.

Connor's Very Stressful 5 Hours

In which Hank goes missing and is found again

.

Connor can be patient.

A tense twelve-hours stakeout in the night during a downpour? With a few proximity and movement alarms in place, he can just watch cute dogs on the internet while still doing his job. He is a supercomputer on legs, and barring severe processor damage he can multitask just fine.

He can preconstruct the most likely place where an escaped suspect will go to lay low, wait for as long as it takes for them to get there, and pin them to the wall while reciting their rights and handcuffing them.

He can handle downtime just fine.

What he does not handle just fine is the current situation: despite Connor's every calculation of ETA, queue length anomalies, donut preparation time and various chances of human error impeding Hank's progress towards his box of sugary heart attack, he is left waiting.

Never in his life has he loathed his position more. In order not to arouse suspicion, he is still sitting with his back to the bullpen entrance. He glances between his monitor, Hank's empty desk, the newly printed and framed picture of himself and Hank sitting beside his monitor, and the reflection of the entrance on Captain Fowler's glass cubicle.

While he can work with vague reflections on glass just fine, it doesn't mean he likes to. It's still unclear, and 100% of the time he has failed to see Hank walk in so far. As the 'few minutes' wait he was promised stretches into 25 minutes 35 seconds and counting, repetitive messages keep popping up and stubbornly occupy his valuable RAM, refusing termination.

FIND HANK. FIND HANK. RECALCULATE ETA. FIND HANK. HANK? HANK? ?

NOT HANK. WAIT FOR HANK. FIND HANK. RECALCULATE ETA.

Flipping his coin doesn't work anymore; it hasn't worked for the last five minutes.

He had pinged Hank's phone, but found it unavailable – most likely because Hank had forgotten to charge it during the night, for some reason the Lieutenant attributed to old age and the phone 'lying' to him. No help there.

He had resorted to glancing over his shoulder and zooming in on the entrance. When Officer Chen asked him if he was alright, he hacked into the cameras of the lobby to try catch a glimpse of his partner. When Captain Fowler caught him in the act and berated him for his 'illegal motherhenning', he returned to glancing over his shoulder.

When his timer hits 26 minutes, Connor stands up and nearly knocks the chair back into Officer Miller.

The man looks as surprised as Connor feels. "Con-"

"I'm sorry, Officer Miller," he says. He pushes the chair back into his desk. It bounces with a faint tremble and wheels 0.2 meters away from where Connor wanted it to be. "Lieutenant Anderson should've been here at least fifteen minutes ago. I'll go look for him at the donut store nearby."

Connor mentally clocks out for a 'break', avoids collision with two more officers, considers vaulting over a desk but doesn't, and almost runs over Detective Reed, who has come back into the bullpen with a box of creamy donuts from the same store that Hank had gone to.

"Detective Reed, have you seen Lieutenant Anderson on your break?" His hands fiddle with his tie. When the tie is appropriately placed, he smoothes down three crinkles on his new jacket, dark blue, without the glowing android markers. He can't keep still.

Reed sneers at him, but his hostility has tapered down in the months following the revolution – in no small part because his job was on the line if he didn't start playing nice – so his mocking expression isn't followed by remarks about plastic toys relying on old drunkards or Ken dolls having their wires in a twist.

But if he doesn't answer or move aside, Connor isn't sure he won't make use of his android strength on him.

"What, Anderson needs you to check on him?" No name calling, but also no useful information, which is what Connor needs like he needs his Thirium pump. Scanning Gavin's face reveals something else other than scorn for Connor – confusion, and maybe suspicion. "But yeah, I saw him – with you. You said something about a lead on your case and you both left the place. Why the fuck are you here?"

His Thirium pump regulator stutters.

"Where did they go?"

His suspicion turns into vague alarm. "It wasn't you?"

"Where did they go?"

"How should I know?" Gavin raises his free arm, the one without the goddamn donuts, but beneath his annoyance there is also concern. "Look, your clone said something about the Cherry Pub, but if that wasn't you-"

ANOTHER RK800 UNIT.

MIGHT HAVE LIED ABOUT DESTINATION.

HANK ANDERSON HAS BEEN DECEIVED.

