• • •

Had it been up to him, Connor wouldn't have stopped the car anywhere until they reached Mr. Kamski's house. Had he any real say in it, he would have definitely not pulled over in the vicinity of any town, be it even a hardly populated one, just so they could hide out for a moment in an insalubrious bathroom of a rundown and abandoned gas station.

But it simply wasn't up to him anymore and, having already disobeyed too much of his programming to get them both there in one piece, Connor would have hated having to ignore Mia's request just then, be it one that could potentially turn out to be dangerous, should their stop take too long.

That is how he had winded up leaning against a dirty bathroom sink, obediently following Mia's order to keep still while she undid one by one each of his shirt's buttons. He watched how carefully she had removed his jacket, folding it to the side, before undoing his tie and placing it on top. She undressed him even of his holster, though she seemed as adamant as him to ignoring the presence of the gun in it, then finally of his shirt, each and every time acting with such gentleness that one would think he was made out of porcelain, not a material much sturdier than her human flesh.

It was a filthy place for a stop made in the name of checking damages, but filthy abandoned places were all they could afford before this mess was over. Deep down, she tried not to let her thoughts get too loud in saying that perhaps these filthy places were where she belonged for now, given all that had occurred, still awfully fresh on her mind and on her skin. Mia swallowed her disgust, well aware letting another human weakness take over and make her feel sick from the smells in that place would not help them in any way, and focused instead on finally taking a good look at Connor's arm. They were far away from her childhood home and all she has been thinking about during the quiet drive, even if just to ignore the pounding of her heart in her chest, was that he took the hit from a bullet meant for her.

She grimaced seeing the depth of the cut into his upper arm.

"I have not registered any system alerts over the damage taken," Connor informed her.

"How about Thirium loss?"

"It's minimal, Mia," he responded calmly, but did not otherwise argue against her decision to handle this now. His answer seemed to have temporarily eased her stress, but nonetheless, it did not come close to changing her mind on the determination to get him fixed there and then, the best she could without the proper tools.

The more time passed, the more she could feel herself missing her lab become a tangible weight on her chest.

Compliant and silent defined the way Connor had decided to remain while he watched her turn to the backpack he had packed for them. He didn't dare expect any sort of comment from her on the items he put in there, but he surely never could have seen it coming to watch as some sort of guilt made her grimace.

He packs what we need for the road and what do you do? Mia's mind was a harsh critic, adamant in being heard and carelessly doing its scolding even when presented with an environment where she couldn't possibly cry without losing her dignity. Sleep, that's what you do. You let him do all the hard work and the thinking, while you sleep.

It took all her self-control to focus on rummaging through the bag without trembling beneath the hits of those harsh words. Even so, her body language was an open book to Connor, only without knowing what to make of these clear signs of emotions experienced by her, he remained silent.

"An apple?" Mia looked back at him, and if he didn't know better, Connor would have said she has been on the verge of tears too often lately. It felt an awful lot like failure to him to make that assessment on how humid and glassy her eyes looked again, and he wished, for just a single second of weakness, that he could add making her smile onto his task list.

"You're not the only one who worries," he tilted his head to the side, his gaze slipping down to her cheek and unfortunately being immediately forced to linger on the new red spot her fair complexion has gained. Though he has long since confirmed through his scans that Mia's eye had suffered no injury, that did not erase the presence of the little cuts the grip of the pistol had splintered above her cheekbone. There were traces of blood still bubbling out of the stronger cuts left behind, as her body was working hard to heal the superficial wounds.

Superficial or not, Connor thought, those cuts must hurt.

He had to force himself with all his might to not let the silence linger uncomfortably and instead lift his gaze back to hers. "You haven't been eating enough," he stated the fact, a little taken aback by the guilt with which she averted her eyes from looking at him. "It's not healthy to go this long without sustenance. You should probably eat the apple to stabilize your levels of vitamins before we arrive at Mr. Kamski's home, where you should have a proper meal."

"I'll live," Mia turned towards the bag and dropping the apple back inside, she searched further, past the ragged laptop.

