It wasn’t the face that had caught his attention first, nor the soft blonde hair that fell almost disheveled against a broad forehead, but two bright pools of blue.
Those eyes he would never forget.
The fear of the unknown, the depth of an almighty trench where only darkness of pain could survive, he knew those eyes. With every pulse, every thump of his heart that turned to a hot sickness in his stomach, he knew those eyes. Allen could remember every twitch, every glance as the drones keyed in on his face -- He remembered the glare and point of firearms when the situation could not be diffused. A childs screams. The run of blood. The smell of fresh death.
And he remembered recovering that body.
He remembered that steady stare. The eyes of the dead. The fear. The loss of control. There was something about it that had felt wrong then, there was something that had sunk into his psyche, something he’d carried with him since that day. And now -- Those eyes were no longer dead. They were bright, they were open -- But they were darting just as they had back then, they were anxious and bleeding with uncertainty.
One hand trained on Allen’s concealed carry, fingers twitching cautiously, subtly, as he watched this android -- followed this android -- at a careful distance. After the revolution, all files on deviants had been burned, they were no longer considered valid cases, even the ones that ended in murder. That meant that despite the technical, Daniel here wasn’t a murderer at large, despite the captain’s fight or flight instincts.
That didn’t matter however, because in the same thread there had been something he’d wondered all these years.Why? What the story was behind the events that unfolded. She was only a child, you were her caretaker, why would you do that to her? So he stepped forward out of his place in the crowd, grabbing Daniel by the arm with enough strength to drag him into an alleyway in passing.
“Daniel -- I know that’s you.” He spoke up immediately, before flashing his gun and the badge beneath his jacket. “I’m Captain Allen -- Don’t know if you remember me, but I think we’re owed a little -- discussion.”
