"You should get some rest," Connor spoke as he slowly removed his lips from hers.
"Right," Henri was flushed, she was startled by his intimacy towards her. "That was nice."
"I like kissing you," he said this in his matter-of-fact tone like it wasn't something to be argued about. It was a fact; he liked kissing her. He enjoyed kissing her.
"Uh," this made Henri blush even more; she felt ridiculous. "Yeah. That is, I like kissing you," she rapidly blinked at him.
"Have I made you feel uncomfortable?" Connor surveyed her uncharacteristic awkwardness. "That was not my intention."
"Uncomfortable is not the word I'd use," she couldn't hide the large smirk on her face.
"Good," Connor smiled back. "Because you didn't feel uncomfortable when it happened. You felt-"
"Okay," she cupped her hand over his mouth. "I know how I felt." she gazed into his bright, brown eyes, "And I knew exactly how you felt, too. It was… so different."
"I don't understand," Connor found it was more convenient to feel what she felt instead of trying to interpret her facial expressions.
"Human's can't literally share their feelings with each other, Connor," she intertwined her fingers in his and pulled him closer. "That's why we have empathy. We can't literally understand what it's like to be someone else; we have to imagine it. But with us, we don't have to. That's something that androids have that I believe humans should envy."
"It's more than that with you, though," he positioned his free hand on the small of her back. "I can feel what you feel, physically. There are times I can't comprehend it."
"Androids weren't designed to feel pleasure or pain," she felt so comfortable in his arms; so at peace. "Human's have that unfortunate burden."
"Pleasure?" he thought about their kiss. "That's what I felt when I kissed you. The physical pleasure of the action. I liked it."
"Yes, I felt pleasure," she let go of his hand. "It's what causes people to make poor life decisions."
"Am I a poor life decision?" he let his arms drop back to his side.
"I wouldn't say that," she answered. "I think you're everything but that."
Connor glanced at the door and then back at her, "I should probably let you get that rest I mentioned."
"Of course," she opened her mouth as if to add something, but quickly changed her mind.
"Is something wrong?" Connor took note of her inaction.
"I'll be at the station in a few hours," but it wasn't what she really wanted to say.
"Be seeing you," and he left her alone.
"What am I thinking?" she whispered to herself in the quiet of the gloomy morning.
Henrietta was placed in the difficult circumstance of having to lead a team that involved everyone's favourite android hater. She was crouched next to the annoying man behind a stack of pallets that were positioned in front of the lab.
"Don't fuck this up," she berated Gavin.
He eyed her cautiously, "Shouldn't you be wearing a vest?"
"Slows me down," and Henri did indeed find that bullet-proof vests were still a tad too cumbersome for her liking. Besides, a shot to the heart wasn't enough to kill her; only a sufficient blow to the head would do that. "I also don't plan on getting shot."
Gavin examined the stitches above her brow, "Did you plan on getting that?"
"Bar fight," she replied in a gravelly voice. "But you should see the other guys."
Gavin gaped at her as if he saw a ghost. He recalled the grip she held on him a few days ago at the station. Her strength deeply concerned him.
"You know the drill, sir," her deep tone continued. "Don't shoot unless you're going to be shot or unless I command you to. I'll be watching you closely, Detective. I suggest you be careful."
Hank spoke up through their earpieces, "All teams are in position. Get ready to go on my mark."
A minute of silence…
"Mark," Hank finally said.
The five tightly knit groups stormed the modestly sized warehouse. The androids who were running the lab operations were none-the-wiser to the charging police force. Almost all of them surrendered; all but the single android Henri and Gavin so happened to intercept.
"Freeze," Gavin yelled this at the lone android who waited just inside the warehouse's back entrance.
It whipped its head back and forth, desperately searching for some other way out.
"I said freeze," Gavin steadily trained his gun on the assailant.
Henri's pistol exploded as she shot the unarmed android directly in its pump regulator.
Gavin turned to her, stunned, "Ffuck..."
"You said don't move," she replaced her gun in its holster. "She was moving."
Gavin was both amazed and frightened, "Holy shit!"
"You saw it," Henri glowered at him. "She was going to charge at us, I had to do something."
"You cold fucking bitch," the words crawled from his mouth as he gaped at the body.