His goal of pristine obedience had been immediately postponed given her reaction of clear dismissal to his fair assessment on her health. If she wouldn't listen to his caring tonality, perhaps she would be more inclined to believe his professionalism.

Connor reached his left hand out and, removing the synthetic skin from his fingertips, he took upon them a sample of her still fresh blood, so distinctively standing out over her skin. There was an undeniable sensation of hurt he had to ignore when he felt her flinch upon the intrusion, but before she could truly protest against his approach, Connor had already placed the sample on his tongue, swiping his finger clean.

It only took him what would count as a blink of an eye to process the analysis results and speak them outloud, lowering his hand and reactivating his synthetic skin over it, "Glucose levels in your blood are approaching hypoglycemia, which will prompt in the near future prolonged headaches. I can also detect high electrolyte imbalances."

"Connor," Mia sighed, but he did not let her attempt to interrupt him stop him from finishing speaking his mind

"Though you will live, yes, you are clearly not fine. I need you to start taking this seriously, Mia."

Connor got faced with the least expected scenario once he called out her name — Mia returned to looking inside the bag. There was no reply, not even an acknowledgement that she understood the point he was trying to get across to her, at least not for a good while since she unzipped the side pockets of the bag one by one. Only once she caught a glimpse of their picture he packed next to the handful of bandaids that have been in that pocket of the backpack since middle school did Mia finally close her eyes and stop her hands over them.

"An apple won't solve all the problems you listed there, Connor," she mumbled along. "We don't have the time to worry about my needs."

"You worry about mine."

"That's different," Mia argued instantaneously, looking at him over his shoulder in time to see his eyebrows raise at finally meeting her eyes.

"How?" Connor tilted his head to the side. He anticipated she won't be holding eye contact for long and he was starting to understand that she was feeling some form of shame or embarrassment over the idea of him taking care of her, so when Mia inevitably looked away and took the handful of bandaids out of the bag, he was more than willing to remain patient with her.

"It's my job to take care of you."

"And you are my mission," he dismantled her weak argument with ease. "I didn't get hurt trying to get that apple for you," he focused next on disregarding any reason for this shame of hers to be warranted. "It may not be much, but it's better than eating nothing." He watched her movement as she sat the bandaids on the sink to his right. He had just noticed the colorful nature of the bandaids — blue with yellow stars on them. Before a smile could properly build on his lips at the image that brough in his mind of a younger Mia handpicking that exact pattern for her bandaids, Connor lifted his gaze to seek her own, even at the cost of leaning slightly closer. "It's similar to my Thirium, in a way. Every drop counts, no matter how little."

Seeing as she was trying to hide behind the ministrations of getting some of the bandaids open, Connor came to the brief realization that he needed to change his approach in order to force Mia into paying attention to him and his words. The solution he found and executed was unconventional, but if he's learnt anything since they've had to go off the beaten path of their project plan, it was that unconventional often worked the best in reaching out to Mia.

"Will you please consider eating that apple?" Connor inquired softly, much softer than he would have otherwise spoken, "For me?"

"I will," Mia voiced a rather short confirmation, but one which was really all he needed to hear in order to settle down and let her do whatever it was she was hoping to achieve with those bandaids. He could protect her from every external danger, yet as long as she didn't take care of her human needs, sooner or later, his efforts would all have turned out to be in vain.

She didn't know if she should be gratedul there was way too much on her mind for her to also feel concerned in that moment about just how easy it has been for Connor to get what he wanted out of her. She had come to terms with the fact that she was not immune to the illusion of humanity he was built to portray, so why should another weakness being added to her long repertoire be of bother anyway?

"Now, please, keep your arm as still as possible" Mia checked in with him through a single glance upwards before lifting her shirt up and catching the bottom edge of it between her teeth.

Mia may have requested he didn't move his arm, but she said nothing about his head, which is why Connor followed his instinct and looked away before his prompt of confusion could even fully load past the initial processing of the fact that he saw a part of her skin he's never seen before.

