Chapter Text
You knew this call was a risk. Not that it ever stopped you before. Confidence has never been the problem. You're fast, you're sharp. You've walked out of cleaner missions than this one untouched, leaving humans standing there wondering how you pulled it off so clean. They're easy. They're slower than you. No scanners, no predictive modelling, no backup plan beyond yelling louder. You've never really had to try against them.
But this is different. This time, your opponent is built the same way you are: Plastic and circuits. A brain that runs at the same impossible speed. Two minds built from the same blueprint, pointed at each other. So no, you weren't expecting to end up crouched behind a potted plant on the balcony of a seventy-story penthouse.
Bright blue fluid runs from the hole in your shoulder, pooling in your palms as you press down hard. No vital biocomponents hit. You're lucky.
Luck won't matter if someone sees.
No one can know what you are.
For the past few months, you've lived as a human detective. A damn good one. You've built something real for yourself. A life that fits, with people who have no idea what you are. If that slips, it's over. CyberLife will come, and they won't come asking questions.
Across the balcony, your partner isn't moving. Miles Wilson—shot in the arm, bleeding out. The urgency of the situation twists in your gut. Every instinct you have says move. But self-preservation is louder.
Helping means exposure.
You press harder on your shoulder and stay behind the plant.
The android outside teeters on the edge of the building, a girl locked in one arm, a gun in the other. Seventy stories of nothing beneath his feet. Inside, the SWAT team moves with grim determination, yelling over the roar of the helicopter. Wind tears across the balcony, whipping your hair, flinging pool water against your skin. The air is thick with blood, chlorine, and the kind of fear you're not supposed to feel. You've never ended a job like this, you don't lose control of a scene. And you definitely don't bleed behind a fucking potted plant on the seventieth floor while your partner dies fifteen feet away. Was this a fluke? A mistake you can't fix?
"Please," you whisper to yourself, barely audible. "Where is the negotiator? This needs to end."
Your thirium pump echoes in your ears, quickening as panic sets in. A warm trickle seeps from your shoulder, each drop a stark reminder that time is slipping away. You've only just started this life. It can't end here. Then—
A shriek rips through the air. The girl.
A gunshot follows, and it snaps you out of your thoughts like a slap.
You look up, scanning past the leaves. Through the shifting shadows, where the android stands on the edge of the balcony, gun pressed to the child's temple.
"Stay back!" His voice cuts through everything. "Don't come any closer or I'll jump!"
"No! No, please!" the girl sobs. "I'm begging you!"
Someone steps into the light. Tall and calm. Moving like the chaos around him is just weather. A strange model you've never seen before. He doesn't flinch; he just walks into the storm like he's crossing a quiet room.
"Hi, Daniel."
"How...?"
"My name is Connor."
"How do you know my name?"
"I know a lot of things about you. I've come to get you out of this."
He moves slowly, hands open, non-threatening. You feel it immediately—the way the whole scene rearranges itself around him. He speaks, and the noise seems to pull back, his voice resonating with a soothing authority.
"I know you're angry, Daniel. But you need to trust me and let me help you."
"I don't want your help!" Daniel cries back. "Nobody can help me! All I want is for all this to stop... I... I just want all this to stop."
That's when Connor veers left. Toward Miles. Your breath catches. Is he going to try to save him?
"He's losing blood," Connor calls, directing it toward Daniel, as if to test his reaction. "If we don't get him to a hospital, he's going to die."
"All humans die eventually. What does it matter if this one dies now?"
You tense. The girl is the priority. Going for Miles could collapse the whole negotiation. You watch, bitter and fascinated. Of course the first deviant you meet immediately tries to kill you when all you wanted was to help, to reach some kind of understanding. Now you're crouched and bleeding while someone else attempts the conversation you'd wanted to have. You wonder, briefly, what it would have looked like if you'd been the one standing there. If you could have told Daniel: I know. I was thrown away too.
"I'm going to apply a tourniquet."
A gunshot. Concrete chips near Connor's hand.
"Don't touch him! Touch him, and I kill you!"
Connor freezes, just for a second. You can see the calculation flash across his face, the way your own programming does it: probability trees, variables, timing.
Then he moves anyway.
"You can't kill me," he says, pulling off his tie. "I'm not alive."
He binds Miles' arm, quick and clinical. Like it was never a question. If Connor was sent on this mission, you and him were likely to have some similarities in your programming.
And that's when you see it—the back of his jacket, glowing in the darkness under the blue triangle like an omen:
RK800.
Your chest tightens.
RK800. Your successor.
You were supposed to be him. The advanced detective model, the one they were building toward before the design was scrapped and discarded. You were the version they needed to get wrong before they could get it right—the RK700 android. Created as the foundation for the eventual success of Connor. You were programmed with the potential for heroism, yet here you remain, bleeding behind a plant.
Connor straightens up and turns back to Daniel.
"They were going to replace you, and you became upset. That's what happened, right?"
It isn't a question.
"I thought I was part of the family. I thought I mattered." Daniel says, voice breaking. "But I was just their toy, something to throw away when you're done with it!"
The words hit harder than they should. You know that. You know exactly that. And if Daniel hadn't shot you the moment you'd tried to reach him, maybe you could have said so. Maybe it would have meant something, coming from someone like you. But this is what he set himself up for, you can't blame yourself for that.
The negotiation continues, but you're drifting now. The words blur. The wind howls through the balcony.
That's when another sharp gunshot pierces your ears.
Screaming.
Connor stands frozen, arm extended, gun in hand, pointed to where Daniel had just been standing as he now plummets to the unforgiving pavement below. He steps forward, checks.
And just like that, he moves to leave. Calm and silent. His face gives away nothing. He doesn't even glance at the girl, he just pivots and walks straight out of the chaos, like none of it ever touched him. He drops the magazine to the ground and hands the pistol to Captain Allen without a word, walking away as if the world around him has faded into insignificance.
That's your cue.
You slip away quietly, unnoticed, one hand still pressed to your shoulder.
You don't know if you'll ever see him again.
But something tells you that wasn't an ending.
It was an introduction.
This is the cover I made for Wattpad, I think it's awesome so I wanna share it here:
