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“-And anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.” Lieutenant Hank Anderson tightens the cuffs around the man’s wrists with the gratifying clink of the culmination of a job well done. The faintest hint of smug satisfaction tugs at the corner of his lip before the few remaining scraps of professionalism in the dusty corners of his mind quash it.
To Hank's left, Connor firmly shepherds another apprehended detainee into a patrol car with a strong grip on the woman's shoulder. The android’s calm demeanour and poise only serve to highlight the suspect’s unseemly clamour as she snarls, twists and had even tried to spit on him once.
“Agh… Fuck you! You're all pieces of-”
The slam of the car door cuts her rant off with a heavy finality. Muffled sounds of outrage can just barely be heard slipping through the cracks, but they're not remotely intelligible.
Hank’s suspect- a tall, wiry and long haired platinum blond man, left severely underweight from prolonged Red Ice usage- seems to have accepted his fate with a resigned calm that starkly contrasts his partner in crime.
“Do you understand the rights I have read to you?” Hank rattles off with the practiced ease of old muscle-memory, maintaining a firm grip on the chain connecting the handcuffs binding the man’s thin wrists.
“… Yes, yes I do. Just get on with it, yeah?” The man ducks his head to throw a straggling lock of long hair out of his eye, and his pale grey eyes to lock on Hank’s face with an uncomfortable intensity.
“Good.” Hank allows himself the faintest glimmer of a smirk now, reaching around to pull open the door of a second patrol car and corral his suspect into the back seat with a firm grip on the man's bony shoulder. From the corner of his eye, Hank sees Connor slide behind him to stand, hands folded carefully behind him. A look of careful pride subtly decorates the android's face, and Hank shoots him a grin in return.
Hank slams the car door with an echoing thunk.
“Two full weeks of work, just for that. Least they could do is give us a bit of a challenge, huh?” Hank turns to face his partner, an unusual swell of pride coiling deep in his gut.
Having been an officer for so long had desensitised him to the routine of most average investigations and arrests, but after a particularly difficult investigation or an especially successful Red Ice bust, he would still indulge himself with a little pride in his work.
Connor tilts his head, raising an eyebrow with faint amusement. “Lieutenant, there is still a third name-”
Hank raises a hand. “Just- let me have this, okay?” He grumbles, rolling his eyes. Little shit. “Can’t ever have any fuckin’ fun any more.”
The whining roar of an over-stressed engine roars in the distance, interrupting the low echoes of sparse bird calls their fellow officers’ murmuring that had been their only accompaniment at the abandoned warehouse. Damn boy racers, Hank grumbles internally.
The android has the gall to flash him a smirk then. “Well then, I believe this can be referred to as a ‘textbook’ case, Lieutenant.”
“Better.” Hank strides over and slaps a hand on Connor’s shoulder. “And drop the whole ‘lieutenant’ schtick, we’ll be off duty in-”
He trails off as the engine grows closer. Both he and Connor turn to face where the road meets the warehouse parking lot, but all Hank can see before the street curves behind a storage building is empty. He holds up a hand to Connor, nonverbally instructing him to stay, before taking a step toward the road.
And the sound of the engine is suddenly upon them as a low semi-truck comes hurtling around the road corner, tires squealing and leaving tracks of melted rubber and acrid smoke in its wake. There’s a scattered few frantic shouts and Hank barely has time to register that it’s heading straight for him-
Something slams into his back and sends him flying to one side and to the ground, out of the vehicle's path, his head impacting on to the concrete with a shower of electric sparks across his vision and a shrill ring bursting into his ears.
For a moment, Hank floats.
But far too soon, sounds of frantic shouting and banging encroach on the edges of his awareness, and all of a sudden there are hands under his arms, grasping, dragging him into some semblance of upright and back. His world lurches.
Hank’s lungs are full of dust and acrid burning eats at his mouth and nose with every breath. The cough that wrenches itself out of him only serves to worsen it, bringing the ringing in his ears to a swelling crescendo.
And then the fog vanishes, and someone is slapping his cheek.
“Anderson!”
Of all people, it had to be Reed. Of fucking course.
Hank tries to speak, to inhale, to do something, but his body rebels and the first hint of air in his lungs sends him launching into a full-force coughing fit that roughly shakes every tiny sinew and bone of his body.
“Just… Don’t move! Stay down!” As soon as the fit dies down there are hands on his shoulders, pushing him back and down. But with how the world is spinning wildly around him, Hank doesn’t think he could do much else, anyway.
The tangled mess of shouting surrounding him slowly starts unmesh, from garbled mess to the beginnings of intelligible.