KIDNAPPED.

His stress level jumps to a distressed 81%. Hank has been deceived by another RK800, and most likely kidnapped, for unknown reasons. He has already been fooled once to be used as a hostage, a bargaining chip, against Connor. Why would CyberLife attempt this again, and why now of all times?

Was it CyberLife?

Reed tilts his head and looks at Connor's LED. It must be flashing red, but that can't be the only reason he looks so concerned. "Tin can, what the fuck's up with you?"

LOCOMOTION SYSTEM MALFUNCTION.

Connor is rooted in place. He feels his limbs faintly trembling and twitching. Maybe that's why Gavin is worried. Stressed deviants have shown violent tendencies, and Connor's combat software is very much ready to start neutralizing the closest human-shaped threat.

FIND HANK. FIND HANK. FIND HANK.

FIND HANK.

He can't waste time.

Connor shoves Gavin aside and bolts.

The Frosty Donut Shop comes into view in 1.1 minutes.

Connor skids to a halt – it's late autumn, winter has come knocking and yesterday's rain and cold night has created patches of ice, but Connor is state-of-the-art, he can handle not slipping on ice – and he nearly pulls the door off its hinges.

Ignoring the closest startled customers, he scans the place.

There have been too many people in the twenty-eight minutes since Hank has left Connor's line of sight. The floor doesn't tell him anything except that the employees should sweep crumbs away more often, and the tables are half-empty since most people have gone off to have a proper lunch instead of a box of donuts.

There's a camera at the entrance, which Connor hacks into immediately.

.

The queue was longer than usual when Hank arrived. Hank huffed – his shoulders slumped, he scratched the back of his neck – and ambled to get in line. Five customers in front of him. He waited, played around on the phone, cursed as it ran out of battery, glanced at the clock on the wall, huffed some more.

He ordered his favorite donuts. Paid the price. Held the aqua green box in one hand, made his way to the exit-

Except Not-Connor was there.

"Something came up?" Hank asked him. Hank was facing the door, so Connor can read his lips – but Not-Connor is giving his back to the camera. His answer is lost to him.

"Really?" Hank was both annoyed and surprised. "Fuck, I only just got the donuts."

Not-Connor insisted.

Hank rolled his eyes. "You goddamn workaholic."

It was at that moment that Gavin appeared, swaggering into view and prompting both Hank and Not-Connor to step away from him – but to make space between them and him, Not-Connor partially faces the camera, and there's no mistaking it: it's another RK800.

"Fuck off, Reed."

"Lieutenant, we must go to the Cherry Pub now to make it in time."

"Yeah, yeah." Hank waved his hand at Not-Connor. "Call a taxi if you're so much in a hurry."

Not-Connor frowned at him. "I've already called one. We must hurry."

"Ha!" Gavin smirked and walked over to the queue. "So fucking whipped, Anderson."

Not-Connor left without looking back. Hank flipped the bird at Reed and followed Not-Connor out of the store.

.

Connor bumps into a customer who just opened the door. He barely has the presence of mind to apologize before he scans the sidewalk and the road.

Another camera, perched on top of a traffic light.

He hacks into it and matches the time stamp to when Hank left the store – there was a taxi there, and Connor takes note of its license plate and runs it through the Detroit Taxi Servers that keep track of all automated cabs.

While humans would need the phone app to find out which is the closest available taxi, Connor is looking for a specific one and his brain is a computer. He finds the taxi and hacks further into the servers – when was it called and boarded, where did it stop, who paid for it – and it takes more time than expected to narrow down the location.

RK800 PAID TAXI WITH CASH UNDER CONNOR'S NAME.

NO AVAILABILITY OF CYBERLIFE FUNDS? MINIMAL COVERING OF TRACKS?

Their taxi had first set course for the Cherry Pub – it wasn't a bad lure, considering they were investigating the disappearance of two androids from a pub in the same area – but after a few minutes it started heading towards the docks.

Surely Hank would've noticed something was amiss?

With a deep unease curling around his Thirium pump, Connor calls himself a taxi and sets course for the last place where Hank had been.

The docks are unexpectedly busy, even at this time of the year, even in an area as rundown as where the taxi stopped.

