SHORT CIRCUIT, connor dbh (discontinued)

; 50

"I figured your girlfriend would've been here by now," Liv's father snarled. He looked on the ground and saw the key Liv gave Connor that night. He picked up the key and looked at the keychain.

"How cute," he said and rolled his eyes, sounding disgusted by the picture of Connor and Liv. He threw it on the concrete floor and stepped on it, crushing the plastic casing around the picture.

"What do you want from me?" Connor's voice box had been damaged and now his voice was much deeper and robotic. None of his injuries were major enough to kill him, but he was still covered in his own blood and his body ached from the pain. He was tightly secured to a chair.

"I was going to explain when Olivia got here, but she seems to not care about you enough to do that," he said, "I'm sure you already know a little about me, you've probably analyzed me already."

"I don't need to scan you to see you're an asshole," Connor said, "but I don't know what you want with me."

"Connor, did you know that the RK android line was actually my creation? It's understandable if you don't, as only a handful of people do. The first RK model, the RK100, was a caretaker android made for Olivia.

"Most people don't know that though, because CyberLife tells everyone a different story. Kamski was treated as a genius, but he stole every invention his company produced. He bought my silence for a while, a long with many others, but he stopped paying after he realized we had no way to prove it."

"That doesn't explain what you want with me," Connor said, "Why not just settle this with Kamski?"

"I couldn't care less about owning CyberLife anymore, not after how badly they ruined their reputation with you deviants. I've worked on starting my own company for years, but this android revolution has really messed with my plans. No one wants to own an android now, they don't trust them.

"But then I saw how you and Olivia managed to make so many opinions shift with just one kiss on the news, so I figured, how much damage could the two of you do in my favor?"

"I won't help you," Connor said, "And neither would Liv."

"You act like you'll have a choice," he laughed, "You're being reset. So, from there, it should only take a few threats to get her to do what I want. She's never had much of a backbone, just like her mother.

"I hope you're ready to do interviews, because in the next few days there will be plenty to do. You'll show the whole world how all the deviants need to be stopped. They'll fear you, because you'll show them how ruthless actually deviants are," Alexander explained, "Then I'll swoop in with the tech to stop all of you, and give the people what they want, obedient machines."

"If you were going to reset me, you would've already done it," Connor said.

"Trust me, I would have already if I could. I'm just waiting on your girlfriend now," he said, and pressed his fingers to wear Connor's LED once was, "Goodnight, Connor."

Connor saw him grin deviously at him before he was forced into idle mode.

----------

Every second of waiting felt like forever. Liv couldn't concentrate on anything for more than a minute at a time, which was terrible for trying to figure out how to get to Connor.

North took her back to Jericho, and Gavin seemed worried sick when they finally went back inside. Liv told North not to tell them about them finding Connor's location, and she didn't, although she didn't understand why. Liv hoped she could sneak out in the night to go there, but Gavin insisted on driving her back to her apartment and staying with her.

"You don't have to stay here, Gavin," Liv said as they got to her apartment.

"Your boyfriend was kidnapped and the same people are after you too. Hell if I'm letting you stay by yourself," Gavin said and opened the door for her, "That one android girl said you, like, freaked out while you were up here anyway."

"Her name's North, and she likes to exaggerate."

"Sorry, you sort of left before I could get a proper introduction, " Gavin said as they walked inside. Liv saw the pictures spread across the table, and turned her eyes away. Gavin noticed them too.

"What the hell is all this?" he asked and started going through them.

"That's why I 'freaked out' earlier."

"God, this is sick," Gavin said.

Liv had only seen a few of Connor earlier, but there were several pictures of her and Connor from before. Pictures of their date earlier that night, and from Noah and Liam's wedding, and even before that. They were watched for weeks.

"What kind of twisted person would do that?" Gavin said, then noticed Liv kept looking at them, "You really shouldn't be staring at these, Liv."

"These two were taken just a few hours apart. We were so happy, and now he could be dead for all I know," Liv said.

"We'll find him."

"Gavin, why are doing all this? I appreciate it, but you've never been on the greatest terms with Connor. And the last time we saw each other didn't go over well."

"Yeah, you gave me a hell of black eye, but I've never hated you. It's still weird to me that you're an android, but both of you have made me a little more open minded about it," Gavin mentioned. She had almost forgotten that she told him that.

"I'm not really an andriod. I really just needed to get into the evidence room."

"Then how'd you do the hand thing?" Gavin asked.

"Oh, when I was shot at the Stratford Tower, I sort of got a prosthetic. Technically, most of my body is the same as an andriods, but I'm still human and I was human before too," Liv tried to explain, but he just looked confused.

"That makes no sense."

"So when I was shot, I died-"

"YOU DIED?"

"Yeah, for a little while, and the only way I could come back to life was to become part android. It's confusing, I know, but that's the story."

"So the hand thing, can you control it or?"

"Usually," she said and demonstrated.

"Cool. Although, it was a lot less confusing when I thought you were just an android."

Not long after, even though he had come over to watch over her, Gavin had fallen asleep on her couch. She felt bad about what she was going to do, but she had to. She started to leave a note, to try and ease his nerves when he found out she had left, but there was no way to do that. There was no way to tell someone that you were about to go meet with some who wanted to kidnap you without worrying them. For now, she was just relieved that Gavin was a heavy sleeper.

She left, as fear and nerves hit her. Liv knew she needed to do this. She needed to face Alexander, for Connor.