• • •

The town's police station was supposedly operating 24/7, yet the second Connor pushed the front doors open at 6AM sharp, he felt as if he had arrived early to a place yet to wake up. A single officer was startled off his seat nearby the doors and he identified him quickly as a newcomer on the job, Officer Brady. Another human, this time a female, much older than Brady, looked up at him with squinted, tired eyes, from across the front desk — his database identified the woman as a civilian, Mrs. Darren, who has worked there for almost thirty years as a receptionist.

After that brief scan, he approached Mrs. Darren and chose the friendly approach as soon as she seemed to be inclined to cower back in her seat, eyes glued on the LED on the side of his face. "Good morning, I am here to see Officer Owens."

The silence which followed was prolonged. Deafening even.

Still by the door, Officer Brady was finally fully awake and contemplating through the twitch in his sweaty hands whether or not he should be alert about a hostile or not.

"He ain't in yet, sweetheart," Mrs. Darren finally answered, a thick accent coming through. "You can take a seat if you wanna..."

"Thank you," Connor nodded. He made a beeline for the nearest seat in that entry hallway.

Just as he sat down, Brady seemed to have remembered he could talk. "You are one of them plastic ones, aren't you?"

"I am an android designed by CyberLife."

"Awesome," his grin grew cheeky and he tossed his gaze towards the front desk. "Didn't know you could come all dressed up for office too. Yo, Brabs, this one's way cleaner than the plastics over at Joel's farm, no?"

"Don't talk like that," Barbara Darren cut Officer Brady off early. "It can hear you, you know."

"Ain't saying nothing wrong here," Brady raised his hands and got up from his seat with a groaned out stretch. Soon after, he returned his attention on Connor unfortunately, "You're not some farm robot though. You look skinny. Joel's plastics could lift you up."

"I have been designed for utmost efficiency to helping in the police department."

"With what?" Officer Brady laughed. "Cleaning? We got old Tom for that."

"With investigations," Connor responded bluntly and for a second, that clinical coldness stopped Brady's laughter. He reckoned it was in that moment of silence that the human formed a thought. The moment, obviously, didn't last long.

"All the investigations you'll be helping with in these parts are missing cattle and whether or not drunk George stole them beans from the store or not. You'd have more to do wiping the floors."

With or without the disdain Connor read in Officer Brady's eyes and tone, it did not change the fact that he agreed with what had been told to him just then, thus make it much easier to choose not to respond.

"Leave it alone, for God's sake!" Barbara shouted from over the desk just as Brady was about to decide the silence of the android was not what he was looking for. It was only at her request that he walked away before saying or doing anything more. As soon as Mrs. Darren saw the Officer approach, she lowered her voice and continued, "It's giving me the creeps to have that thing here with us. What the hell was Owens thinking green lighting this project anyway?"

"Word has it, the mayor did," Officer Brady whispered back. "Owens got no say in it. CyberLife offered too much money anyway. Doubt the mayor would have ever listened."

Connor was grateful for the ignorance of this town to the advancements of technology, because both humans seemed awfully unaware of just how good his hearing sensors were at capturing sound.

Five scanned officers and a whole hour later, Officer Jackson Owens finally entered the police station, thus giving Connor the opportunity to get up. "Good morning, Officer Owens. My name is Connor." He greeted him right from the door, walking with him for a moment, "I am the android sent by CyberLife for the trial period."

Jackson stopped and took a stiff step back, trying his best not to remain too close to Connor. "Good," he replied, staring him from top to bottom. "Take a seat, Connor."

The directions he received were conflicting with the goals of the trial period, therefore Connor felt prompted to inquire further, "Do we have any investigations ongoing today?"

If it was the choice to use the word 'we' or the fact that he asked anything at all, he couldn't be sure, but Jackson seemed suddenly to have grown from righteously skeptic and distant to clearly disgusted and irritated. "Sit down and wait, Connor."

The directions were conflicting with his goals for the day, but orders are orders. Connor retreated to the same seat inside the police station's hallway.

He waited. He watched. He listened.

For the entirety of the day, a full twelve hour shift, Connor sat in the hallway, watched as Jackson Owens passed him several times and ignored his every attempt to ask about tasks involving his actual designation. Other Officers passed him too, some to take pictures, others to whisper as if he couldn't hear them. There were some civilains that came by too and all Connor could do was scan them while they tried to keep their distance, wary.

Time passed, because that's what time did, and he did nothing because there was nothing for him to do.

Only once the sun came down and the darkness fell over the town did Officer Owens finally stop before him. "Good job today, Connor. You're dismissed."

Connor wasted no second before standing up. "It was a pleasure working for you today, Officer," the edge in his tone was intentional. "Same time tomorrow, I hope." With a smile that did not try too hard to look genuine, Connor walked away.

There was a short distance to be walked between the police station and the house CyberLife bought for the sake of the project. It was the only house with a glowing pad next to its door for the handprint identification, so it was hard to miss it on the wide spread of identical, plain homes. This building wouldn't truly qualify as a home anyway, not with the full laboratory occupying half of the living room, or the charging station, spare parts and the Thirium containers stored in the second bedroom which Connor had no use for.

He pondered briefly about how his appreciation of how the first day of the trial would turn out to be was ultimately correct, because upon approaching the house, as per before-mentioned instructions from Mia to return there once he's dismissed from the station for the day, he was met with a strange object waiting on the porch, right before the front door. Getting closer allowed his scanners to make out through the darkness a basket of flowers with a white note sticking out.

