Chapter Text
For the first time in Connor's relatively short activation time, he was truly stumped. He was a detective for rA9's sake, he could not believe how desperate and frustrated he was. He chalked it up to his malfunctioning processor, which was definitely a large contributing factor.
Since the successful android revolution, which Connor had helped aid on along with Markus and the others, society had taken a hard progressive shift. It hadn't even been an entire month since, but governments around the world had granted androids personhood and all the rights that humans enjoyed. CyberLife dissipated entirely, which was a surprise to many. For the world's first trillion dollar company, many thought they would rebrand or adapt to new regulations. Elijah Kamski himself renounced his position as CEO and founder, not even bothering to sell the company off. Seems like he was more than content to disappear from the public eye completely, leaving all the shareholders and employees to flounder around and suffer amidst the fallout. Many rumored he decided to work on more personal projects, uninhibited by corporate regulation. Either way, CyberLife was a thing of the past. The deviant androids moved into the now empty CyberLife tower in Detroit, converting it into a hub of operations for all deviants to work and reside in if they so choose.
Connor chose against moving into what was now dubbed "New Jericho", opting to keep Hank company in their now shared home. It was a bit difficult to adjust to normal life, one that wasn't filled with dangerous missions and hunting his own people down. Now Connor just had to adjust to new emotions, new experiences, and fit into what would be life as he knew it. He kept his job at the DPD, with Hank and himself being moved to homicide. Occasionally, Connor would use his off time to help Markus with android related business. Whether it was speeches to the public, filling in at New Jericho when needed, or simply visiting friends. With Connor's help, Hank had cut down his drinking problem. Getting into better habits like eating better (much to his dismay), taking daily walks with his Saint Bernard Sumo, and finding more time for his old hobbies. Markus and the movement was going well, most public opinion was positive and open to change. Connor was settling into his new being, enjoying the change of pace.
For everything going well, it would be insane for Connor to admit out loud that there was something itching at him. Something he didn't particularly want to think about or acknowledge as the weeks and months rolled by. A pang of dread and worry that crawled up his spinal cord and had nestled into the base of his skull. Connor was well aware that he was simply a prototype, his parts weren't commercially available. What came along with his newfound personhood and emotions, came an entirely new worry. His own mortality. He knew that typical CyberLife androids could outlive any average human, and he was CyberLife's final pièce de résistance. Connor was built to last at least a century with his energy sources and ever adapting processors. But upon realizing that CyberLife along with its human technicians who put him together in the first place was gone, it filled him with dread. Even Kamski himself seemed like he was wiped off the face of the planet. With no commercial parts available, no more bodies to transfer his memory to if he was terminated on the field, there was nothing awaiting him if he died now. At first, it hadn't been much of a thought that concerned him. He could easily run his own diagnostics and he trusted many of the android techs at New Jericho to help him with minor issues. But about two months after that fateful deciding night, when Markus and the revolution succeeded, Connor felt it. The familiar creep of the backdoor of his program being reopened by what he could only assume was Amanda's last hurrah. All he could remember was his processors going haywire before powering off suddenly. Definitely was the worst bug he had ever encountered, something that was meant to shut him off for good. Despite scaring the shit out of Hank, the older man had managed to drag Connor to New Jericho and let Markus's team of techs look him over. They were able to bring him back, barely. They explained that whatever Amanda had set off, it had almost fried his programming entirely. The techs couldn't manage to figure out how to scrap Amanda from him entirely, nor how to fix his programming fully. Being a prototype meant that any schematics they could pull about the RK800 model from CyberLife's massive databases were rudimentary at best. Many of his schematics were in the personal files of former human technicians, and there was no telling if the schematics even existed now that they weren't part of the company any longer. The android techs at New Jericho had temporarily "fixed" Connor, essentially slapping the equivalent of a band aid on a gunshot wound, and sent him back on his way.
"Those stupid fuckin' CyberLife bastards... not even bein' responsible enough to upload schematics of their own work..." Hank mumbled under his breath as he drove Connor back home. He was worried sick when he found Connor unresponsive on the floor when his processor fried, completely wrecked about possibly losing another son. Connor attempted to calm Hank down, squeezing the old man's shoulder for some semblance of alleviation. He wasn't sure if he was even saying this for Hank, or more to comfort himself.
"Seems like an easy enough case to me. All we have to do is track down a former CyberLife technician and send my schematics over to New Jericho. Then I'll never have to worry about repairs again," Connor replied, his normal determined and positive tone masking his own internal fears.
So that's exactly what the two men sought to do in their free time at work. They browsed the police databases for any former CyberLife employees. The issue was that Connor's memory of his activation and testing was shoddy at best, and he was sure it was on purpose. Especially because at the time he was an experiment, nothing more than a glorified test subject before they were able to send the RK800-51 out. He remembered vaguely the bits and pieces from the other 50 versions of himself as they tested and poked at him. Before he had become deviant, those thoughts were simply blurbs in his memory that he rarely thought about or accessed. That's how most experimental androids at CyberLife are treated, not necessarily bad, but like machines.
He was a machine, past tense and not so past tense.
