Connor (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
notalive) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
dualislogs2019-12-03 09:19 am
notalive) wrote in dualislogs2019-12-03 09:19 am
Entry tags:
(no subject)
WHO: Connor, Hank, OTA
WHAT: Connor's blood is valuable to the mob. They pay him a visit.
WHERE: Some side street somewhere, a small hospital
WHEN: Dec 2., evening
WARNINGS: Gun violence, regular violence, drug references, Hank's mouth probably
"Connor!"
Connor had looked up from where he was in the middle of filing his tickets for the day to catch sight of one of the department's top detectives approaching at a jog. Collins is disarming - friendly to everyone, but not too much. Enough to put anybody at ease, but never smarmy, never annoying. Connor likes him - he seems like somebody who's put in a lot of hard work to get where he is, and the more Connor's existed as a deviant, awkwardly aware of being programmed for success in this job, the more he's come to respect that.
"Detective Collins." They're not friendly enough that Connor can drop the rank and use first names, even though no one has much choice with Connor: he has no surname, and apparently 'Officer Connor' makes him sound like he's doing an elementary school visit. "Do you need something? I'm about to clock out."
"Shit, really?" Collins had grimaced. "I was gonna ask you earlier and I couldn't find you."
But Connor'd had time, and it's not like he gets tired, so he volunteered. Another drug bust on Hank's case - all the evidence had been cleared except the car itself and it was getting impounded later that night. They needed it checked before then for traces of narcotics - "You're the only one who can check for that Red Ice shit you told me about, right?"
That's how Connor ends up still on the clock at 21:00, hopping off a bus in a part of town he doesn't spend too much time in to find some soon-to-be-impounded car. He finds it soon enough - Collins gave him the key and all - but a quick scan of the inside tells him there's nothing. Well, almost nothing - there's old weed in the glove box. But nothing from this case, none of the chemical compounds Hank's filled him in on, definitely no Red Ice. A car involved in a drug bust is going to have traces of drugs in it - maybe not visible to the human eye, but to Connor? If there had been drugs in this car within the past six weeks, he'd know about it.
He's emerging from the car, frowning to himself, when he notices the previously empty street isn't empty anymore. People are walking down from both ends of the road - two from one side, three from the other and another one stopped at the mouth of the small alleyway fifty feet from Connor. They arrived at the same time, and they're going to converge on him within a minute. It's a narrow road, there's nowhere else to go.
Quickly, efficiently, biting down a hunch that he'll hate himself for having only if it turns out to be wrong, he opens the driver side door and reaches in, jamming the key in the ignition and turning it as he ignores the yellow light of his LED filling the dark vehicle. Nothing. Battery's dead.
All androids have the ability to speed their processing units up to such immense speeds that time virtually stops around them, and this is what Connor does to calculate an escape route. Assume at least three of the six are armed. The car's dead. Connor is entirely unarmed. In his current position, in the centre of the narrow road, his best defence is that in order to shoot him, they risk missing and shooting one another. They have to be careful too.
If they're planning to kill him, they've got about a 67% chance of successfully doing it. He's worked with worse.
Less than a second's visualisation and calculation later, Connor twists on his heel and dashes forwards - with the open car door somewhat shielding him in the back, at the group of three. Two of them immediately draw guns - shots ring out, deafening as they echo about the narrow street. Connor can't dodge bullets - but he's fast enough to get out of the way of the human hands moving the guns behind the bullets, so it looks like he dodges them.
First human disarmed as Connor reaches under the gun and twists them by the wrist - he yanks them forward by the arm so he can use their body as a shield from the other one, then as a battering ram to hit both the other humans at once--
--ERROR--
--a bullet passes through his right knee, a lucky shot that sends Connor sprawling, yellow LED immediately red. It makes the thirium spattered on the ground seem to glow purple.
They're shouting at each other. Nothing of any consequence, he ignores it.
There's no pain, androids don't feel it, and Connor doesn't have to look to know that the handgun he knocked flying is seven feet to his right. He plants his left foot on the asphalt, pivots, dives - and something very solid slams into his left temple hard enough that for one nerve-jangling instant, his vision in one eye blacks out before his optical unit recalibrates itself. Steel-toed boot, is the conclusion of the impact assessment in the half second before Connor crashes to the ground, rolls--
The gun's gone, skittering off across the road as someone kicks it.
Their chances just went up to somewhere in the high 90s.
a/ OTA
Connor's felt fear before. He's felt anger. But in that instant, they burst into something white hot that refuses to be put down like this. Not like this, not at all. Ignoring the error messages cascading with every forced movement of his near-ruined knee, he twists his legs under him and makes one last desperate charge directly at the nearest of his attackers.
But he's not sure what could save him now.
b/ OTA
He remembers something he told Markus once, the leader of the android revolution. Statistically speaking, there's always a chance for unlikely events to take place. And take place they just did, because Connor is alive. Limping, his optic nerve unstable behind the socket and compensating furiously, but he's alive. He stops in a back door of the police station - he doesn't want to talk to anyone right now, not like this, not with the suspicions he has. But he needs to stash his uniform and he needs what's still in the evidence locker.
"Don't ask," he tells the alarmed-looking patrol cop manning the locker, and that gets him a plastic water bottle filled with glowing thirium.
And he's out on the street, winter, no jacket, in just his button-up shirt and tie, limping, fluorescent blue splatters on his pants and face, LED cycling red, carrying a bottle of something that looks downright radioactive. He knows he's attracting attention, but he doesn't have much option right now.