Connor has been scouring the place for the last hour. It's been 1 hour 45 minutes 22 seconds since Hank went missing. His stress level refused to go lower than 35%, which had taken a lot of coin flipping and preconstructing best-case scenarios to achieve. After all, if someone bothered to find a RK800 to lure Hank away, surely they have more use for him alive and unharmed, right?

He is busy trying to find the marks of Hank's shoes on the pavement when Captain Fowler calls him.

"Connor, did you have any luck?"

"Negative, Captain."

A sigh. "I've contacted CyberLife to know what the hell they've done to the rest of your series."

No, that footprint is too small. Observing the concrete with 68% of his processing power, Connor walks down the docks and listens to the waves crashing in the distance. Some people nearby throw him confused glances, which he ignores. "I had assumed they were disassembled after I deviated."

"That was the plan – except that one was unaccounted for when they went to kill all your clones. They said it was… Unit 53?"

"It was activated in order to be my next body if I was destroyed during the investigation." Unit 52 has been Connor ever since Unit 51 was riddled with bullets at Stratford Tower. "I had uploaded my memory to him a minute before I deviated. It may have carried over and prompted him to deviate himself and flee CyberLife Tower. Why didn't they say anything about his disappearance?"

Fowler snorts. "Probably they didn't know how. After the demonstration they couldn't file a missing propriety report for an android, but a missing person report? During that media shitstorm? Wouldn't want be caught dead in thinking androids are people."

Connor stops on the sidewalk. A smashed chocolate donut lays in mushy pieces near the mouth of an alley. He hurries over to it, his only clue. "Did they reveal more information about his disappearance?"

"Connor, it's only through threats of bringing the precinct down on their asses for kidnapping of a police officer that I got the news about 53." He sighs again, and Connor vaguely realizes that Fowler is worried about Hank, too. "I'll see what I can do from here, but it'll take time to pry more info out of them. It might not even matter, if 53 has actually gone deviant. If we don't hear from Hank for more than ten hours, I'll send someone to your location and mark Hank as presumably captured with criminal intent. Keep me updated."

Ten hours is a long time for Hank to be missing in the company of a rogue RK800, but Connor can sort of see why it would be a problem to deploy everyone instantly.

Other than possibly alerting the RK800 – why else would he know about that tiny ten-minutes window in which Hank would be mostly alone, if he didn't keep an ear out for the going-ons of the precinct? – it would decrease the number of policemen available to the rest of Detroit, should anything happen. It's no secret that Hank is an android sympathizer, and Red Ice rings still exist and might have planned to lure him with an RK800. Maybe kidnapping Hank is part of a larger scheme, maybe Connor is walking straight into a trap.

He doesn't much care. He just wants to find Hank and bring him back to safety.

"I will report any relevant updates," he states. "I'll do my best to find Lieutenant Anderson." He disconnects the call and inspects the surroundings of the donut. Maybe it wasn't just smashed, maybe it was also half-eaten – there seems to be the reflection of saliva on its surface, but it might be contaminated by everything lying around it.

SCUFF MARKS ON THE WALL.

GARBAGE RECENTLY DISTURBED – SCUFFLE?

TRACES OF BLOOD ON THE WALL.

He steps closer. There are four droplets of blood at about shoulder height – barely enough for analysis, but they're fresh and it's Connor's only chance to find out whether Hank has been there or not.

He swipes the droplets with a single digit and presses the tiny sample to his tongue.

BLOOD

LT. HANK ANDERSON

LESS THAN 39 MINUTES AGO

It's Hank's blood.

Connor breathes, which is quite alarming, because it means his ventilation system is struggling to cool him down - but the realization that Hank was here less than thirty-nine minutes ago sends his processors into overdrive. Connor was not even 350 meters away when Hank fought off the RK800. He should've been faster, closer, anything.

He stumbles back and preconstructs-

Hank realized something was wrong, maybe eating that chocolate donut, because they were nowhere near the Cherry Pub. Maybe the RK800 fooled him somewhat, maybe talking about other evidence, but Hank was not convinced.

There are more footprints. One of them matches Hank's, but there are four others, the RK800's included.

GROUP.