“Don’t move! Drop the gun!”
“Fuck, there’s too many cops-”
“Requesting backup!”
The white blob taking up most of the left of Hank’s vision… oh. It’s a patrol car. He’s leant up against a patrol car, Reed crouching beside him with a gun clenched in both of his hands, scowling up and over the car hood and occasionally flinching back with a flurry of spat out curses when a bullet ricochets too close to them.
Hank clumsily fumbles at his belt, hand searching wildly until it finally clasps around the comfortingly solid handle of his own pistol.
“Where… Where’s… C-Connor?” He chokes out, throat clenching rebelliously at every syllable.
Reed hisses something profane and breaks his gaze over the car hood for a brief moment, looking down at Hank with a spark of something that Hank doesn’t like flashing across his face. Immediate worry twines around Hank’s gut like a vine of thorns; his memories of the last few minutes are already blanketed in a haze of fog borne from shock and possible minor concussion, but one thing he can remember with perfect clarity is that he didn’t run out of that car’s path. He was pushed.
“Just fucking stay down.” Reed repeats, sucking in a breath through his teeth. His face steels, and he turns away again. Bringing his pistol up, he leans briefly upward to loose one, two shots, immediately dropping back down to press his back against the patrol car wheel. A scream of pain breaks through the wall of chaotic sound, and Hank knows that at least one of Reed’s shots hit its mark.
He may be a Grade-A Asshole, but Reed is almost always a crack shot.
“You better be okay over there, kid.” Hank mumbles to no-one in particular, almost too quiet for even himself to hear it, and the snake of worry tightens its grip around his heart.
Not that he would say it out loud- not yet, anyway- but the ridiculous android had been growing on Hank far too fast over the last month or two since the revolution, burrowing his way into Hank’s jaded heart like a worm to an apple.
In a flash, Reed is launching himself up and around the car, gun at the ready and shouting orders that wash over Hank’s ears without registering their meaning. Blurred figures of fellow officers race past, equal parts chaotic scramble and perfect order.
Despite the whirling lurch that threatens to send him to the ground each time he moves, Hank places a one hand beneath him, grips one onto the bodywork of the patrol car and pulls.
Nausea instantly lays claim to his stomach as he hauls himself to his knees, and then to his feet, and Hank just barely avoids decorating the concrete with the meagre contents of his stomach. At least this happened before lunch, something useless in the back of his mind supplies. His legs quiver like a newborn deer, but manage to hold him.
Hank pauses for a moment to take in the full extent of the situation; officers are crowded near where smoking remains of the semi-truck are left smashed into the wall of the warehouse, leaving a sizeable dent in the brickwork. Two of them are knelt atop the former drivers of the vehicle, already snapping cuffs onto their wrists, while another two run to secure the vehicle.
The last officer- Person, Hank’s mind supplies- is stood facing the smoking impact site where the semi-truck careened into the brickwork, hands covering her mouth and leaning forward at something Hank can’t see.
As Hank limps around the car to join them, nausea mercifully almost completely receded, his eyes flit across the scene toscan for his partner. Connor is nowhere to be seen in the gaggle of officers involved in arresting the criminals, and that bothers Hank far more than it should.
He’s probably just… chasing down another perp or... something. It’s-
Hank’s eyes land on a long, thick smear of blue Thirium spread across the hood of the semi-truck. His heart drops.
Stumbling and nearly tripping, he tips into the fastest jog he can muster, careening around and shouldering past as Person turns to him, panic written plain across her face and hands held out in a feeble attempt to stop him.
“Lieutenant, wait-!”
He pushes firmly past her. And then his whole world freezes.
All sound vanishes, except the thunderous beating of his own heart and the hiss of each breath he takes.
The nausea comes back full force.
Because the blood may be blue, but it’s still blood.
And it’s everywhere.
Splattered on in an impact pattern around the wall. Dripping down the brickwork in long, viscous streaks to pool on the ground. Spattered across the front of the truck in a mockery of raindrops.
Because when the car impacted the building, it took Connor with it.
He’s pinned between the car and the wall, his entire chest, upper stomach and right arm entirely crushed by the right corner of the car’s engine. His shoulders are listing slightly forward over the metal of the vehicle, and Hank can’t see quite where from but blood is dripping from his head onto the panel below.
A section of his white dress-shirt has ripped, the grey blazer similar in style to the old Cyberlife branded one that Connor had been so pleased to find has been scraped and ripped back. Beneath it his plastimetal frame is utterly crushed, forming a long, deep split all along the left side of his chest. Thirium pours freely from the break, drenching the fabric of Connor's clothing and dripping into a pool on the concrete below.
Sparks fly fitfully from exposed biocomponents, and oh god that’s the kid’s android guts sitting in open air. Everything is drenched in Thirium, so much Thirium, for a moment Hank can’t believe that he’s not shut down already, not died already, and then Hank looks at his LED-
He could collapse from relief at the faint red pulse emitting from the small device. But even still, it’s so faint, and so slow that the wash of relief is gone almost as soon as it started. Its place is soon filled by a yawning void of apprehensive terror that only grows larger when the LED suddenly sparks, flaring bright red once, twice for a fraction of a second before once again dimming.
Hank takes a tentative step forward.
“Ah, fuck… Connor? Son, can you hear me?” His voice betrays him, quivering a little despite his best efforts.
No response. Not even a twitch.
“Technicians are already on their way, Lieutenant.” Person informs him in a low voice. Hank spares her a curt nod, but his eyes never leave the downed android in front of him. He steps a little closer. A faint mechanical whirring and clicking, followed by a strangled wheeze, emanates from somewhere within Connor’s torso. It repeats over, over and over in a never-ending rhythm.
All of a sudden, Hank feels incredibly lost. He knows that android internals mimic human organs to a certain extent, and that thirium is essentially android blood; but aside from that he’s completely stumped. Every time Connor had been hurt before, he’d been either been whisked away to the precinct techs in a flurry to reappear as if nothing had ever happened a few hours later; or he’d insist his funky android ‘self-healing’ could take care of it overnight.
So far, that’d always done enough.
Something deep in Hank’s gut tells him that this time, it wouldn’t.
He gingerly steps forward, leaning to get a view of Connor’s face.
It’s… not as bad as it could be, at least. Connor’s eyes are partway open, unseeing and dull, and Hank is sure that he can see some of the inner mechanics and lenses shining through the dark brown in places.
Most of his face is relatively untouched, though the Thirium seeping down from the back of his head and his hair is concerning at a minimum. But the blank, vacant and open-eyed stare… It unnerves Hank in a deeply visceral way.
Even though androids aren’t intended to feel pain, in the human sense, it has become a common phenomenon since the revolution for some deviants- especially the later models and models fitted with more advanced sensory processing- to develop feelings of intense distress and discomfort from overwhelming errors or invalid sensory feedback from an injury.
And despite his strong insistence otherwise, that it’s ‘only an unexpected glitch, lieutenant,’ and determination that ‘it will be resolved shortly, there is no cause for concern’, Hank is convinced that injury is far more uncomfortable for Connor than he lets on. Hank had distinctly spotted Connor limping on more than one occasion when he thought he wasn’t being watched.
Being a specialised late-model prototype designed with many times more sensory capability than even the most high-end mass produced android ever sold in Cyberlife sometimes had its downsides.
Hank is torn between crushing relief because he’s alive and visceral horror of how is he going to stay that way.
Without warning, Connor’s eyes fly wide open.
Hank has never heard an android scream before. He never wants to again.
The sound isn’t the same as a human scream. It’s garbled shrieking of corrupted noise, like the noise Hank’s CD player would make when he'd put game discs in it as an over-curious child. It’s the sound of subroutines breaking down in panic, outputting data from areas never meant to be accessed.
Finally, after long seconds that feel like minutes, the screaming dies down somewhat but then the struggling starts, Connor’s back trying desperately to arch away into the wall but thwarted by the immovable brick behind him, his head pushing back to press into the hard brick and rolling listlessly from one side to the other. More desperate clicking and wheezing punctuates his every movement, and something deep in a part of Hank’s heart he thought long gone and forgotten cracks.
He whirls around, ripping his gaze from his stricken partner to face where Person is hovering behind him, radiating indecisive concern.
“Why has no-one got this thing off him!” Hank snaps, gesturing a little too forcefully at the semi-truck.
“I… wasn’t sure if it would worsen the damage,” Person admits. “Or if androids work different like that.”
Hank mentally notes to inform Fowler in no uncertain terms that android first aid training for the entire precinct is long overdue.
“So you just left him there?!” Hank snarls. His nerves are long past shot, professionalism left behind back when Connor pushed him from the truck’s path.
“Lieutenant, we can-”
The sound of metallic retching snaps Hank’s attention back to Connor and he whirls around, just in time to see the android lurch forward, a huge gush of Thirium pouring from his mouth as he heaves and trembles. Wide eyes stare down unseeingly and he weakly braces the hand that isn’t pinned behind him onto the hood of the car.
