• • •

"Good morning, Officer Owens," Connor greeted Jackson. The human had arrived at the exact same hour as yesterday, so he assessed the information as a habit of his, something classified as noteworthy in the long run for the project. Jackson's flinch, as well as the lack of a formal greeting gave away another clear clue towards deciding the human tasked to be his contact was not particularly fond of, nor used to androids.

"What was your name again?"

After the man had stopped in his tracks following the greeting, it was the last thing Connor expected to be asked about his name. It was most natural in that improbable case though to believe the man had forgotten entirely about yesterday's introduction. Forgetfulness and faulty memory were not uncommon problems in humans after all. "My name is Connor, I am—"

"Connor, right," Jackson interrupted. "Be a good little android and go take a seat over there," he clasped his hand on Connor's shoulder only to give him a good measured shove towards the direction of the chairs. He did not linger to watch him carry out the order, but insteas moved on, past the reception desk, and into the office area of the station. Connor heard diffused laughter through the closed door, but did not remain in the hallway long either. He quickly wiped his shoulder clean and followed after him inside the office area.

"Officer Owens," he called, managing to stun the man into abandoning his colloquial laughter with the rest of his colleagues there in order to instead turn around and glare, confused. "I am afraid I cannot do that today."

"What?" Jackson sported a cheeky grin. "You want me to spell it out? Is your hearing faulty, android? I said sit outside and wait."

"That is not what I was sent here to do, Officer," Connor opted for reminding him of the terms of the deal CyberLife had struck with the town, thus planting himself in front of the man.

"Goodness," he seemed exasperated by this situation enough to sigh out and even bring up his right hand to rub the top of his nose's bridge, right below his eyebrows. Annoyance, Connor identified. "Aren't androids supposed to follow orders?"

"I do follow orders," he argued with a dosed tonality, trying to stir the conversation back to calmness. "Only not the counterproductive ones."

"Great," Jackson explaimed, looking around at the three pairs of eyes that were his colleagues, watching this all unfold while supressing chuckles. "It's also a talkative one."

Connor narrowed his eyes and analysed. Officer Owens was a clean slate he had to fill with data by getting to know him. So far, he could already affirm this man's requirements towards personality compatibility were polar opposites to those exhibited by Mia. However, Connor was designed for this sort of challenge, so he was unphased by its existence in the first place.

When Jackson attempted to get away from a now silent android and retreat to his desk, Connor simply followed.

"You gon' follow me around all day?"

"If that's what it takes to gain valuable data from this trial period, then yes."

Officer Jackson stared at his face intently and Connor noticed with interest that the man seemed to be particularly fixated on his raised eyebrows for several seconds out of those in which he remained silent. He was designed to have an approachable appearance and as far as his data was concerned, raised eyebrows were associated to an expression regarded to as open. The human seemed unappreciative of it though, so Connor relaxed his expression into a more serious one.

Not even that seemed to help, because Jackson stepped closer nonetheless, a disgusted hint hidden in his glare. It had just become clear to Connor that it was likely the man had preconceived opinions on androids already too rooted for any of his social knowledge to help this tense situation.

"What data are you hoping to get out of this bullshit deal anyway?"

"CyberLife is looking to assess whether my detective capabilities are in accordance to the standard."

"Did you hear that, boys?" Jackson laughed and stepped back once more. "Little android wants to be a detective," he gestured in a mocking fashion towards Connor.

"Androids do not have wants, officer," he attempted to correct his clear misconception. "I was designed to be of aid within police stations. My purpose is to help in solving cases."

"Right," the man before him puffed with disbelief, mimicking with poor sarcasm a sentiment of understanding he clearly lacked. "You heard the plastic," he turned towards the nearest officer. "Have we got any cases for him, Bobby?"

The officer in question was sipping on his coffee leisurely before being addressed directly. There was a clear look of confusion written across his face, as if he was trying to convey a bewildered 'Cases? Since when do those come in plurals?'.

"There's only Miss Carter's missing boy," Officer Brady chimned in, as he has been listening to the conversation from the door, causing a look of panic to flash over Bobby's face at the mention of that name.