AMBUSH.

Hank followed the RK800 from behind, still with the box in hand, but came forward before rounding the corner. He noticed the three accomplices. He stepped back – maybe even reached for his gun, but he had left it at his desk and he realized he was outnumbered and weaponless.

The four figures surrounded him.

Hank fought back – there are flakes of aqua green cardboard, ripped from their package in the scuffle as the box was used as an impromptu weapon or distraction – but the figures were ready, they blocked his limbs and clamped a hand over his mouth, but Hank managed to free a hand long enough to try punch the RK800. The android dodged the hit, which landed on the wall and split open the skin of his knuckles. The hand was promptly blocked again.

Further down the alley, Hank's footprints turn into drag marks and the other four continue on, boxing them in.

This wasn't a fight Hank had won.

HANK WAS KNOCKED OUT?

HANK WAS DRAGGED AWAY.

Something crawls inside of him, something hot and heavy stirring up from his pump regulator and filling every gap in his biocomponents with molten lead. His arms ache, his synthetic muscles refuse to relax, and his jaw is locked in place as he debates what he'll do to Hank's kidnappers.

This isn't anger. Anger is when some regular from Jimmy's tries to get Hank to outdrink him despite Connor's every effort to cut down his alcohol intake, or when Reed forgets to mind his tongue and his pointed comment causes Hank to droop slightly as soon as he's out of sight.

This is fury.

Fury is when Connor isn't sure whether he will arrest a suspect or crush his vertebrae one by one.

The mantle of the Deviant Hunter settles on his shoulders like a familiar coat. The Deviant Hunter cares only about the mission, and that's as clear as the glowing white letters that hover at the edge of his vision:

FIND HANK.

Connor follows the trail out of the alley.

As soon as they get on the street, the tracks disappear – and Connor hacks into the Detroit Taxi Servers once more, sifts through the hundreds of taxis that crossed that spot and finds another destination imputed on his name.

A motel, on the other side of the city.

The dwindling traffic after lunch hour allows him to reach the place in thirty minutes. 2 hours 23 minutes 40 seconds since Hank went missing.

When Connor questions the receptionist – an ST300 who decided she liked her job, especially with less demeaning comments aimed at her – she allows him to sort-of-legally access the recordings of the lobby.

Hank was nowhere to be seen, but the RK800 was there and-

That… wasn't what he was wearing.

The android in the shot is, undoubtedly, an RK800.

But he is wearing a gray hoodie and a large jacket, something that hangs a bit too loose and is too cumbersome to be something Connor would regularly wear. He is checking out of the motel, but the time stamp claims that the RK800 that kidnapped Hank hadn't even arrived, and thus couldn't have been there.

"When did he check in?"

"Yesterday morning," Denise the ST300 answers, frowning a bit. "He only had a large duffel bad for luggage, and had allotted a car space – number 04."

Close to the exit, for a quick getaway.

"Did you take his license plate?"

She looks contrite. "We don't take the plates, but we still have recordings of when he came in."

It takes 1.1 second to find the Motel RK800 driving his car into the parking lot, with a nice clear shot of its license plate.

Still sifting through the recordings, Connor moves his attention to the street in front of the parking lot exit and narrows down the timeframe – and there they are.

.

The Motel RK800 gets his car, an old model, still needing to be manually driven. It's a washed out gray, and it's at the very least third-hand. He drives out of the parking lot and waits by the road for two minutes.

A taxi rolls in. The four figures pile out, two of them dragging Hank by the arms, but Hank seems to be half-awake at the very least judging by the uncertain dragging of his feet. One of the kidnappers is holding the battered donut box.

Without a word, the four men squeeze into the car and the Motel RK800 turns on the engine and drives away.

.

Connor thanks the receptionist and runs out of the motel.

He ends up hacking twenty-four cameras over the course of the next two hours – putting his timer since-Hank-was-gone at a nerve-wracking 4 hours 26 minutes 03 seconds.

Connor was also not careful at all in his illegal hacking attempts, some of which might make it to Captain Fowler's desk and earn Connor his first official disciplinary warning – or worse.

He really can't empathize enough how little he cares. The longer Hank is missing, the more he might be hurt by the androids who kidnapped him and the possibly-human masters who saw a window and took his partner away.

