• • •

Interrogation rooms did not seem like much until she was forced to sit down between three plain walls and a mirrored window, with nothing but her thoughts for company. The last visit must have been hours ago, when the lady from reception came to check on her wounds and gave her a pack of ice for the side of her face. Mia could swear her ear was still ringing from having her head slammed against the wall by that android, but then again, it could have also been the deafening pseudo-silence ruled by the single neon above buzzing on a frequency maddening to sit and listen to for hours.

Her thoughts were no pleasant company either. The last few days have been everything she feared most and more.

Though most ice inside it had melted already, she kept the pack firmly against the side of her head, ignoring the pulsing pain burning under her skin like a migraine on the verge of happening, but also the way the melting of the ice pack's contents condensed water to drip down her right forearm, to her elbow, where it dampened her sleeve and perpetually sent shivers down her spine from.

Every time she closed her eyes she could see it happening again: she could see herself entering that apartment expecting to see Rory — dumb, you were so foolish and dumb, her own mind scolded her in return —, but instead being met with two heavy labor androids. She wished she hadn't recognized their model so easily, but one look was enough for her to tell they were the ones Connor was after.

Damned be the instinct she had in that moment to run away. She didn't make it farther than halfway to the first floor.

Not wanting to recall the most painful bits and thus give a green light to her bruises to start hurting all over again now that she has finallt started getting used to a numbness from them, Mia opened her eyes and shifted the ice pack over her temple, pressing it down a little harder.

She wasn't wearing any handcuffs and she has long since passed the moment of wondering why they would hold her there for so long in the first place, but still, she glanced at the door, expecting it to open at any moment and save her from the hardest judgement of all — her own.

The door didn't open. Salvation didn't arrive. She doubted she deserved it to begin with it.

Mia found herself wishing for a lot more things just then: a bath, a good sleep, some painkillers, maybe even for human blood to evaporate the same way Thirium did. She felt too filthy with her own blood on her to even look down at herself, so instead of doing that when her head dropped from the exhaustion of holding it up in hopes of spotting the door as it opened, her eyes closed.

So dumb, her mind echoed the same thing over and over again, though her recalling of the events kept moving forward. She remembered all too clearly the tight sensation in her chest when she was left alone, tied to that chair while the androids minded the supplies she brought, as promised to Rory. She remembered the terror of hearing the debate between needing her to bring them more before they leave, killing her there and then or sparing her altogether.

There was very little quite as dehumanising as hearing your fate get decided for you and knowing you'll have no say in it whatsoever, no matter if you try to save yourself or not.

She recalled perfectly the moment her silent struggle had a success and she shook the roped restraints off — it was in that moment, when she had gained a wiff of hope, that she knew things could go considerably wrong really fast, depending on her choice.

Mia agreed with her mind. She had been incredibly dumb. Her lack of better choices were no excuse for how she hid in the wardrobe to call the police, well aware she'd be found and killed. All she could think about in that moment was that she would have much rather provided Connor with a lead for his case as her last stand on this Earth than try to climb out of the window only to slip and fall to her death the second her arms inevitably failed to hold her up while hanging by uncertain edges.

Connor, she thought at last, and her heart responded to the name by awakening its hurt to compete with that of her pending migraine. He had been the first responder to her call and though she couldn't begin to understand how he managed to reach her in time, it did not change the fact in the slightest — he got there first and managed to see all her facades crumble in real time.

He sees you for who you are now, her guilt riddled thoughts grew teeth, tearing right into her. A pathetic, meek human and a filthy liar. You know he knows that you lied to him. He's never going to trust you again, and why would he? What can a human ever offer a machine?

The door of the interrogation room clicked open and Mia looked up, dropping the now liquid pack of once comforting ice onto the table. Some of her hope was extinguished by seeing it was just the reception lady bringing her a glass of water, but nonetheless, any interruption from facing her thoughts alone was welcomed. Even just the short glimpse at all the noise inside the police station was a blessing.

"How much longer do I have to wait?" Mia asked the lady as she placed the glass on the table.

An apologetic smile was presented onto her, but no real, direct answer. Mia felt she might go insane before they let her out of that place, such was the cruelty of her own mind.

As the receptionist exited the room though, while she attempted to absorb as much of the world outside and its noise as she could before the deafening silence returned, Mia spotted Connor. It was but a brief second, a blink of an eye, but if anyone could, she certainly was the one capable of recognizing him anywhere. Their eyes had locked for that short fracture of a second, across too many meters and she almost forgot why she had expected him to look mad with her when she was met with the same kindness he's always had riddled in the warm brown of his eyes.

