Chapter 8

"We are getting nowhere!" Detective Paul complained as he hung up his phone and clenched his fist around it as he thought about throwing the offending tech. "That was an old informant of mine. He was begging for a favour in exchange for information, but the intel was at least three months old!"

Dorian and Valerie gave him sympathetic looks. They were sat in a small diner opposite a warehouse flat that had been used as a brothel. They'd found two skinny young women there, with bullets in their heads and the fire escape door open. The working theory, based purely on the track marks and emaciation of the women, was that the others had taken off in a hurry and these two, unable to move through illness, had been executed so they wouldn't talk. It had been one more horrible scene in a list of horrible scenes. They'd finished their work there and left the rest to the CSI's and a team of MXs who would bag the evidence and guard the scene, the bodies already removed to the morgue. They were meant to be on their way back to the office, but the scene had been so horrific that all three of them had been feeling strung out and a bit tearful, so Dorian had dragged them into the diner so they could take a breather before carrying on with their work.

The android studied his human colleagues as they sat with him in the booth, gratefully accepting the coffee that the waitress was pouring them. He was sat next to Valerie, who looked exhausted, she was normally perfectly put together but now her blouse was rumpled and wisps of hair had slipped from her ponytail. Her mascara was smudged and Dorian could tell that when she'd slipped out for five minutes earlier, it had been to have a quick cry. Richard Paul wasn't handling it any better, he was coiled like a spring and looked ready to break something. Dorian understood them both, they'd all seen some horrific things in their time as officers, but this investigation just seemed to be getting no further ahead, and as time wore on and the body count piled up, it was hard not to blame themselves for not solving it faster.

In the last month, Dorian too had become ever closer to understanding how the other DRNs had malfunctioned. As desperate as his colleagues to track down the remaining slaves, he had devoted every moment to working the case or trying to find a way of getting John back. He could see the strain that they were all under and had worked almost twenty-four hours a day in an attempt to ease the load on his colleagues. He knew he'd been getting frustrated about it, but he hadn't realised quite how much it had shown until he had been called into Maldonado's office and had found her and Rudy, both with concerned expressions on their faces.

Maldonado had been stressed too and had been spending the last few months getting tougher and more short-tempered with her team as she pushed them to get the job done. But this time she had started with an apology, "I'm so sorry, I promised John I would look after you…" After that, he'd found it hard to concentrate on what she was saying, as realisation had hit him. Physically he couldn't tire, as long as he got a quick charge every night he could keep going indefinitely, but of course it would take a toll on him mentally like it would everyone else. He felt sadness, anger, frustration the same as any human, he suspected more so sometimes as he hadn't had the years that other officers had to learn to harden themselves. And on the back of that thought was the understanding that John had always known this. Every time, he'd dragged him out for noodles when Dorian had felt he should be working, the inane conversations to distract him, the times he wound the robot up to get him to let off steam. Dorian had always seen John's penchant for pulling him away from work to be a little immature and unprofessional, but the reality had been quite the opposite, the human had seen how much Dorian could be emotionally affected by their work and had tried his hardest not to make sure it had overwhelmed him.

He'd been sent away with orders not to do any work for two days, or longer if needed. He spent the next few days with Rudy, watching movies, playing chess and even went for a long hike, even though the scrawny Englishman looked like he'd never walked anywhere in his life. Despite thoughts of John and the case preying on his thoughts, he'd been surprised to find that it helped, and he'd come back to work exactly forty-eight hours after he was sent home, with a new self-awareness and a determination to look after his colleagues in the same way that John had always looked after him.

It was this new determination that had him desperately trying to engage the two drained detectives in a conversation about the previous night's football game when Paul's phone rang again. Dorian fell quiet as the man answered, "Hey boss." He listened for a moment, nodding before promising, "we were on our way back, we just needed to grab a coffee first." He said guiltily, "We're in the diner across the street."

He hung up the phone just as the door to the diner opened and Maldonado walked in. Valerie leapt up nervously, "We're sorry Captain, we are on our way back right now."

Maldonado frowned at the behaviour. "You're allowed to have coffee detectives. But we need to talk." Paul shuffled over in the booth and offered her a seat but she shook her head. "Not here. Let's go for a walk, bring your coffee with you."

