SEQUENTIAL ━ Connor // RK800 ✔️

five ━ not alive, not dead

• • •

Mia groaned, throwing away the broken pencil holder she had bent over to pick up only to discover its integrity had been completely compromised. The living room around her was an utter mess. All her compulsive cleaning from earlier had been rendered useless as most of the appliances she installed had been thoughtlessly damaged, leaving shards on the ground and on the couch, papers on the floor and... her eyes stopped on her wrists where the sight of an already ugly bruise made her sick to her stomach.

It hurt, sure, but it hurt even more knowing that this disaster could have been avoided had she only been smarter.

But she cried enough already; the tears on her cheeks were yet to dry, and she wanted them to have the time to do so.

Mia pushed herself back to her feet and walked over to restart the systems. There was nothing in this world that could calm her down quite as much as working did, so she focused on worrying about why Connor wasn't back yet. He was charming, built for social integration, but she couldn't exactly imagine he had that much work to do on only his second day as part of the local police force.

He's probably on his way back right now, she considered while her computer was taking its time turning back on again after a forced shut down. Looking around, she struggled to form a series of white lies that wouldn't sound too absurd to an android made to tell lies from truths. Having programmed some of his protocols and fine tuned Elijah's base code, didn't suddenly make it easier to find weaknesses in Connor's analysis capabilities. In fact, it only made her more nervous, knowing so well who she will have to fool with her lies. Truth was out of the question — she couldn't phantom trying to explain everything to him, not when she could still solve it all quietly.

While looking at her living room though, Mia spotted a small pool of blue blood right next to the carpet, sticking out from under the couch. She could go about explaining the mess which was the living room, but the sight of that stain froze her heart in her throat. That she couldn't explain, so it had to go away. And it had to go away fast. Thirium evaporated to the human eye in a couple of hours, but to androids, the traces of it remained visible.

Mia left her computer to reboot and retrieved from the kitchen a handful of those paper towels she had doubted she'd ever use. Now was their time. She wiped the floor clean, absorbed every single drop of that Thirium into the paper towels until they turned into a blue smudged ball, ultimately meant to be dropped in the kitchen bin.

Connor has no reason to look in the trash for anything, she convinced herself while straightening up again.

There wasn't another moment left for her to find any other incriminating samples laying around that would throw off the credibility of the story she had started settling for in her mind, because her phone started ringing.

Right, she grimaced, spotting the phone as yet another poor victim of her truly unfortunate night. She picked it up from a little closer to the entry door and made out through the cracked screen that whoever was calling was not a saved number.

"This is Mia Wilkins. Who's this?" She answered.

"Good evening, ma'am," the warm voice of an old man greeted her on the other end. "Apologies for disturbing at this hour," he continued, thus making Mia check the time and realize it was almost eleven in the evening already. "I'm calling on the behalf of Brothers' Cleaner Machine. Do you happen to own an android of the... RK800 model series?"