SEQUENTIAL ━ Connor // RK800 ✔️

nine ━ about mistakes

• • •

In retrospective, swearing off mind probing no longer seemed like such a good idea to Connor. He had no way in changing what he had promised to Mia though, not when Officer Brady parked his car with a tyre creak across the street from their destination. He was, at the time, yet unaware of what they were about to walk themselves into.

The sun hadn't been visible all day past a thick barrier of dark clouds unwilling to shed a single drop of rain after the downpour of yesterday, but one needn't the sun to tell the time when the radio kept reminding every listener of it every ten minutes, like clockwork. It was late in the afternoon when the town's police station had been alerted by a connection in the nearest town to the north of Joel's farm that strange androids have been spotted taking refuge inside an abandoned house.

Androids were made into an unusual sighting by the one reporting their next best lead and it so seemed to Connor now that the further one travelled from Detroit, or any big city for that matter, the less were the working people interested in having androids around, the less were they prone to relying on such advanced technology. Perhaps he should heed to Brady's past commentary — maybe people truly couldn't afford androids as much as he knew they did in the city, where they were turned into a commodity, sometimes even a social standard to gaining status. It had always perplexed him the idea that Mia, for example, though she worked for CyberLife, did not own an android of her own to take care of her apartment while she's away, or wait for her home with a warm meal after a long day at the office.

This neighbouring town was not entirely different from the one he's gotten used to already, save for the fact that their main revenue looked to be revolving around a factory rather than agriculture. The streets looked the same and the downtown central area was still overlooked by an almost identical church. Another difference were the abandoned houses — the heart of the settlement was a graveyard of homes turned into skeletons of what a building was supposed to be, a picture only occasionally interrupted by new and unfinished projects of new buildings in the shape of blocks, standing out like a sore thumb.

They exited the car and faced such a skeleton of a house, an old and putrid vestige on the verge of collapse. The windows were barricaded from both the inside and the outside on the ground floor, but also the first floor of the building.

"Tell me again why we didn't let DPD handle this in full," Brady sighed, looking up with a distinct uneasiness at this ghost of a house.

"They were only interested in making a connection between Joel Reed and Officer Owens and they have only the beginning of that with those two missing androids found disassembled in the Red Ice lab," Connor explained, leading their walk across the street and towards the barbed wire surrounding the premises of the abandoned house. "You mentioned wanting to put in a good word for yourself with them," he chose to appeal to the man's ego once again. "Well, asking them to take over a murder case is not how you do that." It was easier to give this half truth rather than explain to him his current priorities and mission: DPD should under no circumstances know of the existence of the android involvement in the murder, as per company priority, and he must not, no matter what, allow the opportunity to solve a murder case slip through his fingers, should this field trial be deemed a success in the end.

Officer Brady sighed, watching Connor first asses the chain on the door locking the premises up, then identify a lot further to the side a gap cut into the barbed wire. "I just...," he held his breath for a moment, grimacing at their entryway on the property, realizing, as per Connor's immediate demonstration, how it required some crawling on the ground to get inside. "I have a bad feeling about this, pal."