albinomilksnake | DETROIT BECOME HUMAN OPEN RP POST

DETROIT BECOME HUMAN OPEN RP POST

Pick your poison:
Markus | Connor

( Josh | Gavin Reed )

~~I'd probably play other DBH characters anyway lbr so if you want someone else, just ask~~

Connor default is Machine Connor— but I can throw down a nice Connor if that's more your jam, just let me know what your preferences are if you have them

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[Markus confesses, Simon deflects, and it's good in its own way. Feels familiar and forgotten, lost somewhere between straightforward speeches and endless discussions about a future that stretches out only as far as the edges of their fingertips.

He hears the soft sound of metal striking hardwood flooring beneath them as Simon unmistakably drops the flattened slug, his own hands still busy wrapping wires with a thin strip of electrical tape as a temporary patch. It'll last the next few hours at least. They can peel Markus's efforts away and resolder it once they reach Jericho— the new Jericho— in a couple of hours.]

Splitting up was part of the plan. We couldn't risk them narrowing down their focus, so North and the rest of her team are working to cause a distraction. Prove to the humans that it isn't worth trying to stick it out.

[In terms of appealing targets, they were it: two androids on foot, one of them recognizable to anyone that's kept an eye on Detroit's downfall, the other key evidence in a case that the United States Government was now frantically committed to solving.] She'll be back soon.

[Simon's shoulder panel clicks softly under his fingers, coaxed into resealing itself in spite of its surrounding chassis damage. Stubborn pressure. Markus's trademark.]

Josh is with Jericho. He— couldn't run this one.

[Machines suffer from exhaustion differently than humans, but the end result is, in so many ways, the same: energy needs to be managed down to the most microscopic measurements, tasks like speech, like movement and cognitive focus— all of it comes at a cost. All of it needs to be decisively allocated. He lifts the container to his mouth to drink; he doesn't tilt his head to look at her between increasingly tempered mouthfuls.]

Who are you. Really.

[No more elusive answers, no more games. He wants to know the truth.

He wants to know why.]

Eventually they'll need to stop drawing focus for the sake of their own survival. Eventually those red and blue streaks will turn into a problem, not a benefit. And that's a balance that has to be timed out. Not too soon, not too late. There's a deviant hunter on the loose, according to news reports now scrolling through Jericho's inner hull on loop (thanks to a recent influx of supplies and technology), and where human eyes can be careless, androids aren't—

She turns to look back, and in that moment, he pulls harder. Pace quickening.

'Don't stop.' he thinks, across the narrow band of their networked connection. Don't stop. Don't give in to that urge. Don't let them near. Because he isn't afraid of dying. He's afraid of watching her die, and they're running jagged lines across a razor's edge through emptied streets in the dead of night.

They reach the junkyard in record time. Heels skidding to a stop over snow, just near the chain link gate where trashed metal and outdated refuse are piled high. He freezes, only for a moment (—only for as long as it takes to remember what it had been like to stand knee-deep in tangled, desperately gasping bodies—) dropping his weight and pulling up a section of warped fencing.

[ Her head doesn't lift from the two parts of her work, unpacking the rucksack of gear, then arranging it to what is needed for the immediate things at the moment. One knee on the ground, the other planted boot down firmly. Ready, always ready, to jump up. ]

Jhansi ki Rani. [ The box of ammunition for the rifle is placed on top of the box of his parts. Flicked open as she fishes out what she needs to load it. Thumbing through bullets with a deft hand that she's at least comfortable enough to not really look at it, to glance at him sparingly. ] I am sure all that data can fill in the rest. You may call me Rani.

[ Her eyes drop again, going back to her work. Once it's loaded, she swings the strap over her shoulders, around her back, then lets the gun swing loose behind her. ] There is a small office up there, I am going to move you there once you are ready. Then we can see what else you need done.

