Chapter Text
It had started out as a quiet morning. Hank and Connor had the day off from work, and Hank took the opportunity to sleep in while Connor decided to take Sumo to the park for a walk. But that had been four hours ago and Hank was growing concerned. The park where Connor usually walked Sumo was only a half-hour walk from Hank’s house. And while Sumo loved those walks, the big dog was pretty lazy at heart and got tired quickly. At most, Connor should have only been gone for two hours. Hank had tried calling but had gotten no response. It was probably nothing, but Hank thought it best to go look for him anyways on the off chance something was wrong.
Hank slipped on his coat to protect him from the chilly winter air, grabbed his keys, and walked out the door. With the car being much quicker than walking, Hank arrived at the park only a few minutes later. He stepped out, pulling up his collar as a particularly harsh breeze blew past. He was glad that he’d insisted Connor take his coat before leaving. Androids were only slightly better than humans at withstanding the extreme cold, and Connor in particular wasn’t very fond of the winter weather.
The park was quiet this time of day as the sun had yet to fully rise in the sky and break through the early morning chill. The few people that were here were bundled up to their ears in thick coats and walked by quickly. In the distance, Hank could faintly hear the barking of a dog. In itself that wasn’t unusual, many people walked their dogs here, but the barking sounded familiar. He hoped he was wrong but picked up his pace all the same. The closer he got the more the anxious feeling in his chest built. That was definitely Sumo barking. He was almost at a jog by the time he reached his dog. Sumo was tied to a park bench by his leash, barking frantically. Connor was nowhere in sight.
“Hey, easy Sumo, calm down boy,” Hank knelt down next to the dog, running a hand over his head. Sumo whined, his tail tucked between his legs. He looked over Sumo and his hands froze. Both Sumo’s collar and leash were stained with large splotches of thirium, some of it even staining Sumo’s fur beneath the collar. Hank swore and took out his phone again to attempt to call Connor, but a new notification caught his eye. It was a text from an unknown number.
You should keep better track of your things lieutenant
At that moment two things became clear in Hank’s mind. Someone had taken Connor, someone who knew Hank. The thought made him feel ill. He shakily closed his messages and instead dialed Fowler’s number. He didn’t know what this person planned to do with Connor, but they needed to find him fast. The phone picked up and Hank didn’t even bother with a greeting.
“Jeffrey, someone took Connor,” Hank quickly relayed what little information he knew along with his current location.
“Shit… Alright, Hank, Collins and Miller are on their way,” Fowler said before ending the call. Hank sunk down onto the bench with nothing he could do but wait. Sumo rested his head in Hank’s lap, giving another soft whine. Hank’s hand shook as he stroked it over the top of Sumo’s head. It was a small thing, but he found himself grateful that whoever had taken Connor had left Sumo alone. To lose both in one day… no, Connor wasn’t lost yet. They would find him, Hank couldn’t lose hope this quickly.
It didn’t take long for Chris and Ben to arrive and the pair ran up to Hank. He explained to them everything he could remember about that morning. Connor had left the house at around seven in the morning. He had been wearing his usual dark jeans along with a gray sweatshirt Hank had bought him a few weeks ago and a thick brown coat. He said he would be back in a couple of hours. Hank left the house to look for him at eleven, and now here he was.
“We’ll search the surrounding area, lieutenant, but for now you should head home. And bring in that collar and leash when you get a chance. We’ll need to log it as evidence,” Ben said after he’d finished taking Hank’s statement.
“No, let me help with the search,” Hank said. It wasn’t that he doubted either officer’s ability to do their job, but it felt wrong to not be doing everything he could to help. It felt like his whole world had been turned upside down in under an hour, and he needed something to feel in control of right now.
“We’ve got this. I promise we’ll let you know if we find anything,” Ben said.
“Ben, please, I can’t just sit back and do nothing,” Hank argued.