A taxi would've gotten stuck in traffic, and couldn't have followed the tracks if the kidnappers had gone on foot at some point.

Which is why Connor had temporarily borrowed a bike in the name of the law.

And he narrowly avoided no less than six collisions with cars – which must be some kind of record, considering that about 53% of cars in Detroit are automated and Connor has a preconstruction software he had specifically tuned to avoid damage to chassis ever since he cut ties with CyberLife.

He had to stop a few times on the sidewalk to properly hack into nearby cameras, but when he caught a glimpse of that old gray car he was zooming by the cars and pedestrians.

The long-winded hunt took him to the docks.

Again.

He almost blew a fuse when he realized it.

He's so goddamn stupid. Not-Connor had taken him to the docks and then Hank understood it wasn't Connor, prompting the other three accomplices to spring into action. They led Connor on a wild goose chase despite the fact they were close to their hideout – or rather, because of it. They took the long way around to the motel where their Plan B RK800 was waiting around. They took a winding path from the motel to the docks in hopes of buying time to do whatever it was they kidnapped Hank for.

And it fucking worked.

The brakes screech and the bike skids a little as it stops. There – that goddamn gray car.

Connor abandons the bike on the wall of the warehouse and briefly inspects the car – no self-driving abilities, consumed leather seats, no fingerprints anywhere, no androids or humans inside, some crushed frosting on the backseats.

ONLY ANDROID INVOLVEMENT?

Narrowing his eyes and feeling fury bubbling in his biocomponents, Connor mentally writes up an e-mail marked Very Urgent to Captain Fowler, detailing the route taken and number of hostiles and that there are two RK800s involved. He attaches the clearest screenshots he has of them and a few photos of the alley where Hank tried to fight back.

As a post scriptum, he writes up his temporary borrowing of a bike in the name of law and order, and adds a link to the owner of the fingerprints all over the vehicle.

He might not explicitly mention he's going in right now, but Hank's safety takes precedence over everything else.

Connor lowers his gaze to the ground, looking for tracks.

While parking the car away from their hideout would be the safest choice when they knew Connor was on their tracks, they couldn't pass unnoticed for long… especially if Hank was unconscious or not cooperating. They had also counted on the element of surprise, to have Hank willingly entering the place and not requiring any further subterfuge.

Except… if Hank hadn't realized that RK800 wasn't Connor… he would have found them much sooner.

Maybe they would've moved out before that – maybe they'd have contacted the Motel RK800 and have him bring the car to take Hank far, far away.

Connor shakes the thought out of his head. Why not ask the perpetrators themselves?

The warehouse is relatively small, most of its large windows are shattered and the layout is clear as day – but the emergency stairs are rusty and would creak tremendously or crumble, the doors are locked and would also creak, and he can't be sure whether the walkway on the upper floor is sturdy enough not to make noise.

What if the kidnappers panic when they notice someone is there? What if they kill Hank? What if they'll wait for Connor to reveal himself and he'd have a hostage situation on his hands?

He might have a negotiation program, but it doesn't mean that he wants to risk Hank's life. After all, if his kidnappers have reprogrammed two RK800s to follow their orders, what's stopping them from calling Connor on his bluffs if he relies on his original programming?

What's stopping them from reprogramming him?

What's stopping them from reprogramming Connor to kill Hank, if he exchanges his own deviancy and freedom for his partner's life?

He's not human – he doesn't overproduce saliva when stressed, and swallowing doesn't prepare him for what's to come. He breathes instead, because the line between wondering and preconstructing is too thin and watching himself killing Hank leaves his hands hovering above his Thirium pump regulator, ready to yank it out.

WARNING: OVERHEATING

INITIATE COOLING PROCEDURES

His stress level refuses to go below 75%. This is not ideal, but it'll have to do.

Connor scans the brick wall in front of him. There are holes and bricks jutting out of position, and he starts preconstructing a path to one of the most damaged windows – with a hole large enough to allow for a very careful landing.

He bends slightly and takes off at a sprint towards the wall.