As if she needed the instructions to continue running... except she did. It didn't keep her from glowering at Markus briefly as her eyes shifted over to him when she turned back and kept pace with him. She wasn't even going to snap a retort at him, just letting that annoyance briefly flash across their network, before she matched his urgency and then exceeded it until it looked like she was the one tugging him along.

She turned back again when they reached the scrapyard, sensor systems searching for their pursuit by any means. North held her place when Markus created an opening for them, resisting his efforts to usher her through the access point into the heaps of discarded metal and other things. It wasn't her stubbornness that had her hold up, but the realization that they had outstripped the humans and needed to make sure they were seen entering the yard. To keep the others safe.

93 counted down across their shared connection, North refusing to budge until it hit zero. At 13, the sound of a drone was heard over encroaching sirens. At 7, it flew into sight, spotlight searching along the span of the fencing. And then she bolted through the opening, knowing the drone was focused on finding them and not the other androids.

[He would have been there sooner.

Could have been, if not for the fact that he'd opted to spend his New Year's Eve celebration in absolute solitude, surrounded by half-paged case files and fully emptied bottles of beer (old relics from the last week and a half, standing as testimonies to one hell of a lot of off-the-clock homework), layout only interrupted by the supine grace of one lone, resident housecat.

Factors that meant he’d needed to burn precious time swinging around and picking up his own personal rent-a-cop partner, courtesy of Cyberlife. Which— fine, whatever. His machine was a machine. Still acted like one, still threatened to offset the number of humans employed at the precinct, but if nothing else it did its job better than Anderson’s ever could. Contempt and approval coexisting side by side.

~~Humans are complex creatures, okay.~~

Reed pulls himself out of the car, slamming the door shut behind him so loudly that it manages to drown out the noise of a few lingering fireworks crackling somewhere off in the distance. He clicks his tongue against the back of his teeth.]

Looks like Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dumbass are already on the case. Guess we should've stayed home.

[He’s grinning out of habit; it does him no favors, wrinkling the already crooked set of his nose.]

[Connor-RK900 smoothly exits the car and follows at Gavin's shoulder, calm and serious. There was no celebration in his New Year's Eve, he's as clean and unruffled as ever. His steely gaze sets on Hank, then on the other Connor.]

Hello Lieutenant Anderson. Connor.

[His hand falls to Gavin's shoulder for a moment with a light squeeze, reminding him to focus. Or attempting to.]

I suggest we get to work.

[ simon nudges the barrel of the rifle with his toes, as the deviant hunter's semi-obscured LED begins to warn him of his intentions. it is not an exact science, but simon is old enough and wise enough to the nuances of machines to understand that connor will pursue his directive - by any means necessary. it is, if there is anything to him at all, his sole focus. which means that the moment connor reaches for his concealed weapon, simon is bringing his own to bear. they have one another sighted in mere seconds, connor a few heartbeats before him. he's fast. reflexes wired tightly, superior to an out-of-date PL600's hardware. ]

You know, when I first heard about you, I thought you were magnificent.

[ his finger sits, steady and waiting, on the trigger. a stand-off, if ever there could be one. ]

I still think you are.

[ the words are bitter, twisted sharply. like he cannot help the way he admires connor's build, connor's lethality, connor's purpose. it must be wonderful, to have been able to choose to set aside one's potential for deviancy. to comfortably nestle into another's command and control, to find satisfaction in following the finger as it points to the next directive, the next mission, the next task to be accomplished. simon thinks, in a way, he sought that out in markus: the familiarity of machinehood. the guidance he shamefully missed. ]

Nobody leads Jericho. You killed Markus, and we're all just scrambling for whatever remains in his absence.

[ it's a lie. clever and crafted, prepared through numerous discussions with josh and north. ]

Put your gun down, and I'll give you what you're looking for.

