ALIVE [Connor]

[13] Complimentary

November 6th. 2038.

AM 01:12:09

The rain had softened through the small hours of the next morning. A pitter-pattering sheet of icy water that caressed the earth as opposed to drenching the two bodies who shifted through relatively empty streets, under cover of the black umbrella which Connor had swiped from the precinct's foyer on the way out the door. The water glazed off of the concrete sidewalks in spilled rainbows, the pleasant plopping sounds of the raindrops intermingling with the occasional traffic as they bounced across the ground and escaped through the storm drains. Shops cast in darkness, the roads were ridden of pedestrians, leaving naught but the two sets of footsteps journeying back to Isla's apartment.

The occasional car that hurtled down the street would come dangerously close to the curb, creating a small tsunami of rainwater to splash out onto the sidewalk and give Connor barely enough time to shield the two of them behind the guard of the umbrella. Purposefully stomping through puddles on their way, Isla encouraged this borderline-'deviating' behaviour of acting so care-free and unprofessional. They were kids for a moment in the haze of the rainy weather as Connor shoved a lazy hand into his pocket and twirled the umbrella through the many conversations, her playful manner nothing short of a new experience for him. Bustled close to one another, Isla would clutch onto the umbrella's handle between intervals, squeezing her cold hands over the top of Connor's and inching away from anymore sprays of water. It was an innocent point of contact that she, herself, took little notice to. And yet Connor felt the touch of her palms more intensely than even the deepest of puddles dispersing beneath his feet.

Isla's playfulness was magnetic, and coupled with Connor's professionalism - they balanced out nicely. She complimented his seriousness with bountiful excuses to insert the quick wit and subtle back-and-forth banter. And he complimented her silliness with the cognitive stimulation for her mind, asking questions which evoked further questions. She had a knack for soaring up into space with her limitless abilities to lighten the mood. And he had a way of reeling her back down to earth and give her a second to just pause and take a breath.

In the time-frame of an evening, they had become a duo that just seemed to click. Riddled in the 'what if' on Isla's part.

Between breaks of laughter, initiated by Isla and eventually infecting Connor to some extent, the two of them had been speaking intently about the investigation at hand, with several crucial points of interest cropping up in the conversation. The 'observations' which Reed had exclaimed to the world back at the station had yet to be addressed, and as Isla bit her lip, she was uncertain as to whether they ever would be.

"RA9. What is RA9?" Connor questioned aloud. He was thinking for a moment, he frowned in a particular way when he did that - a characteristic that Isla had become quickly aware of in the moments she spent gazing up at him. Whether it be in the midst of a crime-scene or him trying to understand some very crude humour.

"Well," She began, huddled beneath the safety of the umbrella, "For it to be scribbled like that, all over the bathroom wall back at Ortiz's - it's almost like it's some kind of deity. Something that the deviants want to believe in. Like the coming of freedom, like awaiting a god to deliver them from the snares of humankind. Yes, I did come up with that off the top of my head."

"An android believing in a god," He noted, "The deviant must...--" He tried to gesture with his hand, searching for the right words, "--He must have imitated it from the humans he was in contact with."

"Or," Isla objected, "He could genuinely believe that something is going to come and 'save' him. Do you ever feel like that?"

"Like what?"