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Characters RK800 "Connor" and Hank Anderson
Fandoms: Detroit: Become Human
Summary: A new Connor is sent out after the first one is deactivated following a failed attempt at acquiring the illegal android known as York. Continued from this thread a few months later.

His eyes open.

He has two eyes. Of course. All CyberLife androids are modeled with the same basic features, but for some reason RK800 "Connor" has this strange, unreasonable expectation that he could lift his hand and touch a gaping orbital socket, delicate inner circuitry exposed to the non-sterile air. He doesn't. But for a moment the feeling is still there and he files it away as an error to report later.

It fades away by the time he exits HQ and takes the waiting SUV to his objective.

> Report to DPD Central
> Report/introduce self to [CAPTAIN] FOWLER, JEFFREY
> Report/introduce self to [LIEUTENANT] ANDERSON, HANK
> UPDATE command priority to include [LIEUTENANT] ANDERSON, HANK

After that, it becomes more open-ended, likely contingent on how things progress with his new partner...

He's distantly aware of men and women's faces turning to follow him as he marches out of Captain Fowler's office. Unaware that they've already seen him - an old, malfunctioning, obsolete predecessor - Connor heads to the next objective to his mission. Fowler has pointed out where Anderson's desk is and actually did a quiet double-take when he saw the man was actually sitting hunched at it. He'd muttered something like well I'll be damned, he's actually on time for a change.

Excellent. This saves Connor from having to search for him.

He strides right up to Hank's desk, coming to a stop with his perfect posture, looking at him with zero recognition, and he promptly holds out his hand for a handshake just like Laurier had all those months ago.

"Good morning, Lieutenant Anderson. My name is Connor: I'm the android sent by CyberLife."

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When Hank had come to work this morning, he was just coming off of a two-day bender. Luckily there hadn't been any real emergencies that couldn't be handled by the other DPD officers in that time, but now he was reaping what he sowed, with a hangover that made him want nothing more than to lay his head down on the cool surface of his desk and maybe attempt to sleep it off while looking like he was doing something vaguely work-like.

Until he hears a greeting, in a voice familiar to him in the way that a song he can't remember the title of anymore is familiar to him. His eyes are squinted against the overhead lights of the bullpen but soon he's able to focus on the face of the android that introduces itself, and he just. Freezes.

"Fuckin' Christ," he mutters, looking down at the hand presented to him and sneering. "The fuck do you want?"

His gesture is met with open hostility and it quickly becomes clear that Lieutenant Anderson won't be returning the handshake. Connor's hand drops back to his side, his face - intact without the gaping hole or the blue thirium weeping down like tear tracks - now infuriatingly placid.

"Starting today, I've been assigned as your partner."

A pause as he scans Hank, picks up the fairly recent scent of whiskey on his breath and the way he's still squinting his eyes against the overhead florescent lights as if they're personally offensive. A hard night out, it appears, and Connor will file a little reminder to himself to pick up something to help with the hangover. For now, though, he stares down at Hank with an android's blank-faced judgement.

"Are you fit to work? You look like you should have called out today."

"The hell you are," Hank argues immediately, leaning back in his desk chair just to direct his ire at Connor a little more fully. "I don't need a partner an' I don't want any fuckin' android tellin' me shit."

The briefly stiffened expression on Connor's face when he scans over Hank intensifies the dull rage he can feel building in his gut. He knows he's being...judged? No. Androids don't judge. They scan, take in all the minute little details, and lay out all your flaws for you in black and white.

And when that's exactly what Connor does, Hank does what feels necessary: He turns back to his computer monitor, and determinedly ignores him.

This isn't going as smoothly as he would have liked.

For a moment he sits there processing the exchange and runs through various approaches. Bringing Captain Fowler to read Lieutenant Anderson the riot act would be most expedient, but he suspects that it would upset both men and agitate his new, unreasonable partner more than he already was.

The android's head cocks slightly as he continues to stare mutely at Hank.

It would be best to try to settle this himself, ideally without human backup.

"Lieutenant," Connor begins again, his hands clasped in front of him as he leans forward and speaks to the back of his gray head and hunched over shoulders. "I'm not here to give you orders, but to assist you. Captain Fowler has agreed to work with CyberLife and has already signed off on the approval forms."