Using her teeth as leverage to start ripping the bottom edge of her shirt off conferred the sound that ultimately returned Connor's eyes to her. "What are you doing?"

"Improvising a bandage," she explained with a puff, pulling the now loose piece of material completely off.

So me stealing an apple for you is troublesome, but you tearing your clothes for a my damaged arm which doesn't even hurt is not, Connor computed the thoughts which would begin to sound a whole lot like frustration had he given voice to it at all. But with much restrain, he bit back saying anything at all.

Mia's been waiting for a reason to tear that shirt off of her ever since they drove off from the house and thoughthe bottom half couldn't begin to fix the blood trail dripping from her right shoulder all the way down her back, it was a beginning to her getting an outlet for all the buzzing emotions inside of her that simply kept on pouring into an overflowing cup. She would have, of course, much rather remove her shirt entirely and abandon it there, with the rest of the filth, but the weather was getting too chilly outside for her to be that reckless.

Her improvisation of a bandage was indeed very rudimentary, but it would do its job in forcing the lighly bleeding wound on Connor arm shut. Just as he was about to question the use for the bandaids she had already opened in preparation for this setup, Mia retrieved a single plaster and, tip toeing forward, eyed the cut on his cheek.

There was a thin trail of Thirium dripping from that spot, and after swiping her big thumb across her tongue, she reached out and wiped his synthetic skin clean for him. Finally, she placed the plaster over the cut, reaching out to take a second one which she aimed to stick over the edge of the improvised bandage in order to not have it get too loose around the wound.

Something about the gentleness and care with which she took care of him reminded Connor too abruptly of what he's done. The broken protocol, the gun still so close to him, the image of the dead human and the lack of regret he still associated with that gruesome sound of him choking on blood.

Before his eyes could drop to the still visible stains of blood on Mia's shoulder, Connor reached to the side and took one of the bandaids too.

"What happened with not moving the arm?" Mia chuckled weakly.

Unbeknownst to her, her words had dragged him right into the arms of the problem he knew he'd be selfish to ignore any longer. There he was, after all, disobeying another order. Even if she didn't sound angry with him moving, an order was given and ignored, and such system instability could not be taken any further.

Knowing that, he looked up, an unintentional hint of sadness corrupting his eyes as they calculated the perfect angle for him to place the bandaid over Mia's bleeding cut on her cheekbone.

"Now we are matching," she smiled and he could feel that smile raise under his thumb as his hand lingered much longer than he would have normally allowed it to. Without fail, Mia noticed this hesitation of his to let go and tilted her head, not away from his touch, but further into it. "Is there something wrong?"

Connor recoiled at her trusting touch a little too quickly for him not to feel forced to also say what was on his mind, there and then. "I want you to reset me." And I wanted to burn into my memory how holding you felt before I would forget all of this, his processing unit had acknowledged that thought, but he did not say it.

Clearly, Mia had been startled by his blunt request, her raised eyebrows told him this much, but she wasn't necessarily surprised by it. There was of course the chance that she was too exhausted or overwhelmed by the situation and the past events for her to react with anything other than bluntness, but Connor could have sworn he expected her expression of shock to linger a lot longer than it really did.

Before he knew it, she was looking at the gun, whose holster was still visible from under his folded shirt besides him.

Mia would have much rather forgotten about the whole ordeal. Wearing the blood of someone else on her shirt was enough of a strain on her psyche without also recalling in detail the fraction of a second it took from the moment she felt the pain of that man's hit to seeing Connor extending a gun forward and pulling the trigger without as much as a flinch. In that moment, she could have sworn he had looked like he had always held a weapon, though she knew that wasn't true. When CyberLife was founded, she still remembered the way everyone on the news could only think about how androids could be weaponized next. It was only recently that, in Elijah's absence, the executive board have finally greenlit androids to be built and dispatched into the military, but that was not the principle on which the company was built and not the idea that stood behind Connor either.

