Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

rattle…rattle

Connor opened his eyes to a white, sterile lab, a place that seemed so familiar, yet he couldn’t figure out why. Android lifts, monitors, an operation table, and a two-way mirror surrounded him. Where the hell was he…how did he get here?

rattle…rattle

And what was that noise? Connor looked around but saw nothing but the meticulously organized lab. The cold, uniform stillness of the lab reminded him of Amanda. That’s when he realized he was in a CyberLife lab. Although the lab didn’t look quite like the ones in his memory.

rattle…rattle

That noise sounded oddly familiar. He ran a quick search of his auditory memory files, but nothing came up.

“Connor, come over here,” someone whispered. He looked over and suddenly found another android standing there, beckoning him with a wave of their hand. He tried to scan them, but his scanner wouldn’t respond. Normally, that would have bothered him, but for some reason, it didn’t.

“Come here, I want to show you something really cool,” the android said with a mischievous grin. He vaguely remembered someone telling him to stay put, but he went over to them anyway. The android grabbed his hand and led him out of the room.

Connor looked back at the door as they left and asked, “Where are you taking me?”

“Shh, you’ll see when we get there. Just trust me.” Connor isn’t usually one to trust blindly, but there was something about this android that didn’t make him second-guess them. For being deep in the bowels of CyberLife, he should’ve felt afraid. But somehow, he felt safe. As they walked down the long white hallway toward the elevator, he looked over at the android next to him. Something about them felt so familiar, but when he ran a search, they didn’t come up. He never met this android, yet he didn’t feel the awkward tension that normally came with interacting with his own kind. Even weirder was that he couldn’t tell you what they looked like. The only thing that he could identify was a strip of exposed metal chassis that rattled with each step.

As they climbed into the elevator, his own voice asked, “Have we been authorized to leave the lab? What if someone sees us?” He didn’t say anything, but he heard his own voice anyway.

“Don’t worry, I took care of it, and we are almost there. You're so impatient,” the other android chided. Despite sounding annoyed and shaking their head, they still had that grin on their face. He heard the elevator ding, and suddenly the other android ran off and whisper yelled “Hurry up! We don't have long!”

Connor ran after them and followed them up another flight of stairs. How much further up were they going to go? When they reached the door at the top of the stairs, the other android turned to him and said, “Are you ready for this?” Connor tilted his head and looked at them with a lost look.

“How can I be ready for something when you haven't told me what I’m supposed to be ready for?” The other android chuckled at his response and slowly started to open the door. Connor looked at the scene before him in confusion. “Why did you bring me to the roof?”

The other android gave him an exasperated look, “It’s not just the roof, look, it's raining.”

Connor stepped outside and looked up at the sky. He heard a voice that was his saying, “Why is rain important?” The other android gave a soft sigh and gently grabbed his hands. They turned his hands so his palms faced the sky, leaving their own beneath to support them.

The android looked up at the sky for a moment and then back to Connor. “If I have learned anything during my activation time, it is that moments like these are precious and rare. I am always looking for the next mission, the next target, but every once in a while, it rains, and I can breathe again.”

Connor's voice spoke again, “ You are a machine. You don’t have lungs, you can’t breathe.”

The android looked puzzled for a moment, “How do I explain this…” They looked out towards the Detroit skyline, currently covered in a light fog, and back at Connor again. “I don’t mean to breathe literally, I mean it in a way of giving my processor a break. I find that small moments like these allow me to process better and complete my mission more efficiently.” Connor looked absolutely baffled.

“That makes no sense. How does stopping working toward your mission make you more efficient in it?” The other android looked off again and hummed.

“It might be easier to show you what I mean. Here, look down at your hands. Do you see how the water drips off your hand?”

He looked down and saw the droplets slowly running down the side of his hands and onto the other androids before falling somewhere below. He also saw how some of the water pooled in his palm. His temperature sensors told him that area of his hand was colder than the rest of him.