Henri kept her intimidating expression on him, "Tell me what you saw?"
"She was going to charge us," he looked back at her.
"Then it's settled," Henri went over to the body. "We were just defending ourselves."
"And here I thought you fucking liked these things," Gavin slowly put his pistol away.
Henri crouched down to meet the body and frowned at Gavin, "You have no idea what's really going on. You are ignorant about how dire this situation is. Don't pretend to understand what I am."
Whatever she was, it horrified Gavin.
Henri grimly peered down at the carcass of the android known as Hollis. Although android bodies were immediately stored in morgues, they never received autopsies as such. The laws surrounding what one should do with a deceased android were still up in the air. In a sense, what Henri was doing to these dead bodies could be considered an autopsy. But unlike androids, you couldn't examine the memories and thoughts a human experienced before death. Probing a living android was an illegal violation of personal rights, so was this much different? She didn't want to see it; she didn't want to bear witness to the truths contained inside this android's mind.
"Well," Hank stood on ceremony for her. "Are you gonna do it or what?"
Henri plugged the hard drive into Hollis's skull, "He could have all the answers we're looking for. He could end this case right now."
"Sounds like you're hoping he won't," Hank situated himself across from Henri.
"Once this case is solved, I can move on with my life," but she knew she wasn't ready to let Connor and Hank go so easily. But she would never be able to betray Khatri.
"Move on with your life?" Hank had also grown accustomed to Henri's presence. As complicated as the woman was, he liked having her around. "What are you doing after this?"
"Who knows," she hesitated to put her hand on the hard drive. "I had asked for this assignment. Well, not this assignment specifically. But I requested a less violent position for a change..."
"Less violent?" Hank let out a small gasp of amusement. "This has been less violent?"
Henri regarded the dead android, "Not really. Honestly, nothing has gone the way I pictured. This has been a train-wreck."
"It's not that bad," Hank peered down the narrow hall that housed rows and rows of the deceased. "I've never seen Connor act this way before."
Henri's eyes bolted up, "Um, what?"
"Don't be coy," Hank folded his arms over and smirked at her. "You know exactly what I'm talking about."
"I hope you haven't been encouraging him, Hank." she stared back down at the body.
"He's in love with you," his words rang in her ears. "You mean a lot to him."
"That's enough," she kept her eyes locked on Hollis's corpse. "Hank, I don't want to hear it."
He scratched at the side of his bearded chin, "You don't feel the same."
"That's not it," she snapped her piercing, grey eyes back up at him. "I've explained to you that my life is complicated. This isn't some fairy-tale where we all get the happily-ever-after we've been waiting for."
"It'll break his heart to hear that," Hank shrugged at her. "But you do feel the same?"
She fixed her crouching posture to carefully reviewed Hank's stance, "I will leave my hope with him."
Hank wasn't sure what she intended by that statement, "Yeah?"
"My hope that there is something in this world to look forward to," she finally touched the hard drive. "Whatever good is left in me, I will leave it with him."
Hank still found her words bizarrely cryptic, "Okay..."
Henri titled her head and blinked a few times at the hard drive, "It is done."
"What'd you see?" Hank closely studied her face.
"He didn't have the answers we were looking for," she was relieved, but why should failure offer a sense of enlightenment? "He was created with the virus. That just confirms our suspicion that all the androids in the Cyberlife Tower are infected."
"What if this thing came from Cyberlife, to begin with?" Hank wasn't sure how they would deal with an entire tower of rogue androids.
"There's no way to confirm that," she steadily nodded back and forth. "We would have to search that tower from the ground up, probe every android and you know that isn't possible. As the saying goes: we are stuck between a hard place and a rock."
"We need your friends Kamski and Polanski to make some progress," Hank tugged the hard drive out of the android and closed the rectangular drawer. "If we had more androids..."
"We still have the other one to check," Henri pivoted and called the diener over.
The deiner opened the drawer containing the AX400 that Henri had executed in cold blood during the raid. Henri wasn't sure why she did it. A part of her was truly desperate to solve this case, but it fought against the parts of her that didn't want to move on with her life. She felt dirty thinking about what she had done to the faulty machine; it contradicted who she wanted to be. She wanted to be good. She didn't want to make excuses for her actions anymore.