“Fuck’s sake, just move it!” Hank spits out, and before Person can begin to respond, he is immediately racing back to Connor’s side.
All anger melts away as he lays a hand on one quivering shoulder.
“Kid, listen, they’re going to get it off you OK?” He rubs up and down Connor’s shoulder in a feeble attempt at comfort as the retching peters out into fitful waves of shuddering, bent boneless over the car that still hasn’t moved damn it.
Hank continues stroking, hoping to give whatever comfort he can, despite the nagging feeling that it’s not really being registered. “And then we’ll get you to a tech and they’ll fix you right up.”
The sound of footsteps behind him sends Hank wheeling around, but straight away his unfounded panic borne of far too much stress too quickly turns to relief at the sight of Chris Miller jogging up behind him.
“Lieutenant! I heard Connor was… oh.”
For some reason, the insane urge to laugh flickers through the deeper parts of Hank’s mind, immediately quashed. Shame immediately fills the void left behind and he stares down at his own Thirium-coated hands, saying nothing. He doesn’t trust himself to.
“I got some basic technical training, so I asked Tina to cover for me so I can come help.” Miller’s voice is low, the gravity of the situation clearly dawning upon him.
Hank sighs. “Thanks, Miller.” He mutters weakly, scraping up the strongest smile he can muster. Despite his efforts, it’s still wan. Turning back to Connor, he replaces his hand on one Thirium-stained shoulder.
“Hhh… H-H-Haaaank-k-k--”
Hank winces as the painful vocalisation skips, loops, and eventually trails off into a squealing crescendo of feedback.
“Hey, hey, shhh, try not to move.” Hank shushes, trying his damnedest to keep the persistent quiver out of his voice. “We’ll get you out soon, I promise.”
More Thirium drips from Connor’s downturned mouth. He jerks weakly, as if attempting to cough, but only the half of his chest left un-pinned even moves at all. It still doesn’t manage to inhale.
Just seconds before the last shreds of Hank’s thinly-worn patience snap, finally the semi-truck roars and spits itself to life, hiccoughing for a moment and shaking violently before stabilising into a steady hum.
The harsh shaking of the engine jostles its captive violently and Connor lurches back with another shriek of static, only avoiding his head slamming full-force into the hard wall by Hank’s quick thinking as he jams his arm between the android and the brick.
Connor’s face screws up in agony, eyes crushed closed and teeth clenching shut in a heart-wrenchingly human response, and thick streaks of Thirium drip from the corner of his mouth.
“Fuck!” Hank swears as his arm erupts into fiery, eye-watering throbbing. Flashing catches the corner of his eye, and his stomach drops as he sees spraying sparks and a dark red glow that shouldn’t be there in the exposed biocomponents.
That’s his insides. I’m looking at his insides. Hank's mind repeats pointlessly. Despite being hardened over his many years of gruesome murders, a wave of nausea overtakes Hank. Because this isn’t just another case. This is Connor. This is his kid-
Wait. His?
But there’s no time to dwell on and unpack… whatever that was, before the truck is rolling backward and Connor is collapsing bonelessly forward into Hank’s waiting arms. Immediately Miller is at Hank’s side, partially taking the dead weight as they lower him gingerly to the ground.
Thankfully, the motion seems to have finally sent the android back into unconsciousness. Or whatever the android equivalent is. Connor probably has some fancy-ass long tech word for it.
Miller pats his hand down and across Connor’s shoulder, moving down to feel across his chest as if seeking for something. As he draws closer to where the crack splits Connor’s plastimetal plating, he suddenly gasps and yanks his hand back, hissing.
“Lieutenant! That’s… He’s massively overheating!”
Hank growls a curse, leaning forward and tugging the android’s shoulders onto his lap. Then he reaches a hand gingerly to where Miller's hand had been, and even before he’s touched the area he can feel heat radiating from it like a stovetop. Carefully touching the sharp white edge of plastimetal, Hank instantly yanks back with a hiss.
“Shit!” He spits. “Wha… I… How do we...”
Hank is used to feeling capable. Being a Police Lieutenant with decades of experience under his belt usually left him in control of any situation he’d find himself in. But his past… attitude… to androids means that despite his recent efforts, Hank was still woefully under-educated on android functioning, design and, most importantly right now, emergency care. Hank feels… lost.
Connor's eyes crack open a tiny distance, his head rolls back on Hank's lap and he stares dazedly out just to Hank's left as a miserable, breathy whimper escapes the poor kid's vocal modulator. It sounds a little more human, a little less garbled data, and Hank dares to hope that the more human-like sound means Connor's in at least less android pain now.
