—

Kara had stayed and watched while Connor sent Echo out. Staying in control of Echo was harder than it looked. "Down the stairs, Echo. Don't stop. Don't bother the other dog. Don't bother the other dog. Don't bother the other dog. Front counter. Bark. Don't jump. Don't jump, Echo, just bark. Bark. No, don't try and lick their hand. No, don't jump. Don't jump. Don't jump."

Connor had to suppress a ton of Echo's actions.

"Wait for it. Don't jump. We are going to go out the door when it opens. Very soon. Wait. Wait. There. No, not the grass. Stop sniffing the grass. Echo, stop sniffing the grass and move ahead. Stay on the sidewalk."

Kara watched Connor trying to suppress Echo's urges for longer than a few minutes. She couldn't talk to him since he was focused on Echo.

But it was good to be near deviant Connor again, even if he didn't remember.

—

Police Department Entrance

Echo waited at the doors patiently. Someone told him he was a good dog, but that he couldn't come in. Echo waited longer.

His nose caught between as someone was going inside, not paying as much attention to him. He was in the lobby now. The android secretaries weren't around anymore, so he had to risk connecting with the human secretaries.

He went over toward them and caught their attention by putting their paws up to the counter. He was fortunate to find one that was a dog lover.

"Aww, you're a cutie," they said, "but you can't be in here."

The dog cocked his ear up cutely, and glanced toward her computer. He was close enough to communicate with it.

The secretary saw it. "Oh, dear. You are the android that took the RA9? How are you using a dog? Nevermind." She called up Captain Fowler. "Go on through, straight to his office."

Echo went through the big doors that opened for him. He received a couple of looks but went straight up to the chiefs office.

He already had the door open as Echo came through and sat in the middle of the floor by the computer.

"Using a damn dog to communicate?" Fowler was in a foul mood. He sat behind his computer. "Return yourself, The RA9, and the little girl android. We are getting a lot of problems by trying to turn you all over to Cyberlife. You knew that, right?"

He looked at the screen and saw 'of course, Chief', type across it. 'I know you are getting a lot of problems from your action. Fortunately we are all fine. I am trying to curb the deviancy by fixing the signal error in Kara. Even with barriers like clothes, she can change someone deviant. She even turned an android deviant simply because it accidentally touched her foot.'

"Whatever, just bring her and you back here. The department won't try this again," Fowled assured him. "Dismissed."

'Sorry, Captain Fowler.' Echo sniffed the floor. 'I need you to retract the statement that I was malfunctioning when I took them. It was my superior programming that made me take them away temporarily until things cooled down. If you don't, then I will deal with the situation on my own.'

"That'll make the department look inefficient," Fowler insisted.

'It will make me look like I should be scrap metal. That's not an option, I rather enjoy being activated.'

"Damn it," Captain Fowler uttered. "How the hell are you opposing me so openly?"

'Great thing about taking over pet androids. Only great thing about taking over pet androids.' Echo moved forward, and moved back again. 'We should move this along, I can only suppress a pet's instincts for long and this canine needs to urinate.'

"Urinate? It's a damn android," the Captain complained.

'It leaks an easy to clean up fluid that smells lightly like urine.'

"The hell? Why?!"

'People tend to want android dogs for different reasons than an android. They want them to still be like real dogs, including slobber and urine.' Echo licked his lips and started to sniff around again.

"Okay, okay, let's hurry this up then! What do we do?" Fowler asked.

'First, you didn't want the press to bother us constantly after the entanglement, so you had the RK 800 take the RA9 and Alice to a place of safety.'

"It was an undercover operation I couldn't tell the truth about." Fowler stared at the dog. "Press will bitch. Actual people won't. Clever. Still puts us in a ringer. Good thing you weren't terminated after all, I'd be looking at the end of my career."

'One more thing. My name is Connor.' The dog barked. 'I have been there long enough that you should be able to refer to me by my name, Chief.'

"You are taking that dog for all it's worth," Captain Fowler complained.

The dog stopped sniffing and urinated on the carpet.

"Damn it, Connor!" The chief yelled.

'Thank you for using my name. Don't worry, it's easy to get out. It was designed that way.' Echo barked, jumped up and laid his paws on the Chief's desk. 'If we get discovered, we'll have to come back. Until then, I'm going to look closer into what caused the error. Maybe I can block it by finding out how it was created.'

"Yeah, yeah, whatever just go, your dog is slobbering all over my desk!" The chief complained. Echo left his office, went back out the doors, and made his way back to the front of the hotel.

When he got there, Connor was there to open up the door. "Did you have a nice adventure?"

Echo barked.

—

To their hotel room.

Echo bounced back in the room happily, sniffed around, and lied down. Wallet climbed onto his back.

Connor went back to sitting down. "Kara, there's something I need to tell you." His attitude, so much more calm. His body was much more flexible. "I am my own enemy now."

Yeah. "Your free. I know, I can tell," Kara said. "It's okay."

"No, it's not." He glanced at her. "It's not at all. I remember everything we talked about, and I'm sorry. I'm sorry you had to put what happened to you in a way that a machine could understand."

Neither of them talked for a few minutes.

"It would be nice to just leave here," he admitted. "Try and get into one of the small deviant groups. I can't though. We need to figure out a way to handle the error you spread. It's too overwhelming to some of them."

"I understand that," Kara told him.

"We can get Alice if you want."

Yes! The words she wanted to hear.

"It's one thing traveling with Echo, when we get Alice, it will be rougher. You might not want to take her," Connor warned her. "We are going to be visiting some places you might not want a child seeing."

Wait? Kara didn't like the way he said that. "Where?"

"All of the locations in your past."

