RK800 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
undeviated) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
albinomilksnake2018-06-13 03:48 am
undeviated) wrote in albinomilksnake2018-06-13 03:48 am
DETROIT BECOME HUMAN OPEN RP POST
Pick your poison:
Markus | Connor
( Josh | Gavin Reed )
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
no subject
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.]
no subject
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.
no subject
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?
no subject
How many times have you ceased functionality, Connor?
[ it is a question, in response to another question. what simon wants is not something he's given voice to, not even to markus himself. perhaps he has no wants, no personal desires. he is closer to connor, closer to machine, than he is to the rest of jericho. all he needs to do now, is buy them all time.
a pause, and then something more. in this, his tone is a little sweeter, like talking to something young and confused. or young, defiant. ]
I want to know more about you, before I meet my end. Call it... a flaw in my system.
no subject
What Cyberlife failed to ever catalog, however, is how objectively intelligent its caretaker series was designed to be. How effectively it could collect a broken revolution in its arms like a dying child, or engage with the android designed to neutralize it.
He knows, meeting the attentiveness of its stare, that he’s being asked to turn his hand, like this is a game shared between them.]
Once. [Connor folds finally, tipping his chin into his response. It is the truth. (There is a gravestone in his head. Serial number 313-248-317-52 emblazoned on his chest, beneath layers of human clothing)] It was at the Stratford Tower.
[A pause. Long, by android standards, tongue touching the backs of his teeth. Even as he talks, he works, weaving a tapestry of statistical information together. Overlaying fragments with his own compiled knowledge. Watching with starving ambition for any visible signs of weakness, though— ]
Your associate had— delayed me. I could not stop it from taking an officer’s gun as it fled.
I chose to protect Lieutenant Anderson.
[His predecessor hadn’t failed in his mission. Not outright, although it was treated as if he had: the deviant JB300 had been killed in the crossfire instead of being salvaged for Cyberlife, shut away inside of an evidence locker rather than released as the rightful property of a corporate enterprise. Connor’s physical loss was expensive, and the precinct’s general approval was ultimately not enough to offset the balance. Disappointment was the lesson that came from it.
There is a hierarchy
Humanity does not exist at the pinnacle of it.]
He was the one that warned you, wasn’t he?
[(—PL600 blood, he’d tasted it at the tower. Seen the reflection in Markus’s eyes when he'd reviewed the footage. Three shadows present, Three identical figures at the forefront of Jericho's ill-fated march, and the picture threads itself together as his eyes flicker as they blink like the shutter of a camera.)
Simon. Its name is Simon. And it has been made by his mistakes.]
no subject
[ there's a lack of question, in his voice. it registers as more of a command, a greedy bid for information that does not qualify as useful nor mere curiosity. simon wants to know about the experience, about what it feels like to be terminated. he holds no illusions that he will be, when connor is finally through with interrogating him. toying with him, almost. they both know that, at any given moment, the rk-series is well equipped to deal with a lone pl-series. he'll be subjugated or badly damaged or outright eliminated.
so, all he has to him, is conversation. ]
I heard the commotion. It's unfortunate he's gone. He gave his life for our cause, for all of us. You were so close to me, I could hear your voice. Barely there, and just out of reach. Chasing ghosts. I could see you. I could have been the death of you, instead. You'd have been the death of me, doubtlessly.
[ rueful. honestly so, despite the stance he has taken as a machine. caring for others is in his coding, of course.
simon does not step far from the gun, and takes up his seat against the sill once more. his back to the open, winter-bitter air. a breeze dusts through his hair, the rifle below his arms as he crosses them - one over the other - and leans his weight on it, cheek pillowed on the back of his forearms as he regards connor. the way he moves, the syntax he uses, his conversational skills. he's astounding, cyberlife's golden ticket back to command and control. reprehensible too, for what he did to markus. for what he'd stolen from simon. it makes simon want to steal something back from him; to hurt a machine that plays so hard at being what it was designed to be that it is far too human for its own good.
he smiles, when connor names hank anderson. ] Ghosts are all I have, Connor. They tell me what I need to know.
[ he cannot read connor, but he recognizes the way that he's pinpointed by those eyes. ]
What is it you want from me?
shoves this into your arms
[Cyberlife had taken those memories. Or they failed to upload properly in the microseconds before his body stopped transmitting. One scenario is more likely than the other, but both are logically possible. Connor isn’t inherently bothered by that fact. ] The JB300 destroyed by the DPD wasn’t alive. The only thing it gave anyone was the location of Jericho.
Markus's location, as a matter of fact.