[ he can't watch.

not the way markus's lashes touch the freckles high on his cheekbones. not the way his body is broken by the hands that reach inside of him, intimate and omnipresent despite his attempts to distance himself from the sensation. he can feel markus's fingertips against his bones, polyalloy structure giving way with a single, nauseating crunch as his hip is reconfigured by amateur, but steady, hands. even behind his hands, with his eyes closed and his vision dimmed to near-darkness, he sees color as his system lights up like a wildfire.

catastrophic damage detected.

no reassurances he tells himself will rid him of the alarm, the warning. the notification that part of his body has ceased to function and equilibrium has been lost. the knowledge that this back alley surgical procedure might not work has not escaped him. he's only deigned to tell markus of the dangers of reconstructing an outdated body without the proper tools. it's not like they could have stayed in the warehouse, though. this has to do, this has to work. ]

-- I'm okay.

[ he remembers to say it, through the canned, strangled tone his voice has taken on. not pain, not so much.

distraction. dizzy and surreal, while his system plows ahead and desperately attempts to balance itself. ]

Thirium levels are sub-optimal, but holding. I'm not bleeding out.

[ simon pulls his hands down, away from his face, and props himself up on his elbows. his eyes wandering from the null space where his leg should be, where markus's hand is. along the line of his wrist, his forearm. though he doesn't need to, simon swallows. swallows the warmth that spreads through his throat and collarbones, humming like liquid across his ribs. ( something sparks, in his stomach. the signal shooting throughout him, through the connection of foreign fingers poised within his body: a desperate, muted yearningwanting. the ghostly feeling of markus in his arms, markus spread across his back. the weight of him as he sagged in the church, unconscious into his arms - white cloth flowing like a shroud around him. solid, physical. realalive. ) ]

This will work.

[ promises. ]

[Hank didn't even acknowledge Gavin's comment. What better way than to just go on as if nothing happened. Honestly, it as more unnerving to see a blue-eyed taller Connor each time a situation like this happened, but Hank had accepted the extra aid quick enough. Heck, he even had a nickname for the android since he figured Gavin wouldn't even bother.]

Reed. Conrad. Evening.

[Taking the pad that had given him, Hank quickly highlights and lists out what the first respondents had found so far. But honestly, this is more for Gavin and Hank's sake since the androids could just get the information from the pad itself.]

We've got eight confirmed deaths, one survivor in critical condition heading to the hospital, three eye-witnesses from the room including two androids, and an android and human working front desk. They're all being kept in the hotel's staff room until we get to them.

[Honestly, the should be more people and androids for this mess, but Connor and 'Conrad' could offset their current lack of manpower until more units arrived.]

The press already got word of this shit going down, so we gotta work as fast to figure out who's involved. [Which means, time to get serious.] Connor and I will deal with the two bodies closer to the building. You two go upstairs and get as much information as you can before we come and join you. More CSI personel should be here in about ten minutes.

[The more information they gather, the easier it will be to interview all of the witnesses and figure out how the largest homicide case on January 1st in the past thirty years happened.]

Let's go!

Edited 2018-07-25 02:49 (UTC)

[Connor nods a greeting back to his upgraded counterpart, polite but distant, and much like his partner, elected to ignore the other detective entirely aside from a neutral glance in his direction. Not that ignoring Gavin will really do much in the long run but annoy the man, but it's less energy spent that could be better used towards the investigation.

And the other Connor—or Conrad, as Hank refers to him—has echoed his thoughts. They need to get to the case at hand.

He listens to the briefing without comment for now, bringing a hand to rest against his chin in thought. Although he's certainly eager to hear the story from the witnesses, investigating the bodies and the scene first will give them some time to calm down.

After the lieutenant's orders, Connor casts a final glance at the other two before focusing his attention on the fallen bodies not too far away, and turns to head over and investigate them without saying much of anything—just because there's not much to say yet. A deviant he may be, but his single-minded dedication to solving cases like this hasn't changed much.]

