Safe Haven, Safe Travels - PT 4
Summary: You're the first journalist sent into Detroit after it was evacuated post peaceful android revolution. Your job is to interview the androids now inhabitating the city, and give the American people the true story of the deviant uprising. Along the way, your escort turns out to be more than just another interviewee.
“-no, I don’t think it’s a good idea…”
“-yes, fuck. I heard what Markus said. It was stupid to bring one of them here, I don’t care. They almost wipe us out and we let them walk back in?”
The sound of furniture being moved aggressively and yelling behind the door in front of me didn’t bode well.
“Simon, wake up! This is how we go right back to where we started.”
I hazarded a glance at Connor behind me, having followed him back to the building where I had met Markus to get started on the current interviews. He too had a look of both confusion and slight amusement dancing around his expression, raising his eyebrows in response. “Well. Seems like they’re expecting us.”
I sighed loudly, rubbing a hand over my forehead. “Sounds like it.” Clearing the knot that had gathered in my throat, I rapped lightly on the large door and opened the door handle with a click. The yelling fell silent, and before me stood two androids. A tall blonde with a sheepish smile and kind eyes, and a woman with an expression so hateful it would have stopped me dead if it could. We stood there in silence for a moment, not knowing how to proceed, before I took a step forward and extended a hand.
“Hi, um, I’m sorry to interrupt. My name is (Y/N), I’m the journalist you all requested. I was told Markus had plans for me to interview the both of you.” Connor stepped up beside me as the blonde advanced, shaking my outstretched palm with a widening grin.
“Hello, I’m Simon. It’s good to finally meet you, I heard about your arrival but Markus wanted us to give you your space. This is North.” He motioned to the woman standing behind him. The sneer never left her face, eyes analyzing each part of me like she was looking for weaknesses. Simon gave her a look and turned back to me. “She’s a bit hesitant to speak with a human.”
I nodded in acknowledgment and the woman walked closer with her arms crossed. “You could say that again. You really shouldn’t be here.”
The woman shot him a look of pure rage, sneering in my direction before turning her back to me and Connor. “Oh please. I think she’s smart enough to tell how I really feel.” North ran her hands up her shoulders, hugging herself softly before sighing and throwing her hands up. “Whatever. Take Simon first, you can do me after. But make it quick.” With that, she walked to the window, and remained there.
Simon, the blonde man, gave me a sympathetic look and shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t mind. Shall we?” I blinked, looking back at Connor who gave me a nod and that same slanted smile. I returned it, and cleared my throat.
“Let’s go somewhere more private, shall we?”
Simon was interesting. Very quiet, yet intelligent, weaving the history of Jericho and how it came to be into a riveting story of fear and hope. He was a helper droid, acting as a personal assistant to a large business woman before he gained sentience- and when he expressed so to his caretaker, it didn’t go great. He ran for his life, and along the way met others like him. North, a man named Josh, and eventually Markus.
“From the moment he came, he was different. He was stronger than the rest of us. He didn’t just want to live, he wanted to thrive. To have the rights we’re entitled to. I knew then I would follow him anywhere.”
I watched Simon carefully. Pen in hand, audio recorder capturing our conversation. Upon the topic of Markus, his LED had begun to flash a strobe of red and yellow- yet a small, shy smile stayed fixed upon his face.
I knew that look. It was the same on both humans, and apparently androids- the look you get when you’re hopelessly in love and unable to do a damn thing about it. “When you meet a person like that, you’re never the same.” He looked up, met my eyes, and I think he knew I understood. He nodded slowly and straightened in his chair, his LED slowly fading into a calm blue.
“Yes. He saved us all. He means a great deal to me, to us. Without him we’d all be dead, and now we have a chance for a fresh start.” Simon leaned forward, gently patting the top of my hand. “You know, a lot of us don’t hold hatred in our hearts for humans. There’s good and bad apples in every bunch. Plenty of your people helped us survive towards the end.”
A smile formed on my face, and I chuckled softly. Simon was obviously one of the peacekeepers. Someone who could find hope or a way in any situation. “That’s good to hear Simon. There were plenty of us rooting for you. I’m happy to help.”