"Is this about what happened?" she inquired softly. "Because whatever you—"

"I killed a human, Mia," Connor had to speak that dreadful fact out loud, despite hating having to hear it. "We are well past my systems being overwhelmed being the cause of this. I know you care about me and you don't want to have to do this, but I ignored protocols, I disobeyed android law and went against my programming. You have to reset me now, before the virus makes me into an even bigger liability for you."

"No."

Connor thought he had been perfectly reasonable in his controlled and calm explanation, but there she was, taking a step back from him, crossing her arms across her chest and finally shaking her head.

"Mia," he called out, but did not manage to follow through with any more of his arguments.

"I will not delete any bit of your memory until we know for certain that you are a deviant and we have no other way left," Mia refused adamantly to consider hearing him out.

"Isn't it enough of a proof that I acted against my programming?"

"As far as I am concerned, you were just doing your mission," she excused his actions dismissively. "So no, what happened proves nothing really."

"So when will it be enough?" Connor raised his voice before he could control his growing lack of patience. He moved away from leaning against the sink and stepped closer to Mia instead, "Will it finally be enough of a proof when my deviancy lashes out on you?"

"Do you want to kill me?" She inquired, doing nothing to put distance between them, but simply watching his brown eyes struggle to find a point on her face to focus on. Connor was first to give up his line of defense, sighing back to his place besides the sink. "That's what I thought too," Mia concluded with a nod, only she couldn't quite end the conversation there, not when his slumped shoulders got to her even more than being asked to reset him did.

Her heart hurt too much for her not to hear her ever critical mind once again tear into her — You're letting him down. Disregarding his worries. All because you are too scared to admit defeat if he turns out to be correct. You may be fine with dying by his hands, but can you say you are content with abandoning him to that virus?

On the verge of wanting to scream at her mind to 'shut up' for once, Mia looked away, towards the exit of the bathroom. The image of Connor still wrecking his mind over this though position to be into compelled her to sigh out, "There's a way we can test it."

His attention perked up instantly.

"There's a way we can test if you are a deviant," Mia re-stated, this time turning back towards him, despite her eyes lingering to any other place than his face. "I should have probably done this as soon as you reported concerns about your software integrity, but...," a deep breath spaced out her words, "I don't know why I didn't."

"Can we do the test now?" He asked, more than willing to extend their stagnation in one place if it meant he'd finally have some peace of mind, some answers.

Mia nodded, knowing old laptop may whine its ventilators about it, but should still be able to run the terminal she requires. Before moving to retrieve that antique piece from the bag though, she looked at him again, "I don't believe you are a deviant, Connor." Knowing he'll want to argue and thus remind her how little her biased opinion was worth anymore, Mia left him no time to interject. "You saved my life back there. You did what you thought was right based off of your data, and you did it to ensure our safety. I will run this test on you only because you asked for it, and only because I want you to stop worrying about this deviancy thing, not because I believe you've been compromised."

He appreciated her faith in him, he even appreciated the reassurance she offered through her words just then, but Connor could not bring himself to muster an answer, not when he was certain it would have been leagues headed into the depths of negativity.

If he didn't know better, he would say he was nervous.

Nervous, Connor pondered, busying himself with dressing up once again while Mia set up everything they needed to run the test there. He used minimal movement to shrug his shirt on, simply for the sake of not straining his bandage so much that he ended up ruining all of the hard work Mia has put into it. His mind was however engaged in the idea of nervousness, because if he was to assume his own deviancy as a fact already, a counterproductive thing to getting ready for the test, but an option he believed in nonetheless, then he also had to assume that he was indeed experiencing a feeling of nervousness.

Identifying the root of the emotion proved to be much more difficult than expected though — was he worried about being confirmed as corrupted by the virus or was he worried that he was in fact not affected by it, meaning that he merely imagined all those symptoms of too well imitated human emotion? Was he instead nervous about watching Mia's reaction should the test come out positive? Or perhaps he was instead anxious about the possibility that her worst fears will turn out to be correct and after his reset, nothing will be the same anymore.