Edited (i rearranged the sentence and the pronouns were weird) 2018-07-25 03:55 (UTC)

[Scrambling. This doesn’t look like scrambling. This is organized, adaptive and adjusted in the way that prey in the wild evades the glint of metal in cool streams after nearly losing its tongue, it’s teeth. It is not like the roses in Amanda’s garden: growing wherever it can take root, not knowing when or where the shears will come to close around their stiffened necks. He was designed for a purpose; he knows better.

He smiles, in a way. Too much teeth.]

Nice try.

[If he hadn't seen Jericho before, he might have actually believed it. One footstep taken into the room, heel to toe, slanted at an angle that doesn't steer the sight of his handgun. His smile disappears. Dark eyes harden.]

PL600. [Connor says it like it means something— and it does.] I’m faster than you, and I’m stronger than you. By the time you pull that trigger I will have already put a bullet through your vital functions, severing your motor skills in exactly 0.0237 seconds. If in that amount of time you successfully destroy me, Cyberlife will upload my memories into a new body.

I will come back, and I will finish my mission. You will not.

[It looks like Daniel. (They all look like Daniel, he retroactively corrects) There is a pained gauntness to its cheeks, the hollows of its eyes, as pretty as it was intended to be. A mother, a father, a machine capable of emulating the illusion of love for the human families that relied on its presence, all presumably repurposed in the decay of deviancy. He can see its jagged stress levels, he can see how tightly it grips the rifle in its hands— he isn’t certain, his view is too backlit— but there is something that registers as familiar in the silhouette of its coat.

He steps closer again. Strafing slightly. His finger rising visibly away from the trigger in a show of goodwill. Too cleanly, Connor switches his vocal intonation (human, more human) when he asks:]

You want to live, don’t you?

[It ran. It hid. It did not shut down, and considering how mechanically short-lived his series is, there is a logical conclusion to be found. (Daniel wanted to survive. He wanted to escape.)]

Tell me where your leader is, and I’ll make sure you can come back with me. Alive and intact.

No one else needs to be destroyed.

[Connor's right about one thing: it does annoy him, more than the hand on his shoulder, more than the way Hank's voice pitches when he's running the show with a clear head and a couple of sharp eyes. Gavin's face sours, his lips purse tight— he doesn't say it out loud, that he doesn't need a reminder to do his job— but he thinks it.

He thinks it real hard.

Still, now that androids counted as people instead of mobile tech centers (paychecks and all, what a fucking world), Gavin's habits don't run as hot as they used to. The only thing that comes before his trip up the hotel forefront into the lobby is one last, heated scoff. RK9, he figures, will do its job and follow. Same as it always does.]

One of these days, I'm gonna teach you how to back me up for a change.

[Electric. Humming. The brush of connective circuitry finds him as Simon's systems level out, and he rocks forward over his knees more than his heels to catch it, occupying the space between Simon’s thigh and emptied hip socket. It’s feedback. (His own? No— he hadn’t carried Markus in his arms— it was Simon— Simon, Simon Simon, the name means less and more, it slides around inside of him between wires and vacant spaces, a spreading concacenation) Something digital corrupted and overwritten. His mind palace. His core.

‘We'll talk after. I promise..’ And it is after. And he—

Has never had a good sense of timing.

His hand sinks deeper, seeking out warm spaces filled with charged, living currents.]

I’ll go back if it doesn’t. [Markus exhales] I’ll get whatever you need.

[Tools, equipment, hardware, a body, an army, an end, a beginning, a gospel made of plastic and thirium and the beat, beat, beat of his regulated heart as it screams defiantly in the face of deafening loyalty. His side aches. Branded plastic stiff from where he'd been burned by Lucy's hands, and it doesn't twist as easily when he shifts across his forearms. He should have replaced it; he never did.

A lifetime ago (not so long ago) he knew how to stand still. How to exist quietly and ask for nothing, because he needed nothing. Now, he moves, so fast and so hard that his feet can't stop; they've gone over the edge. If Simon wants an apotheosis, then he'll press jacketed thorns into his housing and bleed until there's nothing left but absolution or ash. If Simon wants him, he'll— strip radiance from his false skin. He'll sink, heavy, hopeful, down into those arms.