Connor had chosen that particular spot in the waiting area of the hallway specifically to maintain the best view he could on the interrogation room. When he met Mia's eyes, even if just for an instant which passed by too fast, it all felt just a little closer to being worth the trouble.

It's been two hours too long that she had been kept in there and he was starting to feel doubtful of the short-staffed excuse Barbara had given him.

Officer Brady wasn't back yet. Walking back all the way from Joel's farm was no easy feat, and though Connor had planned on waiting for his partner's return while Mia reported the crime, that single look in her eyes changed his priorities, making it far less significant to him to sit around and wait for an opportunity to apologize for stealing a car for all the right reasons, and a lot more important to instead figure out why someone who has done nothing wrong would be held up this long.

Seeing as Barbara just left the interrogation room had Connor briefly consider pressuring her for some actual clarifications, but he quickly remembered her reaction to him being an android on his first day at the station. It would have ultimately been a waste of time to try to reason with her, he decided. 

Since Brady had been given an actual case, he had also been granted a table inside the office area of the station, one which Connor clearly remembered to be equipped with a terminal, just like all the others.

If they have an actual reason to keeping Mia in custody for this long, it will also be noted in their files. I should be able to access it, as long as I don't draw any attention to myself, Connor thought his approach to his mission, heading into the office area. After scanning the environment whilst walking into it, he made a calm and directed beeline for Brady's desk.

He had gotten some odd looks sitting down in Brady's chair, putting his car keys on the table, but nothing out of the ordinary, nothing he wasn't already getting simply for the sake of the glowing blue android identifiers on his jacket and the LED on the side of his head. People there weren't used to androids, nor did they seem interested in wanting to get used to them, but all it mattered to Connor was that once their shock of seeing him there passed, they all resumed their small talk leisurely, allowing him to settle in the chair with a straight posture and continue onto his task of accessing the terminal.

He would have perhaps been a little annoyed by the terminal requiring a password, had it not been for Brady's post-it note stuck to the edge of his monitor, holding that very password he needed written on it.

"Of course," Connor ripped the post-it off, cracking a small smile. Of course someone like Officer Brady would keep his passwords written down. He put the note aside and accessed the terminal, immediately having his attention fall on the most recent case file — Mia Wilkins. The case file had been submitted in full by CyberLife.

His eyebrows may have furrowed down in confusion, but he hadn't even the time to click on the file before he heard an enraged voice paired with some stomping marching his way.

"You!" Brady gasped for air.

So much for being discreet, Connor thought, moving his chair back. He didn't attempt to get away, but merelt accepted to be grabbed by the jacket and pulled to his feel by a man who had exerted enough effort it seemed to transform himself into a balloon of anger ready to pop. "You plastic bastard!" Brady shook him once, as that was all the strength left in him.

"The car is in one piece and in its usual spot, Officer," Connor defended himself with a calm voice which may have been wrongly utilised at the moment given it did nothing to decrease the human's anger levels. "I merely borrowed it for an emergency."

"You left me in the dust at that farm. Do you even know how many miles I had to walk to get back here?"

"Six miles," Connor approximated the distance on the spot, raising his eyebrows. "It may have been unpleasant, Officer, but I assure you, it was necessary in order to reach the emergency call on time."

Immediately after saying that, he paused and considered — given how his calm and reasonable approach seemed to be bringing only more anger to the surface from Brady, Connor knew he had the option to instead adapt to this information about him and employ a more emotional persuasion method on his partner. That was bound to, at the very least, calm him down enough that he did not cause more of a scene, but there was also a change for it to bring the man to consider forgiveness.

It was, however, a dangerously compromising approach too.

Given his only other option was to perhaps express how the data considered him to have been a liability behind the wheel, one that would impact efficiency too much to be sustainable, Connor accepted his software's strange reactions that day simply had to be ignored for the time being. He had to play with fire to make this work. 

"It was someone I knew who called," Connor explained then, his voice finding the cadence of some sort of emotion. He wasn't sure which emotion that was, only that it was working — Brady had been left confused by his admission. Perhaps it sounded genuine to the man, so Connor kept it up, "I recognized her phone number when I looked up the call records from the station and I knew I couldn't let her die."

After a second of hesitation, Brady's brows furrowed down as his confusion grew to outshadow his anger. The humane appeal worked its wonder and Officer Brady let go of Connor's jacket. "Did you get there in time then?"

"Yes," Connor responded with a return to his default tone. He fixed his tie and the edges of his jacket, then pointed to the screen. "She's being held in the interrogation room for a while now and I find it strange, given she was the victim. I have just noticed there is a case file recently opened on her name. Can we open it?"