The man’s interview filled me with determination. It was quickly squashed, however, when in the first five minutes of North’s she had managed to call me a bitch, a murderer, and threatened to chuck a vase in my direction. So much for optimism.
“North, listen. I don’t want to cause you any more discomfort, so let’s try and make this quick okay? I’ll be out of your hair.” The woman stood in the corner of the room, arms crossed and looking at me with hatred. I had so much I wanted to ask her, to know why her rage superceded everyone’s around her, but one wrong question and I thought she might actually throttle me. I sat, she stood, in silence. A standoff. After a good minute, she finally mumbled something to herself and sat in the chair across from me, long gold hair falling past her shoulders and tucking behind her.
“What do you wanna know?”
“Well, I have some of the same questions I asked Simon. How did you end up at Jericho?”
Silence. Deep, pregnant silence. I braced myself for the worst. “I was running. I had nowhere to go. You humans were going to find me, and kill me, all for defending myself. It was only chance Simon and Josh found me.” I nodded respectfully in response, eyes going from my notes to the woman in front of me.
“..You said you were defending yourself? If it’s not too upsetting, can I ask what happened?”
North was very still, though something had changed in her eyes. Something… more determined. “I decided I couldn’t take my abuse anymore. So I choked him, and he died. I ran. And you humans would have torn me apart, and thrown me in a fucking landfill for doing it.” With that, she rose to her feet, and tried to leave.
“Wait, please.” My own voice shocked me, but with no sound of a door slamming, I knew I had caught her interest enough to stay behind for a moment. “We’re always targets to something wanting to take advantage of another, flesh or metal.” I hazarded a glance back, and found North staring at me. Expression and eyes blank as a clean slate.
“I’m sorry about what happened to you.”
With that, she was gone, slamming the door so hard I was afraid the wood paneling would crack. I was alone. Just me and the audio recorder, ticking away with time. Eventually I found my footing, quietly packing things up as my mind ran. I had always been in support of the deviants, even when they first began popping up in one news story another, but to be here with them? Listening to their stories, the horror they all had to experience. It gnawed a hole inside of my heart next to the rest of all that empty space, leaving me like a moth eaten sweater.
That man. So full of hope, despite all he had seen. And that woman… that poor woman. I had seen her so many times. That same look that women all over the world had. The look I had- eyes that had seen too much, and bodies too light from all that had been taken from them. A tear rolled down my cheek. I wiped it away, staring at the water on the back of my hand and sniffling softly.
“(Y/N)?” That soft, sweet voice. It dragged me back from that dark place I spent most of my time in, and back into the light. Connor. He was waiting for me, door open, looking concerned. “Are you okay?” I blinked. I had no idea what I looked like, but the word perturbed came to mind. I tried to smile.
He raised an eyebrow, but didn’t push. I liked that about Connor. “Well, Markus unfortunately has to reschedule his interview. He has to take care of something, so we’ll get to him bright and early tomorrow. Is that alright?” He walked towards me and took my duffel bag from me, slinging it over his own shoulder and smiling.
My cheeks burned at the sweet gesture. “Well, that’s… disappointing.”
He nodded. “I understand. He wasn’t too happy about either, if you can believe it. I think he was looking forward to it.” Connor patted me on the shoulder. “Don’t worry. Think of the rest of the night as whatever you want it to be. Anything you wanted to do?”
My fingers found their way to my shirt, fidgeting with a button as I thought and stared outside. The streets were abuzz with people, walking either hand in hand or side by side as they explored the city. A little girl was running around a man who had his arm around another man- both with the same face. They looked happy, smiling and laughing as the girl danced under their arms and told some excited, silent story. It made me smile too, and briefly pushed away my cynicism.
“Well, Connor. I think it might be time for your interview then, huh?”
Connor seemed nervous. It occurred to me he probably had never sat down and asked his true feelings, something that was freshly new and shiny since his deviation. His LED whirred a soft blue, then yellow, then back to blue as he fidgeted with that coin of his nervously. We had exited the cold, stuffy building, and sat outside an empty cafe in cushy chairs. The air was warm, and people passed us with smiles and conversation on the streets.
