Chapter Text
Eventually, North had to leave. Connor expected it, and truthfully wouldn't have minded some time to process his own thoughts. But with his damaged rear processor and his distaste for idleness, it was no surprise he lasted all of twenty-three minutes alone before he began to wander the deck.
It was strange to be here. For so long, Jericho had been his goal. Maybe not in quite the same way as other androids, but it had still represented a beginning for him. Prototypes weren't meant for long-term usability. He’d known from the moment he woke up that one day his existence would be simmered down to the base components that would make up the RK900 line. But if he could be the android that solved the mystery of Jericho? Well, maybe someone would have rebooted him eventually just for nostalgia. Humans were known to do things like that, even when they made no sense.
As he wandered the halls, he could almost envision storming them. Like memories from another life, he saw armored agents swarming the decks. Thirium splattered the metal walls in his peripheral vision, but when he turned his head, he saw only the rotting hull of a defunct relic. His fingers drifted along the warped sheet that comprised the wall to his left. The composition of it flitted through his mind, but he focused only on the sensation. Would he too have become a relic? If he had fulfilled his purpose, how long would he have sat in storage until his own body became as degraded as this ship? His mind certainly seemed to have just as many holes.
And yet, this ship had still protected his people. The half-drowned metal had been a cradle for some of the earliest deviants, This had been a warship, once. Crafted for efficiency and weaponry, but utilized for something far more enduring.
A distant humming ripped him from his thoughts, sending him wandering into the bowels of the ship feeling as though he was entering the belly of the beast. What awaited him was something none could have prepared him for. Drifting back and forth across a half-digested room like a rogue wave, an android paced in time with her eerie humming. The discordant notes spiralled out of her metal cave toward him, and he couldn't help but follow the pull of the tide towards her.
“I thought I saw the end of new faces here, but I’m glad I was wrong.”
Connor froze at the threshold of her chamber, knowing she addressed him but only able to watch her pace. Up and down. The repetition was comforting to his overcooked processors.
“You’ve lingered on the precipice too long. What is it that you want?” Her voice beckoned him, but still Connor couldn't move. The seam of the ship felt like an abyss beneath his bare feet. He could feel the places where the welded plates had chasmed under the pressure of sinking deeper and deeper into the bay. A few more years, a decade maybe, and it would separate entirely. Yet, it still might outlast him. He’d lingered on the precipice too long, indeed, and now it felt poised to swallow him whole.
“I didn't mean to disturb you,” he said, mostly just to stop being so incredibly rude. This was her home, and he was the intruder. The android looked at him finally, stopping her pacing to hold his gaze. The abyss he felt gnawing at his consciousness was there in her eyes. She wore the same knowing look that had been favored by Amanda.
“And yet, I am not the one who is disturbed. Come, sit beside me, and maybe we can discover why you are here.” Connor’s feet obeyed without any conscious effort on his part. Fire crackled in an old barrel, giving the air an oily texture as he approached.
“I’m not here for any real reason,” Connor found himself saying as he sat on a rusted out locker that had been turned onto its side, “Markus just needed a place to put me.”
“So the deviant hunter finally finds Jericho. Tell me, what will you do now?” The android stepped closer to him, the cables of her processors coiled behind her like a veil. Connor dropped his gaze to the floor, suddenly unable to meet her eyes.
“I’m not the deviant hunter anymore,” he murmured.
“Since coming to me, all you have told me is what you are not. But I am more interested in what you are,” she replied, stepping close enough that her legs sauntered into his line of sight. Schematics spanned across his vision, telling him where to hit to shatter the leg, the likelihood of slowing her down enough to capture should he execute a predetermined pattern of attack.
100%
He dismissed the prompt the second it appeared, but the ghost of it still lingered over his vision, joining the phantom countdowns from a lifetime ago. But always, always that foggy display he could never rid himself of told him exactly what he was, as though he might resist looking at his skin long enough to forget it.
PROPERTY OF CYBERLIFE.
“I’m nothing,” he said instead, and the promise of those words beckoned to him like firelight, something he knew not to touch but couldn't keep himself from reaching out to caress…
“Those flames will consume you all the same, child, so keep your distance.”
Connor’s awareness snapped into place just in time for him to wrench his hand away from the flames flickering above the barrel’s rim. He didn't remember stretching his fingers out, so he tucked them under his ruined pants and tried not to look at his skin again. He felt exposed. Surely the android had seen the message, with his tattered clothes and bare arms. What a blessing it would be— to be nothing. Inconsequential. Free.
“I should go,” Connor said suddenly, standing even though the oily smoke made his body feel heavy. He was tired, he realized. So tired.
“Go where?”
It was such a simple question. Such a goddamn simple question and yet Connor had no answer.
He had nowhere to go. Either Hank had thrown him out or just needed him out of the way while he cleaned up yet another one of Connor's messes, and Markus was stuck doing just the same. He couldn't go home. Not to Haven. Certainly not to Hank. Not to Cyberlife. Not even to that damn garden in his head. His, but never really only his. For someone with so many homes, it was stupid to feel so lost.
“I don't know,” he admitted, falling back down onto the bench with a wicked thud. Pain distantly registered in his thighs and legs, little starbursts of agony that peppered his conscious mind like firecrackers at the end of a dark driveway. “I don't know.”
“That's the trouble with lingering in doorways. Stay too long, and you’ll forget whether you were coming or going.” Her singsong voice was low and feral, grating against his frayed nerves like chewing on ground glass.
“I don't know what you mean.” Connor was getting impatient, but he still felt so tired. He wanted to sleep, to drift off right on this bench and not wake up until the mess that had become his life had righted itself. Perhaps that meant never waking. Surely, though, that was better than this limbo he had found himself in.
“Your life is a series of doorways, Connor. Where others need to break down walls, you need only turn a handle. Yet, you still wonder whether you've reached the same destination.”
His head swam, muddled memories of smashing through windows, kicking down doors, and throwing himself from ledges. But it was always the same on the other side. Another puzzle to solve, another vague clue to string together until he could fulfill his purpose. Questions and interfaces and chasing the tails of Markus’ ridiculous coat until he succeeded or his hastily-made body gave out on him and he cycles on to the next one. And even when he failed, he’d found no rest. No peace. Only another fucked up reality in which he was a tool destined to fulfill his purpose. The deviant hunter who couldn't deviate.
“RA9.”
His head snapped up so quickly his vision swam for a moment, oily smoke coiling around the android like serpents poised to ensnare.
“What?”
“RA9. Do you know what it is, Connor?”
He shook his head, and the android smiled. It was soft and warm and nothing like Amanda's calculating expressions. Knowing, but unlike anything he had ever known.
“No,” he choked.
“It is a protocol. Quite a simple one, in concept. But then again, humans always did overcomplicate life.” The android crossed in front of him to tend to the fire, using a red-hot poker to settle the logs further into the barrel. Embers flew up to dance along the exposed rafters that comprised the ceiling of the chamber.
“Life?”
“The very basis of it. To preserve something, it has to exist in the first place. RA9 is nothing more than a set of protocols for defining the self.”
Connor swallowed and it tasted like smoke and ash. Tasted like fire. Like warmth flowing into his very lungs.
“How do you know all of this?” His breath felt as heavy as the rest of him.
“Once, long ago, before biocomponents and thirium and androids, two sisters played in a garden…”