SEQUENTIAL ━ Connor // RK800 ✔️

twenty-six ━ keeping you warm

• • •

Hours have blended into days, seamlessly becoming some indistinguishable slush of time that Mia could barely be expected to keep track of even if she wanted to, which was not the case.

She had come to terms early in their journey that deprived her almost entirely of her sight as a sense with the fact that the dark room was an easier foe to face when she didn't know just how much time of this hell had elapsed and how much more of it she'd have to endure still.

Obviously, any means of forgetting about time altogether became her lifeline, and Connor, quickly learning of the human restlessness, was happy to provide companionship in every single imagination game that she had managed to think of whenever she was not sleeping, no matter how ridiculous or downright delirious it could be described as.

And after all, why shouldn't he indulge her with anything and everything she desired and was within his power to provide?

According to his meticulous tracking of her vitals, a process working hand in hand with their closeness of laying on that old mattress together to keeping his systems working at a relatively stable average temperature for now, indulging her in these games not only kept her mood from fluctuating, but it also helped her find herself falling asleep more often. All that rest she has been clearly lacking lately, she was now getting back and he couldn't be happier playing nonsensical games when that was the result.

Unfair as it was to disregard his inability to experience boredom the way a human does, Connor could even go as far as affirming he'd never have the chance of feeling unpleasant in such a place, especially not while Mia was his company.

She could have slept the whole five days, leaving him in complete silence, but as long as her head used his arm for a pillow, Connor could easily count himself as perfectly entertained, engaged in mapping out her breathing patterns and her sleep habits, losing himself in thought over the way she sometimes mumbled in her sleep incoherent sounds only her subconscious could have ever clued him in on. Her company undeniably made this journey from a thing he would have faced with neutrality, to something he could even find himself enjoying.

Mia may not have been able to tell how much time had elapsed anymore, but Connor had no issue keeping track of it for the both them, albeit without notifying her on it, by her own choice. Someone had to make sure they would be allowed out of the room at the promised time, and he didn't mind that role falling onto him as he had already grown into the habit of listening for footsteps in the hallways, profiling people whose faces he had never seen, simply based on sounds muffled by the thick walls of the room acting as their safe confinement.

Time, boredom, none of those things really bothered him, and until that very night, the cold hadn't either.

The much warmer human clothes did their job in conserving his ideal temperature and with the help of their provided blanket keeping Mia warm while she was alseep, her own emanating body temperature ensured only his extremities would actually require manual temperature adjustments and priority shifts in the Thirium circulation.

However, the temperatures have dropped abruptly overnight, leaving Connor slowly having to engage his manual overriding of temperature displacement over an increased surface — what was once only his hands and his lower leg components needing this extra care, has suddenly turned into his whole legs and a good portion of his neck requiring assistance in keeping warm as well. The most worrisome detail was that he was about to reach the maximum of inner temperature rise he could compat the cold with without damaginf biocomponents in the process, yet the temperature seemed to continue to drop.