"Connor?" Hank asks gently, giving him his best attempt at a smile. It probably comes out a little wan, but fuck it he's trying.
Connor writhes agitatedly on his lap. "H-H-Haaaa..."
"Yeah, kid, I'm here," Hank places a hand on the deviant's forehead. Instantly his eyes widen and he hisses- the artificial skin is almost too hot to touch. And Hank's stomach plummets- because if an android's CPU works anything at all like the human brain… That's not good.
"Temmmm---m--per-atuuuure---" Connor grinds out, eyes slowly losing focus and sliding down to stare at nothing.
“Hey, hey, shhh.” Hank strokes his hand rhythmically down, over the bump of the LED and into the beginnings of the hair on Connor's temple.
"Cri---ti---caaaaaa---" The sound hitches and gives out, reducing to electronic buzzing and Connor's eyes roll up into his head.
To Hank's side, Miller gasps, leaping forward. "Connor! Listen, use the manual override on your coolant system-"
And before Hank even has time to process what’s going on, his sternum erupts into burning pain and the breath is knocked out of him when Connor’s head throws violently back, slamming into his ribcage with force that nearly sends Hank tumbling over backwards. He chokes on the last scraps air wheezing out of his lungs, shock of the sudden turn of events overriding any more constructive response.
Then Connor is jerking spasmodically in his lap, twitching and shaking in a way terrifyingly similar to a human seizure, and as if that wasn’t enough thin white vapour begins pouring out from the crack in his chest. The smell of it makes Hank’s throat reflexively squeeze closed and his eyes water, burning in the same way as acetone. Beneath it, the familiar smell of Thirium wafts pungently.
Miller leaps forward, grabbing Hank’s shoulders to pull him back and away from Connor, leaving the convulsing android alone on the hard concrete.
“The hell’re you doing?!” Hank snarls, scrambling back upright and whipping around to face Miller. “Miller, tell me what’s going on!” He lunges back to return to Connor’s side, but Miller grabs his arm firmly.
“It’s dangerous! He can’t control his own strength right now and there’s… nothing we can do until this stops. He overheated too much and his internal temperature reached the boiling point of Thirium.”
"Boiling point?" Hank knew he was signing up for a lot when he joined the DPD. But he never thought he’d see his partner strewn out in front of some old abandoned warehouse, seizing as his own blood boils inside of him.
“Thirium carries the power supply for his Biocomponents, which is playing havoc with his power regulation right now,” Miller's voice is blank, coloured with forced level-ness. “And causing surges to spike in his synthetic musculature and nerve system.”
“Did you say nerves?” Hank sucks in an aghast breath. Another sharp, metallic squeal of static from the android sends a spike of pain through his heart. He squeezes his eyes shut and presses a palm to his forehead. It hurts, aches like hell where it impacted the ground earlier but he does it anyway.
“It… should stop after a few moments once he can get his systems under control.” Miller mutters, looking at the floor in the opposite direction to Hank. Pointedly ignoring the question. “There’s an emergency coolant in his system, but if his temperature regulator isn't functional is has to be overrided manually."
"...Manually? He's not still fucking conscious for this, right?!"
Miller flinches and looks away.
It takes a second for the implication to sink in, but then Hank is launching himself forward again, Miller's desperate pleas for him to stop falling on deaf ears. Connor is in pain, probably still very much aware and left alone on the hard ground as his body betrays him, and Hank'll be damned if he's going to just leave him like that and do fucking nothing.
Hurriedly shrugging his jacket off, Hank wads it up and, keeping just enough distance to be safe, nudges the soft fabric under Connor's head at the first opportunity.
On an impulsive whim, he wraps his fingers around the back of the kid's cold hand as it trembles, twitching open and closed fitfully. Much as Hank would love to hold it in his properly, he's not stupid. He's seen Connor crush solid metal like it was nothing.
Each second seems to take far too long, trickling, dripping by, making Hank’s skin crawl.
And finally, finally, the convulsions fade, then stop. Hank doesn't know whether to be delighted or horrified.
All at once, both officers are launching into motion. Hank shifts to grasp Connor’s shoulders and straight away hustles the crippled deviant back onto his lap, while Miller rushes to his side and begins pulling back what’s left of his white dress shirt.
As Hank threads his fingers into soft hair, softer and more pliant than a human’s, he gently teases it back only for the liquid projection to slide it effortlessly into its programmed style. Connor’s head still feels warm beneath his fingers, but the worst of the burning heat has at least dissipated.
The kid's dark eyes are opened slightly, misted over and staring out listlessly at nothing, and Hank can only hope that whatever level of consciousness is still going on in that robot brain of his isn't enough to be fully aware of what's going on anymore; the thought of being conscious and aware all through what was essentially a seizure unsettles him deeply to the core.
Miller peers closely under the sheared plastimetal. “The thermal regulator’s been forced out of coupling. If we can reconnect it, that should control the overheating.”
“You can do it?” Hank barks the question, now long past pleasantries. He won’t pretend to understand anything about the in-depth function, but the name ‘thermal regulator’ is self-explanatory enough. His hand wanders down to cup the back of Connor’s neck, absently petting at the softer hair there.
“I… With the right tools.” Miller grimaces. “It’s too hot to touch right now.”
As if on cue, another curl of white vapour puffs from Connor’s chest. Hank winces.
“Stay with him, keep him calm.” Miller instructs, scrambling to his feet. “I’m going to find equipment. Don’t let him move, it could make it worse!” The man sprints off toward where the police cars are still parked.
As soon as Miller is out of sight, the feeling of absolute out-of-depth helplessness returns to Hank’s gut with full force. He’s only ever felt this helplessly terrified a meagre number of times before, the last being when Cole-
No.
Hank is not letting his mind go there.
He looks away from the cars and down at the limp deviant in his arms. Dark brown eyes slowly slide a little further open.
“Sh---shshsh---uuut--” Connor flinches as the sound loops and dissolves back into a squealing and popping like feedback from an old-fashioned microphone. Partly in sympathy, partly in response to the painful sound, Hank winces.
“Shhh, no, don’t try to talk.” Hank’s moves his hand to rest on Connor’s forehead. It’s still disturbingly hot as he plays with the single loose strand of hair there in a way he hopes is soothing.
"Doooo---ooown--" Connor moans through static, head rolling restlessly to and fro on Hank's lap. Drops of clear fluid streaked with opaque Thirium blue collect at the pinched corners of his eyes and God this kid is going to be the death of Hank.
For a moment Hank frowns, mind racing to piece together the fragmented sections of speech as he thumbs away the drops the moment they fall. Then it clicks, and his stomach drops.
"Hey, kid, no. No. Look at me?" He gently hooks a hand under Connor's chin, quieting his dazed stirring and coaxing his head to tilt back a little until he's looking Hank in the eye.
"That's not gonna fuckin' happen, alright? " Hank slides his finger distractedly up and down that almost too artificially smooth skin beneath his chin. "We’re gonna put your thermal whatsit back in properly and then techs'll be here to get you all fixed up."
Connor's eyes are becoming more glassy and unseeing by the second and it terrifies him. Strained whirring is faintly emanating from his chest again, growing louder uncomfortably quickly.
"And besides, you really think I'll just let you waltz on out of here and leave Sumo behind?" Hank continues, rambling nonsense as his mind races elsewhere. Keep him calm, Miller said. Calm.
“C- C-- Caaaa-- Caaaa-n't---" Terror abruptly writes itself across Connor's face and he lurches slightly upward, immediately veering to the side and slamming heavily back onto Hank's lap, shaking like a leaf.
“Whoa, whoa, Miller says you gotta keep still, kid.” Hank scrambles to firmly restrain Connor's shoulders and wrap a preventative arm over his chest. Even so, the android continues to twitch and emit agitated sounds of pain, quickly becoming more inhuman and staticky with every second that passes. Hank doesn’t think his battered heart can take much more of this.
He hopes to any God left willing listen to him that Miller will make it back soon.
For a few moments, it’s a semblance of calm. Hank’s heart is desperately beating itself out of its chest in abject terror, Connor is still in clear distress, his limbs occasionally jolting in another cruel spasm before lying still again, and Thirium-streaked tears still trickle sporadically down his temples into the hairline there. But it’s almost quiet.
Until it’s not.
Just as Hank hears the sound of jogging footsteps behind him, and Miller’s voice calling out something that he doesn’t hear, the same frantic clicking and wheezing as before- this time far louder- emanates from Connor’s chest once, twice, three times. Then a horrible grinding sound of jammed metal and it all stops; the android spasms and shudders violently, his eyes rolling up into his skull, and he goes completely limp and pliant in Hank's arms.
His LED flares once, bright, and then flickers out completely.
“Connor?” Hank growls, patting his cheek frantically. “Connor!”
Thick dread grips every part of Hank's being. It's happening again. He's losing someone he cares about, after he promised that this wouldn't happen, that he would protect him, and there's nothing he can do.
“Lieutenant! I found tools!” Miller manages through pants for air behind him, skidding to a dead stop and dropping down beside Hank at Connor's left side.