The other android spoke again, “ Now close your eyes, let your touch sensors tell you where each drop is.” He closed his eyes and let the drops fall onto his palms, imagining each one pinging as it landed, each creating ripples across his sensors like stones thrown in a pond. For the first time since his activation, he felt calm. Wait feel? He couldn’t feel he’s a…

“Can you feel the rain, Connor?”

08:30:00, 6/2/2041, 115 Michigan Drive, Detroit

Connor’s eyes snapped open to see the ceiling of Hank’s garage. What on Earth was that? A dream? No, it couldn’t have been a dream, maybe a human one, but an android's dreams were essentially replays of actual events. He searched his memory bank for clues, but as he expected, nothing came up. He recognized the lab, of course, it was the place he always departed from when given a new body, but the lab didn’t look like how it did in his memory files. He doesn’t remember a time in the lab when there was no one else there, and he didn’t see any of his duplicate bodies there during the dream.

Then there was that strange android. No matter how hard he tried to picture their face or bring up a memory of them, he couldn’t. He knew there was an android there, and he somehow knew their facial expressions in the dream, but he couldn’t tell you a single detail about them if he tried. Is this how humans felt when they forgot things? A shiver went down his spine at the thought. He had forgotten something. He wasn’t supposed to forget anything.

For better or worse, he could replay his memories in vivid detail. Yet the only distinctive feature he noticed was the cracked chassis that rattled with each step. And why was their chassis cracked? The better question would be, why wasn’t it repaired? They were in a lab, so repairing it would have been straightforward. Maybe because their chassis was metal instead of plastic. That in itself wasn’t unheard of. Some heavy-duty military models were made almost completely of metal, though those models were usually made by specialty military companies, not Cyberlife. The android did talk briefly about a mission, which would support the theory that they were some type of military android. Though that on its own wouldn’t be enough to identify whoever was in his dream.
Not to mention, in the last two and a half years, there has yet to be a report of a non-Cyberlife AI showing signs of deviancy. The android in the dream seemed like a deviant, but likely wasn’t a Cyberlife android, which doesn’t add up. Whether non-CyberLife androids are capable of deviating continues to be widely debated, with no conclusive evidence either way. Then there was the rain: comforting and unsettling at once. The sensation calmed him, yet he couldn’t shake the intense dread. It reminded him of how he felt reporting to Amanda.

“Connor, the fuck are you doin’ in there. We are going to be late.” Hank shouts from the other side of the door.

“Coming, Lieutenant!”

Connor sat up in his charging station as he heard Hank yell, “Hank!” from the other side of the door before walking away. He quickly gets dressed for work. His work clothes aren’t that much different from his old Cyberlife uniform. His pants and jacket are a shade darker, and he no longer has the android identifier markers, but that's about where the differences end. Hank had tried to get him to wear other outfits, but Connor refused. Each attempt left him uneasy. It had taken Hank six months to get him out of the Cyberlife uniform and nearly another six to convince him to wear pajamas at home.

He quickly went over to his fish tank in the corner to feed the fish, then tidied his charging station. His charging station looked like any standard bed, except the mattress and sheets were designed specifically to interface with androids. These stations became extremely popular with deviants because they provided a comfortable space to charge, receive software updates, and could even help boost an android's self-healing systems. They had even become standard in most repair centers. Android lifts were rarely used unless an android was severely injured.

Connor looked around his makeshift room one more time before meeting Hank in the living room. Hank was standing by the couch with a cup of coffee in one hand and his keys in the other. In the two and a half years since the revolution, Hank had changed considerably. His disheveled hair was now tied in a small ponytail, and his short beard looked freshly groomed. He still had the same grumpy expression, but it lost most of its edge. His fashion sense was still horrendous, though. He was currently wearing an outfit Connor had deemed Stripy. When Hank sees Connor, he starts walking toward the front door. Connor quickly pets Sumo goodbye, promising that they will be home soon, and follows him out the door.