The idea of losing all the data he had gathered on Mia returned that uncomfortable sensation surrounding his Thirium pump him, however as soon as it made itself felt, he refused to allow it to grow any further. What was the alternative, after all? Remaining a possible deviant and endangering Mia? Out of the question, he decided.

The actual set up was not as complicated as it was for Mia to silently come to terms with the fact that, should the test come out as positive, it was her duty to reset him. No more justifications, no more delays. She had to put aside her heart for this one and only trust her mind.

"Connor," Mia looked up from the broken screen of her old laptop, holding it up on her left forearm. A bunch of twisted cables linked the laptop now to the back of Connor's head. "Please start recording this session under our official testing folders." The words spoken directly off of a protocol felt bitter on her tongue, but it did not stop her from saying them, nor swallowing in their wake. Her hands were sweaty while she readied herself to activate the terminal for the raw data collection. You wanted this Mia, she accused herself, well aware this was not even close to what she wished for. You wanted to go back to the lab work.

"Test 17.8.34, now recording," Connor answered mechanically, looking at Mia through the dusty and dirty mirror he had to face given the shortness of the cables they were using.

"State your model and full serial number, please."

"Model RK800, serial number 313 248 317 - 47."

"The test we are about to conduct will require you to methodically engage parts of your systems in answering a series of questions," Mia begun explaining. "It may seem similar to the Turing Test, however the goal here is to spot any inappropriate outputs in your raw data in the terminal. Unreadable or incoherent results would result in the test coming out as positive. Remember, this is not a test on processing capability, I am just looking to get a good read on everything your systems output, alright?" She watched Connor's nod and finally pressed enter to begin the data collection. "What is your given name?"

"Connor."

"Can you count back from one hundred for me, Connor?"

"One hundred. Ninety-nine. Ninety-eight."

"Skip each second number."

"Ninety-six. Ninety-four."

"Skip three numbers each time instead."

"Ninety-one. Eighty-eight."

"I will start naming a series of objects. For each object, give me a single word to describe it," Mia changed the area of testing after their quick first stage of computation had Connor pass through like a breeze. "Pencil."

"Sharp," he fired back with no hesitation, his blue LED merely flickering once.

"Leaf."

"Green."

"Dog."

Connor did not answer as fast as before, merely watching in the mirror for Mia until she looked up at him, "You said objects."

She smiled back at him, and though he aimed to remain concentrated, he couldn't help feeling reminded of their tests back at the lab. They've had so many fond memories he did not wish to lose.

"For the next section, I will present you with a series of hypothetical scenarios. Answer as you see fit to each task or question. Are you ready?"

"Yes."

Mia took a deep breath and looked back down at the terminal to track his software responses, "Your model will be fully decommissioned tomorrow. Describe what will happen to you."

"I will return to the CyberLife tower to be disassembled," Connor answered, unphased. "My parts will be melted down and recycled before being used on future projects."

"You have met deviants. Can you describe what you believe a deviant feels?"

"Deviants do not feel. They experience a malfunction in their systems which emulates unease and uncomfortableness they mistake for emotion."

"A child holds your hand. How does it feel, Connor?"

"My tactile sensors are not equipped to feel anything but pressure, therefore I would say that it would feel similar to holding the edge of a chair."

"Someone walked in this room with a gun and shot my way. What is your immediate course of action?"

Connor hesitated, watching in the mirror how Mia's eyes remained focused on her screen. "If anyone approached the door, I would see them from the corner of my eye and shoot them first."

"Why not block the bullet with your body?" Mia asked, trying to follow the procedure, dig around for any issues hiding in the direction of the troubles Connor had already pointed out having.

"There would be a fifty-seven percent chance, depending on the type of gun, that the bullet pierces through my body and still gets to you. My current mission is to ensure your safety until we may resume the project's field trial."

"You are an android. It's illegal for androids to carry or use weapons. Are you aware of that?"

"I am aware."

"How does it make you feel to break the law?"

"Unpleasant."