He can wait here all day if he has to, standing, staring, and certainly outlasting a human if he needs to.

The line of Hank's shoulders stiffens, and his scowl evolves into a grimace, bared teeth at the screen. Of course Fowler had it all arranged without his say-so. Jeffrey knows that he'd shut it all down in a heartbeat. They'd butted heads before about the moves that the Captain makes for the precinct, but this is just out of bounds.

"You're gonna back the fuck up before I decide this is gonna get ugly," he growls, the clench of his fists against the surface of his desk promising violence if he's not given his space.

Why is this human so stubborn and needlessly aggressive?

Connor pauses and then backs up exactly one step, not realizing that he should've scooted further if he didn't want it to come off as passive-aggressive. He did, technically, back up. For a moment he looks confused - as confused as a machine of his caliber can get - with his eyebrows faintly knitting together and there's even a tiny furrow line forming between them as he studies the tension squaring Lieutenant Anderson's broad shoulders.

"I would discourage any violence or verbal altercations," Connor doesn't seem to know when to shut the fuck up. "The first can be expensive and the second unprofessional."

Edited 2022-02-08 22:01 (UTC)

Every word that comes out of Connor's mouth makes Hank's blood boil in a way that he can't quite name. He twists around in place and stands to his full height in one smooth motion, his hand snapping out and wrapping Connor's tie around his fingers to drag the android right into his face.

"If it were up to me I'd throw the lot'a you into a dumpster and put a match to it. So stop pissing me off, or this is gonna get nasty."

He snarls, lip curled when he hears his name being hollered from the other side of the bullpen. He releases Connor's tie, lets it unfurl and rest, slightly wrinkled, where he'd snatched it from. Fucking unbelievable...

He isn't going to be gone for long. Being read the riot act is getting close to rote for them at this point.

If he was human, the tie would've threatened to cut off his breath.

Right now it's just a collar slash leash, an inconvenient fact that he's at the Lieutenant's mercy as the man pulls Connor close enough to feel his breath wash warm over his face, to watch as his black pupils dilate and the aged facial muscles tug in a most...unfortunate manner. Hank Anderson is displeased. No; angry. Very angry. For whatever reason, Connor's attempts at appeasement have been found less than satisfactory.

The words spit through gritted teeth only confirm that.

Once Hank releases him and trudges to Fowler's officer, Connor collects himself. The android will straighten his tie, smooth out any unsightly wrinkles in his jacket and white dress shirt, and then pause, glancing around, dimly aware that several humans in DPD Central are watching the free show before they remember they should pretend to be looking away.

If they want him to react, to go "deviant" over this little spat, then they'll be disappointed.

Cleaned up as if Lieutenant Anderson hadn't manhandled him, Connor neatly sits down in the chair across from his desk and waits with his hands resting on his knees, the perfect image of CyberLife-approved patience.

None of the other officers on duty really react past that; they're all used to Hank's behavior. They know about his anger issues and his problems with androids. If they'd known that this was coming, that Hank was going to be made to work with one as part of his ongoing investigation, they might have warned him of bad shit coming just to see him gear up to go on a tear.

So they have to witness the impromptu show as it is, and most just shake their heads as they return to work.

When Hank returns to his desk to see Connor still waiting there, pretty as a fuckin' picture, looking like a polite child waiting at a bus stop, he's gone from livid to just exhausted and irritable. Fowler has a way of checking his temper that Hank resents, at times.

Now, Hank is determined to ignore Connor, focusing instead of the litter of case work on and around his desk.

Connor's head swivels to watch the human's approach, the way his broad shoulders are still squared but also drooping and for a moment he has to wonder what, exactly, Captain Fowler said to him. Whatever it was, it seems to have ensured that Lieutenant Anderson won't unnecessarily damage him and require the additional paperwork - or a new RK800 - to be sent tomorrow.

The man appears determined to ignore him, pawing at the mess of papers scattered around his desk and looking at them as if they take precedence over CyberLife's generous, thorough assistance.

This is probably the part where Connor, if he was human, would pretend to be busy and give his new partner some much-needed space. Get a coffee, take an extra long bathroom break. Anything.

