From Your Wires to Your Core

Snowed Under

It had been three months. Three months since the android uprising. If you could call it that. It had honestly gone way better than Reed had expected. He'd expected the plastic menaces to be killing humans left and right. What he hadn't expected was to watch a group of androids sitting peacefully, almost in acceptance. It had gotten under his skin. They weren't supposed to be so reasonable. They'd just sat there, singing about peace and shooting off messages about equality. The only violence had come from the human side. He'd watched the reports from the station's break room, seen SWAT mercilessly shooting down android after android. Despite his dislike of androids, he just couldn't be on his own species' side. Shooting unarmed and peaceful beings? That didn't sit right with him.

He'd had mixed feelings when the president had called a ceasefire. Even more so when he'd seen Hank's pet RK800 leading an army of newly deviated androids from Cyberlife for reinforcements. An uneasy peace was declared. Negotiations were going to be made. Androids were going to become recognised as real living beings. Reed had never wanted them to exist. He'd known the moment the first ones appeared that it would be bad news for human workers everywhere. He'd been right. Unemployment levels had skyrocketed within the first year. Now they were free. With the ability to take paid positions. It made them less cheap, but he was sure most employers would still see the value of having a faster, stronger, and overall better android in the workforce.

That night Fowler had sent them all back to work as soon as the broadcast ended. He knew there were bound to be a lot of incidents to deal with. By that point the swelling on Reed's cheek had gone down a bit. The RK800 had a mean punch, he'd give him that. He'd already logged his incident report by then. Agent Perkins had insisted he get it all down as soon as possible, since the evidence tampering had affected the FBI's investigation. Reed had no problem with that. He'd stated honestly that he'd gone in and found the RK800 android tampering with evidence. At the time, it had been no big deal. If he'd shot the RK800, it would have been just a machine. A broken pile of plastic and circuits. No harm, no foul. Cyberlife probably had a few dozen RK800s to replace it with anyway. He knew it had happened at least once.

Time had passed since then anyway. Things around the DPD were busy. That's a phcking understatement. He was surprised, but there'd actually been a drop in the amount of androids working at the station. Quite a few had moved on to different careers after attaining deviancy. It was a dangerous job, and androids were still a popular target for violence. There was also the fact that a lot of their human colleagues would use them as bullet shields, sending them into dangerous situations first because they were just machines and could be repaired. With the drop in androids, they were having to take on more new human officers, but few people were applying at the moment. Things were still tense and dangerous. Reed was pulling fifteen hour shifts almost every day of the week. Sometimes it was every day. It was getting to the point he was actually missing Hank.

Hank had been suspended for the past three months after his bust up with Agent Perkins in the bullpen. Perkins would have pushed to have him fired, but it was too much paperwork for him to bother with. It would also have meant returning to the DPD offices a few more times for follow-ups, and the FBI was based quite a way off. It was inconvenient for something so trivial. He was content to just leave it at a few months' suspension. It was that very Monday morning, as he sipped his sixth coffee of the night before, that Reed saw him walking up to Fowler's office.

"Finished slacking off, old man?" Reed called in a gruff, tired tone. He had an up and down relationship with Hank. He'd always respected him, and there was a time he'd looked up to him. He was the youngest lieutenant on record. Until a few years ago, he'd been a dedicated officer and a great mentor. That had all stopped after his son died. Reed almost felt bad that he'd forgotten the kid's name. He'd only seen him once for a few minutes, and he'd rarely worked with Hank directly, but he still felt bad for not remembering. Was it...Connor? Cole? Cody? Something with a C...