"Shouldn't you be on security duty right now?" Jackson scolded Brady with a glare, prompting the younger man to retreat back to the hallway.

"There's a missing person case?" Connor inquired.

"Would hardly call it that," Bobby mumbled.

"Don't ruin the android's day now," Jackson approached Bobby's desk and rummaged freely through his papers until he found the single page missing person report on the kid. He turned around and pushed the paper into Connor's chest, "If Connor wants a case, we'll give him a case. Bet you could find Carter's son in no time, ain't that so, android?"

Too perplexed by why the humans weren't looking for the missing child, Connor remained silent to the provoking question.

"Well, have at it. Test your skills, get your data," Jackson shrugged. "Case is all yours. Solve it and don't bother me no more, alright?"

"May I use a desk?"

The contrast between Jackson's passive aggressive approach fueled by sheer annoyance and Connor's inherent passive nature struck the human full on. Did he hope to strike a nerve? Connor wondered, though he truly wished that was not the case; humans, even if enstranged from technology advancements as this town seemed to be, should still be able to distinguish a machine from one of their own. Machines can't be as easily riled up by human behaviour, if at all.

"Take mine over there," he pointed vaguely to the back of the room. "I don't need it."

"Thank you, officer," Connor nodded, holding the piece of paper down. "I will get right on it."

He registered Bobby and the other officers' amusement sparked by his claim, but chose to ignore it entirely. There was something about this case that had the humans stray away from doing their jobs and actually being on the trail of the missing child, something Connor couldn't begin to understand without assuming they were all vile men with no sense of duty whatsoever.

As soon as he sat down at Officer Owens' desk, he gave it a quick scan for anything that may be of use in the future, or simply to piece out what sort of man he was going to work with — it was important to profile him early and do so thoroughly.

The first item on his desk that stood out to him was the framed picture of him and his twin daughters. It had a date on it, putting it five years ago. According to the database at his disposal, one of the girls died in a car crash, the same year the photo was taken. The other had no such records, so it seemed she was still alive, currently sixteen years old.

Trauma related to loss would explain some of his erratic behaviour, Connor blinked that note into his analysis before moving on to scanning the rest of the desk.

From the empty cigarette packs to the clear lack of order between his past files spanning back months, the scan gave him some superficial details on the man. It was a start to the profiling, a solid start.

Finally, with nothing else to scan, he started reading the brief report he was given.

Far and away from her own desk, Mia has been fighting through an abundance of distractions the urge of monitoring around the clock Connor's system reports still getting filed at a rapid rate even though, according to the clock, he was supposed to be dismissed by Officer Owens in less than an hour.

Deep down, she knew she was supposed to be rejoicing, not worrying. The upgrade installed was working seemingly wonderful in integrating Connor faster in the work environment at the police station. That was, objectively, a reason to celebrate, not to develop some sort of compulsive attachment to refreshing her terminal for updates on his system status, an obsession that not even setting up the entirety of the lab and finishing unpacking could apparently quench.

She was tired, but buzzing nonetheless, a weird state of in-between that threw her off.

This sort of restlessness was new to her.

Connor had undergone tests before, at the tower lab, but none of them made Mia this nervous. She's always been confident about his capabilities. In fact, she failed to recall exactly but she was pretty certain not even her own life's most important exams made her hands tremble as much as waiting for a clear field report on how her update on Connor's protocols was behaving.

Eventually it even became undeniable that this situation, given how unsuccessful her attempts at distracting herself turned out to be in the end, was nothing but another case of human error, one that called her a spineless and disgusting hypocrite while at it too — telling him to his face that she had faith in him, but then also sitting around, reading reports the second they came in, just to make sure.

Make sure of what? She asked herself the toughest question as she leant over the kitchen counter, a second cup of coffee under her nose. She was yet to commit to it, for this early evening, that cup of coffee might mean skipping on a good bunch of sleeping hours too.

Was she worried Connor would fail from the faults of the 'human element', wherever that may arise from? Or was she concerned of how failure would feel so early in the project's trial period, especially when the blame would fall solely on her?

Too many thoughts bombarded her at the same time from too many angles. Mia lifted the coffee cup to her lips and gulped down in a desperate attempt to calm herself over half of it in just that single swing. If she had to be stressed and agitated, she wanted to be the one orchestrating that disaster and pulling the strings to it.

