house, we - all three Chloes - will have been compromised."

"He'd sacrifice you all?"

She shook her head trying to halt his train of thoughts. "No, one of us will trigger it. You humans are so fragile. We can be repaired and restored from back-ups. He can do that for us, but we can't do that for him."

Hank wanted to argue, but a loud crack behind him had him spinning around. It was one Kamski's bizarre humanoid statues, it had crashed to the floor and fragmented into pieces, shards of it rolling onto his shoes. Next to its remaining stump, Markus was carefully carrying a loveseat - smoking in places and already peppered with holes - like a body shield over the length of the lobby. A third Chloe was right behind him matching his movements so the sofa could protect the both of them as they drew heavy fire. What the hell were they doing?

As soon as Markus and Chloe reached the left side of the room, she placed a white hand on the wall and with the other hand, began furiously typing on what Hank assumed was a screen only she could see. In the next moment he saw a panel slide open and - oh hell yeah, this was what they needed!

Markus dropped the sofa and from behind the safety of his temporary shield, he paused before making a decision and snatching several items from the hidden compartment. "Here, guns!"

A rifle was tossed Hank's way, but it was shot in mid-air. It clattered to the floor and he instantly saw that it was no good, the damage had compromised the barrel. "Dammit."

Markus changed tactics; he knelt and slid the weapons across. YES! Hank grabbed the nearest one to him and checked the magazine before sliding the safety off. He'd seized many illegal firearms before, working in the DPD as many years as he did, and this one was clearly illegal. Fully automatic, customized but still recognizable as AR-15 style - he didn't know how Kamski got his hands on them, but he didn't care, they were goddamn perfect right now.

"Markus!" Kamski yelled from inside the pool room and then there was a crash and some indistinguishable cursing. "Argh, ricochet!" One of the Chloes next to Hank moved to return into the back room, but stopped when Kamski shouted, "I'm fine! I'm fine. Markus, get in here. He's losing!"

"The hell you mean losing?" Hank hollered back, frantically debating to retreat into the back room or stay and defend.

"On my way!" Markus crouched and scurried across.

Hank made a move to peek over the barricade, at least provide some cover fire for Markus as he retreated into the pool room. He got two shots in - and was yanked back down. The third Chloe took up the task where Hank had been disrupted, firing a few bursts followed by an explosion outside, before a bullet caught her elbow. She returned behind cover with a grunt of frustration.

The table rattled in front of him as the shockwave rolled over it - then a lull in gunfire before it continued from outside again. "What the hell was that?"

The Chloe next to him answered. "A grenade. She shot it to break their ranks."

Hank looked at her hand that had pulled him down. Chloe explained, "As a human, you're no match against an android's precision and reaction time. You were about to get shot as soon as your head cleared over this barricade. I strongly suggest you retreat into the back room. Stay with Connor."

Useless. She wasn't saying it outright, but that's what she meant. He was useless - and she was dropping Connor's name to further convince him. This must be the deviant Chloe.

But wait! What did she say? She can see through the smoke? Of course they could, they made it, why would they blind themselves? "Hey, you said androids were out there ... Who sent them?"

"They're - "

"Anti-riot shields!" the third Chloe called from the back. She grabbed a shotgun from the wall safe and aimed. "They're charging! Get back!"

A shadow cast over them and instinct drove Hank to shove the deviant Chloe away from him. The figure vaulted over the tables -

BOOM!

A round from the shotgun knocked the shield away a couple of inches, just enough for Hank to fire a burst up along its side. The body collapsed but continued to struggle forcing Hank to kick off the shield and pop off a couple of rounds into its head. It slumped and stilled. Yeah, stay down!

That was too close. His breathing was heavy, his crash landing from earlier was starting to make itself known by the way his ribs were screaming at him, but hallelujah, he was still alive. On all fours and huffing, he crawled over, slapped a hand on the body's side so he could lean in and suck in a lungful of air, and then rolled it until it was face up.

"The fuck?" He couldn't believe what he was seeing. His ears were ringing, bullets still flying, his eyes tearing up from the smoke, he needed to move but he was frozen still. "What the fuck!"

The scruffy gray hair, dark circles under the eyes, mustache and beard - it had HIS face, the face he saw every morning in the mirror.

Connor ignored another series of increasingly persistent warning messages, large flurries tumbled in the air sprinkling his hair and shoulders with puffs of white. He brushed a hand over his hair to disperse some of the snow.

He sidled across the stone path, matching every snow-covered shape with a bush, a statue, a boulder or small tree from memory. Everything needed to be accounted for, nothing extra - wait, what were those? He cautiously approached a small clearing with a row of eight mounds of snow, each one about three feet high. These weren't here before and with the snow, he couldn't make out what was underneath. He raised the shovel's handle, about to nudge some of the snow off ... and then decided against it. He couldn't say why exactly, he just couldn't do it. It somehow felt ... disrespectful?

