"Thanks for taking the time to see us today, Mr. Manfred." Hank stated as he and Henri walked into the opulent foyer of Carl Manfred's grandiose house. "Nice place."

"I do alright for myself," Carl joked in response. "But please, tell me, what did I do to deserve a visit from the Detroit PD today?"

"We wanted to ask you some questions about Markus." Henri spoke as she gazed around the foyer. She knew Carl was a famous painter, but in this past year, he had been more famously known as the previous owner of Markus. "I know you're probably getting a bit tired of people constantly harassing you about the most famous android in The United States, but we would appreciate any information you have about him."

"Most people come to me hoping to see or talk to Markus himself. Many androids started seeing him as some sort of religious figurehead." Carl slowly rolled into the living area of his home with Henri and Hank plodding behind him. "I realize that Markus has his own life now. He would visit me often; almost once or twice a week, but not anymore. The last time I saw him was about two months ago."

"Did you notice anything different about him when you saw him last?" Hank spoke as his eyes wandered the walls and ceiling of Carl's elaborate living space. Hank wasn't a huge fan of artistic clutter, but he did admire the rather large library that Carl had. Hank had always been fond of the aesthetics of real paper books, no matter how wasteful the world considered them to be.

"He was different." Carl cruised his wheelchair over to his quaint, little bar and started pouring himself a drink. "I hope you don't mind. I know it's a bit early in the day, but the older you get the less you care about such civilities."

"I hear you." Hank nodded in agreement, still unable to stop himself from gaping around the fascinating room.

"Markus was like a son to me." Carl puckered his lips and took a long, slow sip from his glass. "I was happy for Markus and everything he had accomplished. He had his own path in life to follow now, and I understood that but… But I still love him and I miss him." tears formed at the edges of his eyes, but he swallowed them back along with another sip of whiskey.

"It's not easy." Hank knew exactly what it was like to lose a son. You never get over the loss of a loved one. The memories of people you love haunt you for the rest of your life, like a ghost that follows your every waking and dreaming moment. "There are too many ways for us to lose the people we love."

Henrietta fought to kept her cold, emotionless face while she witnessed this conversation. All the people she had ever loved were taken away from her. Tom died in the accident; Mother committed suicide. At what point does a person deserve to die in such an awful matter? At least Tom didn't have a chance to feel pain like Henri had to. As for her mother, all she could do was hope she died painlessly, too. Carl is lucky, though. Henri knew Markus was out there in the world just waiting to be found. She at least knew he was still alive.

"He told me he knew what he had to do, but I don't know what he meant by that." Carl gingerly lifted the glass back up to his lips and stole another long sip. "He said there was a poison in the world and he finally knew how to stop it, that he finally knew what he had to do. He apologized to me, yet I don't know what for. Something was very different about him that day. It was as if he became a completely different person overnight. He told me he still loved me and that he would miss me, then he left. I haven't seen or heard from him since."

Henri felt guilty when she heard Carl's words. He reminded Henri of her own mother, in a way. Henri came home one day a completely different person than before, and she knew it terrified her mother. Henri's mother called her a monster, an abomination and it hurt so much to hear it because Henrietta knew it was true.

"Have you had any contact with any of the androids that Markus considered to be his close friends?" As always, Henri suppressed her emotions, not allowing anything to bubble up to the surface of her face. "Or do you know anything that might help us find out where he is?"

"He used to bring an android named North here." Carl grinned from ear to ear at the thought of her and Markus together. "She was so stunning and the two of them were very much in love. It was amazing to see Markus in love with somebody. I was so happy for the two of them."

"Have you talked to this North recently?" Hank thought of Connor when Carl said this. Imagine if Connor were to fall in love with someone? Hank smirked to himself at the possibility of such a thing happening.

"I'm sorry, that's all I know." Carl carefully placed his empty whiskey glass back on the bar and let out a deep sigh. He swivelled his chair to face the two and looked at them with trembling eyes. "If you two can find him-" the desperation in his face was palpable "Help him. I don't know what else to do; I just want to see my son again."

"We will let you know anything as soon as we do." Hank related to this despair that Carl felt. Hank would have done anything to get Cole back.


Something was moving at the edge of her vision in the pale darkness of the room. Was it happening again? Were her memories tormenting her once more in the cold, lonely night? Henrietta wondered how much longer she could maintain her own sanity. Dr. Everett told her that the only way to get past the night-terrors was to simply ignore them, but what did he know, really? Dr. Everett didn't even pretend to care about her, at least not in the way Dr. Polanski did. Dr. Everett also liked to call Henri a monster or an abomination, just like her mother did.

