• • •

"Good morning, Connor."

The moment the voice command brought him out of the self-induced standby mode, Connor was greeted by Mia's smile. She was stood right in front of him, her hand hovering somewhere near his head. Quickly assessing the situation, action which prompted the blue light of his LED to flicker, Connor realized that she was at the end of a process of fixing his hair. She always did say she admired the cleaness protocols of androids, Connor reminded himself.

"Good morning, Mia," he responded, sound which apparently prompted her to move her hand away and take a step back. He wasn't sure why he noted her reaction with an undertone of disappointment.

"It's a bit early to be going to the station. I was just hoping we could take some time to debrief your first day there before you have to go again," Mia gestured for him to follow out of the designated storage room and towards their new lab environment, even if it was yet to be fully set up. Several boxes hid away items that he knew would otherwise serve as their more natural environment. If Mia were to struggle to unpack and install all the appliances today, Connor assessed it would towards the better interest of the project for him to offer to help her.

"Of course," he followed her nonetheless to the small area of their temporary lab. "Though I doubt there is much to review in terms of data."

"That's what I was curious about," Mia went for a detour to retrieve her cup of coffee from the kitchen counter, before joining Connor in their lab area of their living room, where he had taken his usual seat.

He was glad CyberLife sent them chairs identical to the set they had gotten used to at the tower for so long. Routine is reliant on similarity and productivity suffers almost every time routine is broken.

"I have the full report," she sat in her own chair, across from him and pointed towards the screen of her computer, now besides them. "But it's way shorter than everything you've ever managed to give me before. What happened?"

Waiting for an answer now, eyes glued on Connor, Mia brought her still filled cup of coffee up to her lips. She smiled when she saw that he was still taking in their new setup, scanning until his eyes paused on the coin on the desk, near her keyboard. It was a coin he easilt recognized.

"I asked them to take everything from our lab at the tower," Mia explained as Connor picked up the coin.

Androids had no possessions or attachments to the material, but that coin was his by any means of definition. Mia herself made sure he would call it as such, given the fact that it also classified as a gift — a one year anniversary of the RK800 project — and as a tool to keep his systems active, with his computation power constantly stimulated.

Connor flicked the coin in the air, catching it between two of his fingers and letting it flip over his knuckles with nothing but gravity tugging on it. From there on, he allowed the numbers for the coin trajectory to run in the background while he answered with a sigh, looking at the screen, then finally back at Mia, "The report is short because there was nothing to report on. I profiled everyone in the police station who came in yesterday, but Officer Owens made sure I would not be able to do anything else."

"You're getting good at these coin tricks," Mia nodded towards his hands and the intricate dance of the coin that he dictated with the shortest, most efficient nudges. Distracted as she was by his reflexes and the perfection required of him to exhibit such dexterity, his words still concerned her, so she picked up her gaze and looked him in the eyes, "What do you mean he made sure?"

"He ordered me to remain seated in the reception hallway," Connor offered her the blunt truth.

"No, that can't be," Mia shook her head, her smile holding disbelief. "He can't do that."

"It occurs to me now," Connor stopped the coin's movement and placed it back on the table's surface, his palm flat over it, "some humans may not share in on your conformity to rules and law. Which is rather concerning, given Officer Owens' status."

Though he did not use an alarming tone, but rather a calm one trying to show that their undesirable situation was not in fact a surprise and that even with such a setback, the project shouldn't be too affected, but merely extended due to an additional challenge to overcome, Mia's stress levels increased right before his eyes. She abandoned her coffee cup on the table and turned away from Connor, leaning her head back, closing her eyes to ponder.

He could have tried to make her see reason — that it didn't matter all that much that the challenge was greater than expected or that he should still be able to reach out to Officer Owens, given time, even with him being so outright hostile. But watching Mia's neck muscles tense and knowing all too well just how much of a perfectionist she really was, Connor opted instead to accept that she will not see this situation through neutral lenses.

"How do you want us to proceed?" He inquired instead.

Mia opened her eyes and corrected her posture to simply sitting on her chair once more, "The trial can't provide the data we require if you are stopped from interacting with the police station and the environment of a detective by the orders of one selfish individual."

"I'm an android," Connor furrowed down his eyebrows, confused as to how Mia would have come to need that reminder. "I am programmed to obey."

"Yeah," she lightly shook her head, causing Connor's LED to flicker again as he tried to understand the conflicting information between her words and her body language. "And that's a clear mistake." Meeting his eyes, she finally noticed that he wasn't following her train of thoughts. "Think about it, Connor," she raised her hand, then closed it into a fist and lowered it, realizing at last that she once again chose the wrong words to dispell his confusion. "Compute this scenario for me," she corrected herself. "What happens if the human partner you are assigned to work with in a real life police investigation, for whatever reason, in a moment of crucial split second decision, makes the wrong call? You are built superior to the human intellect, so you would know that is the wrong call and also be aware what the correct course of action would be. If your knowledge contradicts with the order you are given, what do you do according to current protocol?"