Brady plopped down onto his chair with a sigh, hands first dropping to his knees to rub up onto the soreness of his muscles. "How did you know to open my terminal?"

Deciding to stay on track and thus stray from anything that might take too much time to discuss, Connor committed to a white lie, "I found it open."

"Aha," Brady finally clicked on the file, but as it started downloading, he looked up at Connor. "The androids? Did you catch them?"

"The remaining two androids from Joel's farm have unfortunately been destroyed," Connor informed him, watching the loading screen intently. "The third android, the one from outside of town, got away. I managed however to identify its model, series number, and the name of its previous owner. I suspect it is responsible for its owner's death, but most importantly that it knows which of the two destroyed androids killed Joel Reed."

"I don't see why we can't just leave it as it is," Brady clearly started thinking out loud. "It's not like we have an android prison or anything. One of them destroyed ones killed Joel. Don't matter which. And the runaway android is not part of our investigation."

"Of course it matters," Connor corrected him calmly, though his deepening frown told a different story of his state.

Truth was, he knew Officer Brady was right, just as he was hyper-aware he needed his mission to become finding the exact killer, only so he may also get the chance to apprehend the deviant who got away. 'Revenge' was a word that crossed his mind to describe this need for the case to keep going, but that was an emotion which by all means shouldn't even exist in his software's programming. He couldn't say something like that to Brady anyway, so instead, he opted for another lie. "While both androids have malfunctioned, only one of them had its malfunction turn into a violent crime. CyberLife requires exact information in order to analyze the faulty model in comparison with the other and find a way to stop such crimes from happening again in the future."

"Look at us, good samaritans," Brady smiled, leaning back into his chair to stretch his arms above his head. "Doing charity work for big companies."

"Are you sure the terminal is working?" Connor leant forward, propping his right hand onto the back of his partner's chair to glare at the screen and the slowness it clearly displayed. "The file has been loading for a while."

Brady once again looked up at Connor, only this time, there was a less of a humorous nuance to his gaze. "Who is this woman to you?" His question, asked with a soft cadence, earned Connor's attention back to him. Brady then shrugged, a smug smile on his lips, "It just seems you care about her, that's all."

"She's the coordinator to my project," Connor looked away when faced with the rare occasion in which a human other than Mia could read into his expressions and demeanors and actually be right. Hearing that fact be spoken out loud however, irritated him more than he would have liked to admit so his hand held a little tighter onto the back of the chair. "She's significant to its completion, therefore she's also significant to me. There," he almost sighed out relieved seeing the file open at long last, brightening the whole screen.

"Let's see then," Brady turned his own attention to the file, immediately reading out loud the name. "Mia Wilkins." Without any sort of hesitation, he clicked on the first document attached to the folden. "Bank statement as evidence, interesting." Brady read quickly between the lines, gasping his attempt to stop himself from laughing once he got to the end of the first place. "Luck you!" He exclaimed, nudging Connor.

Not understanding what could have possibly had his partner excited, Connor gave a routine scan to the bank statement.

Thinking Connor needed some aid to understand what he meant, Brady moved the cursor onto the payments registered to the establishment named 'Eden Club', the single and most notorious android sex club in Detroit. "Seems your lady's into plastic, pal," Brady did not hold back on a cheeky grin.

Connor blinked a few times. He knew why Brady would be finding this piece of information relevant — he wanted to tease him after previously pointing out the idea of care existing between him and Mia. What Connor struggled to understand was why he too was finding that information to be relevant. Perhaps it was because he has never before pictured Mia interested in having a personal relationship with an android. He knew CyberLife created models capable of being romantic partners to humans and that they wouldn't have created that line of androids had it not sold well, but since Mia didn't even have an assistant android to help her around her apartment, he never anticipated she'd be inclined to sleep with one.

There were a lot more questions than he had time to explore opening up in his mind following this revelation, some which puzzled Connor deeply as to how they ended up there — he felt he should be concerned about wondering what sort of designs from the Eden Club she had fancied the most.

"How about we look at the actual accusations they bring to her in this file?" Connor suggested instead of paying too much mind to his thoughts.

Brady seemed almost too pleased with thus deflective reaction from his android partner, turning back to the screen with a smile. It was a short lived smile though. As soon as he closed the bank statement and opened the next section, his lips to parted in shock. "Holy shit," he mumbled under his breath.

"That's not right...," Connor glared at the documents listed as evidence within that section, rather than at the accusations brought to Mia. Without a single moment of hesitation, he leant forward and opened them up himself over the whole screen.

"I thought you were sent here by CyberLife," Brady said through gritted teeth, looking over the screen to the rest of his colleagues, thankfully still unaware of the conversation his own whispers had now stirred into being kept as quiet as possible. After making sure they weren't being watched, he pushed his chair aside to get a proper look at Connor.