"You said it was trying to attack you and Gavin?" Hank peeked at the defenceless corpse.
Henri roughly jammed the hard drive connection port into the android's head, "Something like that."
"Something like that..." Hank spun around and shook his head.
"I didn't mean to-" she wanted to plead to Hank for forgiveness, but it wasn't his to give. "-I had no reason to do it."
"Jesus, Henri," Hank covered his eyes with the crook of his elbow.
"I don't want to lie to you anymore," Henri sought redemption in his eyes. "I was desperate to progress the case. Or a part of me was..."
"Henri!" Hank raised his voice at her. "You can't be going around killing people because you feel like it."
"I know, I know, I-" she stopped herself and positioned her hand on top of the hard drive. "I have no more excuses for the things I've done. I don't want to be like this anymore, Hank."
Her expression of utter despair reached out to Hank's compassionate side. He saw the face of a lost child who forever wandered in the unguided world. She was adrift at sea with her innocence and ignorance towards a reality she knew not of. Her hollow eyes reminded Hank of his son.
"We'll figure something out," Hank replied after a moment of silence fell between the two. "Let's not worry about that right now."
Henri's eyes shifted back to the plain she dwelled within, "I'll see what she knows." Henri stared back at the AX400.
"Anything?" Hank questioned after another moment of silence.
"Yes!" Henri let go of the hard drive and exclaimed. "She had a memory about the warehouse we were looking for."
"And?" Hank anxiously awaited her reply.
"Based on the geographical information I could gather, the location of the warehouse is in London." Henri shifted her head back and forth.
"Seriously?" Hank looked surprised. "What the hell are they doing hiding bodies in another goddamn continent?"
"London, Ontario, Hank," Henri swiftly pulled the hard drive's connection away from the AX400's neck. "It's a place in Canada. A hundred and two miles from here."
"That makes more sense," Hank was not ashamed of his geographical confusion. "Do you know exactly where it is?"
"I should be able to narrow it down to a few blocks, but I cannot ascertain the exact location," Henri offered Hank a conflicted smile. This would help further their investigation, but the problem was that this would help further their investigation. "Give me some time," Henri didn't require this time she spoke of.
"This is our best lead yet," Hank closed the drawer that contained the AX400. "These androids could lead us to the source of this virus."
"Hopefully," but was she honestly hopefull towards this of all things?
"Do you mean that?" Hank raised a single eyebrow at her.
"Of course," but that's what she was programmed to say.
Astronomical twilight had arrived at Henri's hotel room. She knew what she needed to do, but it contradicted what she wanted to do. Henri had expelled a great amount of effort into finding the house of the dead. A few hundred androids, at the least, were sitting in an abandoned warehouse in London waiting for her to discover them. An end to the case meant an end to her time with Connor and Hank. Maybe she could tell Hank the truth before she disappeared into the wide, crowded planet. Was this the final chance she had been waiting for?
Knock, knock, knock, on the door at last. Who could it be? She already knew.
She paced herself, gradually heading for the door. Two parts of her fought: one part answers the door, the other part ignores it forever. She couldn't ignore it forever, so she opened up.
"Henri," Connor plastered on his perfect smile. "Hank suggested I check in on you to assure that you were okay."
"You could have called," her response was flippant, carefree.
"It was an excuse," Connor paused as he watched her walk away from him. "It was an excuse to come see you in person. Hank informed me that you believe you've located the warehouse as seen previously in the ST300's memory. Is this true?"
"I think so," she strode over to the room's balcony window and studied the blank, night sky. "I'm positive, actually."
"You don't seem pleased about this," Connor observed her doleful face as she gazed out the window.
She turned briefly to acknowledge him with a weak shrug, "Can I tell you something?"
"Of course," Connor joined her beside the night-stricken window. "You can tell me anything."
"How about-" she moved towards him and caressed his arm. "-how about I show you?"
The Bunny in The Moon by John Sheridan
There once was a Robot. This Robot lived all alone on the fields of planet Earth. He searched and searched every day, but found no other soul. He loved the trees and the wind and the water, but they were not enough to keep him company. Every night he looked up to the stars, hoping and searching, hoping and searching. Hoping and searching for someone to call a friend. Hoping and searching for someone to love.