Connor blinked a few times, "I obey the human decision in the moment."

"Even if it's wrong?"

"Yes," he answered without hesitation, but his eyes narrowed, spotting the flaw.

"There's the mistake then," Mia crossed her arms over her chest. "I believe you should be able to prioritise your core mission to help the police force over the mistakes of a human. You aren't just another android from the production line of CyberLife, Connor." In a state of restlessness from how much this issue was starting to bother her, Mia reached out and placed her hand on Connor's shoulder; he remained still. "You are our most advanced prototype. To treat your programming like we would that of a caretaker android is simply counterproductive. It's stupid!" She retracted her touch, "Which is something I have been telling everyone for a while now, but without Elijah present at the meetings, God knows the board would much rather ignore the existence of this project altogether."

"Mr. Kamski named you in charge of the project," Connor threaded carefully in stating that fact. It held a paradoxical 50% chance of helping Mia find some relief, with the other half of probability inclined to the belief that hearing this might set her off further in despair, all thanks to a trait of hers he learnt long ago. Unfortunately, it seemed his reminder only deepened her frown, but remaining silent from there on wouldn't have helped either, so Connor continued, "Do you know how to fix this issue?"

She nodded silently.

"But you would much rather install the upgrade after an approval from the board," Connor concluded out loud. The new analysis checked out with old information stored on Mia's personality: she wasn't fond of the idea of leadership, nor that of having choices to make. He was yet to identify a reason for this strange trait in her.

Mia slouched forward, a distinct look on defeat riddled over her features. "It will be months before they even consider reading my request to alter your protocols if I file it now. Elijah's trapped in some courtroom, so he won't be able to speed this up either. I can't just have you sit on a bench for however long it will take the board to respond to my request, just because some town idiot is scared of innovation."

"I don't mind sitting—"

"I know you don't," Mia cut him off. "But I do. I mind, Connor!"

"If I may," he leant forward, eyes narrowing, "is the update to my protocols in any way dangerous, Mia?"

Mia watched his eyes for a moment, most likely taken off guard by his inquiry choice altogether. "No. Of course it's not dangerous."

He identified that she was being sincere, if not even a little hurt. Though he did not mean to offend, he did not have time to clarify his choice of words.

"But some people on the board did think my idea was a little radical," Mia rolled her eyes. "People like control."

You don't, Connor noted, but remained silent.

"I suppose they think my upgrade would give you too much agency," she added, a bit more absent minded now that Connor had managed to stir the conversation in a direction which required her to think more than to feel. She looked at the screen and the brief report. "But they're wrong," she continued. "They don't understand this project. They never did, and I doubt they ever will until it's up and running and finally making our cities safe again."

"If the code doesn't work the way you want it to, you can always shut me down and go back to the previous version," Connor offered the solution he could see, though it seemed not to be enough to fully pull Mia out of her distressed state. "Though if you ask for my educated opinion, past upgrades you've installed in my program prove chances are near zero for this update to do anything other than what you want it to."

Finally, she had given him a side glance that held something else other than worry. She seemed... Connor couldn't identify the emotion she looked at him with, but he could read at the very least that she wasn't distressed anymore. Her stress levels were decreasing, at long last, and he couldn't help a feeling of satisfaction for handling the situation successfully.

"Alright then," Mia sighed, fishing from under the table a bunch of thin cables, braided together towards the end. "Let's do this then. If you put it that way, we don't have as much to lose trying it out as we do waiting for Officer Owens to see reason."

Connor was all too familiar with this procedure. As soon as Mia confirmed they would be committing to updating his coding, he stood up and removed his suit jacket. Making sure not to cause any creases on it, he arranged it on the back of his chair and begun undoing the button holding his shirt thight around his right wrist. Before sitting back down, he pulled the looser sleeve all the way up to his elbow.

Meanwhile, Mia had left her chair altogether to pull a much thicker set of spiralled cables from one of the boxes. She was now just getting up from under her table, where she plugged the divided end of the bunch into the respective ports of the computer unit. In her hand was the single rounded port on the other end, with which she walked around Connor. He got himself busy with deactivating the synthetic skin around his exposed forearm, only to then open up the plastic carcass to access his own internal wiring.

He felt Mia's tender touch on the back of his head while he plugged the thinner cables past his biocomponents flowing with clear blue Thirium.