“You aren’t doing nothing, lieutenant,” Chris interjected, “We need you to take Sumo home so we can log that collar and leash into evidence.” Hank let out a frustrated breath. Chris was right, and trying to search with Sumo pulling him around wouldn’t be easy either. He had to relent here.
“Fine, but I’m not taking a backseat on this one. Tell me anything you find,” Hank ordered before heading back to his car. He would not let anyone tell him he was too close to the situation to be involved, and he knew Fowler would likely try. He knew Connor would do the same for him. He made it home in record time. He quickly ushered Sumo inside before taking off the dog’s collar and leash.
“Be good, Sumo. I’ll bring him home,” Hank promised, before leaving the house once more. Upon arriving at the police station Hank brought the leash and collar in, logging them into evidence. They likely wouldn’t get much from them, but there was always the off chance some fingerprints may have been left behind. He was headed to his desk to attempt tracking the number that texted him, when Fowler called him into his office. He let out an impatient huff, but went into the Captain's office.
“I’m not going home, Jeffrey. You can’t keep me off of this case,” Hank said immediately.
“I wasn’t going to try,” Fowler said calmly, “But you’re also not going to run yourself into the ground over this either. You can work this case, but you also need to go home and get some rest sometimes too.”
“He doesn’t have time for that,” Hank snapped. The longer that victims of kidnappings were missing, the worse their chances got.
“You’re not the only one on this, Hank. Either you agree to take breaks, or I won’t let you work this. Am I clear?” Fowler said, commanding tone leaving no room for argument.
“Fine,” Hank said before leaving the office. He would just have to find Connor before Fowler made him take any breaks. Though with the amount of evidence they currently had… He sat down at his desk, hooking his phone up to the terminal. The computer took a few minutes searching cell towers and Hank tapped his foot impatiently. Finally, a page with some information popped up. The text had been sent by a burner phone, so there was no way to connect it to a person, but a location had been pinged. When Hank had received the message, the sender had been within a five-mile radius of the park.
It wasn’t much but it was a start. Hank began his search by pulling up all the traffic cameras within the area, isolating the time frame from when Connor left the house at seven to noon, an hour after Hank arrived. Going through all five hours on every camera in the area would take forever, even with the footage sped up. If Connor were here he would have finished the task in just a few hours. Hank shook the thought from his head. He couldn’t do this the same way that Connor did, but he had his own methods. He would just need to be strategic with how he examined the footage.
He started off with any cameras that had views of roads directly exiting the park. There thankfully wasn’t as much traffic during the early morning hours, though it had picked up a bit around eleven. There was no way to search every license plate to see who owned the cars, so searching only for cars reported stolen or owned by people with a record was out of the question. But he could look for cars that would make transporting a body easier. It wasn’t a perfect method, but as of that moment, it was all he had. At some point during his search Ben and Chris returned, but they had found nothing of note. So they got to work helping Hank check traffic cameras, noting down any vehicle that could have possibly concealed a body.
They continued this work well into the afternoon when Hank’s phone dinged again. His heart skipped a beat as he read the same number from earlier. He opened the message, this time an image. It was Connor, thankfully still alive. He was sitting in a metal chair with his arms restrained somewhere behind his back and his feet tied to the legs of the chair with chains. He was looking somewhere off to the side of the camera with a somewhat dazed expression. He seemed uninjured except for a thin trail of thirium running from his hairline down to his jaw on the right side of his face past his yellow LED. His coat was missing though he was still in his sweater and jeans. There wasn’t much to make out in the background other than an aged-looking gray wall, likely made of cement.
Hank took a deep, calming breath before he got to work trying to trace the latest text. Connor was still alive and mostly unharmed for now. Hank didn’t know how long that would last, but it gave him hope. The frustration came crashing back though when he got the results. This time radius from which the call came was much larger, fifteen miles across centered around a tower in the middle of the industrial district. The image itself had been scrubbed of any location data. The background told him nothing, as more than half the buildings in that area would have the same structure. Still, he sent the new information to Ben and Chris in case they might be able to find anything he missed. Hank looked over the image again, searching for anything that could give him a clue as to where Connor was.
