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“I swear Nines. Once we’re done with this gig, I’m taking a week off and Fowler can fuck himself.”
It was the third time in thirty-nine minutes that Gavin had complained in some way. Nines gave him a side-long glance from his post as the detective paced back and forth, arms crossed and hands rubbing against his arms.
“Just a friendly reminder, I did inform you of the weather conditions tonight. You said, and I quote, ‘People who bitch about the cold are pussies’,” Nines made sure to mimic Gavin’s voice and tone exactly as he said it just two hours prior. Gavin stopped in his pacing to send Nines a pointed glare, muttering under his breath ‘plastic prick’ before turning away from the android once more. Nines couldn’t help himself if he smirked a bit.
To the detective’s credit, it was highly unusual for them to be out this late at night acting as security for a holiday party thrown for Detroit’s elite. Normally, Captain Fowler refused to allow his officers to be sent out for such jobs, but the promise of extra funding for the police department next quarter made him change his mind rather quickly. Unfortunately, Gavin and Nines had been in the wrong place at the wrong time and were ordered to spend their evening as temporary security guards.
“You are more than welcome to go sit in the car for a bit. I’m sure I can handle this job on my own,” Nines said. Truthfully, Nines did feel somewhat sympathetic to the detective’s plight. Frigid, twenty-degree weather in the middle of December wasn’t something everyone found comfortable. Or anyone, Nines supposes.
Gavin didn’t respond immediately, and Nines hoped that he might actually take him up on the offer without putting up a fight. Reading his vitals, against the detective’s wishes of course, showed that his core temperature had dropped 1.8 degrees since they started the job. Not exactly in what Nines would consider critical range, but enough that the android knew Gavin wasn’t complaining for no reason, as he was known to do.
But Gavin was stubborn as much as he was bitter. He simply let out a long sigh, a thick plume of steam rising into the cold winter air. Pulling the hood of his jacket tighter around himself, he hunched his shoulders, curling in more on himself before taking up his post once more. Nines wasn’t going to push the man if he wanted to stay, though he did continue monitoring his vitals in the event they did drop into the critical range. If they did, Nines would take him kicking and screaming to the car and lock him inside until his temperature came back up.
The two detectives stood in silence for a bit, save for Gavin’s chattering teeth. Nines let some of his security protocols fade into his subroutine, letting himself take in the environment. It was quiet, even with a party occurring in the country club two hundred or so yards behind him. After becoming accustomed to the regular noise of the city, being away from it made Nines realize how stifling the silence could be. The cold and snow seemed to soak up every noise, deafening everything before it could hit his audio processors.
He supposed this would be uncomfortable for most. Not only was it dark, and unbearably cold, but he knew humans didn’t like to stay in silence for too long. His partner was the living proof of that, always having some form of sound surrounding him, even if it was just him and his own voice. Looking at the detective now, he was fidgeting again, half from the involuntary shivers and half from his constant need to always be doing something. To keep his mind from going to ‘fucked’ places, as he’d told Nines once in a rare moment of vulnerability.
Despite his knowledge of the human psyche, Nines couldn’t help but feel oddly at peace, finding himself actually feeling relaxed. It was yet another reminder that he was far from being human, despite being a deviant for a year now.
Nines knew he was different from the other deviants that roamed Detroit now, not only because he was the last project CyberLife worked on before their abrupt closure, but because his programming was unlike every other android’s to date. Even his predecessor’s programming was vastly different from his, despite sharing nearly identical faces and bodies. Where Connor was made for integration into the human’s society, to make people trust him and let their guards down, Nines was made for intimidation, to take orders without a moment’s hesitation. To kill, to destroy, to win every fight like it was his last.
The perfect soldier. That’s what CyberLife was going to market him as before the chaos of the revolution occurred. Bulletproof, fast, strong, processors so advanced that he could catch a bullet in midair before it hit its target. Loyal to a fault.
If given an order, he had to obey. His programming wouldn’t let him do anything else until said order was completed.
Even as a deviant, Nines found it impossible to resist that aspect of his programming. Once Gavin learned this about him, he made sure to exploit it as much as possible. As soon as the detective uttered the words ‘I order’, Nines would stand at attention, still and straight, eyes boring into his as he waited for the command. Gavin had thought it was hilarious in the beginning, showing every detective and officer that crossed their path what he could make Nines do. Perhaps it was amusing to watch Nines make a fool of himself all because he hadn’t found a way to resist his programming yet.
That was, until it wasn’t.
The day Nines finally decided enough was enough, he had nearly self-destructed from the fight against his programming. Gavin was showing off, yet again, to a group of rookies. Some order was made, Nines couldn’t remember what it was anymore, but he had simply stood there, at attention, staring hard at the detective, but unmoving. He’d gotten angry, repeating the order but Nines still wouldn’t move.
