"Here." Elijah looked up from the electronic pad with a curious hum and accepted the steaming mug with a warm smile. Chloe always knew. He murmured his thanks as he took the mug and let it burn his hands for a few moments. As was his habit, he took one tiny sip and placed it on the coaster at his elbow to be forgotten. He was sitting at the bar for a change, reading the latest news in robotics as he did every morning. It was Sunday, so he wouldn't be going anywhere that day. Sunday...It was the day Gavin and Nines used to visit most. The date in the corner of his pad told him it was the seventh of October. Gavin's birthday. He'd be forty. It's been over a year, and they still haven't..."It's a special day today...We should call Nines and see if he wants to come over." Chloe was right. Nines would be feeling it even more than he was. This wasn't a day one should spend alone.

"That sounds nice." Reading the article wasn't appealing anymore. He was too busy thinking about Gavin, something he tried not to do so much these days. It was hard not to think about him on his birthday. He clenched his teeth and swallowed, doing his best to keep it inside. There was no one besides Chloe to see it, but if he started, he didn't think he'd stop. It was hard to believe how strongly he felt when he'd only met Gavin around two and a half years ago. He'd lived without a brother for almost thirty-seven years before Gavin stumbled into his life, so why did his disappearance affect him so much? It didn't seem logical. He'd lived before, he could live after.

"Eli..." He coughed and closed his eyes, taking a breath as tears pricked the corners. I'm not going to start. I'm not going to start. "It isn't good for you to bottle things up." His lips trembled at that. Did she have to push it? He flinched at the first press of her hand landing on his lower back. She stroked slowly, fingers gliding up the fresh cotton of his shirt until she could rub circles on his hunched shoulder blades. "I miss him too." The pain in her voice was palpable, and her words were enough to move him. His eyes were already blurry as he turned in his seat and pulled her against his chest. She measured her strength as she wrapped her arms around his neck and sobbed against his shoulder.

Elijah's breaths shuddered as he tried to stay quiet. He wasn't one for making a ruckus. His cries were silent huffs against her neck. Tears streamed down his cheeks to be wiped on the sleeve of his shirt. He didn't want to dirty her pretty blue dress. His shoulders heaved with each sob, something he couldn't hide or stop. Chloe didn't mention it. She was crying too, greedily accepting Elijah's fingers in her hair and the hand rubbing her back. Elijah kept a tight grip on his emotions, so it didn't take long for him to regain his composure and remind himself who he was. He was Elijah Kamski, creator of androids. Even behind closed doors he had an image to uphold. Chloe disagreed, of course, but he'd always been the same. Emotions like grief belonged on the inside. Show no weakness. It was an outdated mentality, but it also protected him from the media.

"Sorry, I just...They should have found him by now." One way or the other, they should have brought Gavin home. They'd turned Detroit upside down, searched every corner, and found nothing! How could he disappear without a trace like that? The most logical conclusion was that they'd left the state, maybe even the country, and yet the FBI were still in Detroit. The only time they'd left was to cover other cases. It had been a while since he'd asked them for an update, choosing instead to get on with life. It seemed cold to think such a thing, but waiting for answers that never came was both frustrating and a waste of time.

He was Elijah Kamski, creator or androids, and his time was too valuable to waste standing still. There were software updates to create, new hardware to invent, business projects to look into, and android rights to fight for. He and Markus were still working together closely in order to bring androids and humans closer together. The internal stomach components had been a complete success, prompting companies to begin thirium food production. There was a vast market now. The teenage bodies were ready to be rolled out, and some had even upgraded already. He was currently looking into updating the bodies of older models without upgrading them into a completely new model.

Many of them were quite attached to their hardware and didn't want to change, but their parts were out of date and hard to find. Elijah was looking at ways to alter the connection ports to make them compatible with similar newer models. The trickiest part of that wasn't changing the port itself but the software that went with it. It was like trying to hook an ENIAC to an Apple Mac. That meant the hardware was made of outdated materials that were delicate and hard to work with, and the software was completely different. He'd need to come up with some sort of interface, something to help the two sets of software exchange information and work together. Upgrading the entire body would actually be a lot easier.

"We can ask Nines about his progress when he comes for dinner." Chloe seemed quite confident he'd turn up, and perhaps he would. It was Gavin's birthday, after all. He'd want to do something to mark the occasion, especially for a birthday as important as this one. Forty was quite a milestone. Gavin probably wouldn't think so. He'd think it was a sign of getting old. Elijah smiled at the thought that Gavin probably would have forgotten altogether. He was the same. Chloe always reminded him of important dates like that. Taking her hand, Elijah raised it to his lips and closed his eyes. This particular skin texture was even closer than the last. With a few more tries, he'd probably have a perfect replica.

