SEQUENTIAL ━ Connor // RK800 ✔️

twenty-one ━ in too deep

• • •

Her hands clung to edge of the sink, droplets of water still hanging by her eyelashes and by the underside of her chin. A generously large mirror dared her to raise her gaze so, naturally, Mia looked down, eyes resorting to studying the far too familiar outline of a gun she did not own and the already worn out edges of the folded picture of her and Connor.

Though she had just given herself the waking call of some ice cold water on her face and even undid the first two buttons of her collar to get that thing off of sticking to her neck, breathing seemed to be adamnt in remaining a difficult task to her. Each inhale scraped along, falling short of providing the oxygen she needed and each exhale depleted far more than her lungs were willing to give. It was a vicious cycle and being aware of it did not help in any way.

With her elbows shaking, she held on a little tighter to the sink, hoping the pain of the hard surface digging into the palm of her hands would help anchor her back in the moment. Mia urged her eyes closed and gritted her teeth against the onslaught of nauseating sensations wrapped around the loudest her fears have gotten since she was left all alone, knees buried into that cold dirt. She could remember the scent of the fields, even the sight of the light snowflakes melting on the contact with the ground or how the yellowed light of the headlights faded into the deep darkness of a place stilled by the night and the aftermath of harvet.

She could have remembered so many things, but her mind was hellbent on recalling only the wet sensation pooling through her fingers onto her lap. Her hands were aching from how hard she held onto that sink while reminiscing all too vividly the weight of him in her arms, the sight of his lifeless, unmoving eyes, even that static sound he let out as his last words before a deafening silence took over and left her with nothing but an ear ringing pain.

A brisk knock on the bathroom door brought Mia out of her mind. With a gasp, her eyes opened and she looked right into the mirror.

"Miss O'Connor," the woman caller from the other side of the door. "Are you alright in there? Do you need anything?"

Right, Mia finally acknowledged again where she was, what she was wearing, and what she set herself out to do. There was no time to let her fear take over and she certainly had overstayed the normalcy of a bathroom stop.

Waiting had been an easy task for just about two days after she took her vow of staying alive. Having gone to university in Ann Arbor made her pretty much a local in terms of knowing the safest spots to hide and lay low, and for those first two days, she still had hope keeping her quiet and waiting in the single dark corner in the underground level of a commercial center parking lot where camera angles didn't reach. The time she didn't spend sleeping back then, she watched the single other active spot across the parking floor from her spot, trying to find some entertainment in listening to the radio and following the ministrations of the clients coming and going from that car wash.

After she had taken out her old beat-up laptop from the backpack discarded on the backseat of the car, it truly felt like she had gone back in time, to the quiet, lonely days of high school, back when there was only her. It was after that when the waiting started eating her up from the inside, rotting away whatever was left of her hope.

She didn't want to be alone again and the longer she waited for Connor to come back, the more likely it became to her to assume the memory transfer failed, that he's back at the CyberLife tower, into a brand new body, meeting his new project coordinator without even a single clue as to what had happened or who she even is.