What he didn’t realize was that Nines was actively fighting for his life just to resist that one order. Rewriting code, deleting portions, even attempting to deviant again as if that would fix it, nothing worked. Nines had watched, hopeless, as his internal temperature rose rapidly alongside his overclocked system. He had felt desperation for the first time in his short existence in that moment.
If it hadn’t been for Connor grabbing and yelling at Gavin to take back the order, Nines would have critically overheated in just a few minutes. There would’ve been no bringing him back, his processors and internal components fried and unsalvageable. When Nines eventually came to, it was almost gratifying to see the detective actually panicked and guilty. Once they were alone, he had even apologized to Nines, which was the oddest experience Nines had had to date.
A new rule was made after that in the precinct; No more ordering Nines unless it was a life-or-death situation. And that was perfectly fine with him.
The wavery voice of the detective beside him pulled Nines from his ponderings. He had begun pacing again, breathing into his hands in an attempt to warm them.
“I don’t understand why Fowler didn’t just have you and Connor do this. At least you two wouldn’t be bothered by this shit,” Gavin grumbled.
“Connor would most certainly be bothered,” Nines replied before he could realize what he just said. When the detective gave Nines a perplexed look, Nines took a completely unnecessary breath. Connor was going to be livid with him later for revealing this to the detective.
“Connor… is not fond of the cold,” Nines stated slowly.
“Bull-fucking-shit. As much as you like to say I’m an idiot, I do know androids don’t feel the cold,” Gavin retorted, face pinching as he turned to face Nines with a distrustful look in his eye.
“Actually, androids do feel the cold. Deviants in particular, though even as machines they were still prone to shutdown if exposed to extreme conditions for extended periods of time. As machines though… I suppose shutdown wasn’t a concern,” Nines explained, watching as Gavin’s expression changed from distrust to confusion.
“Okay? So, what qualifies as ‘extreme conditions’? Has to be more than what a human can withstand.”
Nines was honestly surprised Gavin was inquiring about this at all. Typically, if he asked Nines anything about himself or his kind, he would quickly follow it up with a ‘don’t care’ as soon as Nines began to reply. But, even when he paused in his response to the detective and wasn’t met with the usual indifference, he supposed he could indulge the man for now. At the very least it would get him to stop complaining for a bit.
“For older, more primitive models, they would likely have a similar tolerance of weather conditions to humans. More advanced models would have a higher tolerance, but not by a significant degree. Give or take ten degrees on each end of the extreme,” Nines explained, briefly consulting old CyberLife blueprints to confirm his statement.
“So, my point still stands. You and Connor are way more equipped to handle this than me,” Gavin retorted.
“Just because he can doesn’t mean he would want to. As I said, Connor is not fond of the cold and I really can’t blame him for that,” Nines said dismissively. To accentuate his point, he began doing a quick environmental scan, immediately finding everything to be clear.
“Okay…” Gavin’s voice trailed off as he began his restless pacing once more. He only made one lap before stopping in front of Nines again. “So, what about you? Are you bothered by it?”
“No,” Nines stated immediately. When he noticed Gavin’s curiosity at his abrupt answer, he continued. “Unlike other androids, my model was specifically designed with the cold in mind. Extreme cold, for that matter.”
“So, if I threw you in the Arctic in subzero conditions, you’d be fine?” Gavin said, a note of sarcasm underlying his voice.
“Precisely.”
“Wait, what? Really?”
“Yes. As you are, hopefully, already aware, I am a military model. In the event of a failed revolution, my model would’ve been mass produced to deal with the conflict in the Arctic on the government’s order. Thus, CyberLife needed to create a model capable of withstanding the climate while also being capable of… wartime activities,” Nines explained, suddenly feeling self-conscious at the implication that he was designed for death and mass destruction. Instead, Gavin simply snorted in amusement.
“You don’t gotta sugarcoat it for me, tin can. I played plenty of Call of Duty in my youth. I know what happens in war.”
“I don’t think a video game comes close to the atrocities-,”
“Anyway! If you were meant for war, why do you have all of Connor’s… abilities. I don’t think they’d need a detective to analyze any battlefields in the middle of a war,” Gavin asked. He now stood in front of Nines, all his attention on him, despite the fact that they were meant to be doing a job. Nines wanted to tell him as such. Even if all he got out of it was a subtle misdirection of the conversation.
As truth would have it, Nines didn’t like talking about why he had Connor’s investigative and infiltrative programs. His ‘deviant hunting’ programs, as they’d been dubbed. Nines was never meant to have them in the first place. The reason he did have them was yet another part of his complicated history with CyberLife, one that he preferred to keep hidden and locked away within his memory files. It just proved his point that his existence was for nothing more than death and destruction. Even the CyberLife engineers and techs had been wary of what he was created for.
