Connor

Park. Early evening. Detroit.

Hank walked slightly ahead, his hands stuffed into the pockets of his tattered jacket, and studiously pretended not to notice Connor was half a step behind. The way he looked at his feet. His silence—heavily, awkwardly, completely un-android-like, even considering he'd been a deviant for a long time.

"You look so bad," Hank muttered without turning around. "You could practically put a sticker on your head saying 'Fix me.'"

Connor didn't answer. The wind ruffled his dark hair, and his hoodie hung loosely—he'd been doing very little grooming for the last two years. It wasn't that the RK800 couldn't keep it perfectly tidy. It could. It just... didn't need to.

She left. She said it was impossible to be with him. That he was too cold, even as a deviant. That she was tired of expecting "real" emotions from him. And she dumped him. Fool? Perhaps. But that didn't make Connor feel any better.

He started drinking after a month. He stopped after six months. He relapsed after seven. And so it went, round and round. Hank dragged him out of bars, Gavin got angry and swore, Richard silently put water in front of him. But today Hank simply said, "Let's go." And they went.

And now Connor walked through the park, feeling the withered grass under his feet, and thought that it was as if the sound had been turned off inside him.

And then he looked up.

A girl was sitting on a bench. He hadn't seen her before. She was wearing a large pink sweater, black shorts, and white sneakers. Her long, chestnut-blond hair blew in the wind. She was looking off to the side, and in the evening light, her face seemed... warm.

Connor stopped.

Hank walked a couple more steps, turned around, followed his gaze and chuckled:

• Oh. Alive?

Connor didn't answer. There was a strange tightness in his chest—where androids shouldn't have had anything—that was all he felt. Maybe it was the alcohol. Or maybe... not.

He didn't know who she was. But for the first time in two years, he wanted to approach her.

Not for business. Not on assignment. Just to come over.

And he took a step.

Connor was dumped by his long-term girlfriend. Afterward, he couldn't cope with the breakup and started drinking. He binged, broke up, started again—and so on, and so on, for two years.