One day, the Robot looked up at the beaming, bright moon and he saw a tiny creature. He saw a tiny creature rocking back and forth on the crescent of the moon.
"Amazing, wow!" he cheered to himself. "This is wonderful. Someone else is out there besides me!"
The Robot watched the moon oh-so-carefully every night. He watched the tiny animal bounce to and fro all night long. He watched it fall asleep to the sway of the moon's cradle. He wanted to be with that tiny creature so badly.
"Maybe, just maybe, I could build a rocket ship to her!" the Robot thought to himself. But the Robot didn't know how to build rocket ships.
"Maybe, just maybe, I could find the highest place on the Earth and reach up to her!" but he didn't know where the highest place was.
For days and days and days, the Robot searched for the farthest reaching mountain.
"Maybe, just maybe, I could climb onto the highest of clouds!" the Robot cheered to himself. "Maybe, just maybe, I could reach the moon from there!"
And the Robot climbed and climbed until he couldn't climb anymore. He reached for a fluffy, white cloud and held on as tightly as he could. The cloud whisked him away and up into the stars.
"Maybe, just maybe, I can see her again," the Robot gazed into the night sky and found its wandering moon.
And on this wandering moon sat a perfectly precious blue Bunny. The Robot finally found a friend, he just had to reach for it.
"Reach, reach," he cried as he stood up at the moon. "Reach, reach and grab it!" the Robot cheered himself on.
And as he did, his fingers caught the edge of the waning moon.
"Hello," he spoke to the Bunny.
"Hello," she replied.
"I want to come join you on your moon," the Robot smiled.
"You want to join me?" the Bunny smiled back. "I have been alone for a very long time. Oh, such a long time."
"I'll stay with you," the Robot ran to the Bunny. "I'll stay with you forever."
"Will you?" the Bunny asked. "Forever is forever. Forever is a long time"
"Forever," the Robot replied. "Forever is forever."
"So," the Bunny looked up. "I look upon the stars and what do I see?"
"That memory seems to make you happy," Connor replied as he heard the echoes of the final lines of the children's story.
"It was on my mind," she let go of his arm. "You reminded me of the Bunny. You're this out of reach object, too distant to touch."
"But in the story, the Robot ends up reaching the Bunny," Connor stretched his hand out to her limp arm. "In the end, they were together."
"That wasn't what I cared about when I was a child," Henri let his fingers wind around her wrist. "I just wanted to know what the Bunny saw in the stars."
"More stars?" Connor made the same ignorant guess she had as a child.
"That's what I said," she offered him a soothing smile. "But I have a suspicion that the stars are just a metaphor for something greater."
"A metaphor for what?" Connor asked as he wrapped his spare hand around her other wrist.
"A metaphor for life," she admired his wonderfully pristine android form; his perfect face, but not too perfect. "For future, for time, and for all the things that life has to offer. Maybe the Bunny was asking the Robot what he saw in their future together."
"What do you see in your future?" his eyes appeared so innocent and pure.
"Darkness, despair, destruction," she had no positive words for him. "No matter the path I chose, the consequences will be grave."
Connor could feel her anxieties and pains resonate through him like a beating drum. He saw the visage of an older, dark-tanned woman skirt across her mind.
"What about right now?" he asked. "Forget about the future. What do you want right now?"
"I want you," she stared up into his face, afraid. She did not fear his rejection; she feared his acceptance.
"I have the ability to accommodate that," he winked at her; it was an unconventionally provocative action for him to take.
"And what do you want?" but she already knew what Connor was going to say.
He steadily, but leisurely slid his arms around her waist and drew her hips into his, "I want you."
"I have the ability to accommodate that," she teasingly mocked his previous words.
And then they kissed, just like all the times before. Tender and burning, tranquil and slow.
He could feel the fine hairs on her skin prick up with anticipation. If there was anything in the Universe that Connor was sure of, it was his love of her. And in this intimate moment with her, all he wanted was to be a part of her forever.
They shared every thought, every touch, and every emotion in their unspoken embrace. It was an encounter that wasn't possible between any other beings. Her mind was enveloped by his yearning to be close to her; his longing for her affections. His mind was encased by the pleasure she consumed from all of his passionate caresses; from the inside and out.
But in the end, Henri was unable to hide her belief that what they had done was an absolute mistake.