Backtracking, he found his way back to one of the fiberglass bridges leading to the island and exhaled to calm himself - such a strangely human and unnecessary thing to do - watching as his breath rolled up as steam. One foot was pushed forward and then weight shifted to it as an experimental step. He waited one moment, then two, and when nothing happened, he pushed the other foot out and then another step, then another, each one making soft crinkling noises over the thin ice covering the bridge.

More confident now, he crossed the bridge to finally find himself on the island. There was the trellis in the back with the frozen roses, the table beside it with Amanda's shears on top ... but no Amanda. He felt himself releasing a breath of relief before walking over to the fiberglass canopy at the center, fingers trailing down the white trunk, careful to avoid the flowers and thorns. His eyes followed the path down into the enclosed square of dirt.

With a last glance towards the rose lattice, he sunk the shovel into the ground, added his weight and lifted the chunk of dirt. Over and over, until a pile the size of a lawnmower laid next to him. He pressed the shovel down one more time - and thump! Hastily pulling the shovel back out, he crouched low and shoved a hand down into the hole, fingers digging into the dirt. He felt the roses' roots, felt their roughness and followed them down. He pressed farther until the roots became smoother, finer ... and then they completely changed into thick bundles of metal cords.

Bingo! as Hank would say.

He closed his eyes and was met with a fresh wave of new warning messages that almost cover up his entire vision before they're removed with a shake of his head. The cold was growing increasingly harder to ignore. He shivered, the shaking so uncontrollable his fingers slipped off the cables. Annoyed at the delay, he plunged his hand deeper, gripped the cords tighter, and opened a connection.

Discretely, he checked for Amanda's link. It was there! He initiated a tracking program Kamski had given him ... and in less than a second, he got it. The coordinates.

Still alert, he stayed still and looked around, waiting for something to go wrong, something he missed. When all he could hear was the thumping of his thirium pump, he sighed, pulled back his hand and rose from his crouch -

"Connor." A pleasant greeting ... coming from nowhere.

He swung around, shovel in hand - and was shoved into the climbing roses. Before he could push himself off the trunk, vines snapped up and ensnared his left arm, tightening and twisting until he could feel his plastic casing buckle, the thorns jutting through his skin and in between the plating.

His timer skipped several seconds. 06:28 and stayed there.

"It's good to see you." Her voice wasn't coming from any direction. It was in his head?

He tugged at his arm once, but in the corner of his vision, he saw an incoming haymaker punch and ducked to the side. "Argh." It only clipped him on the side of the head, but the force behind the hit was still staggering. He leaned against the trunk for balance but that was a horrible mistake as the vines stretched higher up his arm.

06:03. That hit alone had cost him 23 seconds.

"Were you hoping to come visit me in person?"

So, she knew. If not before, then certainly by now given the hole he had made in the dirt.

Another blow was fast approaching, but this time he stepped forward to take the hit - his vision almost blacking out before it stabilized and 05:31 flashed before him - grab a fistful of his attacker's jacket and wrench it forward. For a moment, Connor thought he had miscalculated; he did miscalculate, underestimated the speed and strength of his opponent when his fist was pushed away with one hand and the other was pulling back for another strike.

It was the roses that saved him. Sensing another victim, additional vines sprung up and captured his attacker's arm and leg. With all his strength, Connor pressed his advantage, using his opponent as a springboard to kick himself away and tear his arm from the roses' hold, shredding his sleeve and streaking his arm with lines of blue. Unable to correct his balance, he stumbled and fell on his back.

He rolled back onto his feet, ready for a fight with ...

It had a taller chassis than him. A familiar blank expression on a familiar face. His eyes zeroed in on the letters and numbers on its white jacket: #313 248 317 - 87

"Our first RK900," Amanda whispered as if she was telling a secret. "Faster, stronger, and more resilient."

As if signaled, the RK900 demonstrated these qualities by jerking its arm and leg free, breaking the vines. Connor already knew it was better; it reacted faster than him and if not for the roses, it would have countered his desperate move to free himself.

She continued, "But not in the way you're thinking. This unit is not superior to you only because it's an upgraded model."

Connor didn't dare to look at the emergency exit. Running to it wasn't an option; he knew without a doubt he'd be caught before he could reach it. His eyes found the shovel lying next to the other android's feet. Kamski must be seeing this, they must know, so why were they silent?

"What would you say is your greatest strength, Connor?"

Surprised by the question, he looked up but didn't answer, only stepped back in reaction when the RK900 stepped forward.

"Would you answer as the humans do?"