"I love you." Chloe smiled at the quiet confession, enjoying the blended shades of green, hazel, and blue as he opened his dirty green eyes. He said it more often these days. Gavin's disappearance had brought with it a fear of things being left unsaid. He kept her closer than before and shared more of his thoughts. They'd always been close, but he was doing his best to bring them even closer. Sudden, regular confessions and reminders were part of that.

"I love you, too." Elijah closed his eyes and nuzzled her hand at the response. He couldn't figure out what he'd done in life to deserve someone like Chloe, but he was grateful. Creating the perfect girlfriend wasn't something he'd thought about during the creation process. He'd actually been against creating the Traci and intimate partner models. It was degrading. He'd created androids as the next step, a new form of life to overtake humanity, not for humans to get their rocks off with. Having experienced it himself, some might say he was a hypocrite, but getting a genital component had been Chloe's request. He'd never seen a need for it. Intercourse was pleasant, but always at Chloe's request.

"After I finish my coffee, we should probably..." He trailed off with a frown as Chloe's body stiffened. Her LED was blinking yellow, crystal eyes wide in alarm. Elijah gripped her shoulders gently, silently reassuring her with his presence. Her head snapped towards the window and she stepped closer, gripping his shirt with one hand.

"An unknown vehicle is approaching." He raised an eyebrow at that. They didn't get unannounced guests. Unease churned his stomach, brow furrowing warily as he met Chloe's worried eyes. She felt the same. People didn't just drive up to the Kamski estate. That last time it happened had been Hank and Connor's visit during the revolution.

"What can you see?" Chloe's eyes blanked again as she connected to the security cameras on the mountainside. It was a standard SUV with blacked-out windows in the back seats, which limited her evaluation.

"One individual in the driver's seat...Male." A close up of his face made her LED spin red. "It's the android that took Gavin!" His face had been shared around in the earlier days of Gavin's disappearance, and her brothers had cautioned her about him more than once. Elijah's heart picked up as he hurried behind the bar and unlocked the small safe beneath the counter. With so many rooms, he needed as much security as possible. Each room had a safe like this, so no matter where he was, he could arm himself. Within the safe was a handgun and a small magazine. Though unpractised, he knew how to use a gun. He had his licence and Gavin had helped him out more than once with his aim.

"Sound the alarm and alert the DPD!" Chloe's LED blinked red at that.

"The signal is being blocked somehow. I can't get through!" She couldn't call any of her brothers, or connect to the cloud server. Elijah cursed under his breath and set off the alert inside the safe anyway. They may not get a signal out, but they could at least secure the house. Chloe's LED span yellow, crystal eyes blank as she set her spare bodies to work. "Ten minutes." Elijah nodded and authorised the home security protocol. His lab locked itself down. Of all the rooms of the house, that was the most important. It was vital no one got in there, so vital that it was rigged to blow. "What should we do?" What indeed...He'd never expected anything like this to happen.

He was a wealthy man, and the target of many attempts earlier in his career, but he was mostly ignored these days. The mountainside was secure, with a direct alert to the nearest authorities. That alert had now been tripped, but with the jamming signal in place, it was unlikely to get through. The blank look in Chloe's eyes suggested she was already working on it. Moments later, one of her doppelgangers walked in with two rifles, one of which it handed to Chloe before leaving to take up position. Elijah swallowed nervously, looking out of the window in anticipation.

"We wait." He trusted Chloe to take care of things. The windows were bulletproof, the doors were armoured, and everything important was password protected with multiple layers of security. What the android wanted, he couldn't say, but he was intrigued. It may not be alone. Anticipation welled in his chest at the thought that Gavin might be with him. But why come here? He had money, of course, but that wasn't usually a motivating factor for killers. His mouth went dry at the thought. They'd already killed Chloe once. With that in mind, it was far more likely that he was the target this time.

"There's still time...We could take a car and drive down." That was true, though there was always the risk of being run off the road.

"True, but then we'd lose the opportunity to trap it." The android might not be alone, but if it was, they could deactivate it. If they could do that, they could search through its memory banks and potentially find out where Gavin was being held. If it wasn't alone, that was even better. They could have Gavin or even the Hickory Killer right there. Nerves fluttered in Elijah's stomach at the thought. Whatever the case, it would be dangerous. The Hickory Killer was a proven killer who planned meticulously. He knew enough about his internal security system to set off a long distance jammer before even reaching the base of the mountain. The system hadn't been hacked, but Elijah didn't doubt it was possible. He's probably waiting until he can plug in directly...Hopefully, Chloe could take him. Licking his lips, Elijah checked his gun one last time and looked out the window. All they could do was wait.