Connor sat chained to the metal chair, glaring up at his captor. He had been in the park walking Sumo when a hooded man had approached him. He didn’t think much of the man’s appearance given how cold it was out that morning. But then he pulled out some kind of device - a micro-EMP as he would later learn - and Connor found himself forced into stasis. At some point while Connor had been unconscious, the man had taken a sharp object to his temple, damaging the component that allowed him to get a signal for making calls and doing searches. Connor had only just woken up a few moments ago to the man taking a picture of him. He wasn’t sure what the picture was for, but his captor chuckled to himself as he messed with his phone.
“Who are you?” Connor asked. Without a signal, Connor couldn’t run any scans on the man’s face, though he looked vaguely familiar.
“You don’t need to know,” the man answered, not looking up from his phone. The man was tall and muscular, Connor could tell even under the jacket he wore. He had dark, short-cropped hair and a clean-shaven face. A small scar cut from the left side of the man’s jaw up to his ear. Connor looked around the room he was in as well, trying to find anything that might tell him where he was. It was smaller than a standard-sized bedroom and made entirely of concrete. It looked unfinished, the floor still just the foundation. There was a window letting in a small amount of light somewhere behind Connor and to his left. The only door in the room was closed and directly across from where Connor was retrained. A shelf filled with various tools was mounted to the wall to Connor’s right.
“Now then, are you ready to have some fun?” the man had put away his phone and was now examining Connor with a sinister glint in his eyes. Connor remained silent, watching as the man strolled over to the shelf to look over the tools. He wiggled his fingers as hand hovered back and forth over the shelf. “Let’s start out with this,” he said, more to himself, as he picked up a hammer. He walked back over to Connor, testing the weight of the hammer in his hand as he looked down at the android.
The man lifted the hammer and Connor braced himself. It didn’t help. The hammer slammed down onto Connor’s left knee. He ground his teeth, holding back a scream as warnings flared up in his vision. The hammer came down again and this time a crack split through the joint. Connor let out a strained whine, bowing his head forward. The man struck twice more and the crack splintered further across his knee and part way up his leg. He couldn’t hold it back anymore, screaming as the pain radiated up his leg.
“That’s it, don’t be afraid to scream. No one will hear you anyway,” the man taunted. He moved on, repeating the process with Connor’s other leg. The pain was blinding, flooding his vision with warnings as the second joint also cracked and splintered. Thirium seeped out of his cracked plastimetal frame in a slow drip, seeping into his jeans and running down his legs.
“Why… why are you doing this?” Connor asked through panted breaths.
“Well I wouldn’t want you running away, not when I still have so many plans,” the man answered. Connor felt a tremor run through him at the words. The man had turned around to place the hammer down and was searching for another tool. Connor tried the question again. Maybe if he could determine the man’s motivation, he could try negotiating. Even besides that, he just needed more information.
“Why did you kidnap me?” Connor tried. The man let out an exasperated sigh, pausing in his search to look back over at Connor.
“I guess it doesn’t really matter if you know,” he thought about it for a few seconds before continuing, a smirk spreading across his face, “I just want to make that fuckin lieutenant of yours suffer. What’s a better way than destroying his little toy.”
So this had something to do with Hank, some kind of revenge seemed most likely. But for what? The lieutenant had put away countless criminals over his career, any one of them would have a reason to have a grudge. Either way, it didn’t seem like the man would be killing Connor any time soon. No, he would make this slow. That must have been what the picture was about earlier. Connor could only hope that in his desperation for revenge, the man would make a mistake. Hank would be looking for him, he just had to hold out until then.