"We both were," Connor assured him with calm. "The project has been approved for field testing, I saw the documents myself before we left the tower."

"Then why does it say here that you're a stolen asset?" The officer pointed towards the screen, thankfully still managed to keep his voice down. "Why does it say she's in the possession of malware potentially capable of corrupting androids and turning them violent?"

Connor was aware of what this case file was trying to do and he was not buying into it. "The documents have been forged," he retorted to Brady's panic, glancing at him before focusing once more on scanning everything in that file.

"How can you know that?"

"Because these documents claim to have been provided by CyberLife, whose databases I also have access to. Nothing in this file matched with the real company documents. Here," Connor pointed at a line on the evidence list, "she's listed as project coordinator on the research into deviancy, when in fact, she was a late addition to the team established for that research by Elijah Kamski." He opened his left palm and projected a holographic copy of the real document in order to present it to Brady. "And here's the proof that our trial here has been approved," he willed a new document onto the hologram before closing his hand into a fist and dropping it to the table. "Someone forged this whole case file to make it seem like she was responsible for the murder. I just don't understand why."

"Could an android have done it?" Brady offered the possibility, thus successfully getting Connor's attention to his theory — his LED has been constant since the accusations section was opened. "The one who ran away, maybe. Would it have a reason to not want to let her go so easily?"

Bobby barged into the office area of the station, making a beeline for the colleague seated just two desks away from them. "You won't believe who I just got off the phone with, Marty. The S.W.A.T.. They're on their way here from the city, can you believe it? Who the fuck do we got in our custody that they'd come to our town?"

"You think...?" As Brady looked over to Connor, he saw first how his LED blinked for a second in red before returning to yellow.

"We have five minutes before the S.W.A.T. team gets here," Connor informed. "They have orders to..." He paused, hesitating to accept the information he had just read.

"Shit," Brady paled, watching perplexed how Connor straightened up instead of finishing his sentence.

"Can you help me with a distraction?" Seeing from the corner of his eye how Brady stood up, Connor took that as an affirmative answer. "I am not authorised to get in there," he tilted his head in the direction of the interrogation room, "but I can hack my way in. I need to get her out."

"And go where?" Brady questioned, still speaking in whispers shushed between gritted teeth. "Do you have where to go? Does she have anyone who can help with this? Can you help her?"

Connor didn't know the answer to any of those questions and not knowing disturbed him deeply.

"This is not how I wanted to spend my day," Brady sighed, before nodding. He grasped his car keys off the table and shoved them into Connor's chest, forcing him to take them. "Take my car once you get her out. Get far away from here and figure this out, you hear me? I am expecting my car back in one piece once things are good. Got it?"

"Got it." Being given a good nudge towards a clearer plan, Connor's LED returned to a pulsing blue. "Thank you, officer," he pocketed the keys.

"Just don't scratch it," Brady dismissed his gratitude with a wave of his hand, looking towards his colleagues and seemingly trying to come up with the best distraction he could as he walked towards them. His months of working on that lonely chair in the hallway had taught him one thing about this bunch — they loved to hear about food being ordered in the station.

Connor heard Officer Brady ask loudly if anyone liked burgers for lunch, question that irked a true ruckus in the office area he now left behind to slip into the narrow hallway to the side. His left hand retracted its synthetic skin and he placed it over the scanner lock on the door to the interrogation room. The countdown to the arrival of the S.W.A.T. team was a constant in his mind, even as he slipped inside the interrogation room and his eyes locked with Mia's, something he feared would have otherwise distracted him given his instability as of late.

It was apparently not the case this time.

After his entrance had startled awake from the trance her migraine kept pulling her into, Mia watched Connor have a proprr stare down with something on the ceiling behind her. She looked back out of curiosity and saw as the blinking red light on the security camera switched off.

"Why did you...?"

"We need to leave," Connor cut her off, walking to her chair and grasping her upper arm to get her to her feet. "Right now."

"What?" Mia did not shy from asking yet another question Connor seemed unwilling to waste time answering. He was going to answer all her inquiries, after he was certain of her safety. "Are they letting me go? No one has talked with me yet."

"You're in danger and you cannot stay here anymore," was the only explanation he'd give her, the only one which he counted as significant enough to have to say right away. After all, he needed her to cooperate with him in order for this escape plan to work.

"Connor," Mia called, but otherwise did not resist being dragged out of the room after him. "What are you talking about?" She toned herself down to a whisper when he gestured for her to remain quiet while they moved not towards the front entrance of the station, but towards the back instead. "What do you mean I am in danger?" She looked back towards the office area and all the noise coming from that direction, before focusing her eyes back on Connor, "You are acting strange."

