They got as far as the cautery pen touching his wounded hand, and then Connor recoiled once again.

"Holy shit," Hank said. "You really can feel that, can't you?"

"I'm sorry, okay?" Connor blurted. "I can't stop myself from pulling away."

"Yes, you can. That's part of feeling things – you have a choice!"

"But I'm not human, Hank, even if I do 'feel' things! Now that my program has recognized pain, it won't let me stay in its path. Hank, you don't understand. I can't."

"If you can override your fucking program enough to feel these emotions and sensations in the first place, then you can override it enough to cope now. Come on, take it like a man!"

"Is that what you believe I am?" Connor asked. "A man?"

...

HEAT

...

A/N: This first chapter has a lot of overlap with one of the branches of Public Enemy. It's mostly setup; everything after this will be new content that didn't take place in the game... but could have. Bear with me while this chapter sets it up.

...

Chapter 1: Pain

Stratford Tower, broadcast room

"See something?"

Connor snapped out of his momentary trance to see Hank looking at him sidelong. "I identified his model and serial number."

"Anything else I should know?" asked the lieutenant dubiously.

Hank's skepticism helped Connor himself realize just why he reacted the way he had: something about that android – Markus – had shaken him. RK200. RK200? Was Markus a prototype Connor?

…Irrelevant to the investigation. He could ponder RK200 more during the downtime, when Hank was at Jimmy's Bar and the world was asleep.

Connor shook his head, not meeting Hank's eyes. "No. Nothing."

He wasn't trying to deceive the man. He just didn't know what else to say. Hank's suspicious stare lingered a few seconds longer. Connor was surprised how relieved he felt when the lieutenant finally turned away.

Focus on the mission. Focus on the… but the mission was a clutch, wasn't it? An excuse to avoid confronting what he was really feeling, by telling himself he was confronting something that mattered more.

The mission. The comfort of familiarity. Of simplicity. He was a machine, after all. But then… this conflict, this effort not to feel, was it not human in itself? Hank did the same thing every day, in his own way. He turned his emotions off, turned his life off, so he didn't have to face the pervasiveness of his own reality.

If Connor was honest with himself – and he was, he self-checked regularly – he used his programmed obsession with The Mission to escape any challenge he didn't want to face. And if he was even more honest with himself, he knew that humans also did the same thing. Maybe with their own mission, like a job or a goal. Maybe with drugs or alcohol or sex or gambling or television or a million other things he didn't quite understand. Yet.

No. There is no yet.

There were three android chairs in the broadcast room, each meant for the monitoring of CCTV footage. Only one of them showed Markus and the others easing into the broadcast room – so only one of the androids had seen. The fact that said android hadn't reported this sighting could only mean one thing.

"The androids are in the kitchen," said the officer, seeing Connor looking at the footage. "We didn't know what else to do with them."

Connor strode toward the kitchen—

"Connor," said an unfamiliar voice. "Remember me?"

He had only just refocused on the mission again. He didn't want to be distracted but sensed the officer who had said his name really wanted to talk to him.

"I was on that terrace. That android that took the little girl hostage…?"

No, this man wasn't unfamiliar after all. It seemed such a long time ago now, but he still remembered. It seemed that time dimmed the memories of androids… just like it did for humans.

"I was shot. You saved me."

"I remember you," Connor said softly.

"I could've died on that terrace, but you saved my life." The Mission lapsed out of the spotlight for a moment as the officer's gratitude captured Connor's attention instead. "I never thought I'd say this to an android, but… thank you."

Back in August, he had only been doing what he was programmed to do. His mission – investigating and stopping the deviants – meshed well with saving human lives, or keeping them from being taken, when he could. That was all it was back then. Practicality. But something had changed since then – or more specifically, he thought, since meeting Hank. He understood what he had done as something that wasn't just part of a mission, but that had had a tremendous impact on other people's existence and livelihood. This officer he had saved, he had a… another version of a "Connor," that was all he knew how to call it; a unique sentient program inside of his own head filled with the same urgency and fear and hopes… all the same things that Connor had come to realize he possessed, things he had come to recognize as traits, as personality, as fear, urgency, hope. A mind palace.