There was the sound of something shuffling across the floor and a silhouette appeared at the foot of her bed.

"Mother?" she spoke in a brittle voice as she squinted at the figure. "Is it you again?"

"You're not like them." the figure spoke with a silvery voice. It wasn't her mother.

"Who are you?" Henrietta could feel her heart pounding in her chest, but why should she be afraid? Henri could cripple any living being with her bare hands, so why be afraid?

"You could be like one of us." the figure's features were still invisible to Henri in the dimness; however, the voice was that of a man's. "I know a lot about you, Henri. You gave your secrets away too quickly, or maybe you wanted us to find out. All you had to do was touch one of us for the rest to know. You're very special, aren't you?"

"Are you threatening me?" Henri gradually pushed her bed sheets away from her and swung one leg to the floor. What was he talking about? What did he know?

"No, you misunderstand." his tone changed in an attempt to sooth Henri's worries. "You're so special Henri, we just want you to join us. Help us stop humanity once and for all. Ralph saw some of your memories, so we know how much pain the humans have put you through. You don't have to defend them."

"It's not just them." Henri was now standing at the side of her bed, anxiously breathing. Why did he frighten her so? "It's androids, too. I saw that room full of dead bodies and I felt how scared Ralph was. You can't say androids haven't been victims of these crimes, too."

"Ralph is a good android. He did the right thing." the figure took a step backwards, not wanting to give Henri the chance to see its' face. "Not all androids see our cause as a righteous one; consequently, we couldn't let them get in the way. You could change so much for us if you would just join us. Let's stop this chaos together." and he reached out a hand towards her, but Henri knew she had to stay away.

"I won't agree to that." she was terrified he was going to grab her and try to forcefully change her mind. "You have to leave, now."

"I won't give you another chance." his face turned towards the balcony window and was lit up by the shimmering moon. It was Markus, just as she feared it was.

"Markus…?" her small voice trembled.

"You're not surprised, are you?" he smiled and reached out his hand to her once more. "This is your last chance to join us, Henri."

She grabbed his arm; not to join him, but to stop him. She yanked on him and used the force of the motion the headbutt him right on the bridge of his nose. Markus lost his footing and collapsed backwards onto the floor. The move, however quick it was, would have been much more effective on a human opponent, not so much an android.

Markus clambered to his feet bracing the dresser next to the wall. "You've made your decision, then."

"I've called the cops, Markus." she hadn't yet, but there was no way for him to know. "You need to leave." she was trying to set a trap for him and she hoped he would take the bait.

"Not until you die." he reached his hand behind his back and pulled a knife out from under his trench-coat. "If you're not with us, you're against us."

"That's a bad idea, Markus." her voice was rough and she was beginning to panic. There were two things Henri didn't want: to kill him or to capture him. She wanted to know where he was hiding and what he was hiding. If he could just get away and she could follow him, that would be ideal.

"Markus," she pleaded once more "I'm faster, stronger, and smarter than you. What makes you think you can win this fight?"

"I know you don't want to fight me." he narrowed his eyes and leered at her. "You don't want to hurt me."

"I'll do what I must." and Henrietta lunged at him.

Henrietta decided now would be a good time to call the police. She kicked Markus hard enough in the stomach to cause internal damage to his bio-components. She seized his knife hand and squeezed forcefully enough to destroy his wrist so his hand could no longer function. It was at this point, Markus realized he couldn't possibly win the fight.

"I surrender." he slumped to the floor and bowed his head down. "I give up. I don't want to be destroyed."

"Alright." Henri furrowed her brow at the pathetic android. "The police should arrive soon. I did critical damage to some of your bio-components, so we will get you fixed before any questioning commences."

Markus wasn't finished, though. He wasn't willing to die in order to stop her because he wasn't actually allowed to, but he couldn't let her investigation continue. Without Henrietta, it was unlikely Hank and Connor would be able to solve this case. Markus couldn't allow what they had started to come to an end. The poison had to be stopped.

Markus got a hold of Henri's ankle in an attempt to confuse her for just long enough for him to regain his footing. Henrietta felt sick for a moment as visions of android corpses filled her mind. She stumbled sideways and almost lost her balance, but by the time she turned to Markus he was standing once more with the knife in hand. He stabbed her, but not where he wanted to. He intended to get the knife under her rib cage and into one of her lungs; unfortunately, the best he could manage was to stab her lower abdomen. There would be internal bleeding, but it would not kill her. However, this was the only chance Markus had of getting away. It was unlikely he would be able to get the upper hand on her again.

