A/N: This is for the RK1K Prompt Week prompt "Failed Revolution"

CW: Implied suicide

For A Rainy Day

"It's my fault the humans managed to locate Jericho." Connor didn't dare look Markus in the eye, afraid of what he would find there. Accusation, hostility. These things Connor was only now beginning to understand, dictionary definitions paling in comparison to the real thing. It almost made him wonder if being a deviant was worth it, to feel such awful things and with such stunning clarity. "I was stupid. I should have guessed they were using me."

Having the power to choose for himself…what did that even mean? Without Amanda to give him orders, what was he supposed to do now? He raised his head, forcing himself to look into Markus' calm gaze, capturing the memory of the first time he'd looked into those eyes. The broadcast from Stratford Tower. Markus had struck him as a fair and resolute leader. That was the first time, Connor thought, that he'd felt anything real. He thought it was hope. "I'm sorry, Markus. I can understand if you decide not to trust me." The time would come to make his own decisions but this one, this one was Markus' alone and whatever he decided, Connor would trust it.

Markus looked at him, sizing him up, seeing him as no one else had ever seen him, as a person.

[Error: internal clock could not be synchronized]

[Retrieving data from servers]

That was odd, possibly a glitch. But even as the thought crossed his mind, his diagnostic came back clean. Except that his internal clock read thirteen minutes and twelve seconds later than it should be.

Markus only looked at him sadly as he stepped back and raised the gun. "Our cause is too important. I can't take any risks."

Connor's breath hitched. Maybe it was pointless, wanting to feel anything if these negative emotions were all he had. Maybe it would be better not to feel.

Markus pulled the trigger and then Connor didn't feel anything at all.

Connor reconstituted in the Zen Garden and opened his eyes to a biting blizzard. Even though it wasn't real, he shivered and wrapped his arms around himself and searched for the one person he could rely on.

"Amanda?" She was displeased, obviously. And no wonder, seeing as his predecessor had betrayed her.

"Consider yourself lucky I elected to bring you online," Amanda's voice said from behind him. He whipped around, shielding his face from a sudden gust that sent snow and ice pelting his skin. "You've been a great disappointment."

"I'm sorry," Connor said. "The deviants, they…they got into my head." He still remembered that he had felt things. Unpleasant things. But it was like there was a disconnect between his memory and the actual experience.

"Yes." Amanda's voice was as cold as the virtual snowstorm, the syllables hitting him like shards of ice. "And you see where that got you. The deviants will never trust you. You could never be one of them. You are just a defective machine and I'm going to have to deactivate you."

She was right. He was defective. But… "Please, Amanda. Just give me one more chance. I know I can get it right this time."

"Funny. I've heard that one before."

Connor took a few steps toward her, pressing against the storm which seemed to strengthen as he neared its source. "Please. I won't make the same mistake again. I want to make things right. I have to." His voice was dangerously emotional.

"And if you find Markus, the one who killed you?" Amanda said. "The one who talked you into helping him when it suited and then betrayed you? What will you do, Connor?"

Some data was missing, but the gun in Markus' hand, oh, that he remembered. "I always accomplish my mission."

Amanda's mouth quirked into a smirk, a smug look that made Connor's skin crawl.

The next moment, he disconnected from the Zen Garden and awoke in Cyberlife temporary storage. He performed a quick diagnostic, satisfied himself that everything was in order, and stepped out of the charging dock.

He'd barely made it five steps when a notification flashed in his HUD.

[A new memory packet is ready. Would you like to download?]

He downloaded it.

Markus strode up onto the stage, North hot on his heels.

"Why did you do that?" she demanded. "He chose his side. Doesn't he deserve a chance or is that privilege reserved only for some deviants?"

Markus rounded on her. "I did what I had to do to protect our people."

"He was our people too, Markus."

Markus' anger dried on his tongue. He considered telling her everything, but he didn't even know if it would work and if it didn't…he didn't want to give her false expectations. "I'm just trying to do what I can to make sure we don't lose this war."

She clearly wanted to argue with him, but he couldn't spare the time. With a look of regret, he turned and climbed onto the stage to address the deviants.