She would have drank it all in one go most likely, had it not been for the knock on the front door interrupting her. Reaching out across the counter, she swiped right on the screen connected to the wall and to the sensors installed on the scanner outside.

Android, Mia's eyebrows furrowed down as she read what the data had detected. "Did I fuck up Connor's code enough for him to forget how to open doors now?" She mumbled under her breath, a nervous laughter wanting to get past her lips but stiffening up in her chest instead, as some sort of heavy stone. Another series of knocks banged on the door. "I'm coming, I'm coming," she shouted, shutting off the screen.

Connor looked out the window of Officer Owens' car.

"You sure this is the place?" Jackson inquired, a yawn waiting to happen somewhere behind his heavy tone.

The missing person case had hardly been a challenge. Though he was aware of the advantage that he held over certain humans in solving these things and spotting the connecting elements which turn the mundane into patterns and the insignificant into clues, Connor was certain anyone in that police station could have picked up the trail of the missing boy if only they had tried, which begged the question — why haven't they done so already?

Joshua Carter, seventeen years old, has been missing for well over a week already. The missing person report had been filed in by his new English teacher, and only later had it been confirmed with the boy's mother through a protocol home visit from Officer Owens himself. If they spoke of anything else other than validating the information that Joshua was not at home, none of it went on record. The police did not investigate further, even as the details presented by the teacher were downright disturbing in what they entailed of the boy's well-being. According to the report's single page, Joshua showed all the most common side effects of Red Ice consumption.

He did not have access to the terminal of the police station, nor the permission to own credentials to access any of their past cases to check if Red Ice was as big of a problem for the town as he knew well it was for Detroit — Mia's habit of having the radio as background noise in the lab had clued him in on a lot of current human problems.

However, even with those impediments, a brief phone call with the school teacher booked Connor an invitation to interview not only her, but her eldest son as well, in the confinements of their own home. Neither were expecting an android to show up for the questioning, but the teacher's worry about the rise of Red Ice dealers frequenting their town compelled her to cooperate nonetheless. It was through her that Connor found out the youth of the town have been affected by the rise in Red Ice production and usage.

Her son was even able to provide him with a location. According to him, it was 'too dangerous to even pass it by on a bike'. He suspected all those who go there are addicts — to Connor, that information turned into an obvious lead, which again, he knew any of the current officers could have been on had they merely just asked the teacher for more information than the formal and succinct report they took on the disappearance.

He looked out the window at the abandoned silos of the location now. They were right outside what the map would dictate to be the edge of the town. According to town records, his scans affirmed this used to be a farmstead. It went out of service due to the debts of the previous owner in 2024 and has been owned by the bank since. Agents have tried to re-sell the land, but given the state of every single appliance, rusted and destroyed by time and human-made vandalism beyond recognition, all those placards in the front of the property righteously stopped getting replaced a couple years back. It was also around the same time the sales agents stopped trying that the borders of the town were modified and the property was officially outside its premises. A place belonging to no one. To nothing.

"Yes," Connor confirmed. He didn't expect Jackson Owens to agree to drive him there after the rocky start they had, but it was a pleasant surprise of progress that he seemed receptive to the news on the case brought to him.

"Alright then," Officer Owens turned off the engine of his car and instead of reaching for the door handle, he clicked to lower his window. "What are you waiting for?" He questioned without looking at Connor. "This is your case, not mine, android. Get out there and find the missing kid, yeah? Or are you scared?"

"Androids do not feel fear," Connor corrected his misconception once again, a little more disappointed this time by how wrong Jackson could get. Progress was made, but apparently not nearly enough just yet. Alas, Connor pushed his own door open and exited the car.

With a cigarette between his lips and one hand aimlessly trying to feel the lighter in the space between the seats since the diffused yellow light above did not help with clearing up sight in the slightest, Officer Owens called after him before he could have shut the door. "Do you got a gun on ya?"

"In accordance to Public Law 544-7 American Androids Act, I am not permitted to carry or use any type of weapon."

After a short break of stun, the officer shook his head. "You could have just said no."