They all filed out after their Captain, Valerie making sure left enough money to cover the coffees on the table. They walked in uncomfortable silence until they made it the two blocks down to the river. Years ago when the city had been undergoing regeneration as part of the attempt to draw the robotics industry, the whole riverside had been redeveloped with trees walkways and cycle paths, but the industrial areas around the wall had already started to show signs of neglect. Aside from one aging woman shuffling along with her pug, the riverside was void of people.

The waited for the woman and her wheezing dog to get out of ear shot before Maldonado addressed the small group. "There's been an incident at John's prison."

"What happened?" Dorian blurted out, voicing the panic that they were all feeling. The android had been dreading this conversation since the day his partner had entered that awful place. Having visited him there and seeing his injuries and the toll it was taking on him had made his fear even worse.

"We've lost contact with everyone inside and the blast doors are locked down, no one can get in or out."

Dorian felt a mix of relief and horror. He'd been sure the Captain was going to say that he'd been stabbed, but then realised that perhaps not knowing what was happening to him would be worse.

"I'm going to go down to the site, the riot teams are on their way. I'm going to need you guys to carry on with the investigation and I'll keep you updated."

That was the last straw, Dorian was not going to carry on as normal while John's life was in danger. In a fit of anger, he kicked at the railings that ran along the riverside. "He shouldn't even be in there!" He roared.

Maldonado's face fell and she ran a hand over her face to try to regain her composure. "I know." She sighed.

"What?" Paul asked with disbelief. The shorter detective had made his opinions well known, he'd been very vocal about how he believed John had betrayed them. But he could see from the expression on her face that now wasn't the time to mention it.

"John's cellmate is Adam Zebingew, he is the youngest of the Zebingew brothers who you arrested a few months ago in the trafficking case. He's only nineteen and a year ago took the fall for his brothers in a drugs bust, so he was deemed to be the most vulnerable. It was John's plan to enter the prison undercover and gather information from him. We were hoping he'd be out again by now, but it looks like Adam is more tight-lipped than we expected."

"You shouldn't have let him do it." Dorian said, less angry now but no less upset. "He's not safe there."

"I tried to talk him out of it. He's struggled since the coma, and I told him that I thought it would set back his recovery. The isolation, it's not good for him. But he insisted and once the senior leaders heard about the idea it was out of my hands."

"Why did it have to be John then? There are plenty of officers who could've done it." Stahl said.

"We didn't have long to create a cover." Maldonado explained. "John suggested that due to his history that people could believe he would turn; the psych evaluations, the anger management, the suspicions around his father, it's all there. And he can be very persuasive when he wants to be."

Dorian bristled at the way his partner's vulnerabilities had been so casually exploited, even if it had been his idea in the first place. It was those same vulnerabilities that should have been used as reasons to stop him from doing it. John had always been one to push himself to his limits, especially if he thought it could save lives. Dorian had confronted him about it once, after the human had done something particularly suicidal, and he'd coolly told him that his life didn't mean as much as other peoples. He'd refused to elaborate, and once he'd seen how much he'd upset the android, he'd tried to take it back, but Dorian had known that John had believed his statement to be true. After educating himself extensively on human psychology, Dorian had come up with his own amateur diagnosis of depression, abandonment issues and an overwhelming need to atone for the deaths of eleven men that he still blamed himself for. John needed rescuing from that prison, but perhaps more importantly, he needed rescuing from himself.

"Why didn't he tell me?" Dorian asked sadly.

"I wanted to tell you." Maldonado said, "It's been awful watching you so miserable and angry. But John made me promise I wouldn't. There was evidence to suggest that our servers were being hacked. If they'd hacked you then this whole thing would have been compromised. That and you're not a good liar Dorian. Besides, I think John thought you'd talk him out of it."

"So why are you telling us now?" Paul asked. Dorian noted that the man at least managed to look sheepish. The detective had said some truly awful things about John after his arrest.

"Because I'm pulling the plug on the whole operation. I've spoken to management, they want us to keep going, but it's getting too dangerous. They can bump me back down to foot patrol for all I care, I'm extracting John now. Paul, Stahl, I promise I will update you as soon as I know anything, but I need you to carry on working. The two of you are in charge of the precinct until I get back, call me if you need anything. Dorian…"

"I'm coming with you Captain." Dorian interrupted firmly.

"I thought you might say that." Maldonado nodded, ignoring the insubordination, which was much more typical of John than his mild-mannered partner. "Come on, the SWAT team should be on their way by now."