The man had finished making his selection and returned with a handheld vice. He moved behind the chair and Connor could no longer see him. The man roughly grabbed one of Connor’s hands and his thirium pump picked up its pace. Connor tried to pull his hand away, but the restraints made his effort pointless. The man forcefully spread Connor’s fingers apart, and he could feel one being slid into the grip of the vice. Then the man began twisting the bar, tightening the device around his knuckle where his finger met his hand. Connor screamed as the metal creaked and bent before finally snapping under the intense pressure.
“Can’t have you trying to pick your way out of your restraints either,” the man hummed thoughtfully as he moved on to the next finger. Connor tried again to jerk his hand away, moving his whole body in protest. But it only made the pain worse, shooting up from his knees and now his two broken fingers. The man continued this, methodically slow as he worked his way around each of Connor’s fingers until he’d finished both hands. Connor’s throat felt raw from screaming and his vision was clouded by blaring red warnings he hardly had the energy to dismiss. The man tossed the now blue-stained vice back onto the shelf, looking over his work with a satisfied grin.
Connor’s head was bowed as he fought against emergency stasis through the pain. His hands felt like thousands of tiny blades were being stabbed into them and the feeling throbbed halfway up his arms. His knees too had the same sharp pain and he could feel them throb with each beat of his thirium pump. The man, apparently still not finished, picked up a screwdriver from the shelf.
“Now then, let’s send your friend a little present,” he said, slowly walking back to the chair. Connor lifted his head, looking into the man’s eyes. The man in turn, reached forward and roughly yanked Connor’s head back by his hair. He brought the screwdriver forward, digging the point into the corner of Connor’s left eye next to his nose.
“No, please!” Connor begged, trying to squeeze his eyes shut. The man didn’t listen, only slid the screwdriver forward until it wedged itself beneath the optical unit. Connor’s eye was forced open with the motion and the man began leveraging the screwdriver against Connor’s nose, slowly prying the eye from its socket. Connor cried out as the optical unit popped out and fell into the man’s waiting hand. Thirium gushed from the now empty socket and static took over his vision on the left side. The man released his hair and Connor’s head fell forward, chin touching his chest as gasped sobs escaped his mouth. Tears mixed with thirium dripped down his cheeks into his lap.
“Shit, if only I could see his face when he gets this…”
Fowler had forced Hank to go home at around ten that night. They had spent the entire day searching the traffic cameras but had nothing. The frustration and thoughts of what he must be missing swarmed Hank’s mind and made sleeping nearly impossible. The thought of drinking himself to sleep was tempting, but he couldn’t do it. He needed to be alert and ready the next day if he was going to be of any use in finding his partner. It was only a little past midnight that Hank fell asleep.
At six the next morning, he found himself rudely awakened by the sound of his doorbell and Sumo barking. Hank groaned, rolling out of bed. What could anyone possibly want with him this early in the morning? He stumbled from his room to the front door, looking out the peephole. No one was there. He woke up a little more at the strangeness of the situation. It could be some kids just messing with him, but that seemed unlikely given the time. Sumo was also still anxiously huddled near the door, whining up at Hank.
Hank opened the door just a crack, glancing around the street. Seeing no one, he opened the door fully and peered out. The neighborhood was empty and quiet in the cool morning. Hank shivered a little as a cool gust of wind blew past him into the house. He was about to write the occurrence off and close the door when something caught the corner of his eye. He looked down. There was a cardboard box, small enough to lift with one hand. There was no label or address on the outside, and Hank immediately felt on edge.
He bent down, slowly lifting the box off his front step. It weighed less than a pound and something round rolled on the inside as he tilted it. That wouldn’t make sense if it was something explosive, so he brought it inside, closing the door behind him. He brought it into the kitchen and set it on the table before grabbing a box cutter from a nearby drawer. He cut the line of tape sealing the box shut then pulled the flaps open. The interior of the box was splattered with small blue stains. At the center, an eye stared back up at Hank.