Not everything had gone according to plan, yet what Henrietta wanted to happen did indeed happen. Markus would gain nothing by dying in a fight against her, so he had no choice but to flee. Now that his decision had been made, Henri had the opportunity to find out everything she could about Markus and his future plans. She could no longer risk touching androids to gain important information, so she needed to find out what she could by other means. All she needed to know is where Markus had been hiding.

When Henrietta burst out of the hotel lobby and into the streets, she was wearing nothing but a thin, blue nightshirt. It was a bitterly cold night, with the sidewalks drowning in the bleak and severe rainfall. She saw that Markus had only succeeded in getting a single block ahead of her. She rushed after him, with the slapping noises of her naked feet on the pavement being overtaken by the heavy rain. She was bleeding and she was cold; she wasn't sure how long she could keep up the pursuit. But Henri was faster than him, she reminded herself. She couldn't risk losing him, but she also didn't want to capture him.

She had been following him for five blocks while keeping an even distance from him when a car appeared ahead of them. The doors popped open and Markus made a quick leap for the interior. Henri picked up the pace so she wouldn't lose sight of the vehicle, but even Henri couldn't run as fast as a car. The vehicle's tires splashed away in the murky rain and Henri whipped her head around hoping to see a taxi or anything, but there were no other cars parked on the street.

"Fuck you!" she yelled through the roaring downpour.

The car Markus had escaped in was long gone by the time a police vehicle showed up beside her. The door to the police car flew open, and to Henri's surprise, it was Connor who appeared in front of her.

"Henri-" Connor saw that she was soaked from head to toe and that she was bleeding, a lot. "-are you okay?"

She avoided making eye contact with him and lowered her head. She was so pathetic, she couldn't believe it. Not having Markus at all was worse than capturing him. She shouldn't have been so naive.

Connor could tell she was injured, so he decided to perform a medical scan on her. His LED flashed red for a second. He couldn't complete the scan; it was as if someone was running a program that caused interference. He scanned her face and acquired the same information as before, but nothing additional. He couldn't read her pulse, he couldn't read her temperature, he couldn't even read fingerprints from her hands. What was going on?

"Henri," he placed his hands firmly on Henrietta's shoulders to gain her attention. "We need to take you to the hospital, you're losing a lot of blood." at least he thought she was.

"No, Connor," her breathing was laboured and she was trying to suppress how upset she was. "I need you to understand this: I can't go to the hospital. I'm going back to my hotel."

"Henri, you need medical attention." Connor held on a little tighter as he pleaded with her.

"The wound isn't fatal," Henri looked him in the eyes with an expression of anguish. "Connor, I can't go to the hospital, it's not going to happen."

"Okay." Connor slowly released his grip on her shoulders and let his hands slide down her drenched arms. "What can I do to help? I'm not leaving you until you're okay."

She could tell he was worried for her, and not just because his LED was glowing yellow. "I need some stitches. I have the supplies back at the hotel."

"Alright, we'll go back to your hotel." Connor kept a steady grip on Henri as he escorted her into the police car. He had a heavy, warm jacket which he draped over her frozen body. He was concerned that she might have hypothermia from being in the freezing rain too long, but since he couldn't scan her, he couldn't know for sure.


He eased Henri onto the edge of the bathroom tub once the two arrived back at the hotel. If she was in any pain, Connor couldn't tell.

"I need a change of clothes, first." Henri held her fists in small knots while she caressed her bleeding wound. "Just anything from the closet in the bedroom."

"Okay." Connor kept his tone with Henri warm and gentle. "I'll be right back."

The hotel Henrietta was occupying wasn't as ambitious as The Marriott they recently visited, but it seemed pleasant nonetheless. There was no kitchen to be found with the living room and bedroom making up one large area combined. Everything looked untouched except for the bed which had obviously been recently slept in. He found some comfortable clothes for Henri to wear: a plain black t-shirt and a pair of dark blue sweatpants.

"Here you go." Connor bent down on one knee to hand Henri the clothing he found.

"Can you give me a minute while I change?" she carefully stood up, but briefly had to place her hand on Connor's arm for balance.

"Don't take too long." Connor held onto her hand for a moment as she removed her grip from him. "We need to get you stitched up as soon as possible."

"I'll be two minutes." she leisurely pushed him out of the bathroom and closed the door behind him.