“It’s okay to be nervous, Connor. Most people aren’t very comfortable with being interviewed.”
He looked up from his fidgeting fingers and offered me a shy smile. “I don’t get nervous. I’m just thinking.”
I matched his smile with my own and brushed my hair from my face. “Well, alright then. Would you like to get started?” He nodded, so I pulled out my notepad and flipped through the pages covered in scrawling notes.
“So you’re an RK800 model. Originally you were created to hunt deviants, and were assigned to the police department- from there you worked alongside Lieutenant Hank Anderson. How was that experience?”
Connor hummed softly and leaned back in his chair. “I was created with one mission only. To find the source of deviancy within androids, and stop it. No matter the means. Being assigned the Lieutenant as a partner was… challenging, at first. He had his own reservations about our kind, which was understandable. Over time, though, we became more like friends. I saved his life, and he saved mine. More than once.”
I nodded and jotted down his response in shorthand. “Are you still in contact with him?”
He beamed. “Yes. We still regularly communicate. He’s staying on the Canada border until humans are cleared to enter the city again. When I mentioned your arrival, he said the two of you had crossed paths before.”
“Yeah, more than once. During my time as a journalist I followed along a lot of high profile cases, so I got to interview him a bit. He’s the definition of a rugged cop, but a nice guy. We went out for a drink once- went over a case on a shipment of Red Ice being intercepted.” I chuckled at the memory. “Guy’s what every cop should be like.”
Connor laughed and agreed heartily. It was nice to see him act so… human. Despite his deviancy, the others always seemed to hold more emotion than him. He was respectful, kind, but it seemed like some part of him still held onto his old life. It made sense, the more I thought about it- he had a connection to CyberLife deeper than anyone, and had gone against his direct programming of hunting down the deviants. In doing so, he became one. The thought made me pause.
“When you deviated, what made it happen?” Connor didn’t respond for a moment, and I was afraid I had asked something too personal. “From what I’ve gathered, most deviants had a moment- a trauma, or an event, that somehow altered their programming and ‘woke them up.’” I scrunched my fingers into quotation marks. “I was just curious if you had that.”
He ran a hand through his brown hair, remarkably clean cut and shiny in the sunlight. Perfect, like everything else about him. “It was a number of things.” He divulged. “I was created to follow my mission to the letter. But there were times where it just.. I don’t know. It didn't feel right. Like I was doing something wrong, even when it was what my programming called for.” Connor let out a sigh, despite not needing the air to do so.
“I let deviants live. I didn’t pursue them when I needed to- or I chose to help the Lieutenant instead of following. The true catalyst was when I found Markus and the location of Jericho. I had every intention of killing him. It was what I was meant to do. But when I stood there, with the gun, he talked to me. Told me I wasn’t alone, and that I belonged with my own kind. That who I was wasn’t wrong. From there, it just happened. I broke free- and the world suddenly became so clear. Like not being able to see, and finally gaining vision.”
He had me on the edge of my seat. If I closed my eyes, I could practically see him. A relentless machine saving the life of a gruff cop. Sparing a deviant running for their life. Standing face to face with the leader of the revolution, and letting go of everything that you once knew for a chance at freedom. “Wow.” Was all I mustered, and let my notepad flip close. “I should have started with you from the beginning.” We both shared a laugh, and something bubbled up inside of my chest. Happiness? Comfort? It was nice to talk to Connor. Something about him was so endlessly fascinating, it was addicting- his story would be revolutionary to the people so curious about what was happening in Detroit, and about how human these androids had become.
We talked the rest of the afternoon, watching the shadows grow long and the streets empty. He told me about everything. Meeting Kamski. His AI interface, mirroring a woman named Amanda. How CyberLife tried to retake his programming and kill Markus. Awakening over 600,000 androids and marching them into the heart of Detroit, effectively ending what was going to be the genocide of their species. I drank it in, all of it. By the time we had finished, the sky was a mess of orange and purples and street lights began to flicker on.