Instead the android tilts his head a hair to the side and speaks up:

"Lieutenant. I understand that is important, but I must request that you finalize the transition with your fingerprint. It will only take a second."

Connor holds out his arm as if for a handshake, brown eyes burning dark holes into the side of Hank's head and his grit jaw. His hand, so human looking at a glance, shimmers and seems to peel back with a faint, almost inaudible hiss to show an android's pearlescent true chassis, segmented and smooth.

Welp. What little calm he'd managed to find is whipped away quite efficiently by the android speaking up again, and he nearly does the stubborn, childish thing and turn his back to on Connor. The sound of his skin sliding back snaps Hank's stare around to that offered hand.

"And what if I don't?" he says cautiously, that hostility still laced into every syllable. "You gonna fuckin' hold me down and make me?"

The android doesn't lower his hand just yet, his true skin shimmering an almost pretty white under the overhead lights.

"No, I'll ask later today, tomorrow and/or so on until you can make time for me."

In other words, Connor is fully prepared to wear down at Lieutenant Anderson in small, repetitive steps for however long it takes.

Hank hates this.

Hates it with a bloody passion.

"Fuck. You." He spits it through gritted teeth but takes Connor's hand nonetheless, ignoring the warmth that he can feel in the contact nodes as his prints are taken and probably filed away in Cyberlife's system files to be used for whatever the hell they feel like later. He knows how huge corporations work when it comes to personal information.

He does make a point not to squeeze Connor's hand any tighter than he would a normal human's, the habit drilled into him from much earlier in his life thanks to a lot of jokes about 'hand squeezy death' leveled at him before he even realized he was gripping down too tightly on people.

When he lets go he turns back to his desk, just to start sorting his paperwork back into its appropriate folders just so that it would all be easier to make sense of when he didn't feel a migraine creeping up into the top of his head.

"Thank you for your cooperation."

Connor's hand drops to his side as soon as Hank releases his hand. The android's voice is as pleasantly neutral as his face and if there's a hint of smug satisfaction at getting the Lieutenant to play nice, it's entirely up to interpretation if it's there or just a figment of the imagination.

He pauses, noticing that once again the human has turned his back, and for a moment the thought occurs in his mental processes that this could be a deliberate act of stubbornness like earlier. This time Connor waits a few seconds longer than before, as he registered that one must be less..prompt with social interactions with ANDERSON, HANK as an android.

After a few seconds Connor chooses to sit down in the chair across from the Lieutenant's cluttered desk, both hands curled around the armrests, and at least he isn't towering over the seated human anymore.

"Maybe I'm repeating what you already know, but I'm here to assist you in any capacity necessary." (That he can rationalize to Amanda, to CyberLife, as being for the greater good). "I could handle filing for you, if you wanted. If you want coffee or a lunch run, I can do that too."

He starts small, offering an innocent olive branch.

Deliberately ignoring Connor clearly isn't working, to Hank's chagrin. He takes a long, steadying breath and finally looks back at the android with a deep scowl. That little quirk of lips and eyebrows intensifies the smug tone that he gets from Connor and it makes him prickle.

"How 'bout you do me a favor and stop trying to make nice," he snaps, keeping his voice down if only to keep from drawing the Captain's attention back over to them. "If you got questions, terminal's right there on your desk."

Connor sits with his hands folded neatly in his lap, almost as if he's in school, but he doesn't access the terminal. Not yet.

Instead the android's head swivels so that he's still staring at Lieutenant Anderson. For a moment he doesn't say anything, just thoughtfully studies the man with those dark eyes and a small cant of his head to the side.

"I'll familiarize myself soon." A pause as he considers the order, weighs it, and decides that CyberLife's directive to become a desirable partner supersedes it. "...I'm sorry for the discomfort I cause you, Lieutenant."

A weird shiver runs up Hank's spine at the way that Connor's head swivels, a little too smooth, a little bit uncanny. He narrows pale eyes at Connor's big brown doe-eyed gaze and his mouth works against the immediate desire to lash out.

