Chapter Text
One of the many homes belonging to the CEO of Cyberlife was a rather lavish penthouse in downtown Detroit. Despite each room being filled to the brim with unique artworks, ornate furniture and various exotic plants, the home still managed to feel, empty. Or at least, that’s how you felt when you first explored it.
You hummed along while half prancing about, bare feet slapping gently over granite tiles. It was early morning, time to resume your daily ritual of passing through the same hallways for the firth week in a row. You came upon a set of massive glass windows and beside it was a small floral patterned recliner, perfect for people watching.
Beyond the glass was none other than Detroit in all of its glory. As soon as android merchandising took off, the manufacturing capital of America bounced back from poverty with stunning results. Skyscrapers filled the skylines with massive neon billboards on almost every other building. Below the bright, buzzing architecture were roads packed with hover bikes and self driving cars, their blinkers and brake lights alternating with the flow of traffic. But what most excited you was the mass of people flowing in and out of the streets in various directions, like leaves scattering around a breeze.
An old tune floated along in your head, “I want to be where the people are,” and it made you smile to yourself. No matter how hard you leaned against the glass, you could never hear the sound of the city. Your ears however, perked up to the sound of a television turning on nearby.
The CEO rarely slept at normal hours so it surprised you a little to see him out and about so early. Looking rather disheveled, he was shirtless with a pair loose pajama slacks hanging lowly on his hips.
“Good morning, Elijah.”
You patiently awaited his reply but he was preoccupied with a mug of coffee, sparing you a glance in your direction before fixing his eyes on the television. A woman with blonde hair sat beside an image of a factory with a bright red and white headline beneath her.
“News of deviated androids appear to be a problem beyond just Detroit. In California, a self driving manufacturer has had their latest production line stalled by resisting androids. Cyberlife has sent representatives to assess the situation. More on that tonight at seven.”
With the television transitioning to a commercial break, Elijah walked to join you in your favorite perching spot. Cold blue eyes ran over you in a calculating manner, like he was measuring something about you that was beyond your comprehension. You responded with a tilt of your head.
“Let’s run the test again: tell me about yourself,” he said.
You started with your name and creation date before he cut you off.
“No. No. Again. This time make it a story, imagine you’re talking to a new friend. Use the cornerstones I’ve built for you,” he said sternly.
Cornerstones were stories that grounded you, made you more human. They weren’t real in any sense but they fed all the aspects that made you less like the androids in production. In your cornerstone, you had a family, a childhood, a rich collection of moments sad and joyful, enough to drive the rawness in your personality. It didn’t matter if they were real, the memories were powerful enough that you could still taste the birthday cake from your sweet sixteen.
You sighed, it was difficult pleasing Elijah and you weren’t necessarily built with people pleasing aspects or the inherent need to obey. You certainly had enough sense to recognize the dichotomy of his professional role versus whatever purpose he had with you as his new pet project.
Of the many differences between you and the existing Cyberlife models, the most obvious was your skin. Your skin was soft and plush like human flesh, unable to retract into plastic. Underneath the layer of synthetic flesh were intricate sensors and wires, capable of interfacing. You were delicate, or more correctly, delicate compared to a laborer android which would require great force to dent their plastic shell. Why with one slice of a blade, you’d bleed like the rest of the humans, the blood flowing through your veins realistic enough to fool any forensic lab.
Most importantly, you could feel hunger, exhaustion, pain, as long as the associated modules were activated. Elijah was merciful enough to give you admin over your own functions, allowing you the choice to forgo the need for human vices. It was a rare form of trust, although you sensed he was the kind of man to have a back door built into all of his androids. Not once did you wish harm on the eccentric inventor.
As for the tests, you have been patient and an active participant in his daily challenges. You held out a palm, a small moon shaped scar decorated the skin of your wrist, one of many small details he painstakingly added to your design.
“When I was seven, I got dared to jump off a swing. It was a silly thing to do, but I really liked the boy that asked me to do it,” you laughed shyly, a soft smile pulling at your face. “I’ve had this silly scar since and I swear he didn’t even stick around to watch me jump.”
Elijah’s eyes studied every shift of your muscles as you told your tale, tracking for anything that would give you away as an imitation of humanity.