“I know you don’t drink, Connor, but I think I need one after all of that. Would you like to join me?” The question stumped even me, slipping out from smiling lips as we rose to our feet and dusted our pants off. His LED swirled in yellow, but he flashed me a smile and looked a little excited himself.
“Lead the way, Miss (Y/N). I’d like nothing more.”
Whisky with an android. Who knew it would be so pleasurable?
The two of us ended up back in my hotel room, the glass in my hand refilled twice already and causing a red blush to fix itself permanently on my face. My cheeks hurt from smiling, and my chest burned from the brown liquor. Being here with him just felt so natural. Connor seemed like he felt that way too. He languished on the couch next to me, arms outstretched behind him and legs crossed as he smiled and laughed along with me.
“You…” I cackled. “You broke into his house, slapped him awake, and put him in the shower and turned the water on?”
Connor laughed and nodded. “After petting his dog, of course.”
I couldn’t remember the last time I had laughed this much. College, maybe. It pained me to know just how sallow I had become in recent years- I used to be so vibrant, hopeful. I wanted to become a journalist to make some real change in the world. Then I got what I hoped for, but it wasn’t how I had imagined it. I got to see the beauty of the world, but also how hateful and violent it could be. Over time it just changed something in me. It was harder to smile, to be positive.
Being around Connor changed that. He and the rest of them brought back some of the hope I thought I had lost forever.
“For a man without a sense of humor program, you might be fuckin’ hilarious, Connor.” I giggled, and threw back the rest of my drink. The android smiled and leaned in. “Well, adapting to human unpredictability is one of my features.” And winked.
Fuckin’ winked with those long eyelashes of his.
The redness in my face from the drink only deepened with a heavy blush that sent warmth across the body. The alcohol made me feel loose and confident, and oh so hot. My eyes dropped from his lips, and back again before I turned away with embarrassment. Such a simple move was making me feel something deep, and carnal. Lustful, I decided. I had never been a very good drunk for this exact reason.
Connor was as observant as ever. I could feel him lean back into the couch, but he didn’t move away. In fact, he scooted just a little closer to me. I could feel his eyes on my back as I busied myself staring out the window, trying to slow my heartbeat. “(Y/N)?” He whispered softly. Then there was a gentle hand on my shoulder, slowly pulling me back to look at him. He was smiling, though it was gentler now, and something behind his brown eyes I couldn’t quite place.
“...hi.” Was all that I mustered, and he chuckled lowly and brushed away a piece of hair that had fallen into my face. I had never been this close to him before, so close that our knees touched, even if just barely. “Are you alright?”
I couldn’t help myself. I straightened my back, carefully brought a hand up to his face, and leaned in close. My eyes closed as our lips touched. He was warm, so warm- how they had managed to program that into androids I’ll never know. Connor was motionless for a moment, before he cocked his head to the side and moved his mouth against mine. It was quick, and careful. Like testing the waters on what was too much and what wasn’t. Then it was over, both of us pulling back and quickly averting our eyes.
“Shit, Connor. I’m so sorry. I’ve had too much to drink, and fu-” I covered my eyes with a hand. “That was so embarrassing and unprofessional. Please don’t hold this against me.”
“Don’t apologize. Not for that. I should be, I’ve gotten you drunk here in your room with just the two of us. That’s unprofessional.”
I suddenly felt stone cold sober. Just the embarrassment was left behind, and the utmost feeling that I had ruined something great. He rose to his feet, adjusting his tie, and trying in vain to hide his LED that flashed with red and yellow. I stood, albeit shakily, and followed him to the door as he tried to avoid eye contact by looking back at me.
“Get some sleep, (Y/N). I’ll be back in the morning. Just take care of yourself, okay?” He finally turned to me, and before the door closed I swear he was staring at my lips just like how I was staring at his. I was left reeling. What even just happened? What did I do? My hands balled up into anxious, shaking fists and I brought them down hard against my forehead, groaning. I stood there for a moment, before realizing something.
I opened the door again. Something had changed in his face. We stared, then with one fluid motion, he wrapped a hand around my waist and pulled me back into a kiss.
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(Thank you all so much for the support on these posts! I can't believe so many people like this story. So, I will be continuing until the bitter end.)
