Survivor - Connor x OC

What Is This Feeling?

Wicked – What Is This Feeling?

Hours after she parted ways with Connor, Taylor was standing in the kitchen of a home in the Detroit suburbs with her hands shoved into the pockets of her jeans. Partly she was cold, her fingers felt like icicles. The sun had set a while ago and the temperature had plummeted. She'd been living in California for too long and had forgotten that Michigan winter was quickly descending. The other half of her was just trying not to touch anything.

Connor and the Lieutenant had still not shown up to the crime scene. She was staring at the bat on the floor trying to ignore the smell still wafting from the front of the house. It had turned her stomach the first time she had walked in and she'd immediately bolted back out of the front door thinking she was going to vomit all over the floor. Most of the cops had rolled their eyes at her, only Chris had checked to see she was okay and told her it was fine. Almost everyone reacted that way to their first dead body.

Taylor lifted her head, realizing there were people talking at the door. New voices, not the same few she had been hearing on and off for the last several hours. She immediately headed towards them, stepping carefully along the path of safety that had been laid out in between the evidence markers.

As she entered the living room once more, she could see the backs of the two new arrivals. One of them was Connor, made obvious by his grey CyberLife jacket, and the other was a tall older man who could only be Lieutenant Hank Anderson.

"—and apparently I'm stuck with this plastic asshole and some pop star—" The lieutenant was complaining as he turned to look at the crime scene. He paused mid-sentence when he spotted her, though, and her lips quirked.

"Internet star, actually. Nice of you to show, Lieutenant." She came closer just as he was stepping into the light of the room to get a look at the body. Taylor felt herself freeze up when she saw his face. She forgot to breathe for a second.

Hank had glanced over when she spoke before, when she had been standing in the shadows of the house, but he looked over at her again when she abruptly stopped and caught sight of her face as well. His eyes widened. He recognized her too.

How is this even possible?

"Is something wrong, Lieutenant?" Connor was glancing back and forth between the two of them, knowing something was happening but unsure what to make of it.

"What? No. I told you to get to work. Aren't androids supposed to follow orders?" Connor immediately headed towards the body, his eyes trailing over the corpse and the words written in blood on the wall. Hank turned back to her, glossing over the moment like it had never happened, "And you, you haven't touched anything, right? I don't know why you have to be on the crime scene as a consultant."

Taylor pursed her lips and chose not to respond, but Connor spoke up from where he was kneeling on the floor. "Taylor has firsthand experience with deviants. She may see something that we don't."

She gave the android a grateful smile while Hank scoffed. "Well then, start consulting. You've been here for a while, what do you think?" Taylor was about to respond when Hank turned back to look at Connor and immediately started yelling at him, "Jesus! What the hell are you doing?"

"I'm analyzing the blood. I can check samples in real time. I'm sorry, I should have warned you." He didn't seem very apologetic, Taylor noted, as he continued studying the body of Carlos Ortiz.

"Okay, just...don't put any more evidence in your mouth, got it?"

"Got it."

"I think," Taylor began, drawing Hank's attention back to her, "that the android must still be here somewhere, or hiding somewhere very close. Most androids who become deviant abruptly are terrified and overwhelmed. They tend to stay in places that are familiar. This android had just killed their owner. It has no one to give it orders but it also has nowhere to go. If it isn't on the premises, then it will likely be somewhere else that it is used to going to frequently."