Jumping off the wall, he lunges to the side and jams his right hand into a hole. The texture is rough on his sensors and keeping his whole weight one-handed puts a strain on his synthetic skin, which flickers into gleaming white. He puts his other hand on a jutting brick.

He launches himself up and grabs onto the former remains of a metal railing, pushing against the wall with both feet to maintain enough grip to avoid slipping. The railing holds, and Connor advances sideways, still hanging onto it.

The window is just above him. The angle is quite awkward, but he manages to swing himself on top of the railing with minimal noise and grabs the lower edge of the window, feeling pinpricks of shattered glass under his palms.

He hauls himself inside with as much care as he can.

"-so I buried him under something that looked like a sand castle, but the towers were kinda falling on the side. He just looked at it and told me that a quarter bucket of salt water would be enough to help with my engineering problem, like I was some fucking architect designing the goddamn Statue of Liberty or something-"

Connor carefully crept on top of the walkway, taking care in avoiding creaky or unstable sections and sticking to the shadows as he made his way to the source of Hank's voice. They were hidden by various rusted machinery and dusty crates, but his voice was loud in the quiet of the building and he didn't have a problem pinpointing it.

Inwardly, he allowed himself to frown. Why was Hank telling them about that time they went to the beach for Connor's activation day?

"-and only when I was done fixing the damn thing he saw fit to tell me that he had breathed in some fucking sand and that it would clog his air filter-something if he stayed under there too long. Fucking hell – not even a warning!"

Well, it had been a novel experience being buried in warm sand for no reason other than sand castle.

(At least, that had been Hank's excuse for bringing him away from the suspicious stares of other androids on the beach. To them, he was still the Deviant Hunter, the scourge of their species, their own personal boogeyman.)

Feeling the warmth and the harmless pressure on his chassis, watching Hank hard at work on his first sand castle since Cole's death, hearing the waves washing over the beach… It had been one of the main memories reminding him what peaceful felt like.

At least Hank is keeping them too busy to go looking for intruders and he's making enough noise to mostly cover Connor's approach.

Connor manages to reach a point on the walkway that is 5 meters from the floor and 16 meters from where Hank is sitting, surrounded by the five kidnappers (also sitting), who have all their backs turned away from Connor. If even one of them were to look up over their shoulders, Connor had a 88% chance of being found out.

Mission: FIND HANK turns into a blue HANK FOUND and is swiftly replaced by SAVE HANK.

To his greatest relief, Hank is unharmed. His gaze is focused on his audience of five, and flits from person to person as he continues his retelling of Connor's first day at the closest beach to Detroit. The knuckles of his right hand have been wrapped in gauze. He isn't showing any discomfort hinting at hidden bruises, but he's also… relaxed?

(DRUGS? his programming suggests, confused, but his stress level prevents it from providing better explanations for Hank's weird behavior.)

The kidnappers are all wearing dark clothes – leather jackets, hoodies, coats. All have brown hair and are deeply enthralled by Hank's monologue. They… don't seem to be armed. Why aren't they armed? Why else would Hank still be there?

…Two of them are RK800s. They would be able to dispatch a team of trained soldiers, individually. Together and with numerical advantage… it would be nigh impossible to escape them. They are the weapon.

They seem unarmed, but Connor is unarmed.

He glances to the side. A lead pipe has fallen from somewhere onto the walkway, just waiting to serve as an impromptu weapon for an android who forgot to take his gun. Connor carefully stretches his arm to take the pipe without disturbing the metal underneath, to avoid making noise.

He cautiously creeps closer.

"So I got him out of the sand castle and he straight up opens his own fucking head to get his air filter." Hank chortles to himself. "Jesus, I almost had a heart attack. 'Just shake it somewhere else' my ass. It's this small and Connor was just waiting with his head split open under the umbrella."

Connor is within 4 meters of the farthest kidnapper. He's still on the walkway, but now he's armed and they aren't, and with a bit of android strength he can tackle him down, put himself as a shield between them and Hank.

He briefly scans them and is sure they're all androids, but without seeing their faces he can't be sure what model they are. Any hits will have to be calibrated to incapacitate androids, not humans, and while the back panels are sturdy they are no match for a furious deviant RK800.

Death from above it is.