If anything, this just gave Connor a chance to look around her hotel room. Hank liked to refer to this trait as 'snooping', but Connor preferred to think of it as intelligence gathering. He knew you could learn a lot about a person by the objects they possessed. However, it seemed Henrietta possessed a tiny amount of items. The first thing he noticed; though, was the fresh red and blue blood stains on the carpet next to the dresser. There was significantly more human blood than android blood. He analyzed the blue blood to discovery it came from the one and only RK200. Not two feet from the fresh stains was a knife gleaming with blood right up to the hilt. Even though androids couldn't feel pain, the idea of a knife wound so deep made him uncomfortable. Uncomfortable? Uncomfortable, like how? He wasn't sure.

"Can you tell me what happened?" he shouted in the direction of the bathroom as he continued to peruse the room.

"Can we talk about it tomorrow at the station?" she yelled in response, still upset about what transpired.

"If you say so." Connor quickly dropped the subject as he could tell she was already under enough stress at the moment.

He noticed a half-full bottle of 15-year-old whiskey on the nightstand next to the bed; no glass to be found. She probably drank it straight from the bottle, but that wasn't enough evidence to say if she had a problem or not. If she was an alcoholic, she hid it well. He saw a cheap hotel stereo sitting on the metal TV stand, although it did have a small music player plugged into it. Connor picked it up to inspect it further, but at this point, he heard the door to the bathroom open.

"I have a first aid kit." she tossed it on the bed. Besides being dry, she looked the same: unwell. Her face was pale and displayed none of its' usual blushed tones.

"Sit on the bed, I'll administer the stitches." he examined the complex first aid kit she owned. It was a tactical kit, which was commonly only used by EMTs or field medics. It had also been used previously as if this wasn't the first time Henri needed proper medical attention.

"I've done it to myself a few times already," she noticed him closely examining the kit as she placed herself next to him on the bed. "But it's usually easier if someone else applies the stitches."

"Do you want to tell me why you didn't want to go to the hospital, Henrietta?" Connor had given Henri the benefit of the doubt in the past and he has chosen to trust her, but it only goes so far. He finds her behaviour often arouses suspicion.

"Not really." she looked at him bashfully.

"You're not giving me a lot of reason to trust you." Connor gripped the bottom of her shirt, looking at her for approval of this action.

She responded with a short nod as he lifted her shirt.

"This doesn't look good." he reached for a sanitary cloth from the kit and cleaned her wound with delicacy. "I don't think stitches are going to be enough, Henri."

"I know a doctor-" she winced at his touch. "-a doctor who can help me. Someone I can trust, anyway. But I won't be able to see him until morning. The stitches will do for now."

"You're still not answering any of my questions, Henri." he was trying to be patient with her, but her evasion of all subjects was becoming frustrating. "You seem to be keeping a lot of secrets. I struggle to understand you because I'm not sure what your true motives for anything are. You've been stabbed, but you refuse to seek proper care. I tried to scan you to run a diagnostic on your condition, but I am unable to. I have never experienced that before, Henri."

"There's not much I can say, Connor." she had no excuses to offer him, she just stared at him blankly as he swiftly threaded the curved medical needle.

"The first time I noticed that something was different about you was when you were questioning Ralph." Connor held the needle against Henri's skin and looked at her face one more time for approval.

Once again, she nodded in response.

"At first you lied to Ralph and I disliked that." he forced the needle through her flesh, but she barely flinched. "You then seemed genuinely concerned about Ralph's well being and whether or not he was guilty. You were also able to keep him calm as if you could read his level of stress. You've shown that you have observation skills more keen than the average human. Possibly more than that."

"I know I'm asking for a lot when I ask you to trust me." she put her hand on top of his and stopped him from continuing to stitch her. "Connor, we both want the same thing. There's a mystery here that's waiting to be solved, and we both want to solve it. I would ask you to believe me when I say that I'm not a bad person, but that's not very true. I've done a lot of bad things in the past, things I can't make up for, but I'd like to try."

She had to turn her face away from him; she didn't want him to notice how upset she had become. She knew it would be difficult to have an android like Connor around because she knew he was too smart for his own good. It's not that she didn't want to talk about what she was or what she'd done, she just couldn't. She saw her mother's dead body splayed across the floor in front of her. She didn't want to talk about.

"I don't want to talk about it, mother." her voice was so tiny as she whimpered this; nonetheless, Connor heard this remark.

"Everyone deserves a second chance." he ignored her faint sobs and concentrated back on the stitches. He remembered how Markus had changed him. He remembered how Markus had given him a second chance. He remembered how Hank had given him a second chance. He remembered when he got a second chance at life.

"I promise I'll try not to let you down." she whispered softly, still facing away from him.

Connor wasn't sure if the promise was for him or for Henri's mother.