That's the outcome that he wants. Simon was always better at it, giving himself up for their people.

He sets fractured metal aside. On his knees. Broad coat tails spread like wings across dirtied flooring. He nests his fingers in unsealed wiring, he puts his mouth to the concept of their consciousness, keyed so high that his own automated subprocesses suspend themselves. He could transfer what he knows of love and sex and violence— but he only pulls, working frayed titanium between his knuckles at a subduing pace. Explores through long seconds whatever Simon allows. To be inside of him and a part of him, working to the surface those vivid pangs of stop-start data flow, actively suppressed by Simon's conscious efforts.

Let go of it.

It’s his profile that he drops into the hollowed line of Simon's hip, just where it meets his thigh. Scuffing. Remorseless. He opens his mouth, draws fabric between his teeth.]

[ there is

a flicker of something neon-bright in one of simon's eyes. a mote of light that shimmers briefly, splitting the shadows that he has eclipsed himself in. it is mirrored in the steady, unwavering blue at his temple. there is a gun leveled at him, and it does not register as something to panic over - something that has been prepared for in advance. simon may not have the precognitive ability to read a situation and map out the most optimal route to advance along, be it physical or psychological, but he has learned to function - outside of his parameters, with experience to his life that most androids did not have. there was one other.

( he'd heard that rupert had jumped to his death, rather than allow himself to be taken in by the DPD -- he'd flown, like the birds he loved ) ]

I know.

[ it isn't conversational, it is an admission of understanding. simon knows that he is outclassed, easily outmaneuvered. when he dies, connor will simply return - unyielding, until the last of his empty shells are wasted on his pursuit. killing him in this place was not an option, it was a waste of time and resources. his tension is visible in the tightness of his mouth, the set of his jaw, the line of his shoulders. made wider, even still, by the shape of markus's coat upon them. the bullet holes have been left where connor had put them, but the thirium-blue stains have faded in time. a memory, more than a manifestation.

simon doesn't lower the gun, but he doesn't move his finger any closer to the trigger, either. ]

Oh, Connor. I'm not alive, [ he says, like a soft refrain that's carried on all this time. markus isn't here to hear him, now. ]

Jericho could never understand, but I know you do.

[ things happen: markus's hand slides deeper, into the exposed cavity and over sensory connections. simon doubles-up, one of his hands pulled away from his face ( from where it follows the bridge of his nose and calculates the exact angle, numerical procedure to keep his systems busy and compromised while markus breaks him into pieces in the hopes that his system will be fooled into integrating an advanced limb ). his hand closes around markus's forearm as it begins to vanish into the socket where his thigh ought to be. ]

Markus -- not there.

[ we'll talk later, he had promised. ]

Not there, [ he repeats; the flex of his arm a solid thing, attempting to guide markus's hand from the empty cavity full of soft wires and warm connections. away from where jericho's leader is trying to crawl inside of him and seek out his neural endings and worn interior. already, he can feel the way markus is reaching out to him. the slow and liquid-silk brush of all things that he was, worming its way up through his body. the spark of a thing in his belly, ricocheting and overlapping digital curses, pressing itself against the errors his system has cataloged for review. he is not as far gone as he was before, in the traincar. the damage is bad, but he has found

a middleground. ] Here.