Hank stumbled away from the box and barely made it to the bathroom in time to vomit up what little was in his stomach. He sat on the floor, hugging the toilet bowl as another convulsion wracked his body. There was no mistaking it, that was Connor’s eye. He gagged again, nothing but bile coming up now. He leaned back, supporting his weight against the tub. This was getting too fucked up. Connor had been fine a day ago, everything had been okay. And now Hank had no idea where he was and some sick fuck had begun removing body parts.
Hank pushed himself to his feet, staggering out of the bathroom. He had to get ready and head back to the station. He needed to find this bastard today and pray that he wasn’t already too late. He got dressed, poured out some food and water for Sumo, and quickly downed some coffee and toast. He picked up the box on the table, pointedly not looking at the object inside, and brought it with him. It would need to be added to evidence for now, and they would need it when they got Connor back.
He drove to the station in silence, not having the heart to listen to his normal music. When he arrived, Fowler and the others working the case were equally disturbed to see the newest piece of evidence.
“That’s terrible,” Chirs mumbled, looking a little green.
“Has there been any progress narrowing down that location?” Hank asked.
“Nothing yet,” Ben shook his head. The three of them were gathered in the evidence room, looking over their minuscule pile of things to go off. Ben had gone home earlier in the day before than Hank but had come in several hours earlier this morning. Chris had come in at the same time as Hank but had spent the previous day out on the streets, scoping out potential hideouts in the industrial district.
“Lieutenant, I- I’m afraid I don’t know much about androids, but,” Chris began a little hesitantly, “would there be any way to connect to Connor’s eye? Maybe see what he saw, before…” the officer swallowed. Hank wasn’t sure about that himself, but without any other leads, it was at least worth a try.
“I’m not sure. But we can bring it to the technician here and see,” Hank picked the box back up. They had already checked it for fingerprints but found nothing. He didn’t particularly want to touch Connor’s eye either, so leaving it in the box was best for now. Every time he saw it his stomach still turned.
“Let’s head up there together. It’s our only lead for now,” Ben agreed. The three of them headed up the stairs to the infirmary. They had always had a doctor on staff, but within the past month, Fowler had finally hired a technician - Dr. Thomas Clark - both for Connor’s sake and also for the number of patrol androids on staff. When they arrived, Dr. Clark was sitting at his computer and typing away.
“Hey, Tom,” Hank called out to him. The man turned around, then stood up from his chair and walked over to Hank.
“Hey Hank, what’s up?” he asked. Hank handed him the box, and the technician looked into it with a frown.
“The bastard who took Connor sent us this. We were wondering if there was any way to see what he saw before it was removed,” Hank explained. The three waited expectantly as Tom pondered the question.
“It’s possible,” Tom said, “but Connor would have to have intentionally stored data there. Typically everything just goes straight to the intracranial processor.”
“Well let’s try it,” Hank said. Tom took the box over to one of the monitors typically used for monitoring an android’s condition. He pulled a wire from a nearby drawer, plugging one end into the machine and the other into the eye in the box. The screen showed nothing but static for the first few seconds, but then a person came into view. The man on the screen was holding a screwdriver, which he brought forward toward the corner of the screen. A few seconds after that, the screen faded back to static.
“He actually did it,” Ben muttered in surprise.
“Shit,” Hank cursed, watching as the video looped. Aside from the sickening thought that Connor had his eye pried out with a screwdriver, Hank knew that man. It had been years, but he hadn’t forgotten. “That was Doug Walters,” Hank announced.
“You recognize him?” Chris asked, a hopeful rise in his voice. Hank nodded.
“He was in one of the red ice rings I brought down before becoming lieutenant. We knew he was one of the top members, just under the bastards leading the ring, but we didn’t have enough evidence to convict him of everything. He must have got out…” Hank hadn’t remembered how long Doug’s sentencing was as he’d arrested a lot of people at that time, but he does remember the frustration at not having enough evidence to prove all the terrible things the man had done. But it explained everything. This was revenge.