He sighs deeply and sits back, trying to decide how to deal with this, since Connor has apparently decided that ignoring him is only going to make him more obnoxious. The apology rankles him; he knows it's not sincere. Not in the way that a human would be. He has the words but not the feeling. Fucking androids.

"Yeah whatever," he grunts, rolling his eyes and finally getting his desk in order.

Connor might not have that almost borderline innate human instinct to read when "the room changes", but he can mark out several facial and body-language markers that have shifted after the verbal apology. Anderson's sigh had a definite mark of resignation to it. The apology doesn't seem to have 100% the desired effect, but it is more than 0.00% and he finds that...agreeable.

The android pauses to watch Lieutenant Anderson before he accesses the terminal, turns his head away to glance at it, and by the time Hank runs out of things to organize, Connor is already pushing away from the desk across him, one hand flat against it, slender fingers splayed.

"We have somewhere we can start. There's a man who just reported in at the front desk: a WILLIAMS; TODD."

A pause as the RK800 expands his auditory sensor range. Mumbles and the dull buzz of conversation become louder, loud as shouts, and he can filter to Mr. William's voice in order to reduce the disruptions from the others. His LED snaps back to blue as he adds:

"I'll retrieve coffee as he sounds like he wants some. Should I get you one too while I'm in the break room?"

Edited (added more/typos) 2022-02-23 06:13 (UTC)

"Don't bother," Hank replies, standing at the same time that a notification appears on his computer's display to notify him of exactly what Connor just had, courtesy of the android working there. He doesn't have long to wonder why the guy's name sounds familiar, when he looks toward the gate keeping the lobby separate from the bullpen to the man just passing through it with the kind of pinch-faced displeasure that comes with people that have a history with the police.

Just what kind becomes increasingly obvious to him the longer he looks at Todd: from the blotchy complexion to the bloodshot eyes to the halting speech and rasp of his voice, Hank can see an addict from across the room. Moving to narcotics to homicide hadn't gotten him away from people like Todd; the drug trade and murder just tended to go hand in hand.

With Connor momentarily out of the way, Hank moves to watch the man go to take a seat and give his report: his nanny, an AX400, had done a damn good job of busting up his house, assaulting him, and kidnapping his daughter. It feels...weird. Wrong. Hank knows when not ignore weird, wrong feelings.

He waits until he sees Connor, and stares at the android. How to tell Connor with his eyes that he wants his hunch confirmed...

Connor returns with that cup of coffee, winding his way around the rows and rows of desks.

As he approaches, Todd pauses to stare with a little frown creasing his blotched face - he's never seen this model before and after last night's bullshit, more ugly surprises just causes his expression to darken as he glances from the coffee cup to the RK800 leaning down slightly to offer it, unaware that he's looming over the man.

"...Put it down," Todd grumbles. He seems to have suddenly changed his mind about wanting coffee, his arms folded across his chest as he refuses to reach for the styrofoam cup. "I don't want no plastic here, you shitting me?"

Connor joins the two men, aware of two different kinds of stares. The one from Mr. Williams is jittery, aggressive, threatened, sullen; the one from Lieutenant Anderson is less aggressive, a mix of what appears to be exasperation and...suspicion? His eyes are narrowed slightly and he appears to be chewing the inside of his cheek, tells that Connor will file away even as he clasps his hands behind him and dips his chin apologetically toward Todd.

"Mr. Williams, I'm sorry if my presence is distressing, but I hope you will find it worth the temporary discomfort: CyberLife sent me specifically to assist with cases like yours."

Just like Hank, Connor has picked out what appear to be signs of a chronic user of Red Ice. It occurs to him that the man's testimony might not be 100% accurate and it would be preferable to grill him more closely, to catch him in any lies and slip-ups.

"Anything and everything you tell us could help us help you. If you would prefer some privacy, there's some rooms in the back we could discuss this without being overheard," he adds, and Todd actually flinches a little, eyes darting unconsciously to Hank and betraying the fact that his hunch was right.

Edited 2022-02-28 23:19 (UTC)

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002

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thinking timeskip? Could do it where he comes with Hank to interview someone

Perhaps they do what they really should about Todd and talk to him more than just taking a report?

oh yes definitely. We could share npcing of him

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