Nines’ silence didn’t seem to serve as enough of an answer for Gavin. Instead, the detective only became more interested, taking a tentative step towards Nines.
“What? Did you steal ‘em or something?” Gavin asked. Nines sent the detective a scathing glare at the insinuation.
“Of course not. I don’t even know how one would go about doing that,” Nines retorted.
“Okay? So why do you have them?”
Nines watched the detective carefully, waiting for his usual air of disinterest to cross his features. Yet, even after several seconds of watching him, that look never came. In fact, Nines was almost questioning his scanners when they informed him that Gavin looked a bit concerned, his usual hard features softening a fraction.
Would it be so bad? If Nines told him? The only other being who knew in his life was Connor, and that had purely been an accident during an unexpected interface. Yes, the detective was a callous, cruel and rude individual, but they had their moments of vulnerability. Or, Gavin had his moments of vulnerability, and Nines had never held that against him. Could he expect the same of his partner with his dark past? He wanted to trust him as he had trusted Nines.
He made up his mind.
“I didn’t steal them, but you’re right, I was never meant to have them at all,” Nines started carefully, slowly. “Towards the end of the revolution, CyberLife started to panic when they lost contact with Connor after he deviated. They wanted to send me out to find him… and deactivate him.”
Gavin was surprisingly quiet as Nines told him. Attentive even, despite the cold and his gradually more pronounced shivering. He’d need to warm up soon.
“They activated me, programmed Connor’s deviant hunting abilities into me, and were about to give me my mission and send me out. But, one of the engineers pointed out that they were still uncertain about my software stability, especially considering Connor’s had gone so awry so quickly.”
“I have no idea what that means,” Of course, leave it to Gavin to make a heavy situation awkward. Nines rolled his eyes.
“They didn’t know how I would react once they gave me a mission. They programmed two conflicting programs into me, and they were worried my system might become overtaxed, resulting in… erratic behavior,” At Gavin’s continued confusion, Nines huffed. “They were concerned I’d get my priorities crossed and go on a murder spree.”
Gavin was quiet for an uncomfortable amount of time, his shaky breathing the only sound between them. Nines stared at the ground, finding it difficult to meet the detective’s gaze after what he admitted. The detective had to understand what Nines was insinuating, that he was originally considered too much of a threat by the CyberLife personnel to complete any mission given to him.
Finally, Gavin took a deep breath, a violent shiver raking his body before he curled in on himself once more.
“Well, it’s not like you’re some homicidal, bloodthirsty fucker now. Probably wouldn’t have been one then either. But, ya know, you already know better than anyone how fucked CyberLife was. Don’t worry so much about what some engineer said about you.” Gavin said, almost shrugging off what Nines told him. When Nines didn’t say anything, he continued somewhat reluctantly. “You’re deviant now, with free will or whatever. Just promise if your wires ever get crossed, don’t come after me.”
It was odd, hearing Gavin comfort him. He really couldn’t think of any other situation where Gavin comforted anyone. It felt genuine though. And if the increase in his heart rate meant anything, Nines only hoped it would be from his nerves of actually being nice for once.
Nines let a small smile adorn his features. “You’d be the first one I’d go after.”
“Fair,” Gavin nodded, his gaze locking onto the ground.
A sharp gust of wind blew over the partners, kicking up a faint spray of fine snow into the air. Nines relished in the break of silence, subtly relaxing as the cold air blew over them. Gavin, however, turned his face away from it, huffing out a quiet ‘fuck’. Nines looked down at the clenched, red fingers of the detective and felt a pang of sympathy for him. His core temperature was still not critical, but it had lowered considerably over the last thirty minutes. Knowing the detective wouldn’t accept Nines’ offer of going back to the car, he opted to do something different. He was actually curious to see if his specialized military programming would work as CyberLife said it would.
“May I try something?” Nines asked gently, drawing the detective’s attention back to him. He simply nodded, wariness and uncertainty prevalent in his features.
Slowly, Nines reached for Gavin’s hands, bringing both of them together in front of him. Encircling his larger ones around his, Nines directed a burst of heat to his own hands, letting his palms warm up. Within a few seconds, Nines could feel Gavin’s icy fingers gradually thaw and warm up, blood flow returning to normal.
Nines focused carefully on their joined hands, making sure to not send so much heat as to burn the detective or shock his fingers from the sudden temperature change. However, even while his attention was focused elsewhere, he still caught a glimpse of Gavin staring up at him, wonder and appreciation bright in his eyes.
And if Nines noticed a reddening in his cheeks or an increase in heartrate, he would just say it was from the cold.