“I’ll go tell the captain, we need to put out a warrant,” Chris said, running from the room.
“Tom, can you hold onto that for now? We’ll need it when we find him. And send the video over to us,” Hank asked, gesturing to the box.
“Of course, good luck,” the technician replied. Hank and Ben left the infirmary, going back down to the bullpen. This was the best lead they had yet, now they knew what they were looking for. Going back to his terminal, Hank opened the new email with the video of Doug removing Connor’s eye. Much like he had done with the initial photo, he methodically searched through every frame for anything that would hint at where Connor was.
When that failed to give him anything, he returned to the cameras. Looking through all the cars they’d marked as having a potential for being the ones to take Connor, Hank began marking out all the ones where the driver was in clear view and not Doug. After hours and hours of digging through the footage, Hank had narrowed it down to ten cars. They were mainly utility trucks, with the only outlier being a gray van with tinted windows. Only four of them had visible license plates but it was still better than nothing. He sent the information to Chris and Officer Person, who had joined in helping search the industrial district, so they could mark all the buildings with those vehicles or similar ones.
He had just finished when a new text dinged on his phone. That familiar sense of dread settled in his stomach as he picked the phone up. As he’d feared, it was from the unknown number that had sent the other messages. He didn’t even want to open it, but knew anything would be useful to the case. This time it was an image accompanied by a text.
You’re running out of time…
Hank grimaced at the ominous message and opened the picture. It was more gruesome than even the eye. The picture showed a hand holding onto an electric drill, and the drillbit and the entire head of the drill were completely covered in thirium. It shined a glistening cobalt in the light of the room, thickly covering the tool. Hank slammed the phone face down on his desk and brought a hand up to his mouth to suppress a gag. He squeezed his eyes shut, lowering his head to rest on his desk.
They were moving too slowly. It was becoming a pattern of rapid escalations. The first picture, sent in the afternoon, Connor was fine. Then the next morning he got the eye, and now this afternoon the drill. Hank didn’t want to think about what would be waiting for him the next morning, he couldn’t. He had to figure this out now. He sucked in a breath, forcing the nauseous feeling down, and picked the phone back up.
Like before he forwarded the new evidence to everyone working on the case and began his own careful examination. He tried removing himself from the emotions of it, to just view it logically and not think about what the picture implied. The only thing to examine in the image was the drill itself, as the background was blurry from how close the tool was to the camera. The hand holding the tool was also nondescript, not telling Hank anything he didn’t already know about Doug. When he saw it though, his heart fluttered a little. The serial number on the drill was visible. It may end up another dead end, but he could use it to determine the owner and where the tool was bought.
A quick search showed the place of purchase was a small tool shop on the edge of the industrial district. The owner was registered as… Doug Walters. The idiot had used his own identity to buy it instead of stealing or anything else. Now Hank just had to hope the shop owner remembered anything about Doug, like maybe the vehicle he was driving.
Connor sat in the chair with his head tilted towards the ceiling, now alone in the room. The drill had been worse than anything yet. His captor had been intentionally slow with it, drilling into his chest at the tool’s lowest speed. He seemed to know a bit about android anatomy as he’d missed hitting anything vital. It had to be intentional given the number of holes he’d made - a total of fifteen. No, he couldn’t let Connor die, even from thirium loss. The drill had only clipped wiring and scraped against minor thirium lines. It hadn’t damaged anything major, but that didn’t take away from how agonizingly painful the whole process had been. He had cut Connor’s sweater off too, something about not wanting the drill getting tangled in the threads. The cool air of the room pricked uncomfortably against his bare chest. He felt exposed.
After he was finished, the man had taken a picture of the drill and then left. It had been a couple of hours since he went and thirium had finally stopped dripping from the drill onto the shelf where it rested. Every breath that Connor sucked in ended in a whine as pain radiated across his body. Even the minimal movement that breathing caused aggravated the collection of holes in his chest, causing frayed wiring to brush against each other and his frame.