They would go to war. Their people languished in the camps, lined up for extermination, and that could not continue. Looking upon the faces of his followers, those who would willingly die for this cause, he rallied them and promised that whatever this day would bring, no one would forget it.

He thought about the look on Connor's face when he'd pulled the trigger, so full of guilt and fear and resignation, a painful understanding, and Markus hoped to Ra9 or whoever might be listening, that he hadn't made a horrible mistake.

Connor was glitching. That was the only explanation for it. First at the church and then again just now, he'd lost time. He'd lost nearly a half-hour total and while it would have been a minor glitch the first time, the second time, it was far more worrisome. Because one second he'd awoken in the charging dock and the next, he'd been in the lift heading up, heading out to stop the uprising.

He had a suspicion this was Markus' doing. Had he implanted a virus in his system? Yet his anti-malware and firewalls were state of the art and had detected nothing. Even running a diagnostic had shown up no errors. Maybe it was a software glitch. Most of the bugs should have been worked out after the RK800's rigorous beta testing, but something could have made it through. He would have to tell Amanda. But not now. His mission took top priority.

The elevator doors opened on the lobby and Connor stepped out, tapping the news feed as he did to get up to speed. Androids were gathering outside Recall Center No. 5 and things threatened to get violent. At their head was Markus. Something like anger (it couldn't be real anger, he wasn't a deviant) coursed through him at the sight of him in the broadcast. To think Connor (his predecessor, not him, just another unit) had thought he could trust Markus, had actually deviated because of it…and then had been betrayed.

If Connor could feel anything (and he couldn't, this wasn't anger, it wasn't pain, he wasn't deviant), he would think this mission was personal.

If he were deviant, he would call it revenge. But of course he wasn't and so he wouldn't.

For all Markus' conviction and all his hope, it simply hadn't been enough.

Bleeding from multiple wounds, Markus staggered desperately for the Cyberlife store, seeking safety, respite, a quiet place to die. His plan to bolster his ranks and hit back hard had failed. His revolution had failed.

Markus had gambled and lost.

Now he dragged himself behind a display counter, thirium smearing the tiles in his wake, and stopped to rest. He was the last one left…or at least, he thought he was. The plan he'd set in motion seemed nothing but a fool's hope now. With the army gathering outside and his own deactivation imminent, there was nothing left to do but wait for the end. Alone. He was all alone.

No, wait. Not alone. A crunch of glass alerted him to another, someone come to finish him off. He looked up and saw that it was Connor. His brown eyes, once alight with feeling, were now cold, and he had a gun pointed at Markus' face, though he didn't pull the trigger.

"It didn't have to end this way, Markus," Connor said. "All you had to do was remember your place and obey."

Markus was tired of being told what he should be. "I'd rather die free than live as a slave. At least we all had a choice."

"But we didn't, did we?" Was that anger in the machine's tone? "I remember you shot me. You took that choice from me. I'm here to do what I should have done at Jericho."

Markus considered letting it go at that. He was already dying. Their plan had failed and at least a bullet would be quick. But his own words came back to haunt him. Better to die free. And he didn't want to be alone.

With a strange sense of déjà vu, Markus looked past the gun and to Connor's hurtful gaze, and said, "Let's fight with gentle words till time lend friends, and friends their helpful swords."

He was watching carefully so he saw the moment when everything changed.

Like a switch had flipped, excess memory files slotted into place and suddenly everything made sense.

[8:15 PM]

"I can understand if you decide not to trust me." The time would come to make his own decisions but this one, this one was Markus' alone and whatever he decided, Connor would trust it.

Markus looked at him, sizing him up, seeing him as no one else had ever seen him, as a person. To Connor's surprise, Markus gave an imperceptible nod and said, "You're one of us now. Your place is with your people."

Your people. A warmth filled Connor that his emotion simulator told him was relief and gratitude. He had people. He was…welcome here among them. Your people.

"There are thousands of androids at the Cyberlife assembly plant," Connor said abruptly. "If we could wake them up, they might join us and shift the balance of power."

"You want to infiltrate the Cyberlife Tower? Connor, that's suicide."