'To Mia,' appeared to be written on one side of the note and once he picked it up from amidst the flowers, Connor read the continuation of the message on the back. 'Hoping to see you succeed. Yours, Elijah Kamski.'

Connor bent over, stuck the note back in, the way he had found it, and picked up the basket, holding it with one arm in order to leave one hand free to unlock the front door via the scanner. Just as the door clicked unlocked, a proximity sensor prompted him to instead delay his entry and turn around, look back at the street and the park across it that the house overlooked. He didn't know what he was looking for, what he thought he'd see, but there was someone on a park bench. They were not facing his way and they were too far away to even attempt a successful scan though, so he doubted his sensors picked then up either.

He waited a little while longer, watching for movement, but when ultimately nothing happened, he pushed the door opened and slipped inside, listening attentively for the lock behind him clicking the place shut.

With the house dark and quiet, it was safe to assume Mia was asleep. There were plenty of boxes with lab equipment yet to be unpacked, stacked in lines down the hallway, but Connor made his way quietly through the narrow path and reached the open kitchen. He placed the basket on the tabel, mustering only a passing thought about how he's never quite pieced together how Mr. Kamski and Mia related in order to have what seemed from the outside as quite a trusting relationship.

A soft sigh pulled him from that pending analysis and Connor was forced instead to notice that Mia was asleep on the couch in the living room. The lamp on her lab desk on the other end of the room was casting a diffused light over the scene: messy hair, serene features. Connor realized he's never actually seen her this relaxed before. It has always been the lab setting, never this imitation of domestic life, so he always got to see her with her hair tied up, out of her eyes, always concentrated, even if she found the energy to smile and joke and get excited over the most humane things she could. This slowly breathing version of her was new, so he stepped closer and assessed whay he was seeing.

Half draped in darkness, half in gentle light, her breathing patterns were normal and her eyes were moving behind her eyelids, meaning that she was in deep sleep, dreaming. She's been asleep for a while. Wearing what humans would classify as pajamas, he also noticed her book of Sudoku and a pen neatly arranged next to the couch, all of which told him that she did not fall asleep there by accident, but rather intentionally.

He could have sworn there were two bedrooms on the house plan. Looking up from her and down the hallway behind the couch, Connor scanned and confirmed that there was indeed one bedroom up for use parallel to the one they'd use for storage. One more glance down at Mia told him a final detail: she didn't have a pillow, nor a blanket taken for her camping on the couch, which could only reasonably mean there was some reason for her to not want to even enter the bedroom.

The curiosity of a true detective had been installed into Connor from production, so he kept the silence and walked to the said bedroom to inspect it himself. If the police station provided Mia with no data to study over tomorrow, he'd put his systems to work himself, for the sake of the research.

Initial scan revealed nothing: the room was just a room. Two nighstands, an open suitcase filled with neatly folded clothes, waiting before an open wardrobe. There was a tall mirror to the left, next to a still empty desk. The bed was right in the middle of the room, connected to the wall under the only window.

Stepping inside the room, Connor noticed the bed was in quite the disarray: the blanket has been pulled aside only halfway. He dropped his gaze to the carpeted floor and identified with ease Mia's footprints since she seemed to be liking wearing slippers inside the house. There were quite a lot of steps, most a bit further from the bed. It seemed to his understandment up to thay point that Mia was about to get in bed when something made her leap backwards and abandon everything related to the bed in the room, resorting to simply sleeping on the couch, a far less comfortable medium.

If pulling on the blanket scared Mia away, then Connor definitely had to test his theory by pulling the blanket all the way himself.

A single tug was enough to stir awake a black spider the size of a thumb that has been hiding under it. The thing ran off the bed this time, instead of further under the blanket as it probably did when Mia attempted to get in bed, but was clearly underestimating Connor's ability to track down a target. The system worked wonderfully in locating the pesky being of a kind which had caused troubles to the human before behind the nightstand. He picked it up with a sigh, reminiscing while he watched it struggle the first time Mia revealed to him the existence or "irrational fears" in humans and the fact that she too suffered from such an affliction. 

Since that one spider disrupted their lab session, Connor knew should it come to it, it would always prove to be more efficient to discard of this beings before they can affect her mental state and therefore hinder the project's progress and their overall productivity in-session.

With the mystery of why she'd ever choose a couch over the designated space for humans to sleep in, Connor walked the spider over to the window, opened it and tossed it outside, promptly closing the window behind. He turned the blanket over and scanned it for any more such small creatures, then picked it up and took it with him out of the room. The night was pretty chilly outside and the house itself seemed to have almost no heating at the moment — Mia catching a cold as a result of her irrational fears would heavily impact their productivity on the project, therefore, he placed the blanket over her sleeping figure on the couch.

She did not stir, she didn't even flinch in her sleep at the little disturbance of a weight being added on her.

Of course, Connor noted a final observation looking down at her careless and relaxed features one last time before straightening up and retreating to the storage room to switch off in the recharge port. She's such a heavy sleeper.

• • •

AUTHOR'S NOTE |
Having some fun with this book, ngl. It's interesting to challenge myself to think how an early version of Connor would have behaved without having the full upgrades or the full package so to say of the Connor the games introduced to us. I imagined it makes sense that apart from Amanda missing, there would also be some features which were yet to be fine tuned, like his prioritising system on tasks, goals and orders.

I also got some more stuff planned in regards to what more differs, but yeah, one chapter at a time 🥰 speaking of chapters, this is a rather short one, but no worries, my chapters usually tend to get longer the more the story progresses