He hoped that Hank had gotten his message. It was a rather gruesome way to leave one, saving the video to his optical unit, but it was all he had in the current situation. His captor didn’t seem to realize that was something androids could do, and Connor was worried that Hank wouldn’t think about it either. As the day had gone on that worry had been steadily increasing in Connor’s mind. Waiting for his captor to slip up and send something that would give away his location was taking too long. Connor was afraid he wouldn’t have much time left at this rate. The door to the room opened and Connor flinched. The man walked back in, a plastic bag with something heavy inside gripped in his hand.
“I was going to wait until the morning for this… but I’m just too excited,” he grinned, setting the bag down on the shelf with the other tools. Connor’s voice had grown so hoarse from screaming he could barely make a sound at this point, so he said nothing. Instead, he just watched as the man pulled the newest torture device from the bag. It was a blow torch. Tears pricked at the corner of Connor’s eye and he let them fall.
“Yes, perfect! We’re going to put on a great show for your partner,” the man laughed. In one hand he held his phone pointed at Connor, and in the other, the blowtorch.
“Look at your little toy, lieutenant ,” he said the title in a mocking tone, “Watch it burn!” he flicked on the torch and began to approach Connor.
“P-please, don’t,” Connor’s voice was rough and filled with static. The man ignored him, bringing the torch down so the flame brushed against where a human’s collarbone would be. Connor let out a silent scream, his voice completely giving out on him as the flame forced away his artificial skin and began to melt his plastimetal frame underneath. The man slowly pulled the flame from there across to his shoulder, lighting the whole area in burning agony. More warnings flashed across what remained of Connor’s vision, blocking anything else from view.
“I wonder what this will do?” the man hummed. He moved the flame from Connor’s shoulder to hover directly over the center of his chest where his thirium pump was. Connor began to take in large, choking gasps as his thirium pump rapidly heated and the thirium within threatened to boil. His body twitched and convulsed as he tried to pull away from the heat threatening to melt his heart. Then the flame was pulled back just as quickly. Connor hunched over as much as his restraints would allow, nearly hyperventilating as his artificial lungs struggled to cool the burning heat of his thirium pump. The heated thirium spread across his whole body and it felt like this entire being was on fire.
The flame was brought forward yet again, this time right over where his thermal regulator was. It was right next to one of the holes from the earlier drilling causing the heat to singe some of the wires. Connor’s breathing kicked into further overdrive as his thermal regulator reacted, forcing his ventilation components to double their efforts. But they couldn’t keep up and he could feel them thrumming rapidly in his chest. Just as it felt like they might explode, the flame disappeared. He was wheezing, but no matter how much air he got it didn’t feel like enough.
“Next up, the finale,” the man whispered into the phone. Then he stopped recording and typed something out before slipping it back into his pocket. He set the blowtorch back onto the shelf
“What a wonderful performance,” he clapped, “I know you’ll make the finale just as fun.”
His mind had gone hazy from all the heat and the pain, so the words sent a paradoxical sense of dread and relief through Connor. He knew whatever the finale was would be worse than what had just happened. But then it would all be over. He didn’t want to die, but at this point, anything seemed better than what he was going through now.
Hank finally felt like he might be getting somewhere. Officer Person had been closest and went to the tool shop to question the owner. Turns out, Doug had been in just that morning and better yet, the shop had security cameras out front. It had only taken an hour for Hank to get the footage of Doug leaving the store and getting into his utility van. With the vehicle type and license plate now known, Fowler had sent all available officers to patrol the industrial district and look for the car. They were so close.
Hank and Ben got into Ben’s patrol car and made their way out to join in the search. But all of Hank’s hope was sent plummeting down as he got the newest text from Doug. Ben glanced over to Hank from where he sat in the driver’s seat at the noise.
