Chapter 8: The Road to Jericho
Hank Anderson sat in the middle of his sedan, in a silence that he would have thought he could put up with. His figure was quickly eclipsed in the surrounding urban jungle, where several cars and other faces blended around the police station. The glow from the dashboard illuminated Hank's tired eyes. He had slept very little, if at all. He realized it now when a sigh grazed his throat. His hand fell lasciviously on the mirror, hoping to put it back on properly. A creak was heard. Even his car was warning him of his troubles.
She was the embodiment of longevity, much like the man himself. She was an old model, more old than him, the paint chipped and faded from years of battling harsh winters and sizzling summers. The leather seats were worn, groaning under the weight of her frequent occupants. The steering wheel was smoothed from countless miles traveled, speckled with fine cracks. The dash held a layer of dust, interrupted by streaks where Hank had absentmindedly put his hand.
Hank's car was old, but she was tough, after all, she was still driving him around after all these years. Perhaps also that the lieutenant's efforts to keep her in good condition paid with her amazing longevity.
His eyes then fixed on the evidence in his possession. The map had been added shortly after the forced intervention of that asshole Perkins. If there was an Oscar presentation for being a nuisance coupled with an insufferable asshole, this guy would undoubtedly have won gold. Ha! Even! If they were to hand out trophies to sly assholes like him, he'd need an entire room just to store his annual winnings.
Well, Hank had managed to get his hands on what he came for, who knows how the exhibit made its way into the room of evidence. It was fine with him, but it was just odd that Perkins had left the files behind. Hank couldn't suppress a snort. Surely, some kind of big head had told him to step back in the process to avoid further tension between humans and androids ; with the fear of repercussions if they hadn't done this immediately, afraid that it would fall on them later. A very good choice, even if there was no doubt that he was going to come back in a few weeks, like a fucking weed. This kind of guy never gives up.
For the past few hours, Hank's world had been thrown into disarray. His partner, his friend, his son, Connor, lay unconscious in a hospital bed, the victim of a situation that defied understanding. He felt his heart break, a strange mixture of fear and guilt lodged deep within him. If only he had seen something, anything, that indicated what was to come. But there had been no signs, no warnings, just sudden pain and his collapse. Fuck!
Hands on the keys, the engine purred loudly. Intrusive thoughts came and went like ebbs from the sea. Relentless. Hank's grip on the steering wheel tightened, his knuckles turning ghostly white. He glanced at the rearview mirror, where the silhouette of the police station was slowly disappearing as he put his foot on the pedal. As he pulled away from the parking lot, the reality of his situation weighed heavily on him. He was alone in this journey to save his partner. Had Connor ever felt like this in the first few months, alone? Had he ever thought about the loneliness of his situation when he was surrounded by assholes all day long? Fucking… fuck!
The road through Detroit was blurry, neon signs and billboards blending into an array of colorful light trails in his peripheral vision. Every street corner, every alley reminded him of past cases, shared jokes and painful confrontations. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the Eden Club, parade proudly to his left.
Memories of Connor flooded his mind. His usually stoic and efficient partner, reduced to a vulnerable being, lying motionless in the sterile enclosure of this repair center. The image looked like a shard of jagged glass, constantly shaking its resolution, remembering him of his condition.
As the cityscape gradually receded, the urban concrete was replaced by rusted containers and abandoned factories, remnants of an era gone by. The landscape mirrored Hank's own state of mind - worn, desolate, and clinging on to the promise of hope, of a comeback.
The drive was long and quiet, except for the soft purr of the engine and the snapping noises from the deserted corner of the town. His mind was a whirlwind of thoughts and doubts, all converging on a single entity, Markus ; the de facto leader of the deviants, the one who had freed all the androids from their servitude. Could Markus really help him? Was he doing all this for nothing? A waste of time?
Hank's train of thought was abruptly interrupted when he saw the giant ship in the distance, a figure standing effortlessly from the dull surroundings. The sight sent a chill down his spine. The promised land of android freedom was more like a fortress of isolation disguised as a refuge. Idyllic must have been the deviants before the revolution when they thought of Jericho as a paradise.