[ he doesn't ask that markus move his face, from where it has begun to tuck itself. he even gives up on removing markus's hand from the place it has found, too warm and too hummingelectricbright. instead, he grabs for the other hand. the one that sits idle while markus's mind begins to quest for what fragments he can reach. it is frightening, to see jericho's hope, mouth soft against the crook of his thigh. teeth working at the cloth he has used to hide bare, synthetic skin even against eyes that would undoubtedly understand, lack judgement of physical form. or the lack of form.

it is

empowering, to see what was meant to be jericho's -- here, burning. piety of the flesh. simon feels like a serpent. ]

Here, [ simon repeats. a broken mantra of the most simple words, as he nudges his shirt's hem higher and slides the heel of his hand along his abdominal panel. the spark of conversation works between his mechanical brain and his physical processes, and his skin fades away in liquid patches, baring his belly as it caves and slides open to expose deeper mechanisms. the steady pulse of his thirium-blue regulator, soft and glowing.

he brings markus's other hand to all of it, and sinks him in up to his knuckles. and falls back, fingers uncurling. letting go. ]

[He doesn't know if that's really what he meant. Or not all of it. He wants to know the rest of it, like how suddenly there are circumstances where North can be proving to the humans that retreat is in their best interests.

But he can admit to being distracted by the small symphony of technical data feeding directly under his fingertips now as Markus reseals the crooked shoulder plate. A hundred blinking diagnostic errors ping back and revert to rerunning for resolving damage, logging one after another: green, green, green, connection not detected, connection not detected, green, connected not detected-----

Simom shifts, a full body flex. His hand comes up automatically to touch his own face, blinking rapidly at the feel of his own fingertips against his skin and the deadzones where no contact registers on his face, just his fingers feeling some ragged anonymous edge that might belong to anyone.

It's just for a second though. Then his hand falls away.]

If they're out there being a distraction, we should probably get moving. I think we can go now.

[He can mostly feel all this fingers and toes now because-- Simon turns his face to him. Looks at him directly instead of just edges of Markus's face or fingertios in his rigid peripheral vision.

(Androids don't look tired. Repairs willing, they can look the same forever. But he looks it anyway.)]

Markus-- [Thank you, he could say. Instead Simon touches his arm, squeezes with some modicum of strength to prove he has it.]

[It isn’t— strange despite the fact that he was never written with instructions for this. He has no compass, and the only map that spreads out before him is the figure spread out for him, battered and brilliant in cold, suffused light. Hands that pull, pointing out whispered waypoints: not there, here. Here. Connectivity sings in the gaps between those words, and he feels himself thinking it in time as they slip out from somewhere inside Simon's upturned lips.

Here. Here—

Simon’s manufactured interior beckons, and Markus answers, not with a voice that longs to be human, but the soundless one that promises he’s something else entirely: a language of hunger that maintains no etiquette, to tell him that he shouldn’t— delve deep into the dense tangle of internal wiring and connective divides, curving his wrist against the grain. There are deep grooves, notches he can't identify at first. Doubling back over score marks, function melds with feeling: here, the empty basin where a connecting rod has warped over time and rubbed against its connecting shell; here, deeper, a passageway for accumulated debris sports hatchmarks from years of disrepair. Here. Here, he feels life, trembling against assembled confines.

He pays his tribute with searching hands.

He rolls his spine, and it alters where his fingers lie, deep and high and hot from running synthesis. He’s been hunted; this time he hunts, lifting brilliant eyes from where he’s buried his face, watching— everything. Simon's naked fingertips as they let go, the way his face tips as he lets go, visible just over the arch of his chest and its exposed undercarriage, blue and bright and beckoning, interrupted by the smooth plating of Markus's immersed forearm.

(He wonders brieftly what it would be like to fit more of himself inside and watch, without looking away, where the merger of their bodies begins and ends)

The lowered angle of his right hand, tucked and shifting on some absent, unintended line, catches against sturdy contours; it ricochets sharp and clear, forcing him to blink, and it's only as he flexes his fingertips within febrile cables that he realizes it's part of his own chassis— fingers clipping over fingers, heat trapped tightly between them— ]

Edited 2018-07-30 02:09 (UTC)

It isn’t the approach he instinctively wants to take. They’re too coming too close, risking a pinpoint location in exchange for a few minutes more of distraction— but he trusts her (he always has; Jericho always has), and if he weighs it out in his mind, their own freedom in exchange for the androids they’ll have saved...