Her thumbs brushed gently around the short cut of his synthetic hair. He's heard CyberLife perfected the feel of its texture and that the synthetic hair was now not all that different from normal hair to touch. He couldn't tell the difference based on touch alone though, but he wondered for a brief moment if Mia could, or if she agreed with the claimed advancements towards new levels of realism on the androids' imitation of humans.

She was always careful with touching his hair, for a reason he couldn't exactly understand, but never really asked about either. There were simply times when she acted as if he was made out of porcelain, and he grew to accept them, even if that was an objectively silly opinion to hold. He was far less fragile than a human, far less fragile than her.

Before Connor could get used to the tingle of her playing around with his hair, brushing through it superficially, Mia found the ridge to his connecting port and opened it. "I'm connecting you to the terminal," she let him know before plugging the wires in.

"The connection was established successfully," Connor reported in return, tilting his head to the side. He couldn't feel the external wires as additions to his body, which always seemed strangely intriguing to him.

Mia's right hand dropped to the back of his neck. "You may shut down systems, if you please."

"Of course, Mia," he responded with an intentional softness, closing his eyes. He appreciated now her warmth and respectful nature a little more given the cold and rude versions of humans he met at the station the other day. "Shutting down all systems."

Softness was mirrored right back, "Good night, Connor." Her hand remained planted, half on his synthetic skin and half on top of his white shirt's collar, until his LED started a sequence of slow pulses. Only when the terminal lit up did Mia remove her hand and returned to her seat in order to give her full attention to her keyboard and the screen.

The code was already prepared. It has been waiting on her crowded desktop for months already, along with a whole other bunch of files that she would never be able to bring herself to delete.

To copy and place the code in the right places wasn't nearly as difficult as convincing her shaking right hand that all those hours she spent debugging and testing the said code at home actually happened and that she was being irrational suddenly feeling as if she was making some catastrophic mistake simply because she wouldn't wait for some bureaucratic approval over a project she has been legally in charge of fully for a while already.

"Come on, Mia," she murmured to herself. "Connor's right. Get it together, it's what he..." She bit the inside of her cheek. "It's what the project needs."

With a final click, the update got uploaded into Connor's main code. Mia watched the thick and thin wires alike flow a blue glow from the computer towards the android seated next to her, until finally the computer screen showed the upload as complete.

So much stress over a process so short.

For Connor in particular, it was merely just a blink of an eye between the moment Mia wished him 'good night' and the one in which he fluttered his eyes opened again to hear her say 'good morning' with an all too familiar smile. Nothing seemed different to him while his systems were rebooting.

"Good morning, Mia," he greeted back, as usual.

"How are you feeling?" She tilted her head to the side, watching him carefully now that she was done studying the live feedback of data on her screen's new tab. Her question was part of their secret code — he knew what she meant to ask was that he should run a self-diagnosis and report on it.

"All systems are running perfectly," Connor said, lifting his exposed arm.

"Let me help you," Mia got up instantly, taking his arm and setting it back down to carefully reach past the blue fluid veins for the end of the wire. Connor used his free hand to unplug the wire from the back of his head, and by the time he placed it back on the table, Mia had already closed up his arm's carcass, allowing him to reactivate his synthetic skin over the spot. "I got it from here," Connor stepped in to fix up the end of his sleeve, brushing against her hand to do so.

Mia leant back in her seat, "Let's see if the update works then." She turned to her screen and typed in something which Connor only needed the patience to find out all about — Mia had gotten him used to full transparency in their workspace, as she too believed that helped their overall efficiency. Just like clockwork, Mia begun explaining, "I will temporarily set your mission as bringing a glass of water from the kitchen. Having a priority allocation option to orders should now give you the ability to ignore orders which do not allign with your main priority."

At the same time with his LED's short flicker, Connor got up, "Mission acquired."

Taking a deep breath, knowing this was the moment of truth, Mia turned around with her chair to watch him, her hands on her knees gripping a little tighter. "Connor, sit back down," she gave a first order unalligned with his mission.

He registered the order, however unlike yesterday, he realized the order's conflicting nature with his mission turned it to bulk information, capable of being ignored and discarded.

"Connor," Mia called once he was already in the kitchen. "Stop!"

It felt odd to not follow her voice command, but Connor concentrated on the mission, reaching out in the cupboard for an empty glass.

One more test was necessary — in order for the update to be a success, Connor had to still be able to follow orders which alligned with the mission given to him.

Mia got up from her seat to watch him, remaining within reach of her keyboard in case the code would show any security risks, "Connor, please fill the glass with water before bringing it to me."

The lack of a time restriction on the mission allowed the added command to be ruled under android protocol to follow orders, therefore Connor paused, turned towards the sink and filled the glass with water before returning.