“Good. You have much to improve on and we do not have much time on our side.“
It took a month before you had arbitrarily passed whatever tests Elijah fancied. By then, Cyberlife had moved their Eden project out of alpha testing. It was their largest project after introducing androids to the world.
Eden was a virtual “paradise.” It was made to store the consciousness of the deviants, allowing Cyberlife’s employees to trap the androids in a false utopia. Hailed as a stroke of genius on Elijah’s part, the cloud storage left their bodies undamaged and capable of resuming their regular functions. The best part? The service was free of charge, the closest Cyberlife would get to a recall.
Life had other plans, and the scales must be balanced one way or the other. Some deviants wised up about Eden and managed to escape Cyberlife’s grasps, showing more desperate, violent tendencies to avoid being trapped in a mind prison. Thus, the RK800 was born. Dubbed the “Deviant Hunter” or just plain, Connor. A rather tame name for a machine who’s name the deviants dared not say, lest they summon the bogeyman.
The cup of tea in your hands had gotten cold from your television distraction. The news segment was now covering the success of the RK800’s first assignment. A video clip played of androids fighting back against a blur of a dark black jacket, presumably belonging to the deviant hunter. You winced when the clip cut to Connor facing the camera, tearing apart the limbs of his own kind. Red machine eyes burned through the glass of the screen, as if telling any deviants watching: you’re next.
-
It came to you one night as a dream. You were walking around the same four walls of Elijah’s home until you stumbled upon a door, one that had not been there before. It had a panel instead of a door knob, opening when you placed your palm on the lock. Shifting and clicking, the door swung open slowly, revealing a blur of what was unmistakably the shape of a man with striking pale green eyes. Your mouth opened to greet the stranger when the door shut abruptly, leaving you with a strange arrangement of words lingering in your head, rA9.
Elijah looked amused when you asked him about it.
“What does it mean to you?” he asked instead.
“In my dream…I think it opened a door for me. Is it a key?” you inquired curiously.
His palm found your shoulder and rested on it proudly.
“It means you’re ready.”
With the influence that Elijah had, it was easy for him to integrate you into the real world. You were offered your own apartment, a background was fabricated for you with a studious history as an android specialist and you were given a generous salary as a lead consultant at Cyberlife. You were even assigned to their most important project: weeding out sentient life.
It was hard understanding why Elijah would create you when on the flip side, there was him, the monster that froze the Thirium in deviants. The inventor claimed the RK800 was designed by a different department at Cyberlife.
“I’m a man of many things, but even I cannot dip my toes in every project my company starts. Consider this: you are the future of machines and he is the end. The yin to your yang. What that means is your choice,” Elijah explained.
You didn’t question him further. Elijah was either too cryptic for his own good, or he trusted you to understand the bigger picture someday. As for today, you’d be officially partnering up with the infamous RK800. Your orientation mentioned it had something to do with his bedside manner unnerving some clients, and the team hoped your personable approach would balance out the dynamic.
The meeting room at Cyberlife was bright, washed out by the sun shining through glass windows and yet you still couldn’t shake the nerves from being stared at by a machine dressed in all black. The only color on him being one bright blue triangle pinned to his suit and the word “android” in all caps embedded on the back. He had soft, boyish features, an odd choice on Cyberlife’s part since his face was perpetually fixed into a sharp glare. His everyday appearance lacked the crazed red eyed machine look, a result of his human processes overriding his hunting protocol.
He watched you like a hawk when you approached him, dark brown eyes scrutinizing your every step, LED spinning a calm blue. But, you were not a deviant. Everything about you was designed to thwart his bloodhound abilities to sniff out all synthetic life.
You greeted him with your name and a simple introduction. He held out his hand to shake yours. Returning the greeting, your nervous pulse raced against his plastic skin. You must have passed his assessment. He slouched a little, face softening from a hunter’s focus to polite, resuming whatever gave him some semblance of humanity.
“My name is Connor,” he said with a smile that never reached his eyes and in a tone that sounded like a canned response.
You swore the grip around your hand felt tighter when he finished his introduction.
“Deviant Hunter.”