...the math does itself.

As she darts in (drone circling high over their heads in alert), Markus levels the gun he’d been keeping. Two shots (he only needs one), ensuring their last known location is a likely dead-end to anyone unfamiliar with the area, and that the tailing cars won’t miss the noise. It’ll prompt witnesses, it’ll draw in attention. Good.

He drops the gun, ducking beneath the fence after North, and pressing his now-free hand to his chest. The leak has slowed, his self repair functions are trying, but— the fabric is soaked through, and he’s stressed his automated responses by running for nearly five blocks straight, pumping thirium through his limbs at a heightened rate.

He doesn’t stop.

Squadron cars do, however, sirens wailing high and loud. Doors swing open, voices overlapping at their backs as he catches up to North's silhouette. Footsteps loud between mountains of scrap and discarded machinery.

Jhansi... [Markus mouths back, a half-formed thought, wordlessly blinking his way through it— and setting it aside along with the now-emptied container of Blue Blood. There's a lot that he could say, starting with thanking her for saving his life. The last of Jericho's living, if the deadened connection he leaves to echo out across the city is right.

Instead, he shoves himself forward with effort, away from the heap of camouflaged scrap she's aligned for him, bypassing the miniature armory at her heels (volatile, but not enough to protect either of them, should the military succeed in tracking them down).] I'm ready now.

[He isn't, not really. Warnings still frame the lining of his vision, fingers shaking as they curl deep into dust. None of it deters him.]

The sooner we get away from these windows, the better.

[In advancing, his occular components are better able to acclimate to the deep shadows that surround them. He sees more of the deviant's face now, how slivers of cast light sink into the hollows of its eyes. Blue. Its LED is blue. It is focused, and so it is also unafraid, defying the standard reactive fear that defines all deviants (aside from one model in particular. two, now). It wears—

His left heel scuffs sharply, touching dust-slick flooring with more pressure than he'd originally intended, interrupting the smoothness of his stride.

—it wears the fatal evidence of his confirmed success. Heavy canvas, a reinforced collar, twin diamonds etched in white on one sleeve. His memory is wholly accurate; he does not need to strain to recognize the exact positioning of each puncture mark, left intentionally unrepaired.

A PL600 unit. A domestic assistant near the end of its lifespan, docile and rudimentary in function. Cyberlife's first real foray into accommodating the needs of working-class human families. And it is draped, purposefully, in the crown of Jericho.

A PL600. The target of his mission. The Deviant Leader.

(Yellow— red, red— ) He stops entirely. His handgun slants as he processes more than those visible details, forcing calculated logic into the incomplete picture they've compiled. This is an anomaly. This is— not the RK200’s transferred consciousness. Similar and too dissimilar. Too impossible. This is new.

Cyberlife would want it alive.

His priorities realign: assess, persuade, obtain.]

You’re right. I do understand.

[Connor's features are designed to be pleasing. His eyes are wide set and deep, and the thickened eyebrows that slant upwards above them only serve to highlight how innocuous he can make himself seem when necessary. A trait he exploits now with subtle shifts in tone and posture. In the way that he lifts his gun, flashing its side as his fingers relax and point skyward. A fired shot from the Deviant now would undoubtedly find its mark, but it would not prevent him from destroying it in retaliation.

It leaves them on even ground.]

Which is why I think we should...talk.

[He blinks twice. Three times. Rapidly, earnestly. The pause he inserts is thoughtful. Or it would be, if it were coming from a human, false breath pinned delicately against the back of his teeth.]

Edited 2018-07-30 13:12 (UTC)

North briefly glanced back at the sound of the gun firing, a smile flickering onto her face at Markus actually using the weapon. It was just a moment and over, her attention back to the path ahead of them, before Markus entered the scrapyard and fell into step with her.