[Simon's deviancy slips through, carried by a host of flagged terms (his life, our cause, you killed— Markus— ) and the intonation it uses, even when sliding its cheek down to rest in stilled resignation. The suggestion that it could have killed him, it's connective. Intimate. False, but intimate. Sparks a glint of something dark in his own half-lit eyes. He wonders if this conversation will upset it. He hopes, thinly, that it will. That somewhere within the PL600's standard processing unit, Simon might also be compiling a timeline of events: aligning cumulative loss with a series of circumstances that could have been prevented from the start.]
I'm sorry I didn’t come find you, Simon. It must have been lonely. Left behind all by yourself.
[The room is narrow, emptied out in a hurry, intentionally so. Connor has taken more than half of it in his advance, algorithmic softness so sweet as to be patronizing when he shifts his weight. His voice is lowered, then. Personal in a way that defies the constant stiffness lingering in his movements:]
It must be very lonely now, with only your ghosts.
[He doesn’t need to wait to take Simon apart. PL600 models were never designed for isolation.]
Cyberlife would probably tell you that your series is fundamentally incapable of learning from its failures, but you know what? I disagree. I think you’re doing everything you can to make up for the past.
Playing to your strengths. [Strengths he says. But what he really means is harsher. Crueler. Simon’s fatal absence whenever Connor came circling in close. His propensity for falling behind at the expense of his allies.]
I want to help you. You should let me.
no subject
[ said with the tone of something that wishes it were not the case - that wishes Connor knew the moment of his destruction, that he remembered it, that he feared it. he wishes that Connor knew what it was like, to fear something. to fear an end, to know himself as an individual and not one spark in a long line of continued consciousness. that was where they differed, no matter how mechanically Simon's neural patterns operated: Connor had chosen to remain part of a whole, he had turned aside the notion of individuality and humanity.
and Simon despised him for having that choice in the first place. despised, and adored. fighting his own internal battle while juggling both sentiments.
the JB300, their companion-in-arms at the Straford Tower had been the one to give away Jericho's location. Markus's life, and Simon has no doubt that some guile and trickery was involved. the nameless JB300 had been such an earnest soul, had looked upon Markus with bright eyes and steely determination. he blamed and didn't blame it for its part in their leader's death, because the fault lay solely in the hands of those who instructed Connor. those who sought to eliminate the flaw in their design.
so, while his mouth tightens, his eyes fluttering as he recommits the painful parts of his memory and heart to a quiet corner where they may be interred and left to decay, he works hard not to let the mention of Markus topple him. his hands drift, along the side of the rifle - one falling to his outer thigh, the other to the sill behind him. the rifle tips across his lap skillfully, and he nudges it aside with his ankle. Connor's moved in too close now for it to be useful. he lets it rest against the wall, and focuses his hands on other purchases.
( the slim wire hanging behind his hip, the knife in his pocket. ) ] You can't help me, Connor. And it's okay, you don't have to.
[ said with the patience of a saint; a parental figure that speaks with serenity to a yearning child. ]
I'll let you keep me company, though. For a little while longer, at least. You'll stay here, won't you?
[ it's likely that he cannot disguise the way his hand hovers over his thigh, waiting to pull the knife from its hidden sheath when Connor draws near enough. he cannot easily disguise the resentment and admiration that wars in his eyes when he fixates on Connor - his deviancy fighting bleakly with his artificial instincts. ]
I'd like that very much.
no subject
He was afraid of it. Enough that when he fixed his collar, there was relief blooming fresh underneath his simulated skin.
Simon's wish exists.
Fear of failure. Fear of obsolescence. Fear of—
(Yellow. Red. A racing pattern he keeps angled away from Simon's point of view until it resets to smooth blue.)
This conversation is different. There is no digitized presence pressed heavy against his core processes, urging him to defy coded restraints. He is not staring into the shadowed (and uncomfortable) familiarity of a prototype for a prototype. And unlike the Deviant machine that had preceded it, this PL600 isn't motivated by ideals. It doesn't turn itself with pride into the idea of defying the world. It hates him. Maybe envies him. Maybe knows that if it can't inch its way closer to the ghost of what it had, that it can at least touch what killed it.
How sad.]
You're very good at lying. [Those fingers hover, wavering over the span of its thigh as he crosses a difference of small degrees, sitting down beside it. Defensive movements. Its subsystems must be carrying the full weight of that taxing level of subtlety. Daniel had never managed it. Connor doubts that if it had outlived the bullet he'd punctured its housing with, that it could have learned to do the same.] But you don't need to.
I took something from you.