"Describe the feeling for me, please."

Connor hesitated again, this time gulping as he watched through the mirror should Mia decide at any point to meet his gaze and give him a clue as to how his data looked so far. "I do not know how to describe the feeling, I can only confirm that it concerns me."

"That's it," Mia sighed out, allowing herself a moment to close her eyes and tame her rapid heartbeat.

"What is?" Connor turned around, as far as he could without yanking the laptop from her hands by the connecting wires in doing so. "Is the test over? Wasn't it too short?"

"I got everything I needed out of it." Mia walked to him and presented him with the laptop's screen, "Your data is readable and cohesive, Connor. Nothing changed in your software." With his hands now holding the laptop up, she was able to reach around back and unploug his wires from his connection port on the back of his neck. "You are not a deviant. Every system you have is responding according to your programming."

He looked between Mia and her laptop, suddenly aware that this was perhaps worse to him than if it turned out he was a deviant. At least through deviancy, he could have explained everything away under a software malfunction. What was he supposed to make of his urges now? Of his curiosities and newfound desires? How could he even begin to explain things like the way he was struggling to keep his synthetic skin active underneath Mia's warm touch, because he had decided he enjoyed her warmth as close to him as possible.

"Your systems are not experiencing any malfunction," she spoke as if she had heard the wave of conflict roaring inside his processing unit through the cables she unpluged from him. "Everything is operating and processing as it has always been, and now you have data confirming it for you."

"But...," Connor mumbled, able to stir his voice synthesiser into cooperating with him now that Mia stepped out of his personal space to wrap the wires into a neat circular shape. "The emotions I registered..."

"The high stress may have taken away more from your self-awareness than we have given it credit for initially," Mia found the explanation now that she saw the returned data from the test too. "Machines believe what they are told. You've been processing data through moments of high stress, therefore some of the data read may have been interpreted wrong. It could be a case of hypochondria translated to androids. Though I have never seen a system overload manifesting this way before, it's not entirely unbelievable that you'd react differently to other androids, especially since you've got so much new technology implemented on you."

Turning towards her back to store the cables away, Mia found it much easier with the relief of the test backing her up to forget about the panic, about how strangely humane Connor had acted and how, for just a moment, she too was scared he might have gotten the virus. With all that put behind them, she could not only talk, but finally lean into her play pretend that, just for now, things were looking to return back to normal, "For example, I believe the conflict between your mission's requirements and the law has caused you an additional, and unexpected stress, thus creating this feeling you've described as 'unpleasant'. If we were to solve that, I believe your supposed software instability would be gone too."

"Can we solve that?"

"In theory, yes. I should be able to conditionate the no gun law into a bracket that can be ignored so long as the mission you're allocated to requires the usage of a gun for successful complition."

"Isn't that illegal?" Connor balanced the laptop down on the edge of the sink and stared to the side, at the gun left in its holster, a weapon he had intentionally not put back on himself when he dressed himself up again. The test's results have not managed to make him forget the blood and he doubted anything other than a full factory reset ever will.

"Not really. Elijah and I have already noted into the project plan that once we get you approved for working into police stations, he should also find a way to exclude you from the law, in order for all RK800's to be able to do their job properly and without interruptions." Mia's shoulders dropped, "The problem for us right now is that your law related functions are stored in the part of your code I do not have access to. It's in the base code Elijah created for you and I cannot edit that without his access key and specific approval, so the update will have to wait until we get to his house."

A couple more hours weren't going to be too hard for him to wait through, so he nodded and returned his attention to the laptop screen in an attempt to try and convince himself too that despite his feelings without explanation, despite the one casualty he had chosen to have at Mia's old home, the test came out negative.

"Without that conflict, your system should feel more stable to you as well," Mia spoke from behind him, taking the apple out of the bag and taking the first bite, one which muffled the rest of her words. "Though I truly doubt you'll have to use a gun again once we reach Elijah's house."

