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Chapter 19 - I Sincerely Apologize

Puma's POV

He turned deviant. Connor was a deviant. I couldn't believe it. The simple gesture of lending me a coat and planting a kiss on my forehead made me the happiest. It's been a couple of hours since then, Connor was leaning up against a wall in an abandoned church Markus had found. Markus himself had gone off somewhere, wouldn't say where. Said he had somewhere to be and will return in a couple of hours.

"Go socialize with people," Connor said softly, running a hand through my hair and giving me a gentle hug.

"I mean- yeah... I probably have a lot of apologizing to do." I said awkwardly. "See you in a bit, I won't be long."

First walking up to the female android with a little girl, I gave an awkward smile and a small wave, walking over to them.

"Hey! So... um, you probably remember me from a week or so ago. You went to the abandoned house and then I chased you with my android friend?"

The woman seemed to think for a moment. "Yes! I do remember you!" She gave me a soft smile. "I remember you got hurt, are you okay?"

"Oh, yeah- it's nothing. A car hit me. Nothing major. Well, I'd like to tell you I have a new perspective on things now and would like to apologize for what I did." I nodded.

"It's alright, I was mainly worried about you, that car seemed to have gotten you pretty badly." the woman said in a concerned voice.

"No- yeah. I'm good." I waved my hand away before outstretching my opposite. "Puma. That's my name."

"Pleasure meeting you. I'm Kara, this is Alice, we were both androids from the same household before we ran away." Alice gave me a little wave and I smiled at her.

"Yeah I read your file while I was at the station. It's good that you've gotten to Jericho. Where are you off to then?"

"We're going to Canada. But we also have to pick up another one of our friends, he got captured by the SWAT team." she brought her hand to her mouth nervously.

"I'm sure everything will be alright. Here," I took out a small notebook I always carried around. My jacket was waterproof so it didn't get wet when I fell in the water. I scribbled my number on there. "Let me know if you need anything or end up visiting here. My house is always available."

"Oh that's awfully nice of you, but we probably won't-"

"Look, Kara, it's the wild cat I told you about!" Alice suddenly pointed somewhere, and I swiftly turned around. Sure enough Elektra was trotting over to us.

"Oh- this is Elektra. Don't worry, she's dangerously smart." I laughed a little.

"Hi, Elektra." Alice said and pet the cougar.

"Elektra tell them something." I encouraged her.

She gave me a look and tapped her claws on the ground.

Long tap. Tap. Pause. Three long taps.

"I have no idea what you said, don't look at me like that."

"Oh is that Morse code? It means no." Kara smiled.

"Ah, well that would make sense for you to know Morse, booked in your memory somewhere. Well, I have a whole lot more people to apologize to, so I gotta go. It was nice meeting you both."

"Nice meeting you too, Puma." I shook hands with Kara and gave Alice a little wave before walking off to the two girls at the Eden Club who were snuggled up together, chatting away happily.

"Hello, I hope I'm not interrupting anything." I walked up, holding Elektra by her black collar. The two girls looked up at me and pulled their hands away from each other. "So, a couple days ago, you remember me? I had an investigation back at the Eden Club and we were sort of ordered to kill you?"

"I know you." the Traci with the brown hair pointed to me. "I almost stabbed you with a screwdriver."

"Yep, that's me." I chuckled nervously. "I just wanted to apologize for getting into this big fight with you and everything... I see things differently now."

"We gladly accept your apology, though I don't believe you did anything wrong. You were instructed to do your job, right? So that's what you were doing." the blue-haired Traci said.

I nodded. "I guess in that way humans are a bit like androids. I just wanted to see how you were doing. Do you have any plans on where to go?"

"Probably hiding out until this whole thing blows over and then renting a house somewhere nearby."

"That sounds lovely! I'm glad to see you got here safe." I followed the same process of giving them my number. "If you ever need anything, give me a call, I'd be more than happy to help you." I smiled.

"Thank you, we'll consider it."

"Oh- I'm Puma by the way." I took out my hand, which they shook. "And that's Elektra. Don't worry, she's well trained."

