Summary: A short account of how Nines deviated.
A/N: My first Nines fic! Hopefully I did a good enough job at writing him in character :’]
Ruthless. Unwavering. Invulnerable. These were things RK900 was designed to be. He was designed to complete a job, and a lot of money was poured into making sure there was no room for error in his programming when it came to doing said job.
A lot of money poured into making sure he wasn’t like him. His predecessor. The ever present thorn in his side.
The weight of the pressure was unbearable, a prototype designed and produced to replace a faulty prototype. Not that he felt it, though. He didn’t feel.
Which was why he found himself having to run constant diagnostics as of late. His systems were going haywire. “Hot under the collar,” was never a phrase he understood, and definitely not something expected to experience himself. Yet here he was, hotter than hell under the collar. And everywhere else. To the point, in fact, that he had to, on top of his diagnostics (which were coming back normal somehow), constantly adjust his clothing. He was about a day away from making a trip to Cyberlife Tower for them to check for malfunctions in his hardware when a piece of information revealed itself to him, an unraveling pattern: these symptoms only occurring on days during which he encountered you.
So the solution was obvious, and refreshingly simple, like finally receiving a glass of water on a hot summer day… Or so he assumed. All he had to do was stop encountering you. At least, he had thought it would be that simple.
He was moderately prepared for seeing you against his will. After all, you did work for the same department he was currently positioned at. Every brief encounter was accompanied by the same symptoms, the heat, the warnings flashing in his visual field, the looping and breaking thought patterns. As long as he kept his distance and kept the encounters short, he was able to mitigate these symptoms. What he was not prepared for in the slightest was being assigned to a case alongside you.
Once again, his systems felt less than fully operational. At simply the proposition of this task, his processing unit was going a mile a minute. This was simply not logical. You were not a lieutenant, you were not even a deputy. You were still in the academy! There was no reason he should be on a case alone with you. If you were to be on a case, it should have been with Lieutenant Anderson. This was simply not logical! The line repeated in his mind like a bug, a virus. You were infecting his software.
Fowler’s instructions were simple: follow her orders, so as to allow her to learn, but do not allow her to get hurt. For a military grade android equipped with deadly weapons, this task should be simple. This was your first mission without Lieutenant Anderson. He would be there to oversee the process and make sure the mission doesn’t go awry to provide you experience without a Lieutenant looking over your shoulder, to make sure you were ready for the field. This thought, however, made him feel like he had butterflies— no, cicadas— clamoring around in his plastic and metal chassis. He ran a hand through his hair, pausing midway through in his confusion. He smoothed his hair back into place, unable to place what these physical reactions were, or how they were happening.
The mission itself was unbearable. The two of you were tracking down a missing android, of course. The same monotonous task the DPD had been plaguing its workers with for nearly 6 months at this point. The case didn’t seem particularly dangerous; the murder it had committed only involved blunt-force trauma, so potentially accidental. Nines considered it immensely helpful that the case was so lack luster, at least it gave him more mental space to deal with the aggravations that came along with being around you. The uncomfortable reality was that he still wasn’t sure how this was happening, and yet… He no longer considered going to Cyberlife about it an option, instead opting for a more secretive route. Although he’d never admit it to himself, he didn’t entirely want these feelings to go away. The symptoms were annoying, sure. Overheating was… Less than optimal. But there was something else that accompanied these feelings. Like an instinctive feeling, which was exhilarating for him. Something that existed outside of the zeroes and ones, outside of mechanics and the software. It was small, and it was technically a bug, a glitch, but it was real. He didn’t want Cyberlife to take that away.
As RK900, or “Nines” as you insist upon calling him, accompanied you around this seemingly abandoned house, you busied yourself with asking him trivial, meaningless questions. And he was desperate for you to keep asking them.
“Why did they give Connor a name and not you?”
“RK800 deviated because they allowed him to tread too far into human territory. I suppose they did not want to take the risk with me.”
His non-existent stomach did a flip as he watched your eyebrows furrow in response.
“But you’re sentient. You can think. You’re self aware. That’s mean for them to give Connor a name and not you.”
“It has never made a difference to me, I assure you.”
“I’ll call you Nines for now. But I intend to give you a real name, okay?”
RK900 felt hot again, even more so than before. His face felt hot. He wasn’t sure what to say.
“If that is what you want. I will allow you to call me whatever you choose.” He wasn’t sure why this was the case, but he knew it was. He would do anything she asked of him. Anything. And he had not a single clue as to why.
As the two of you made your way up the stairs, Nines kept a hand on his holster, ready for anything that could be in store. Just as he suspected, there was a loud clamor from one of the rooms as the two of you reached the top of the stairs. Just as he takes his gun out of its holster, you speak.
“Stay here, Nines! I mean it!”
He wasn’t sure what your aim here was. Strategically, this decision was the least sound. If he were to get hurt, Cyberlife could either repair him or send a replacement. If you got hurt…
Fowler’s instructions echoed in his mind. Follow her orders, don’t allow her to get hurt. In this instance, the set of instructions was contradictory. He also had a secondary set of instructions: yours, telling him to stay put. His brain was rapidly running reconstructions, none of them ending well. As took a step forward, something in his coding stopped him. He heard another loud clamor from the room you had disappeared into, sending his systems into a frenzy. He fought against his coding, ignoring every single warning and reminder his mechanical brain was firing at him. Suddenly, he was able to step forward, running into the room you were in, gun drawn and aimed.
He didn’t hesitate, he didn’t have time to. He saw the deviant, and fired with lethal precision. As the deviant fell to the floor, he turned to you. You lay on the floor, blood oozing from a gash on your forehead. Seeing a broken wooden beam on the floor next to you, he quickly reconstructs the scene. The deviant was trying to escape as you entered the room. He must have been hiding when the two of you were coming up the stairs, and whatever was containing him broke. As you entered the room, he tried to throw the beam at you as a diversion. RK900– Nines— had arrived just in time to catch him just in time, before he was able to make it out the window.
Nines kneels down next to you, feeling yet another new emotion: panic. As he examines your wound, he exhales in exasperation. “Why would you do that?! Why would you not send me in first?! You are not replaceable, I am!” You look at him, slightly dizzy as your head pounds. Your voice comes our groggily. “No, you’re not. They could send a new model, but it wouldn’t be you.” Anger flares in Nines as he looks down at you. “This was ridiculous. If all he had was a piece of wood, it would have done nothing to me. Nothing!” You smile, groggily. “We didn’t know what he would have. Plus, you would have killed him. I was trying to get him out of here alive. Now can you help me up?”
Nines sighs again as he helps you up. “This was idiotic, detective.” You laugh, feeling yourself being practically dragged off the floor. “I’m going to make it. Looks like he’s not, though.” Nines says nothing, walking close behind you to ensure your stability as you exit the scene. He continues to say nothing. In the car, at the station, not a word.
As you gather your things, preparing to go home, you wander over to Nines’ desk, standing next to him as you smile down at him. “You know, if I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were scared back there,” you tease, smirking at him. Nines doesn’t look at you, keeping his eyes stubbornly locked on the screen in front of him. “You’d be wrong, detective. I do not feel anything, as I am not programmed to.” As the words leave his lips, you both know that it’s a lie. But you don’t say anything. And neither does he.
As you leave the bull pen, RK900 clenches his fists. A military grade android, a weapon, programmed to never, EVER feel anything remotely similar to emotion, afraid. Going against his coding. There was only one thing that could mean: he had become what he was built to destroy. He had become like him.
