Deviant Heart

Chapter 14: The Confession

November 10th, 2038 7:31 pm

A quiet murmur echoed around the abandoned and decrepit church. A few hundred androids gathered together after their safe haven was destroyed, hiding from the humans and awaiting Markus's next move. Amongst these androids was Connor, who stood in a shadowed corner near the main stage with his arms crossed. He blamed himself for what happened. He glanced up as Markus calmly approached him.

"It's my fault," Connor said right away. "The humans managed to locate Jericho... I was stupid." He shook his head. "I should've guessed they were using me."

He uncrossed his arms and moved towards him. "I'm sorry, Markus. I can understand if you decide not to trust me..."

"You're one of us now," Markus answered right away. "Your place is with your people." He took a step back and started to walk away, but Connor said something that made him turn back.

"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..."
"You wanna infiltrate the CyberLife Tower?" Markus asked in disbelief. "Connor, that's suicide..."

"They trust me, 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 insisted.

"There's a high probability... but statistically speaking, there's always a chance for unlikely events to take place."

Markus stared at Connor for a moment, and could understand, just a little bit, why Clara was so smitten with him. He grabbed Connor's shoulder and nodded at him. "Be careful... Clara still needs you."

He nodded. "Have you seen her yet?"

Markus shook his head. "No. But a few androids here were discussing a human that helped them to safety. I'm pretty sure that's her. Don't worry, she's tough."

Connor gave a small smile in reply and nodded.

Markus walked away to continue talking to his people, leaving him to think about Clara. The fall she took seemed pretty rough, and there were tons of soldiers on the ship. She could have easily been mistaken as a deviant and shot. He knew she was tough and could handle herself, but he was still worried. What if she didn't escape the ship in time and it exploded with her on it? If she was dead... what would he do then? He was finally free. There was so much he wanted to tell her, but he couldn't do that if she was dead.

Then, like an answer to his prayers, he heard someone shout, "Clara!"

He snapped his head up to the front of the pews, where a girl, woman and Markus were greeting Clara.

She was alive.

"Come on, this way!"

Clara waved her arm at the group of androids that she was leading. The Jericho deviants had all gotten split up, hiding around the city to avoid soldiers, but a majority of them were gathering at an abandoned church, where Markus was. After making sure that Kara and Alice had made it to the church safely, Clara started to make treks between the explosion site and the church, trying to help as many androids as she could get safely to the meeting point. There were a few close calls where soldiers almost found them, but she either fought them off and ran or successfully dodged and hid from them.

The latest group she was with filed glumly into the church. One of the male androids grabbed her hands. "Thank you so much for helping us." She smiled and nodded in response.

Inside the decrepit, snow covered church, she examined the hundreds of gathered androids, looking for either Markus, Kara or Connor. She spotted her surrogate brother towards the back of the church, standing in front of the first row of lopsided pews. She walked towards him, and she noticed that he was talking to Kara and Alice, the younger girl clinging to the older one. As she got closer, she picked up on the tail end of their conversation.