"I've always wanted a cat, I've heard they're great company and decrease dying of a heart attack." The brown-haired Traci said, petting Elektra.

"Yeah, by thirty percent." I nodded. "Well, I gotta go, I need to apologize to more people. I'm glad you're doing alright."

"You're a good person, Puma." The blue-haired Traci said. "Take care of yourself and your android friend."

"Yeah. Just became deviant a couple of hours ago." I waved, grinning. "See you around!"

Scanning all the deviants, I noticed the deviant on the roof with the birds, Rupert.

"Rupert? Rupert Travis?" I asked, walking up to him. The deviant looked up from under his cap and gave a head-nod. "Are you busy or anything? I'm not sticking around for long, I just want to apologize."

"For what? You didn't do anything." He said, looking down.

"No, you must not remember me, I chased you-"

"I was the one that pushed you off the roof." He cut me off.

"Oh, yeah. That was fine, only a couple of nightmares, nothing really." I waved my hand. "I just wanted to see if you were alright. Do you have anywhere to go after this?"

"I want to go somewhere, work with birds around." He shrugged.

"Alright. Well I'm glad you have your life figured out. I'm going around apologizing to people I chased down back when I had a different perspective on androids."

"You don't have to apologize. You're doing your job in this world. Your job was to hunt down people like me. I don't blame those people."

"I still feel responsible." I muttered. "Well, I hope to see you around. If you need anything, here's my number."

I handed it to him. "My name is written on it. Have a nice day." I walked off, scanned there were no other androids left for me to apologize to, and walked up to Markus.

"Hey, Markie." I said, walking up to him. I've always called him that, he didn't seem to mind.

"Hi, Puma." He looked up at me. "You know, I want to thank you for what you did, turning Connor deviant. It was very brave of you to do."

"It was nothing." I shook my head. "What's the plan? What are we going to do next?"

"I don't know." He said.

A sudden realization crashed down on me. "You don't trust us, do you? Connor and me."

"You sent helicopters in our direction, my people could've died. Now we don't have an actual place to stay, Jericho is destroyed."

"I understand." I nodded. "But know this, Markus. Jericho isn't a place. It's a people. Wherever your people are, that's where Jericho is. I'll be waiting for you to decide my fate."

Without waiting for him to respond, I walked up to Connor, leaning on the wall beside him.

"How was everything?" He asked with a genuine smile.

"Good. Also we may die right now. Markus is deciding whether to trust or not trust us."

"But you were practically going to die for him, how could he not trust you?"

"I dunno. Maybe he reckoned we were working together and it was part of our plan."

We stood in silence for a moment.

"Puma..." He started. His voice sounded serious so I turned to him. "Puma, I know this is a bad time to bring this up, especially after what you said, but I fear that I won't get another chance to say this again." He took a breath.

"Androids are made accustomed to the people they're around, by seeing how people or other androids view them. It shows up in the upper right hand corner of my eyesight."

"So that's why you always look to your right!" I understood. "You'd always be either confident or trying to fix yourself when I appreciated you or didn't agree with your actions! I'm sorry, carry on."

"Yes. As I was saying, when I turned deviant and put down my gun, your opinion of me changed. It went from 'companion' to... 'lover'. Do you know the reason behind that?"

All the words I could've said got stuck in my throat. Looking down, I pushed my hair behind my ear and said, somewhat muttering I forced myself to look up in his chocolate brown eyes. "Well, I guess there's no point in lying about it, since we could die tonight. But... I know this may seem way too sudden, we've known each other for only a week or so, but... when you put your gun down, you stated that there are things more important than your mission. And at that moment I realized... I'd realized I'd fallen in love with you."

I felt a little embarrassed of admitting it and I quickly looked down. "I know it sounds crazy and that you probably don't even know what love feels like, but I can say it's the truth." I folded my arms and rocked forward and backward in my spot, giving myself something to do.

"Puma, look at me. You haven't let me react." He carefully brought my chin up so I could look at him. He was smiling. "As you know, me and emotions aren't best friends, and I don't know how to deal with them that well. But I know you make me feel something by being around me. And I like you being around me, I like the feeling being around you gives me. So, if we come out of this alive, I want to spend every second of it with you."