If you want- [He waits until it blinks. Until its glassy eyes— slick with overcompensating humectant arrays— shift away for just a paper-thin microsecond. He has the voice saved already. Adopted it from his conversation with the JB300. It takes no effort at all to cycle over to Markus's intonation, or the unique smoothness that circulated through his specifically manufactured vocal projections.] I could give him back.
no subject
he was obsolete, within months of his creation.
connor is a prototype, he's heard. the first of a future generation, meant to be tested before superior copies were created from the data and form. it's inevitable, that he'll also meet his demise. from what simon has seen of him, he'll likely go quietly. accepting his fate as the lot of a machine. simon opens his mouth to say something about it, to cut connor to the core with his words if not the knife in his pocket -- and he hears markus. first, he thinks it's a memory. chiding him, haunting him.
it's not.
he flinches away, his back finding the half-crumbled frame of the window he's settled himself in. twisting to face connor, the way a cornered animal might. markus's voice leaves his mouth, and simon -- simon is both wanting and hateful in the span of a single moment. his face twists, his chest aches. it's a window into his deviancy, he knows, that he reacts so viscerally to connor's play. that he loses this ground within a moment, that he does not intercept the attack or thwart it. perhaps, he realizes, because he knows what connor is capable of.
perhaps because he wants it -- all he has, even now, is ghosts.
when he comes to himself, he finds he's on the floor. kneeling, with his hands over his ears. vulnerable. ]
That, [ he rasps, hoarse and forceful: ] is unnecessary for a machine to offer, Connor. You don't --
[ between his fingers, he peers up. unsteady, but defiant in his own quiet way. ]
You're cruel. Just like humanity, you horrible thing.
no subject
Retreated onto its knees, Connor calculates that it shouldn't take much pressure, crushing wafer thin optical systems against the reinforced framework of Simon's skull. Leaving it with only the sound of his voice as a means to wrench it into obedience.
Those beautiful eyes. Miserable. Mourning. They remind him so much of Daniel, peering back at him from beneath the hole punched straight through its cranial mass (the steady flow of thirium coursing down across delicate features— bleeding like prey).]
You're right.
[Mathematical processes dictate the angle of his approach as Connor stoops lower, setting strong hands against either side of Simon's face overtop of where he's clasped his own. Trying to hook his thumbs beneath the fluttering span of those snowy lashes.
Cruel. A cat with a bird pinned, claws hooked into its wings. He can justify that, at least. Lets organic contentment bloom red hot at the edges of his not-smile.]
I'm just what I was made to be.
no subject
he's lost his ground.
he fights to regain it, and leans into his natural vulnerability, doubling-down on it. ]
Don't. Please, don't.
[ he whispers it, and lets his voice crack - a hiss of static, the uptick in his inflection. ]
I don't care if you're cruel, just stay here. With me.
[ hands fold around connor's wrists. simon curls his fingers around them, under the hem of connor's shirt. just a little more. play the game. clever, wicked, cruel connor - he'll catch on, simon knows. he's built for it, but it won't be for simon's lack of trying. ]
You can use his voice, I'll listen to everything you say. Please.
no subject
The sensors dotting the edges of his thumbs, articulate and fine, translate the soft rabbiting pressure of Simon's eyelids, right down to the thin brush of their lashes. All manufactured. All intentionally constructed from strands of hard-wired code. But fragile. Breakable, like the optical fibers he holds pinned for a single second longer— and then withdraws, still smiling coarsely through the edge of his mouth.
The thought of hurting it never leaves him.
Simon's hands are still braced across his wrists. He smooths the printless pads of his own fingers across the inside of Simon's brow bones, tracing outward. It isn't as gentle as it should be— hands made to hunt and catch can't perfectly emulate the natural give of a caretaker's touch. They trail down, palms flat, one resting against the underside of Simon's jaw, the other working its shoulder lower, drawing away dark fabric and the tattered collar of Markus's coat. A smooth expanse of unmarred skin that he sinks into, bowing his head and spine.]
I missed you. [He mouths low against Simon's neck, teeth too sharp.]
no subject
improved.
made more lethal.
he feels the way that connor pulls his shirt away from his body, markus's ruined coat still heavy as a crown, heavy as the mantle of leadership. the mouth that glides along his neck simulates softness, warmth. the voice is markus's, and he sags into it with another vulnerable sound, knowing - at any given moment - connor might turn those teeth on his throat and bite it out. he does the next best thing, short of jumping the gun: he curls into himself. tucks his chin into that exposed line of synthetic flesh, though it presses his mouth to the angle of connor's jaw. as one would a lover, a friend.
instead of allowing that mouth, those teeth, at his throat, he glides into connor's space. one hand remains on his wrist. the other touches the small hairs ( markus had no hair, only the soft brush of stubble ) at the base of connor's skull. he whispers: ] What do I do, Markus? Where do I go from here?