She felt like she had sat too long in that box of a room, perhaps even far longer than her warped perception of time allowed her to guess, because the Connor who brought her there was certain this would be just a routine report of a crime, while the one dragging her towards the back of the building, to the fire exit, seemed to have completely changed his mind, giving in to what she could only describe as paranoia.

"I believe someone impersonated CyberLife and forged a case file which accuses you of stealing me from the facility and possessing the deviancy virus with the intents of uploading it into as many androids as possible in order to cause chaos," with the exit door in sight Connor could catch his breath and thus quickly brief her in too, no longer needing to resist his instinct of explaining himself to her. It was better anyway for her to have less questions to ask before they headed outside, he reasoned a second later.

"You're joking," she tried to smile away what he was saying, despite her stomach twisting into decisive and uncomfortable knots of fear.

Connor pushed the fire exit door open and checked the perimeter outside before exiting and keeping the door open for Mia too. "Stay low," he instructed her, appealing to the training sessions he has been given on escort missions. "We have a vehicle in the front parking lot that we can use, but we should avoid being spotted while getting to it. You wait for my signal at the corner and then go for the car. I'll be right behind you."

He had chosen this detour around back specifically because of Barbara's presence at the reception desk. There was a good chance that, should she spot them getting to the car, ahe'd call the escape in, in which case the car would be listed as stolen and they would be far easier to find.

They had two minutes left to get to the car when they reached the corner of the building, the parking lot right ahead. Connor scanned the perimeter and deactivated the two cameras present there.

"Do you realize how insane this sounds?" Mia questioned looking over her shoulder to get a glimpse of him. Fortunately for Connor though, she was following his directions by remaining low and mostly quiet. "Document forgery? Who would even do that?"

"Rory perhaps," Connor offered, trying to hack remotely either into Barbara's screen terminal or into her phone in order to cause a distraction that would green light them getting to the car unnoticed. Mia's heart stilled while Connor continued, "The deviant who threatened you. That's how his owner caller him, right?"

How can you be surprised he knows? She asked herself amidst the gutting panic that raised into her at the mention of the android. "He wouldn't do that," she disagreed.

"It doesn't matter who did it right now," Connor told her rather coldly, his LED turning yellow while he connected to Barbara's phone and sent her an amber alert. The sound of the blasting ringtone could be heard from outside and the second it was off, Connor grabbed Mia by her right forearm, taking a deviation from his initially instructed plan. "S.W.A.T. troops have been sent to apprehend you and they have been given instructions to shoot on sight, both of us. I need to get you out of here before they arrive."

He didn't leave her time to argue with his final attempt at making her understand the severity of the situation, but instead immediately dragged her along, out of their hiding spot around the corner and directly towards the single car in the parking lot.

Connor removed his jacket with the glowing android identifiers, folding it backwards before tossing it in the back of the car. He got behind the wheel and waited for Mia's door to be closed as she sat besides him in order to start the car and drive off.

He fought tooth and nail to stabilize the commands running through his software so his LED could stop shinning yellow and return to a pulsing but gentle blue glow, one that would be harder to spot.

No sooner had he put the car on the road that he spotted right in front of them, heading for the station, two S.W.A.T. vehicles.

"Get down," Connor quickly secured his right hand behind Mia's head and pushed her down. "Stay there," he instructed her while he focused on keeping his software stability calmer than it would have normally been in a high stress situation like this.

He held his breath when the two cars passed them.

Only once it seemed not a single glance had been given their way did he sigh out.

"We are clear," Connor removed his hand from touching Mia in any way and she immediately sat up, turning around to see for herself those vehicles pull into the parking lot of the police station which they just left. They were not far enough behind them yet for her not to spot the rifles they were carrying as they walked out of their cars.

"We aren't criminals," she mumbled to herself, full of disbelief and heart struggling to keep up in her chest. "We haven't done anything wrong."

"I know," Connor reassured her, but did not move his hands from the wheel. He looked back at the police station through the rear mirror, before glancing to his side at Mia, "And we're going to fix this."

• • •

AUTHOR'S NOTE |
Kicking Act 2 off strong with actionnn picking up right where we left off, only turned up by a thousand.

It escalated quickly yes, but trust me when I say, this does in fact make sense once the whole picture clears out and I am just soo excited to get to that part of the book. Hope the excitement is mutual.

Get ready for Connor to have a lot of revelations about his software instability this act aND speaking of that 👀👀 the Eden Club detail just unlocked a path, and I think we all know what path that is.