"Mission accomplished," Connor handed Mia the glass of water, unable to fight a little twitch of a smile in the corner of his lips.

She sighed relieved.

"Now," she took the glass and set it on the table, taking instead his suit jacket from the back of his chair, "Officer Owens can no longer tell you to sit out a whole day of work."

Though Connor's initial instinct was to take the jacket himself, once Mia held it out by the shoulder line to him, he understood what she meant and turned around instead, allowing her to dress him. "It seems your worries have been misplaced, Mia."

"Yeah, yeah," she sounded bashful and if he had to take a guess, Connor would be pretty confident just then to say that there was a smile on her lips while she neated out the creases of his jacket by draggin her hands down the sides of his arms. "I am a decent programmer or whatever." Her gaze lingered a little while longer on the blue letters writing out clearly 'Android' on his back, but fortunately, she needn't think too much about why it caught her attention just then of all times. Connor turned around.

"You are objectively brilliant," he insisted on her understanding the compliment, looking now down at her quickly fixing his tie. He could have done that himself and he did not understand why she insisted to fix his appearance on her own, but he was able to rule it under a need to stay busy in order to ignore the praise. "It is humans of your intelligence who allowed me to be here today," he had to add.

Mia dropped her gaze, unable to hide her smile in any other way. Since lookint down seemed insufficient immediately, she turned back to her computer, "I'm going to set your current mission as 'integrating in the local police station and taking part in their daily acitvity'. It's a bit wordy, but it covers the basics for the time being. How does that sound?"

"Sounds fitting," Connor agreed. "Then it's probably time for me to head to the station."

She wished him 'good luck', which to his understanding was a common phrase for humans, even those who agreed luck was hardly detrimental in day to day activities, but Connor didn't make it out of the house.

"Oh, wait!" Mia quipped in from behind just as he reached the door. He stopped and before he knew it, she broke her rush of catching up to him by wrapping an arm around him and staggering him forward for a brief moment. "Can't let my dad down and forget about the daily Connor picture."

She already had her phone up in the air and the camera ready to snap that one picture she needed. The moment was over before Connor could even correct his posture for the picture and her speed left him stunned for just about enough to all of sudden find himself standing alone before the door again. This break from his initial course of action broadened his awareness of the surroundings for longer than he intended though. From the corner of his eye he spotted the basket of flowers has been moved from the kitchen table to the top of the shoe cabinet near the door sometime between the moment of his arrival last night and the moment Mia woke up in the morning. The note from Mr. Kamski was no longer there and he wished to ask about the whole ordeal, but most importantly, noticing the flowers reminded Connor of last night as a whole and one particular event had him turn around more decisively.

"Mia," he called out, making her abandon the text message she was typing out to her father, as well as her coffee, just to look at him. "You should be able to sleep in your own bed tonight. I took care of that spider when I came in yesterday."

She was silent at first. Had she not heard him well?

"Oh," finally, she smiled. "So that's what you were doing off working hours. I saw activity on your systems showing up on your report late at night and was actually meaning to ask you about it before you mentioned the whole deal with the officer. I forgot all about it aftet that," Mia tapped the side of her head, a funny gesture in Connor's eyes, since he was pretty sure she was trying to scold her brain over this minor inconvenience. "That solves that, I guess." She shrugged and raised her cup of coffee to him, "Thanks, Connor."

He responded with nothing but a nod, the sort he supposed humans give other humans in a workplace, the sort his programming affirmed would help warm a human up to a machine by imitating gratitude or appreciation of such. Mia seemed delighted by it, so Connor didn't spend any more time in the house at all.

On the porch though, he stopped again. His sensors had detected extra weight and located it to the left pocket of his pants. His hand slipped into the pocket and his gaze dropped to confirm his find — the coin. She must have slipped it inside the pocket during the picture, he deduced the only possible explanation, given that his sensors did not alert him of the coin while inside the house. Nonetheless, he placed it back in the pocket.

Looking up had Connor accidentally scan an odd detail in the grass of the small porch yard area.

Footprints. Belonging to shoe of size 10.

He let his gaze scan the whole yard and found the footprints stopped in front of the window to the left of the doorway, then went away, back to the sidewalk. Whoever came over did not stick around. Connor made a note to check the perimeter of the house once he returns from the station that night, but did not linger around any longer, given the lack of urgency to his drawn conclusion.

• • •

AUTHOR'S NOTE |
A bit of a longer chapter, as it was required to go into detail and I didn't wanna be cheap on any small fact this time around. Things are building up ✨️ and they are building up nicely, if I say so myself. I am really glad the plot is linking up according to plan so far.