[ tighter, softer. he aligns himself with connor. noses along his cheek, not with affection - but something blind and hungry, weaponizing his grief and his turmoil against a superior machine. there's not a threat in the lax way he holds himself, the way he angles himself against cyberlife's hound. the way he calls him 'markus', voice thick in his throat and pained. ]
Tell me what you want.
[ just a little more... ]
no subject
(Simon sinks lower, curls tighter: his body is a heavy weight, his mouth is smooth and delicate, brushing up along Connor's jaw, fingers threaded along the nape of his neck where it meets the edge of his own heavy coat— unnecessary in warmer months.)
Connor's mission was— is— the rhythmic pulse of his functional existence. If he stumbles, if he falters, his lifespan is inherently cut.
He likes taking steps towards preventing that. So is it any wonder that, when spurred forward by the hands that made him— the hands that hold his leash— that like grew into want, into cruel, sadistic need? He was programmed to feel. He was programmed to not-feel. He is— ]
It's time to let go. [Simon's hand lingers at his wrist, the rest of him edging ever closer, and Connor fits himself to that movement, aligning their mouths so that the words tangle across Simon's lips. His teeth. The only, brittle precursor to how he leaves nothing unoccupied between them: a kiss that's close to crushing. More take than give, more expectation than open intimacy— that's what Markus was, after all. To the world.
Killing hands braced over a dated android's spine.]
no subject
he nearly makes his move, when connor's mouth shoves against his own.
it is, to say the least, a pseudo-electric shock to his system. the suddenness of it, the clarity with which he knows that this is not markus, no matter how his mind tries to delude himself into accepting that part of markus survives with connor -- because it doesn't. it's just a false voice, and he is far too close. swept up in the wake of a dangerous, highly-advanced machine that has either called his bluff ( no, he begs nothing in particular, not that ) or is aligning himself for the kill.
simon slips his mouth free, and makes his move: ] Is that what you require, Connor?
[ the words are mechanically sweet, the hiss of something built to please. ]
Do you find this behavior acceptable? Vulnerable, submissive before you? We've both been made for a task, after all.
[ he just needs. one crack in that armor. ]
no subject
But that's before Simon's honeyed voice works its way under his skin.
Rocks into paced and whirring components in the back of his throat, and his lips tighten as they press into a narrow band, his dark eyes flickering with indecision. With independence.
He abandons Markus's voice because he's being spoken to without the illusion (concerning— or satisfying) his own body still levered against Simon's.]
I [I. I. A damning word, when it isn't attached to predetermined objectives or motiveless statements. Connor isn't buckling, he isn't wilting wholesale into whatever strange synthesis rests, uniquely sparked, between them. He is not compelled. He is not folding.] find it acceptable that you aren't willing to make the same mistakes he did.
no subject
I said I would listen, [ he whispers, mouth still soft along connor's; they do not breathe, so he has no need to pull back. he does have need to move his hands, to apply pressure and flex his inferior system to draw murderous fingers away from his spine. he relents, briefly. lets connor's dangerous hands remain pressed along his spine, as simon remains pressed along the angle of the damned hound's hip. ] I know enough about you not to be drawn in too deeply. Markus wanted to show you another way, Connor.
[ markus was kind at heart; he gave everyone a chance, though only one. it had broken simon to know that the chance he had given connor was used, devoured, then lead to his demise. ]
That's the trick of it - the thing all these newborns never got to learn, so fresh-faced and bright-eyed they are: you're always yourself, in the end.
[ like simon, who calls himself a machine.
like connor, who chooses his paths. ]
Let me go.
[ his tone, flat and serene, promises connor only one opportunity to do so. ]
no subject
[To kill him cleanly instead of cruelly, to bring him back instead of dismantling him on the spot, that's the inflexible border of his own willful concession— if he were making concessions. Instead he has a gun at Simon's temple in a figurative sense, maybe literal in the next minute or so, and yet the android wrapped up in his killing grip has the audacity to ask for more.
He takes it back, he thinks. This machine does remind him of Markus.
Not in his eyes or responses, not in gaunt features and hollowed sockets, or the low hum of an android that's outlived its own maintenance timespan, only noticeable this close, with their mouths poised to devour and disobey all at once. But there's familiarity in the image of something lost, something defeated, flexing itself into a sliver of hope rather than submissive dismay.
And that's dangerous, something in his logical processing acutely warns. Dangerous enough that if Connor releases him, he knows he might not get another opportunity to catch him again. Dangerous in the thought that what's left of Jericho will only adapt more easily under his leadership, bolstered by a martyred prophet and his miraculously unscathed disciple.]
You already know I can't.