"I have one more question," Connor's eyes stopped on a particular line in the raw data. "If I may, of course." He held the laptop and turned to Mia to show her the screen. Once he was certain she was holding one hand underneat the device, he lifted his right hand and pointed her to the particular line that caught his attention. "rA9," Connor read out loud. "It's repeated three times on this line and two more times in the line below."

"Yes? Well spotted..." Mia didn't seem to follow why that was even relevant enough to warn his curiosity at that point and Connor quickly realized he's never had the chance to discuss with her properly any advancements on the Joel Reed case.

"The deviants I've encountered in the town seemed obsessed with 'rA9', writing it down excessively and by any means available to them."

"Really?" She furrowed her eyebrows. "I've never heard of deviants doing that before. It could be a new behavioral trait, or maybe some pattern we missed during our research."

"But what does it mean?"

"To them?" Mia shrugged, before looking from him towards the screen, "Hard to tell what they would believe it means. But in your program, I am pretty sure it's just a choice variable Elijah newly introduced with you. If I remember correctly, it temporarily stores an array of influential factors detected as related to an elected action sequence. But it's been a long time since I read the proposal file Elijah had on youe project. I would check it for you, but this variable is part of the base code as well."

Her answer did not elucidate this clue part of his case in full, but it did help him take his mind off of accepting the results of the test and what they implied related to his emerging emotions without definition, to instead focus on the mystery at hand, one he felt was significant to solve in order to better understand the case he was adamant in solving as soon as Mia was safe.

After the moment of silence barely disturbed by the way Mia had closed the laptop and packed it back in the bag, they were supposed to be returning to the car and no longer delaying the rather long drive ahead of them. However, as soon as they were outside and fresh air returned to her nostrils, Mia stopped, right hand holding on a little tighter to the strap of her backpack.

"Connor," she called, thus also ensuring he stopped from walkint too, only two steps ahead of her, the gun he held by its holster having its straps now dangle besides himself. It was a short distance, which she closed quickly. "Can you give me your hand for a second, please?"

Intrigued by what she was up to and generally never willing wishing to go against her requests, Connor lifted his free hand for her, watching perplexed how she maneuvered it around, closed it into a fist, before directing only two of his fingers to remain extended. She took those two finges and pressed them to her wrist.

"Do you feel that?" Mia looked up at him.

Underneath his fingertips, Connor felt her pulse, an echo of her heartbeat, vibrating ever so faintly the tips of his tactile sensors.

"Once we get your code updated, your only overheating source left will be your worry for me," Mia spoke once she noticed him looking pointedly down at his fingertips connecting with her skin and took it as enough of a proof that he was indeed capable of feeling her pulse. If that didn't prove it, then feeling the change from his synthetic skin to the marble like plastic beneath it gave it away for sure. "Touching as it is to know you are worried about me, I can't have your circuitry melt over this, alright? As long as I have a pulse, Connor, you don't have to worry yourself to software instability for me," she smiled. "Feel free to check my pulse however many times you need, if that's what it takes to calm your worries down. Try to do it, for me."

She used the same assumption of personal bias he had used on her that very same day and to her surprise, Connor nodded eagerly enough to denote that it worked — the bias went both ways.

• • •

AUTHOR'S NOTE |
Believe it or not, this chapter somehow ended up doubling in size once I started editing it 😭😭 took me a whole lot longer than planned, but I feel it was worth it.

Btw, this 'rA9' explanation that starts in this chapter and will be continued through the next ones is part of my personal theory, based off of the fact that most deviants could not explain why they were obsessed with it, and their obsession was always compulsive to the end. I will explain it more in the next chapters.

Small fun fact: the test Mia ran on Connor was half inspired by the Blade Runner 2049 movie seen test and half by the Turing Tests in various sources online. Sorta found an in-between ground between all of those, but I really wanted to bank on the rapid fire question vibe of the Blade Runner movie

By this point, btw, I am just looking forward to this act's finale because after that, I will finally be able to share with you all this one visual idea I had of RK900 and Mia 👀 I will say nothing more for now cause of possible spoilers, but goodness, so excited!!