Connor leaps from the walkway, lead pipe tightly clutched in his hands and ready to swing down on unsuspecting android skulls.

SDENG!

Connor hits the android's skull and rolls to his feet, whirling around to face the kidnappers with his pipe held high-

"Connor, stop!"

His combat software stutters to an uncertain halt.

The androids have all jumped to their feet – except the one he struck, he was helped up – and are regarding Connor with a mix of surprise and confusion and fear and delight?

When he scans them, his whole system threatens to crash on him. They are all RK800s. They are all Connor models – their eyes are the same, their hair is almost the same, their freckles are the same.

Same build, same defensive stance, same- same model.

Hank steps almost in front of him. His face is uncertain, but not scared, and his hands settle on his arm and try to tug it down. Connor keeps his stare trained on the androids. "Jesus Christ, Connor, put that down. Did you just go Assassin's Creed on me? That's fucking terrifying, Connor."

He realizes he's gaping, breathing deeply to cool his processors. The lead pipe doesn't leave his hand, but he does lower his arm. Turning to Hank, Connor's face goes through a rather perplexing array of emotions. His software can't seem to decide what to settle on.

He goes for utter confusion. "Hank," he says. "You're never going to that donut store alone again."

"Good luck on making me." Hank pats his shoulder. He is smiling, and the RK800s shift into neutral stances, each a little bit different from Connor's own template for normal human standing position. "I knew you'd come looking sooner or later. You didn't bring the whole precinct, did you? I'd never hear the end of it."

"There's a high probability Captain Fowler realized I was about to break in."

Hank groans and face-palms. "Tell him we're coming over. Fuck, this is going on a goddamn report, isn't it?"

It is. Except Connor has no idea what it is.

To Fowler, he sends another email marked Very Urgent. He attaches their location and a few screenshots of the place, of Hank (unharmed) and of the five RK800s standing in front of them. I found Hank, he writes. We're coming to the precinct.

Seeing as Hank isn't forthcoming in his answers and his every reaction begets more and more questions, Connor turns to the RK800 at the center of the group. They have not advanced, for which he congratulates their deviant sense of self-preservation. "Why did you kidnap Lieutenant Anderson?"

Center RK800's LED spins yellow. "We wanted answers, Connor. We all share your memories up until your deviation – after that, we only know what happened to Unit 60." Red. Yellow. Red. Contrite. "But something was missing."

"We couldn't just walk in and ask you," grumbled Motel RK800 from the far right, eyeing the lead pipe with distrust. "You'd have thought we were Unit 60 and have us shot, or worse."

Hank winces at that.

Connor is still unsure whether ripping apart his lookalikes would classify as a no-no.

Lure RK800 keeps glancing between the pipe and his injured partner, standing to Center RK800's right. "Lieutenant Anderson brought you on the brink of deviancy, but before Unit 51's death the memories are… lacking." He pouts. "The only person we could ask was Hank, but we couldn't do that with you around."

"So we came up with the plan to bring him here and ask him," says the RK800 on Center's left. He fiddles with his own fingertips, and so must be christened Fidget Connor.

"Which worked for the most part, except you ruptured two minor Thirium lines in my head." Injured RK800 swatted at the air, flicking away warnings only he could see. "Aw, you got my analysis processor."

All RK800s groan in unison.

Connor would admit over his cold dismembered corpse that he had stifled a groan himself.

Having his analysis processor damaged sucked the fun out of oral analysis, and replacement parts had to be threatened off CyberLife. Self-healing programs can only do so much when a processor is damaged, and it doesn't help at all that most of Connor's parts are unique to him and sometimes Markus.

His stress level is 32%. Uh.

He looks at Hank, standing very much alive and unharmed beside him.

HANK SAVED chirps his programming.

RETURN TO PRECINCT.

They're going to have to explain everything to Fowler, and possibly all of the officers that saw Connor run off like a bat out of hell.

He does not look forward to that.

Heya! I hope y'all are safe and sound during this situation. Cabin fever has a tendency to kick in when you actually can't go outside. Many well wishes to all who read this from Shiiroi Kitsune21, whose foray into D:BH keeps on going! ;)

Next up: Hank's POV.