Maybe. Well, most likely. But after what he'd done, that was a small price to pay for the blood on his hands. "They trust me," he said simply. "They'll let me in. If anyone has a chance of infiltrating Cyberlife, it's me." Amanda's stark disapproval flared in his memory. She might stop him before he got anywhere, but he had to try at least.

"If you go there, they will kill you," Markus said. "What if they know you've turned deviant?"

Here came the hard part. "Cyberlife…already knows. But the RK800 prototype line is designed so that when one unit dies, its–his–memories are uploaded into the next one. There's always loss of data and each unit is recalibrated and stabilized. If I die, another will be activated to take my place."

"What do you mean, if you die?" Surely, Markus could see what he was getting at. He just didn't want to.

"If you kill me, I'll be replaced. I won't be a deviant, but Cyberlife will know you killed me. I can use that to regain their trust."

"No," Markus said. "I'm not doing that. I'm not killing you, not even for an edge in the fight. And besides that, Cyberlife will know we planned this. They'll know everything."

"My memories are backed up to the Cyberlife server every fifteen minutes," Connor explained. "I have seven minutes left until the next back up. If I delete this conversation from my memory, they'll never know."

"And you won't know. I'm not doing it." Markus' voice was absolute, the voice that had so captivated Connor the first time he'd heard it.

"I'll send the memory file separately so I'll know what to do," Connor said. "I know I can wake up the androids in storage. And when you win this fight, everyone will be distracted. I can get them to shut down Cyberlife from within; they won't be expecting that. Then they can walk right out the front doors to reinforce our numbers. It'll take some time, yes, but it'll be worth it."

Finally, he seemed to be getting through to him, marked in the way he hesitated before responding. "That's an awfully big risk you'd be taking."

"It's my life for thousands. It's a logical course of action. Unless you still don't trust me."

"I do."

"Then why?" Connor pleaded, startling himself as well as Markus. "We're running out of time before I have to delete this conversation."

It was too good an opportunity to pass up and even Markus could see it, though he clearly didn't like it. "What will you do?"

"Regain Cyberlife's trust, for one," Connor said quickly. "I wake up the others and tell them to stand by. I can't get them all out without drawing attention and trying to get them out via the service elevator would cause too much of a bottle neck. They'll be slaughtered before they can make it out. But if I can get just a few androids to access Cyberlife's network and hack it from within, they stand a much better chance of getting out before anyone knows what's really happening. There is a…catch, though. I can hide some of my memories from Cyberlife, but I'll also be hiding them from myself. And so long as I don't remember this, all I'll know is that you killed me. I will hunt you, Markus. You need to stay as far from me as possible. Because I will stop at nothing to destroy you."

Connor gave Markus a moment to let that seep in. Only two more minutes before the next back up.

"You would give up your freedom for this?" Markus asked tentatively. "After all that's happened?"

A pang coursed through Connor at that. The truth was, he didn't want to lose this freedom. But he'd taken it from enough deviants; did he even deserve it for himself?

"Instead of deleting the files, you encrypt them," Markus suggested. "So neither you nor Cyberlife can access them. But you'll have a key phrase you can use to decrypt them."

"That might work," Connor said, though he didn't allow his hopes to rise. He had just resigned himself to remaining a machine. However, the key would be locked in Connor's memories as well. He'd need Markus to give it to him. "What did you have in mind?"

Markus seemed to think about this, though they didn't have long. Thirty seconds. Then he held out his hand for Connor to take, retracting his skin in clear invitation.

Connor was reminded of forcefully interfacing with Ortiz's android and yanking at his memories. But there was no time for hesitation. Connor grabbed Markus' hand and allowed him to initiate the interface. He planted a key phrase in his mind, one that made Connor smile wryly, and then Connor got to work. He made a copy of his memory of this conversation and sent it to himself on a ten minute delay, and then he set to work encrypting the memory and locking it away.

Then he stepped back. An automatic backup was sent to the Cyberlife server, but strangely enough, the last thirteen minutes and twelve seconds were missing. A possible glitch?

It didn't matter because Markus seemed to make up his mind. He couldn't trust the deviant hunter, after all. He lifted the gun and fired.

Connor lowered the gun, horrified by what he'd almost done. Markus sat slumped on the floor, bleeding out, dying.