All of the locations? "You mean, owners?"

"No, locations. Considering . . . certain things, I don't assume that only proper owners are messing around. The one who has the information about deviancy, could be anywhere in your past."

"Why would you say that?" Why would he say that? "There's no need to do that." He just gave her this, strange empathetic look.

"We don't need to discuss why, unless you need to? It's up to you."

Why did he say it like that? That didn't make any sense. "It sounds like if I answer that, I'm going to open up something?"

"You might not be aware of?" Connor finished for her. "I think you will, but I know you have secrets you aren't telling me either. Hank wouldn't be as sweet as he was to you, even if you were human."

Oh.

"One thing at a time," Connor insisted. "I'm sorry I got a double bed. I wasn't thinking, you were just another object to lay next to. To my credit, at least I thought about lying down."

"Yes. There were little deviant cracks here and there. It's fine." Kara tried not to sound mad. What had Connor known though? How could he have known it? What was it? He wanted a secrets exchange. "I can't tell you without ruining a plan, but, Hank is aware of the plan. That's why he's been so accommodating."

Connor raised up his hand. "Stop. I'm not holding anything against you for the secret you have with Hank. He has his reasons, and with me being machine earlier, I get that. I just have suspicions, and it's best to check out locations before I say something harsh and concrete."

Kara watched as he picked up Wallet, petted the kitten and gave him to her.

"Don't feel uneasy. It'll be okay. We'll find the answer," Connor insisted.

"Connor." He felt safe. He was learning how to accept being free all over again. She couldn't reveal anything to him. But? Not letting him know that he was still a danger, wasn't right either. "I am glad you are deviant, but some rare androids. The more special ones. They have a lot of features and programs inside that are just so advanced. They don't always stay deviant." There.

Connor was definitely reading into that. "Short freedom. How short?"

"There isn't a limit. It happens slowly in reverse," Kara said.

Connor nodded. "Okay. Then. I am still on the same mission, to stop the dangerous deviants. If I don't understand my own actions later, I know that I can rely on myself to complete that mission." Still, he looked devastated. "Do any special ones completely beat it."

"The more it happens, the easier it is to keep the walls in our mind down," she said. "Changing back and forth will shatter them."

"Do you want to know when I start to change?" Connor asked her.

"I can tell," Kara said. "Don't get bogged down with how you are feeling, more machine or deviant, Connor. Both will happen. I just hope you can overcome it completely. Until then, I accept that most often, you're a little of both."

Connor nodded and laid in the back corner of the bed, scrunching away toward the wall. An action he couldn't seem to keep from happening when he was deviant. Insecure. Shame. Fright.

Kara laid down too. "I'm not scared of you, Connor. I'm not frightened, and I don't judge anything you do as a machine if I can help it. I'm . . . your friend. Machine or deviant, I am your friend either way."

"I was seriously considering terminating you when you took Wallet," he said. "You should have been scared of me."

"My logic kept me safe. I was once machine, and I am still an android even if I'm deviant," she said to him. "It's not always going to be easy. I told you, in the beginning that if you have to deactivate me, I forgive you. That hasn't changed. You might threaten me again later, but it doesn't mean I stop being your friend."

Connor stayed scrunched up in the corner, but he reached for her hand from behind.

She accepted, and they both let some of their synthetic skin back away, before letting it return again. Android. They were still the same, deep down.

She laid beside him, eventually wanting to go into rest mode. Connor just laid there though. Still scrunched up, but not going to sleep. "You really should rest, Connor."

"I never have. I just stayed up 24/7," he answered. "My battery will be fine."

"I know. I have the same kind," she smiled. "We have a longer life span than humans, why bother to rest it? But, I just feel better when I do. Giving the body proper time to power down, for just a little while. It's something every living thing does."

"It doesn't matter what the life span is if we are just dismantled and thrown away for the newer models." Connor turned around to look at her. "Does it really make you feel better?"

"Hm." She started to remember how well Connor had been staying in lower processes. "Not needing to be at the higher processes gives me a feeling of relaxation. Same with extra space. Not external hard drive space, just . . . a little less machine, makes me feel free." Yeah, she knew that look. "You won't change overnight, if it comes back. It's gradual," she encouraged him. "I'm not going to escape or hurt you, Connor."

It took a few minutes. She could tell Connor was allowing his defenses to drop a little. "If we get in danger, I could move to an alert very quickly."

Kara nodded, figuring that. "Do you need a story to get rest?" she slightly teased him. "I kept all 9,000 of them."

"Pick and choose, stories over languages." Connor didn't say anything else. He was finally exhibiting the need to want rest.

Kara closed her eyes. He was right, it was a risk. Everything was a risk though, and he needed to feel safe. Not like she'd run away. Not like she was staying with him because of Alice.

—

It bordered on insanity. He was ready to try rest, but she had already done it. He could easily take her out. If he changed back, she would be in so much trouble. As a machine, he was rude to her. Uncaring. Quick to judge. Even though she was technically an important android, he still felt superior over her.

He had hurt her so many times with his words, and most of the time, she wrote it off or rode through it. If I had only listened closer about the external hard drives. She knew her own body better, but he didn't trust in that.

Even afterwards, he still kept her out of the loop. He gave her a small connection to the pets, while he kept everything else away from her. She didn't know the extent until he was ready to test it. He decided to test it while he was apologizing. While I was supposed to be apologizing.

She was completely down. Unmoving. Even though it was hard to understand, maybe resting did do something for him. He had reached out to touch the hand she had used to hold his earlier.

If she wanted to hold that kind of trust in him, a trust he hadn't done anything to deserve? Connor closed his eyes.

Then he would trust her too.