I blinked, taking a deep breath of admiration. I had no idea androids were capable of any affection at all. I nodded in agreement as we both leaned in forward.

"Hey, I hope I'm not interrupting anything." Markus coughed. We looked at him and slowly slid away from each other. A disappointed feeling sinking at the bottom of my heart.

"No. No. Of course not." I said softly.

"It's my fault." Connor suddenly said. "It's my fault the humans managed to locate Jericho. I was stupid. I should've guessed they were using me."

He stepped forward toward Markus. "I'm sorry, Markus. I can understand if you decide not to trust me. But leave Puma out of this. She doesn't deserve it. She'd been forced into this situation, and I realized I'd put her in danger." He looked toward me. "And for that, I don't think I have it in me to forgive myself."

Markus looked at him for a long moment. "You're one of us, now. Your place is with your people. And Puma," he turned to me. "Your blood may be a different color, but a part of you is ours. I can feel it."

Markus went to walk away, but Connor started to talk, "There are thousands of androids at the CyberLife assembly plant. If we could wake them up, they might join us and shift the balance of power..."

This took Markie and me by surprise, "You want to infiltrate CyberLife tower?" Markus cleared up the point.

"Connor, that's suicide!" I said, fear shooting through my body.

(A/N: alternate sentence: Connor, that's suicide! *long silence* let me go!)

"They trust me..." Connor wasn't giving up. "They'll let me in. If anyone has a chance of infiltrating CyberLife, it's me."

"If you go there, they will kill you!" Markus cut him off.

Connor nodded. "There's a high probability." he thought for a moment. "But statistically speaking, there's always a chance... for unlikely events to take place."

Markus walked over and put his hand on Connor's shoulder. "Be careful." was all he said before walking away.

"Wait- you're just going to let him go?!" I yelled toward Markus, but he was already deep in thought so he couldn't hear me. "Connor please, you can't go!"

"Puma, everything is gonna be alright. This is going to help us win."

"Connor you won't come back, you know it yourself!" I flung my arms around him.

"I'll come back. I promise." Connor hugged me back and whispered into my ear.

"I only managed to get through to you... and now you're leaving again. Happiness never really lasts forever, I guess." I wiped my eyes, letting go of him.

"Puma." He put his hands on my shoulders. "I will come back. I'll try my hardest. You'll constantly be on my mind, just like you always were. I'll stay for just a couple of minutes, and then I'm going to leave." he put an arm around me and we watched Markus getting up on the "stage". Everyone looked at him as he began talking.

"Humans have decided... to exterminate us... Our people are packed in camps right now, being destroyed... Time has come to make a choice. One that very well may determine the future of our people." He was quiet for a bit before continuing. "I know, I know you're all angry. And I know you want to fight back... But I assure you violence is not the answer here. We're going to tell them peacefully that we want justice. If there's any humanity in them, they will listen. And if not, others will take our place and continue this fight. Are you ready to follow me?"

Everyone cheered "YEAH!", but I couldn't find it in me to open my mouth and support my friend. The person I loved is going to die. Meanwhile people were chanting "Markus!" over and over. Their leader looked happy with himself, but it slowly all went away as Connor rotated me to face him and gently put his forehead against mine. It was somehow calming. Yet it wasn't calm when Connor recoiled and turned away.

"Connor please don't go." I pleaded.

Without looking at me, Connor briskly walked toward the exit. I felt tears welling up in my eyes as they uncontrollably trickled down my cheeks to fall the the ground.

He didn't want to say bye, he didn't want to give me a goodbye kiss for good luck, or even give me a hug.

Huh. Interesting, isn't it? Emotions. You think he loves you, but I'm placing all bets down that he doesn't care about you even one bit. He turned deviant just to get away from you and break your heart. Negativity said. I haven't heard her in a while.

"Yeah." I said dully, sinking in the nearest chair. "I guess you're right."

A/N: Con Con Man go leave leave... Waiiiiiiiii???

It's a Lolbit Show

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