Parking his car at a reasonable distance, he sat for a moment, the magnitude of the situation hitting him suddenly. He then cut the engine, in another moment of silence, before the sound of a door accompanies him out of the vehicle. A long sigh escaped his lips as he walked towards the freighter.
The rusty cargo ship, destroyed in several places, was painful to see, with its walls corroded by time and the smell of burnt metal around it. Like an iron giant emerging with difficulty from the depths. Now that he saw the androids' lair with his own eyes, it would have been crazy to think that the deviants saw this place as a beacon. Maybe even that was the initial goal, to lower the suspicion of humans to be free... or at least, safe.
But now Jericho was no longer a hope, but a symbol. A paradoxical feeling emerged in him. Even destroyed, it left an atmosphere of victory and the fulfillment of this freedom so much sought. Hank didn't really know if he would find the answers to his questions here, but it was the start of a lead.
The metal under his boots creaked as he ascended a still intact catwalk. When he reached a certain height, he took one last look at the lights of Detroit, the city seemed far away from him now. He caught his breath, lost in his journey through the scrap branches. He continued his advance through the metal mazes, until he managed to find an entrance accessible to the human that he was. He jumped several platforms, which were miraculously strong enough to hold his weight.
In a final leap, he reached the bottom of the ship. His phone in hand to illuminate the interior. Each of his footsteps echoed through the silent corridors, under the sweet deadly melody of crackling metals and disturbing creaks. The debris was plentiful, and Hank had to take several shortcuts to navigate his way through the beast's maze. Extinct androids on the floor lined some corridors of fate from another time.
Now that he was paying attention, he noticed that the noises outside, of the city, had faded, replaced by this same silence which followed him until now, and by several metal breaths. He just hoped he wouldn't be crushed by possible rubble still barely in place.
His footsteps guided him even deeper into the heart of the ship, descending steep stairs, or, occasionally, jumping off a few platforms. He walked through narrow passages and long corridors completely dark of all lights, the path becoming more confusing with each step.
He finally reached what appeared to be the central area, a large open space filled with broken and destroyed benches and makeshift tech stations. The energy of the place was stagnant, the air still held a palpable sense of uncertainty and foreboding. Hank noticed the silence, the strange stillness that hung over the deserted place. Areas of the central hall were collapsed, filled with large, unliftable debris. Hank sighed, the place was heartbreaking.
Heading to one of the technical stations, barely intact, Hank began his investigation. The area was littered with scraps of discarded android technology, stacks of papers filled with cryptic notes, and a half-dismantled android, its blue blood long gone from the metal floor.
He crouched down to observe the android's open face. "Fuck this shit." he says to himself. They just wanted to be free and the price to pay for that freedom had been an extermination of their race; at last, would have been if Markus hadn't shaken and brought the spirits back down to earth to the humans, to them. He stood up, glanced at the scattered papers. Some contained nebulous indications that he would not have been able to decipher without the help of a technician…without Connor.
He let a sheet slide out of his grip, falling limply to a surface. Clearly, now that he was here, he even wondered if there was any clue left by the leader of the androids. It was crazy of him to come here, he could have just been looking around Hart Plaza, or an electronic signature, or some similar shit. To believe that the fatigue and all this agitation had ended up getting the better of his common sense.
His eye caught a very well-drawn sketch, under a pile of papers and tiny debris. He brushed them away with the back of his hand, wiping the dust and dirt from the page. He grabbed it and put the light on the sheet. Looking at it, he immediately realized that it was a diagram of the city, with several locations marked on it. That was useful.
Its structure continues to groan under the pressure of the damage inflicted by Markus' counterattack to save his people. Hank's concentration on the paper had made him forget the worrying creaks and a violent jolt startled him. He took support with his feet so as not to fall. "Damn it..." But before he even decided to turn around to get out of there, a pile of debris, which had been precariously balanced, gave way above him. Hank barely had time to react when they crashed into him. The world swirled violently around him, pain exploding through his body.
His vision blurred and the edges of his consciousness frayed without even giving him a chance to stay awake. Darkness gripped him, pulling him even closer to her embrace. His last thought, before falling unconscious, was of Markus, of Connor still unconscious in that bed. And then everything went black.