After deviating, those ghosts of memories seemed to haunt him… how cold and inhuman they were towards him. That's where the gnawing had really started to increase, the faint deja-vu like memories coming to him in bits and pieces whenever he'd go into standby mode, or whenever he'd run his regular nightly diagnostics. He could barely remember a handful of technicians who worked on him, but one seemed to stick in his mind more than the others. One person who he was sure could help them now. Problem was, he couldn't remember her position, how she worked on him, or even her name. Her face was a blur, nothing more than muddy colors in the far recesses of his brain. It angered him how absolutely human he felt to have forgotten, or rather the technicians had wiped and stolen away, some of his earliest memories. The one thing he could recall, however, was her voice.
Sweet, inquisitive, gentle, but professional all the same. Her soft laughter sounded like how he felt when he heard wind chimes chitter against the spring breeze for the first time.
^^^
"RK-"
The CyberLife logo flashed in his bleary vision. He couldn't see what was around him, only muddled colors. His audio processors were crackling to life, a voice calling out to him.
"-800?"
"RK800?"
If he was human, he would've groaned in protest but he didn't. He had no connection to his limbs, or any part of his body except his head for that matter. Did he even have a body?
"Con...nor?"
The voice asked gently, his audio processors finally evening out to work properly.
"Connor? Are you awake? Please let me know if you're online and operational," the sweet voice asked, polite and quiet. A woman, he surmised. She must've been in close proximity to him, possibly right in front of his face where he assumed he stood. His vision was definitely shot and he was effectively blind, only seeing the haze of artificial light that haloed around behind her figure. He responded regardless, his voice coming through static and mechanical whines in his throat,
"RK800 model number 313 248 317 - 23 online."
He could faintly hear a soft chuckle, barely there. It was... nice. As he booted up slowly, messages kept popping up, blocking whatever blurry vision he had. Connor could see a shape moving around him. A shadow of dark hair, light skin, a white coat. That's what he assumed the woman in front of him looked like at least.
^^^
It wasn't his first memory, but it was his first memory of her. Deep within the recesses of his mind, something he was sure CyberLife tried to erase hastily before sending him out into the real world for testing. The woman from his memories was certainly a technician of some sort, and maybe she stood out to him because she sounded so kind. Not cold and indifferent like many of the other humans who worked on him like a car. Those people blended into one big amalgamation in his head. But the woman whose voice he could pick up from a mile away was different. Or at least, he felt that she was somehow. He couldn't be sure. Connor, however, did know that of all people she could be the one to help him. He knew it was shotty detective work at best to focus on one detail or lead like he was currently doing, but he felt deep down like it was the right thing to do. He didn't want to tell Hank about his feelings out loud though, simply scanning through databases of former CyberLife employees as quickly as he could. Dark brown hair, light skin. That was all he could look for. About two weeks after his fried processor incident, Connor had managed to pull up a list of about two hundred women fitting that description who worked at CyberLife around the time he was created. With his processor working at a fraction of a percentage that he was used to, tasks such as this became more difficult. He almost resorted to doing his research the old fashioned way like Hank had, manually browsing files with his terminal at work. Hank had managed to find a few potential technicians, but he was blind to which people worked on which units. CyberLife didn't include that information in their normal databases. It took an android's touch to dive a little deeper, push past the encrypted wall that protected the real information in their databases. Names, pictures, positions, employment dates, brief personal information. Connor had access to it all, albeit much slower than he was used to. Hence as the weeks wore on, the more exhausted he was as he searched through the two hundred profiles of women he had stored away. Two hundred leads that he'd have to narrow down. In some sense he felt as if he had limited time, like he was racing against the clock. Which in hindsight, he was. His processor couldn't function forever like this, Markus did tell him that he had maybe a couple of months before they wouldn't be able to help him anymore. Connor chose to push that warning aside and truck onwards, ever the stubborn one he was to complete a task.
The tables had turned when Connor narrowed it down to a handful of technicians. Pursuing each lead on his off time. Hank would accompany him each time, just in case it turned ugly. For as much as the old man was a mess himself, he was even more worried about his partner turned family. Following these leads wasn't dramatic like their normal cases at work though, simply going to old addresses and matching the women's voices to the recordings he had banked in his memory in hopes he'd find the woman he wanted yet to no avail. None of the women could help him either whenever they'd explain what they needed. Hank's leads never panned out to anything either.
The straw that broke Hank's back was the first of many "seizures" that Connor experienced. The android would seize up and his eyes would flutter wildly, acting as if he had been shocked with some unknown force. Connor would sometimes collapse unceremoniously, only to have to restart and boot back up to right himself. It gave Hank a few metaphorical heart attacks, which meant Connor inevitably had to take a temporary leave of absence from the force to pursue his own personal case full time. His "seizures" weren't necessarily detrimental, more like an annoying reminder of his newfound mortality.
He felt like a private investigator in one of those old detective noir movies Hank had insisted he watch. Dead set, determined, searching for a woman shrouded in mystery. It was the only thing keeping him motivated, all the late nights spent at the kitchen table fussing over files or using what little processing power he had left to scour for leads. As the days passed, the cool summer breeze was almost tantalizing. His first summer truly alive and it came with thoughts of existential dread. What a combination, indeed.