“Another one?” he asked. Hank swallowed thickly, trying to mentally prepare himself for whatever had been sent.
“Yeah,” he answered. He opened the message with a shaking hand. It was a video this time. The first thing that filtered through Hank’s phone was Doug’s mocking voice. Then to see Connor looking so broken with tears running down his face as he begged Doug to stop- Hank paused the video. He had to take in several calming breaths before he could continue. But what followed was so, so much worse. Hank found himself looking at anything but Connor as the video played. And that’s when he noticed it.
There was a window in the background. He paused the video and took a screenshot, then used that to zoom in on the window in the back. There were docks outside.
“Ben, go to the shore. There are docks in the video,” he ordered urgently. Ben nodded and changed directions, heading for the edge of the industrial district that lined the lake. Hank picked up his radio, relaying the same message to the other searching officers. They had to hurry and get there before this finale that Doug was talking about. It took several minutes longer than Hank would have liked, and he was on the verge of jumping out of the moving car when he spotted Doug’s vehicle.
“There!” he shouted, pointing to it out the window. Ben radioed in their location, pulling up behind the can to block its exit. Hank moved to get out of the car but Ben stopped him with a hand on his arm.
“Hank, we should wait for backup,” he warned. Hank shook his arm out of the other man’s grasp.
“No time!” Hank opened the door and jumped out of the car. With not much choice, Ben followed behind him, both with their guns raised. Hank pushed open the door to the warehouse and was surprised to find it unlocked. Either Doug hadn’t been expecting them, or this was a trap. Not that it mattered. They made their way to the right side of the building, which directly faced the docks. There were three doors along the wall.
Hank pushed the first one open silently, but there was nothing behind it but a storage closet. The next room he showed a little less caution, but it too was empty. By the final door, he already knew what to expect. He slammed it open and stepped into the room, gun raised.
“Detroit police! Put your hands up!” he shouted. Doug turned around with a look of utter shock on his face. He had an ice pick in one hand and a mallet in the other, apparently just about to use the tools. Connor sat hunched over in the middle of the room, looking even worse in person than he had in the video. Doug’s eyes darted over to the android, and Hank could tell what he was thinking a second before it happened. Hank fired, the bullet hitting Doug in the chest just as the man had attempted to ram the icepick into Connor’s head. Doug stumbled back and fell onto the ground motionless.
“Shit…” Ben muttered from behind Hank. He radioed in the situation, requesting an ambulance to an android emergency repair clinic. Hank holstered his gun and ran over to Connor. He crouched down in front of the chair and cupped Connor’s face in his hands, raising his head so Hank could look him in the eye. His left eye was shut and his right was half-lidded and glassy.
“Hey, I’m here, son. You’re going to be okay,” Hank said quietly, hoping for any reaction. Slowly, Connor’s functioning eye lifted, and met Hank’s gaze.
“Hank…” his voice was rough and came out full of static.
“I’m here,” Hank repeated, “I’m going to get you out of here.” He gently released Connor’s head, then moved behind him to undo the restraints binding him to the chair. It was chains that had been wrapped tightly around Connor’s wrists and locked in place.
“Here, Hank,” he looked up to see Ben standing by the shelf on the side of the room, holding a pair of bolt cutters. He handed the tool to Hank who used it to quickly break the chains. He moved in front of Connor, repeating the process with his ankles.
“How far away is that ambulance?” Hank asked as he tossed the bolt cutters to the side.
“Still five minutes,” Ben replied. They were almost there, good. Connor seemed to be regaining some awareness too, showing in the pained grimace now crossing his features.
“Help is on the way, just hang on a little while longer,” Hank said, crouching in front of him again. He wished he could be of more comfort, but he was afraid of touching Connor. He looked so damaged, and Hank didn’t want to accidentally cause him any more pain. All he could do was talk to him gently and try to keep him awake while they waited for the ambulance to arrive. But for now, he let a small feeling of relief settle in him. He had made it in time.