Connor deemed it was always important to state protocol clearly, but with a downward twitch in his eyebrows, he had to also note the assessment for what it was: Officer Owens found his professionalism and formality as off-putting.

With these observations put aside, Connor closed the door and accepted the situation he found himself into so late at night. There was no light source on this part of town other than the headlights on Officer Owens' car so, naturally, as he approached the farmhouse at the centre of the property, he had to start adjusting his retinal light sensitivity.

On initial scan, the property seemed abandoned. There was not a sound save for the now distant hum of the car engine, at least not until Connor stepped on the porch of the farmhouse. Then, each of his following steps were echoed by the creak of the old wood below him.

The circular nature of the porch allowed him to do a perimeter sweep before having to commit to entering the house. Several windows were broken. Almost every inch of visible wall was cover in some sort of vandalism. The sight was deplorable, reeking of decay — the sort of environment he imagined was perfect for the thriving of Red Ice marketing.

He had reached the back door of the abandoned house when he heard a groaning sound from inside, just about clear enough to put him on alert that there were clearly people on site. Dropping his gaze to the door handle and giving it a quick scan, Connor hoped to identify some clear fingerprints: there were too many present for him to confirm the missing person trail right away.

Only once he pushed the door open and stepped inside did the decadence of the place tell him that his thought through solution to the case might have indeed been correct: this was the sort of place where a young addict might hide out. Joshua Carter hadn't the money at his age to go someplace else to get high, and why would he? The remnants of red ice on the cracked smoking pipes littering the floor, but also on just the surfaces present alone, gave away that the supply wasn't showing signs of running out any time soon. Young Joshua would not leave this addict haven behind. No addict ever would.

The abundance of fingerprints Connor kept finding on each and every item and surface he thought would be useful to scan painted the grotesque picture that the place had several illegal inhabitants indulging in the same bad habits as the young boy he was after. Still there was no clear full fingerprint to analyze.

A loud tumble from upstairs interrupted Connor's slow sweep of the ground floor. His consideration of perhaps remaining silent and simply assessing the whole house bit by bit until he found the child flew right out the window the second the loud noise was followed by a louder groan still. The probability spiked that someone might be in danger, and that someone could as well be the boy he's looking for.

"Are you injured?" Connor called out and stopped to listen for any more movement whilst carefully threading his steps towards the hallway, where he spotted the stairs leading to the first floor. Everything went silent again. He needed to make sure he didn't scare anyone inside the house, because should Joshua not be there, questioning whoever else he found would be his only acceptable lead moving forward.

"I am not here to cause you any trouble. I am just looking for Joshua Carter," he announced. The truth seemed like the safest approach, so he took it. "He's been missing for a week. I only want to bring him home."

Reaching the top of the barely stable stairs, Connor looked down a narrow hallway with exactly five doors — two on the right and three on the left. He identified one ladder propped on a gap in the ceiling, leading to some sort of attic. There bird droppings in several spots on the floor, so the tumble he heard might have been birds living there. The groans however had been clearly human.

"Joshua?" Connor called out and moved forward. He was going to go one door at a time, be as thorough as possible.

He stopped in the doorframe of the first room on the right side of the corridor. There was nothing left of the room for him to identify what it had once been. He frowned at its emptiness and returned to the hallway, taking to the first door on the left side next. The sight he found there stilled him.

The source of the groans had been identified.

In the center of a room decorated with lines of transparent plastic curtains hanging from the ceiling and forming makeshift walls, underneath a lingering cloud of red smoke, someone was curled up into a ball, shivering and heaving their breaths. The plastic separators, lightly ondulating due to the lack of glass to the only window in the room, were making it heard for Connor to appreciate if the human was alone there. Nonetheless, with carefully quiet steps, as much as the creaking floor allowed, he moved forward, towards the figure on the ground.

By the looks of the tables hidden behind the plastic separators that he caught glimpses at on each side, Red Ice wasn't just being used on the premises, but also fabricated. He started to consider the disturbing reality that the police did not look into Joshua's disappearance on purpose — if so, why give me the case? he asked himself, kneeling down besides the shivering human.