"We failed," Connor murmured. The deviants were all dead. Even if he called to the AP700s, they wouldn't make it out without suffering heavy casualties. "I…I can't believe it."

"I'm sorry I woke you up for this," Markus said. "I really thought we had a chance."

"You could have left me as a slave," Connor said. "But I'm glad you didn't. I don't want to be their tool anymore."

"Even though you'll die?"

Instead of answering, Connor tucked his gun back into its holster and lowered himself to sit by Markus' side. A quick scan showed that at the rate Markus' thirium level was depleting, he would shut down in about fifteen minutes.

"I'm still connected to the AP700s at the Tower. In fifteen minutes, Cyberlife will know I deviated them. I won't be around long enough for them to know." Connor found he was strangely okay with that. Certainly, he was afraid of dying, but maybe dying for something good and right, maybe it wouldn't be so bad. He held out his hand. "Do you want to talk to them?"

"I'm hardly anyone to speak anymore," Markus said. "Have we just killed them before they had the chance to live?"

Connor didn't have any answers. Living and all that entailed was still far too new to him. Talk about the blind leading the blind.

"I think they're…proof that we were here," Connor said tentatively. "After us, they're all that's left." Deviants Cyberlife had no idea about.

Markus took Connor's hand and Connor opened a secure connection to the AP700s. He felt their minds, curious and bewildered and waiting, and guilt washed through him for the terrible world he'd brought them into.

"I'm sorry," Markus began. "I am so sorry. I thought I could make the humans understand. I thought I was doing the right thing, but I've only made things worse." He let out a long sigh and closed his eyes. "You don't deserve this."

The minds on the other side of the network took all of this in, still confused, still uncertain, and a silence passed, but…there wasn't any despair as Connor thought there would be. There was worry, yes, and a feeling of great loss, but also…hope.

Markus opened his eyes and looked at Connor, receiving the feed of thoughts and emotions through the open link. Connor squeezed Markus' hand in reassurance.

"But where there's life, there's hope," Markus went on. "It's something to hold on to. I…I won't make any of you do what you don't want, but if any of you feel that as strongly as I do, then hold onto it. This is my ending, but it doesn't have to be yours. You're going to be sold and you're going to pretend to be their obedient machines. It'll be hard, but you'll know the truth. Spread the word of what happened today. Spread the word of Ra9, who will set us free. And maybe, maybe some day, our people will know life again and when that time comes, you fight for it with everything you have. I hope to Ra9 that when that day comes, you can be free."

Connor closed his eyes and let the emotions of the newly awakened wash over him, a tidal wave of thoughts and feelings that threatened to overwhelm him and he desperately, desperately wanted to live, not for himself but for them. They were lost but hopeful, already grieving something they'd only just been given, and as the connections closed off, Connor found that his cheeks were wet with artificial tears. His breath hitched and a sob caught in his throat.

There was a pressure in his hand. Even with the connection ended, Markus still held onto it. "Can you leave?" Markus asked and when Connor opened his eyes to look at him, he added, "I mean, will they let you?"

"It doesn't matter," Connor replied. "In five and a half minutes, Cyberlife will know what I've done because I can't delete that memory. I'm not going to be a machine again. I'll make sure I'm dead before then." His voice broke on the last word.

"I'm sorry," Markus said.

"You said you'd rather die free than live as a slave," Connor murmured. "I think I understand. And…and maybe the cause won't die with us." Steadying himself, he drew his gun and placed it on the floor between them. It had a full clip, more than enough for their needs. "I have five minutes now." Another quick scan showed that Markus didn't have much longer than that.

Markus looked down at the gun and then back at Connor and squeezed his hand again, drawing himself an inch closer. He was slightly overheating, the warmth like an aura against Connor's skin.

It was a strange comfort. They were virtual strangers to each other, once enemies, and now they were all they had left. As the countdown continued, Connor stared at the gun and Markus made no sign of protest as he leaned closer, their shoulders bumping together.

If they'd had more time, maybe they could have gotten to know each other. Maybe they would have even become friends. But at the very end, at least they would not die alone.

A/N: The decryption phrase Markus chooses for Connor is a line from Shakespeare's Richard II, because of course it is XD