“Miller! I- He's shutting down! His light’s gone out!” Hank gestures frantically at the darkened ring. Miller’s dark eyes widen and he spits out a string of curses.
“I’m going to need help!” He drops the canvas bag and yanks the rest of Connor's shirt open. The entirety of his artificial skin program beneath is completely deactivated, only white plastimetal left visible. Long hairline cracks and denting mar the whole of his chest panel, converging at the single crack splitting through nearly the entirety of his left side.
“What do you need?” Hank is too deep into crisis control to even think of questioning it as Miller takes his wrists and places them on the left side of Connor’s abdomen, just above the still-smoking split.
“When I say, push it down and to the other side. Hard. No time to be careful.” Miller grunts, rummaging in the bag for a few seconds before dragging himself up to rest near Connor’s head. He presses a small grey disc firmly on the centre of the LED ring, and holds it for a few seconds. It flashes blue with a tinny beep.
“Alright, go!”
With everything in his ageing body, Hank pushes the panel inward and away, wincing when the heat of the panel beneath him becomes almost unbearable. With an uncomfortable crunch, the panel mushily slides downwards and the back a little, moving an inch or two before becoming completely jammed.
Hank is about to give up, to turn to Miller for new instructions, when the man is at his side, hands joining Hank’s in forcing the metal panel across. Slowly, painfully slowly, the piece grinds back. A whip-crack of electrical sparking sounds from within Connor’s chassis and the panel suddenly slides, and sparks shower just behind Hank’s hands. He winces, but doesn’t let go.
Sorry, kid, He whispers internally.
“Alright- that’s enough!” Miller draws back and takes one look inside Connor’s chassis.
“Fuck!” He curses immediately, before diving for a blue biocomponent near the right side of Connor’s chest. The usual blue glow of a healthy biocomponent is gone, replaced with sickly dullness.
“Black thermal gloves in the bag, get them!” Miller snaps, calm demeanour gone.
Hank’s heart drops as he leaps to rustle through the bag. Inside are a few long cables, something long that looks like oversized tweezers, a few sharp knife-like tools and-
Grabbing two sets of the heatproof gloves, Hank dashes back to Miller’s side.
“Put them on,” Miller snatches a pair and pulls them over his own hands. “His Thirium pump has given out, most likely from the heat. You need to actuate it.”
“I… what?” Hank hears the words, but their meaning can’t be right. “You want me to work his heart?”
“Essentially.” Miller reaches in with gloved hands and pushes on three points around the biocomponent. With a faint click, the small thing pops loose. Three thick blue tubes connect from the ends, one from the base and two from the top, and a glowing blue membrane reservoir sits on the side. Eerily biological looking red-brown tubes connect in coils around the other side.
Miller points to the blue reservoir.
“Massage it gently. Like this.” He carefully cups the biocomponent by the side covered in cables, and taking his other hand, pushes the heel of his thumb from into the bottom along to the top of the membrane. The way it squashes in at his touch makes Hank’s stomach pound uncomfortably.
“Holy flying fuck.” Hank mutters under his breath. He doesn’t know what life-decision it was that made it all come to this, but if it means saving his ridiculous, all too often little shit of a partner then he’ll do anything.
He reaches over and delicately pries the small component from Miller’s secure grip.
It’s a tiny thing, really, no bigger than a large egg. Impossibly fragile, Hank’s heart lurches and he has to fight to keep the shake from his hands when it crosses his mind that he’s holding his partner’s life in his hands. He’s seen other androids’ pump whatsits many times before, and this is visibly not constructed even remotely the same as the standard model. Hank doubts they’d be able to find a viable replacement at all, let alone in time.
His own heart fluttering frantically, Hank carefully pushes the pad of his thumb into the pliant membrane, and rolls it up to push the fluid up and out the top. The Thirium line out the top pulses a little, a slight glow returning to its flat blue hue.
“C’mon son,” Hank murmurs aimlessly, gently but firmly massaging his thumb over the small blue component. “You gotta stay with us.”
Looking to his left, he spies Miller poking the long tweezer from the bag beneath another dark biocomponent. This one is long and slim, with a port on each end and more fleshy tubes wrapping around the centre. One end has been knocked upward, disconnecting each end.
“How’s it looking?” Hank almost doesn’t want to know.
“Ah-! If I can just…” Miller grunts, the tweezers pinging back out from beneath the component. “Plating shard’s stuck underneath it. Need to-” He pauses, working the tweezer back under. “Get it out to reconnect.”