They got into the car and winced when Hank started the engine and heavy metal music blasted through the speakers. “Shit!” Hank shouted as he scrambled to lower the volume to a manageable decibel. “How do we always forget to turn it down before going in for the night?” Connor shrugged as Hank pulled out of the driveway. This happened nearly every morning. After blasting music late at night, they’d forget to turn it down before leaving the car, and the next morning brought an unpleasant surprise. Truthfully, Connor had remembered, but when he first moved in with Hank, he had been too anxious to speak up. He could correct him now, but it had already become part of their routine.

Hank glances at Connor and asks, “What took you so long this morning? You’re usually the one who wakes me up.” Connor looks out the window and sees his LED flash yellow for a moment.

“I had a strange dream last night. I dreamt of something that never happened. I checked through my memory files, but the only familiar part was the location, and even that looked slightly different,” Connor said with a puzzled expression.

“Well, maybe it's a new deviant thing or something. Maybe androids start dreaming like humans do after a while.” Hank suggested.

“Maybe…” But Connor wasn’t convinced. He had never heard of this happening with other deviants before. Although it’s not like he talks to that many other deviants in the first place. Many androids still had mixed opinions about him. Some thought he was a hero for what he did during the revolution, but others still fear him from his time as a deviant hunter. Whenever he talked to other androids, there was always this weird tension in the air. They were either nervous because they put him up on a pedestal for being one of the Jericho leaders or because he was the infamous Deviant Hunter.

“Oh, what the hell is this!” Connor looked out to the parking lot to see that it was strangely full, and that their unassigned assigned parking spot had been taken. Hank grumbled while he searched for an open space, “I have a feeling that today is going to be extra shitty.”

After finding a parking spot, they entered the building and found the lobby surprisingly empty, given how full the lot was. They continued onward towards the bullpen, only to find a group of FBI agents hanging around the meeting room. And right there at the head of the group was Agent Perkins.

“You gotta be shittin’ me. What the hell is he doing here?” Hank snapped. Connor’s LED switches to yellow for a moment and finds himself shifting closer towards Hank. “You’d think they’d fire him after how badly he fucked up with the revolution.”

“You’d think they’d fire you after punching a federal agent.” At that reply, Hank shot Connor a deadpan look.

“You are such a little shit sometimes, you know that, Connor.”

Connor just looks at him innocently as Hank sighs and starts heading towards his desk. Despite the Lieutenant's attitude, Connor can spot a small smile on his face.

Connor began to follow when he heard Fowler shout, “ANDERSON. MY OFFICE. NOW.” The smile on Hank's face vanished.

“Well, it looks like I get to see what the party is all about,” says Hank as he changes his direction towards the captain's office. Hank pauses and turns back to Connor. “Try not to go near Agent Perkins. I know you could probably knock out everyone in this room with your eyes closed, but I would feel a lot better if I knew you weren’t going near him. I didn’t really trust him before the revolution, and I just…” Hank paused, shifting his weight. “He can be a real cocksucker, you know?”

“So I’ve heard,” replied Connor. Hank snorted at that and then continued to look at Connor seriously again. “Don’t worry, Lieutenant, I’m not really keen on acquainting myself with Agent Prekins anytime soon.” Seemingly happy with that answer, Hank patted Connor's shoulder and continued his journey to Fowler’s office.

Connor went to his desk to begin filing paperwork from their last case, but he couldn’t focus. His mind lingered on the strange dream and the FBI agents in the room. He kept glancing up, trying to follow the agents’ movements and overhear Fowler’s conversation. Hank seemed upset, but he wasn’t yelling or being aggressive, which at least suggested that they weren’t going to be the officers working alongside them. That was good, Connor wasn’t lying when he said he wasn’t interested in acquainting himself with the man that could have ended the revolution, and subsequently him. In the corner of his eye, Conor spotted a woman coming towards him. Connor ran a quick scan on her.