The paths throughout the stacked vehicles, littered parts, rusted steel beams and sheet metal wasn't easy even for androids to traverse. It was narrow and there were many places that required turning sideways to get through or junk breaking the line that required climbing over. Keeping close to the tall stacks so that the drone couldn't see them, North squeezed behind an old rusted truck that had slid off the top of a stack to get stuck nose down, making use of the shelter it provided.

Kneeling down, she gestured Markus close - listening for their pursuit - and used their network to show him her intended course to the sinkhole in the back of the scrapyard they needed to go down into to access the sewers. If he disagreed with her, this was the time to let her know.

[RK900 makes eye contact with Connor as the other android looks back, and watches him go. RK900 may be the more advanced model, but his predecessor has interested him ever since he learned that he was initially designed to replace him.]

[He finally looks to Gavin when he speaks, giving him an intent look.]

Perhaps when we're not on a case, Detective. As Lieutenant Anderson said, we're in a hurry.

[Moving ahead, he gets to work examining objects and damage, and licking various splatters of fluids.]

[ simon wears their fallen leader's coat; it breaks up his softer silhouette, the lines and planes of a body designed by cyberlife to be welcoming and nurturing. compassionate, towards the demands of the working family and their struggles. the cut of markus's coat makes him look broader. not any more imposing, but definitely gaunt and phantasmal -- when connor finds the correct angle, the lighting finally giving way to deep shadows and stark highlights, simon's face is schooled. calm. rational as any machine. the LED at his temple does not shift in hue, nor blink in thought.

he is rock-steady, and his eyes are as dead as jericho's former messiah.

under the hem of connor's ridiculous hat, he can see the faintest of glows. the bright red of an android in psychological crisis, processes running up against a difficulty that it must rapidly adapt in accordance to. he assumes, in this moment, it is because connor has never considered that a model such as the PL600 was capable of leadership in any sort of degree. and that satisfies him, in a way that is not machine. it is very, very deviant of him. it gives him something to hold onto, to feed into. even the deviant hunter could be caught off-guard, it seemed. ]

I'm glad.

[ simon's forefinger flexes, reminding the hunter in the room that he, too, has not placed a finger on the trigger. ]

We had considered that you would be the most reasonable agent that Cyberlife could send after us.

[ a human would find sweet comfort in connor's mannerisms, in the way his sweet expression would soften, the way his voice would shift in cadence and approach something soothing, something like empathy. but simon, designed for such things ( to a lesser degree, to an inferior degree -- ) does not lean into them in the way he imagines the hunter would want him to. in the end, he admires and despises this android before him. because he has it all, and because he took everything from simon. from their people. ]

Jericho has abandoned this place by now. I'm the only one left. We have all the time to speak together now. Leave your gun to the side, and I'll do the same.

[ simon tips the barrel away from connor, slowly. ]

We both know you could easily deconstruct an old model like me. You don't need a gun to do it.

[I'm glad, it says, as cold and unfluctuating as the flat blue of its sunken irises.

Connor isn't certain he believes that.

Still, the handgun he places to one side against a low section of collapsed shelving, only a step away, which leaves it well within reach should something go awry. He does not, as it rightly claims, need it to destroy an outdated resource; he subsequently will not rule out the possibility of deception, or assistance waiting for an opportunity to rescue Jericho's current leader from its own predetermined fate. He can retrieve this model, he can destroy it.

He cannot fail.]

I don't. [He agrees, tugging the cap from his head and loosing a handful of dark, messy curls that rush to tangle against his forehead. It highlights how the line of his stare drops towards Simon's chest. The coat. Its unmended gaps, left open and bared.]

Though it would be unpleasant for us both if I was forced to.

[He does not emulate softness in that moment.]

What is it you want?

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Page 7 of 11

DETROIT BECOME HUMAN OPEN RP POST

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I can't believe we're gonna write smash here but these androids can't be stopped

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S M A S H

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