Connor is too still. That alone is enough to make Hank’s spine crawl, but the fact that he’s dead right now, by any sense of the word, is too much to safely think about right now.
His skin program is growing translucent.
Just don’t think about it. Don’t think about the fact that you’re holding your kid’s heart in your hands.
There it is again. Hank’s kid.
Connor’s no child, Hank knows this. The android is a built hunter, designed like a bloodhound to never give up until he's taken down his quarry at any cost. In fact, the kid can be downright terrifying at times, launching into foot chases at speeds no human could ever match and taking down fleeing and resisting suspects with almost casual ease.
But there’s a kind of… newness to him. A shocking amount of naïveté mixed with an endearing curiosity for life that Hank can see the deviant trying very hard to keep wrapped up and hidden away deep inside himself. And Hank doesn’t know why… but the more Connor tries to hide it, the more desire Hank has to pry in, unwrap it and coax it out into the world.
Connor may not be... well... Hank's child, but Hank still feels viciously protective over him. Like a protégé, perhaps.
Maybe this whole thing is a reaction, is Hank trying to fill the void left behind when he lost… When the car crashed. Maybe-
Maybe Hank needs a fucking drink.
A sudden snap, and Miller’s face brightens with triumph.
“Got it! Just have to… Yes!”
The tweezers yank free, a sizeable chunk of white plastimetal in their grasp. Miller tosses the piece away, dropping the tweezers to one side and gripping the loosened biocomponent in both hands.
A gentle pressure from his thumb, and a small click. That’s all it takes, and the thermal regulator is back where it belongs.
Miller deflates a little with a sigh. “Alright.”
Hank’s thumb is beginning to ache from palpating the small device, but he’ll be damned if that’s enough to make him slow down. He'd promised the kid he wouldn't be dying, or shutting down, or anything of the sort today and there's no chance in hell Hank's going to waver now. The faintest glow still emanating from the nearby components fuels his determination, and he speeds up a little.
“Careful!” Miller barks. Hank startles, his head pounding with the beginnings of a hard adrenaline crash, and he instantly drops back to his original rhythm. “That isn't meant to be touched. It’s extremely delicate.”
Hank nods. “What now?” He can feel himself burning out, bringing the hammering of his head and the absolute exhaustion that aches in his bones to the forefront. “Can you… reboot him or something?”
Miller is already fishing in the bag. Shortly he holds aloft another small grey device and shuffles over to Hank’s side.
“Pass it to me.” He extends a hand.
For some reason, reluctance grips Hank, but he delicately transfers the pump anyway. His thumb is screaming its exhaustion far louder now that it can finally rest.
Hank feels lightheaded. Everything is swimming. Is it? He doesn’t think it should be.
Miller pushes the tiny device to the side of his kid’s heart and pushes down.
The reaction is instant- the pump glows blinding blue and a metallic plunger beneath the membrane on its side contracts violently, the membrane itself quivering in and out frantically for a moment before settling into a somewhat regular, if fast, rhythm.
Hank’s hands shake uncontrollably and he holds his breath.
Slowly, painfully slowly, glowing blue colour begins to return to the biocomponents around, and finally Connor twitches, a tiny thing, face pinching in for a second before his chest rises and falls in a single, wheezing breath.
And then another.
Some sparks are still flashing from the components in Connor's chest, particularly around where the plastimetal is warped and crushed inward, and his face twitches a little each time. Even so, Hank can’t help but feel like some of the danger has passed.
Miller removes one glove with a snap, and gingerly places his hand by, and then on, the metal at the edge of the dent.
“He’s cooling off.” The officer sighs, a tiny smile twitching at the corner of his mouth. “He should be stable for now.”
Rather than leaving, the nausea in gnaws harder. Hank frowns.
“Lieutenant?”
“Y- Yeah,” Hank mutters, mind not quite processing what he’s saying anymore. His head is slowly being stuffed with cotton wool.
Hands are on his shoulders, and he’s tilting backward, guided back from his kneeling position to sit on the hard concrete.
Then Miller is directly in front of him. He startles.
“F-Fuck, Miller. Don’t… do that.” The overspill of cotton wool from his mind is flooding to his mouth.
“Lieutenant, I need you to stay here, alright? Don’t move, just stay there and watch Connor for me.”
“Mmh.” Shrieking sirens are piercing through Hank’s ears. “Thhh… The fuck is that noise…”
Miller’s face is gone. When did he leave?
Oh. Hank’s on the floor now. There are multiple pairs hands on him.
Hands are probably good.
“Gotta…” Hank slurs with the very last of his energy. “Helllp… Stop…”
The hands grasp at his head and arm, and-