Priority demanded that he scan the person for any health risks other than the obvious consumption of a highly volatile substance. There were none urgent enough; he'd have to alert Officer Owens to call an ambulance after sweeping the whole place. Tilting his head to the side, he got a good look at their face too. Not Joshua. It was another child though, a year younger than him.

Before getting up, Connor looked ahead, further into the room, on both sides. To the right, there was a hole in the wall, big enough that it could connect to the room right next to this one. To the left, he spotted a pile of highly damaged android parts, majority of belonged to older TR400 series models. Harvesting Thirium, he concluded underneath that spotted detail before filing it away and finally standing up.

A lot more creaking than he had expected hearing occured. Hallway, Connor identified the source of the additional sound and turned around, hurrying to catch up with whoever else was out there. He didn't want them running downstairs and getting away.

"Looking for me?"

The voice he heard came not from the hallway just two steps ahead of him, but from behind. It was clearly not the voice of the human on the ground as they had taken too much of that Red Ice to speak so clearly so soon. With his LED flickering its blue light, Connor looked back over his shoulder. A quick scan convinced him to abandon his quest of exiting to the hallway: he had found Joshua.

There was no time to decide on his approach to talking to him though; a hard plank of wood hit Connor across the back of his head, staggering him forward. His LED flashed to red, before settling on yellow. The plank of wood had broken in half, sending splinters everywhere, but even so, a second hit descended. Connor had spun just in time to catch the piece of wood. The sharp ends cut through his palm, but with the absence of pain, he merely grabbed on it harder, taking advantage of the edge he gained to pull it out of the hands of the attacker and throw it away. Splinters of wood remained stuck in his right hand.

Finally, he looked up at his attacker. Another young man. There were three more children around the same age behind him, lingering on the hallway, all of them with bloodshot eyes. One face Connor recognized, but before he could compute the information and see the situation for what it really was, proximity sensors prompted him to move to the side.

Joshua stumbled forward, crowbar in hand, dropping into the arms of the other attacker.

"Get him!" Someone shouted from behind the two of them.

Connor could have ran for the window, but that was not his mission. He could be rebuilt, his body was replaceable if anything were to happen to him. Therefore, he raised his hands and merely started backing up, slightly to the right so as to not collide his trajectory with the human still laid on the floor. "I am not here to harm you. Joshua, if you could please just come downstairs. Officer Owens is here too." He looked back towards the hallway, hoping to spot the reaction of the girl he recognized.

A step on the wrong part of the floor cost him his balance and position of leverage. The old floor cracked right under Connor's left foot, sinking his whole leg down the hole. It took another second before, with a louder creak still, the last pieces of wood holding him up caved in and he fell through.

He had closed his eyes in time to protect his retinal scanners, but did nothing to brace for the unavoidable impact of his back to the hard wood of the floor below. There was nothing he could have done to decrease the damage intake and the damage was substantial indeed.

The system overflowed with reports on just how badly everything had been wrecked. The worst of the critical damage reported was what he had sustained in the abdominal area unfortunately, after the impact with the table in the ground floor's kitchen area.

A piece of wood was restricting Thirium flow through and from his battery. Connor looked down to see it stick out through his side, but couldn't do much more other than file the whole report to Mia immediately, as protocol required — in the inevitability that a field operation had chances of turning fatal, he had to let her know immediately.

It is late, he reasoned leaning his head back, Mia must be asleep.

With only so little energy remaining, Connor fluctuated its flow between hearing and sight, getting fragments of what was happening around him: the addicts were laughing on their way downstairs, there was a gunshot at some point, then he saw Officer Owens, staring down at him, saying something he couldn't quite get before tossing a finished cigarette at his face. Ash stuck on his eyes. He's lost too much Thirium by that point, his systems were shutting down.

• • •

AUTHOR'S NOTE |
Unfortunately leaving this one on a bit of a cliffhanger try, with tons of stuff happening, on both sides of the pov 👀

This book may be mainly focusing on the philosophy of what a connection between android and human may entail, but that doesn't mean the detective nuances of it all won't be tense af

I will try my best to update on Sunday, but most likely, the next update will be on Monday as I am away for a short fishing trip this weekend.