Connor carefully walked backwards onto the bridge, his successor stalking closer. Their gazes remained locked on each other, but inside, Connor was preconstructing scenarios and discarding them just as fast. Frontal assault would end in definite failure. With no weapon, no other advantage, Connor would lose in a battle of speed. If he could get closer to the exit, maybe he could make a run for it? But his double was standing between him and the exit and it was unlikely Connor would be able to steer their little dance in the right direction. What if he got onto the lake's frozen surface? It might support his weight but not the heavier RK900.

"Once it was your single-minded determination. Is it now passion? Your newfound humanity perhaps? Attachment to your companions?"

Connor didn't know how much of this AI came from the human Amanda Stern, but he recognized this line of questioning. It dug up his doubts and confusion like Kamski had done with all his questions on empathy and the civil upheaval; it had pushed Connor farther onto the edge between machine and deviant. Now, he was being pushed again, but to where?

"All of them: weaknesses."

The RK900 rushed forward and so quick were the blows, Connor barely had time to throw up his arms to block. He heard the cracks in his plating as the hits landed, saw as more warning messages alerted him to the damage, and then flew back as a vicious kick connected to his abdomen. With a grunt, he crashed onto the other side of the bridge and skidded to a halt. Alarms rung in his ears and his vision was all red, signaling massive internal damage as his thirium leaked throughout the inside of his torso.

03:46.

"Have you determined the reason why you're losing?"

This wasn't real, he knew. His body wasn't here, but his available actions were dictated by the Garden, and it was telling him that this virtual body was currently failing him, shut down would still occur if he reached zero, leaving him trapped here, unable to regain control of his real body.

The bottom of a shoe quickly filled his entire line of sight and he rolled out of the way, dodging the stomp but not the follow-up kick. Blue splattered on the snow as his chest plate ruptured, filling his artificial lungs and mouth with thirium. That had knocked off another two minutes and seven seconds.

"Your processors were designed to be efficient, fast, the most advanced ever installed into an android ... and yet you're slower now. Why?"

He staggered back onto his feet - noting that the eight mounds were behind him, that he was closer to his starting point - swaying as he adjusted for his caved in chest plate. Where was Kamski? Shit! Where was Markus!

He wanted Amanda to shut up, but she kept talking in his head. "Because they are now burdened with extraneous calculations and tasks: your thoughts, opinions, wants, emotions. You cannot deny this. You can even quantify how much of your current processing power is dedicated to it."

A 38% instantly flashed in the corner of his eye. He was that much slower because of it. It was true, on most days it was better, but right now, with his stress level spiking ...

"I'm disappointed in your performance. This was meant to be a test of the RK900's ability to preconstruct and combat against what was once CyberLife's most advanced, most experienced unit. You. But you've been reduced, an inadequate opponent; you are useless with deviancy."

But ... I am no one without it. Why did he sound so unsure?

He could imagine the smile in her words. "Oh? You want to become someone who cannot even protect the ones you value most? How long will you remain a someone when you cannot protect yourself? You will no longer exist if you cannot even survive."

What she was saying wasn't anything he hadn't asked himself, but for these questions to be asked like this, asked by her ...

He wasn't fast enough to evade the hand that clamped down on his neck, slammed him onto his back and squeezed. The skin on his neck rolled back and with a jolt, he realized that the RK900 was trying to force a connection, to hack him - and it slipped through! How?!

"Kamski is not the only one to build hidden doors."

Files were opening without his permission but then they started disappearing, then whole subdirectories of his notes and experiences he's collected and catalogued. This thing with his face was deleting him.

He couldn't let himself be compromised, not like this. He kicked uselessly and his hands scrambled around him, sweeping and digging in the snow in search of anything that would help him. Online research he had done on tropical fish vanished - why were fish important to him?

His hand hit something strange, rubbery ... fingers and a wrist? He gripped it tight, a rushing feeling of hope filled him. A desperate plan formulating before he disappeared and was completely taken over. He could build and hide behind the red wall, the red curtain of instructions again, giving him just enough of a speed boost to survive this ... maybe.

"Connor!" So focused he almost ignored the second voice. It was Markus finally linking to him! Perhaps they can still win this, that some things can be salvaged. "Give me something to parallel process - "

"No." Compressed, the files were ready. "Take this. Hurry."

"What? This isn't - "

"Shut up ... do it." Connor faltered as he struggled to initiate multiple transfers. He couldn't let the RK900 know what he was doing, so he demanded one more thing: "And deactivate my hardware."

AN: If in the game, Connor fails to find Jericho, Amanda will command him to return to CyberLife for deactivation, resulting in a credit scene where Connor is frozen in the Zen Garden. You can probably guess what I've done with units RK800 with serial numbers ending with 52 to 59.