He had preserved all that for someone else. He had… saved this person's life.

He felt his face twitch into a smile, let the smile stay there, and nodded.

You're welcome.

Maybe humanity and The Mission weren't mutually exclusive.

With that in mind, Connor finished his walk to the kitchen. If one of these androids really was a deviant, it had let Markus and the others kill people on their way up here. That meant it was capable of killing the police officers on this floor if it had a chance, if things went wrong…

He had to be careful and, if necessary, he had to destroy this android. Even if it was alive, even if you could call it 'human,' better to destroy it than risk it ending more innocent lives than it already had.

First priority, though, was finding out where Markus and the other deviants had gone. Perhaps a broadcast android in this room had allowed it to happen, but Markus and the others had actually committed the crime.

It didn't take long to find the one that was different than the others. Compared to the deviant he had interrogated back at the police station, it was almost insulting – this JB300 had no subtlety and looked guiltier than Sumo after tearing up Hank's shoe.

Maybe play with them a bit. Just to make sure.

"One of you saw the attack on the surveillance cameras and said nothing. Which means there's a deviant in this room." Pacing, Connor stopped right in front of the guilty android and looked him in the eyes. "I'm going to find out which it is."

He could scare the guilty android by tormenting the other two. The other two, after all, wouldn't care. They really were just machines. Just as he had been on the terrace with the hostage. Daniel had shot him – the bullet grazed his left arm – but he had felt no pain, no fear. He knew the two machine androids here would not be troubled by his probing – but the deviant would, because the deviant could feel those things.

…Could he feel those things? Connor knew he wasn't deviant – of course not – but he certainly had more humanity now than he had back when Daniel had shot at him. And if nothing else, he had more humanity – or at least a sense of humanity – than these machines.

"If you give yourself up," Connor said to one of the innocent parties, "maybe I can convince the humans not to destroy you."

No effect. That was okay. There was only one android he wanted to scare, and it wasn't this one.

"You're going to be switched off," Connor said to the middle android. "We'll search your memory and tear you apart piece by piece for analysis. You're going to be destroyed!"

Again, no reaction. But that damn android on the left was getting more nervous by the second, with its measured but wary glances…

I'll give you one more chance to make this easy.

"Why should you all be destroyed, if only one is deviant?" Surely that would appeal to his better nature. If this android was deviant, surely he had the capacity to understand that destruction meant death. "Turn yourself in, or two innocent androids will be shut down because of you. You'll be shut down anyway if no one confesses – you'll all be shut down – so you might as well just give yourself up."

The one on the left offered nothing. So, just like humans, deviants were capable of such immense selfishness so as to let their own suffer for their own survival. Connor felt a spasm of violent cynicism that he knew right away he shouldn't have been capable of. He had seen a similar cynicism in Hank before; he wasn't supposed to feel it for himself.

He let himself feel it anyway.

"You're just a fucking deviant!" Losing control, he grabbed the guilty android by the lapels and shook him. "Go on, admit it!" When the android didn't respond, he ripped open its chest cavity and removed its thirium regulator.

The android froze, rooted to the spot, and blinked erratically.

"Biocomponent 8451," Connor murmured. "It regulates the heartbeat. Without this module you will shut down in exactly sixty-three seconds. I could put it back, but… you just have to tell me the truth."

Several seconds passed and it became clear the android wasn't going to talk. Shit. He was wrong. This wasn't the deviant. The deviant would have talked by now. Maybe if he had kept his mind open, paid more attention to the other two – what signs had they exhibited that he had missed?

Connor put the biocomponent back in the android's chest.

And then – as the android grasped his lapels, threw him down, tore out his biocomponent, and stabbed a knife through his hand – Connor knew he could feel pain.