Hospital. He needs to get to a hospital. A small one.
c/ Closed to Hank
He has scabs. His thirium has clotted around his temple, where the steel toe split his chassis open, trying to hold the wound closed. He actually smiled when he realised it - the mods he got really worked - and apparently his tongue had bled too when he bit it on one of the impacts, because the nurse stitching his head had recoiled from the blue stains on his teeth.
The hospital hadn't known what to do with him until he told them he'd heal like a human. So…they're treating him like a human. They can't fix his knee, but he can already feel his insides slowly, at a glacial pace, fixing themselves. They stitch and bandage it, then give him crutches and strict instructions he already plans to ignore.
Then they ask if he has someone who can take him home. That brings the worst part of this crashing in - Hank's going to have to see him like this. And he has to explain what happened, and his hunch.
He uses a hospital phone to call - his own is gone, and he has a vague memory of dropping it at the scene. It's probably been destroyed by now.
"Hank?"
WHAT: Connor's blood is valuable to the mob. They pay him a visit.
WHERE: Some side street somewhere, a small hospital
WHEN: Dec 2., evening
WARNINGS: Gun violence, regular violence, drug references, Hank's mouth probably
"Connor!"
Connor had looked up from where he was in the middle of filing his tickets for the day to catch sight of one of the department's top detectives approaching at a jog. Collins is disarming - friendly to everyone, but not too much. Enough to put anybody at ease, but never smarmy, never annoying. Connor likes him - he seems like somebody who's put in a lot of hard work to get where he is, and the more Connor's existed as a deviant, awkwardly aware of being programmed for success in this job, the more he's come to respect that.
"Detective Collins." They're not friendly enough that Connor can drop the rank and use first names, even though no one has much choice with Connor: he has no surname, and apparently 'Officer Connor' makes him sound like he's doing an elementary school visit. "Do you need something? I'm about to clock out."
"Shit, really?" Collins had grimaced. "I was gonna ask you earlier and I couldn't find you."
But Connor'd had time, and it's not like he gets tired, so he volunteered. Another drug bust on Hank's case - all the evidence had been cleared except the car itself and it was getting impounded later that night. They needed it checked before then for traces of narcotics - "You're the only one who can check for that Red Ice shit you told me about, right?"
That's how Connor ends up still on the clock at 21:00, hopping off a bus in a part of town he doesn't spend too much time in to find some soon-to-be-impounded car. He finds it soon enough - Collins gave him the key and all - but a quick scan of the inside tells him there's nothing. Well, almost nothing - there's old weed in the glove box. But nothing from this case, none of the chemical compounds Hank's filled him in on, definitely no Red Ice. A car involved in a drug bust is going to have traces of drugs in it - maybe not visible to the human eye, but to Connor? If there had been drugs in this car within the past six weeks, he'd know about it.
He's emerging from the car, frowning to himself, when he notices the previously empty street isn't empty anymore. People are walking down from both ends of the road - two from one side, three from the other and another one stopped at the mouth of the small alleyway fifty feet from Connor. They arrived at the same time, and they're going to converge on him within a minute. It's a narrow road, there's nowhere else to go.
Quickly, efficiently, biting down a hunch that he'll hate himself for having only if it turns out to be wrong, he opens the driver side door and reaches in, jamming the key in the ignition and turning it as he ignores the yellow light of his LED filling the dark vehicle. Nothing. Battery's dead.
All androids have the ability to speed their processing units up to such immense speeds that time virtually stops around them, and this is what Connor does to calculate an escape route. Assume at least three of the six are armed. The car's dead. Connor is entirely unarmed. In his current position, in the centre of the narrow road, his best defence is that in order to shoot him, they risk missing and shooting one another. They have to be careful too.
If they're planning to kill him, they've got about a 67% chance of successfully doing it. He's worked with worse.
Less than a second's visualisation and calculation later, Connor twists on his heel and dashes forwards - with the open car door somewhat shielding him in the back, at the group of three. Two of them immediately draw guns - shots ring out, deafening as they echo about the narrow street. Connor can't dodge bullets - but he's fast enough to get out of the way of the human hands moving the guns behind the bullets, so it looks like he dodges them.
First human disarmed as Connor reaches under the gun and twists them by the wrist - he yanks them forward by the arm so he can use their body as a shield from the other one, then as a battering ram to hit both the other humans at once--
--ERROR--
--a bullet passes through his right knee, a lucky shot that sends Connor sprawling, yellow LED immediately red. It makes the thirium spattered on the ground seem to glow purple.
They're shouting at each other. Nothing of any consequence, he ignores it.
There's no pain, androids don't feel it, and Connor doesn't have to look to know that the handgun he knocked flying is seven feet to his right. He plants his left foot on the asphalt, pivots, dives - and something very solid slams into his left temple hard enough that for one nerve-jangling instant, his vision in one eye blacks out before his optical unit recalibrates itself. Steel-toed boot, is the conclusion of the impact assessment in the half second before Connor crashes to the ground, rolls--
The gun's gone, skittering off across the road as someone kicks it.
Their chances just went up to somewhere in the high 90s.
a/ OTA
Connor's felt fear before. He's felt anger. But in that instant, they burst into something white hot that refuses to be put down like this. Not like this, not at all. Ignoring the error messages cascading with every forced movement of his near-ruined knee, he twists his legs under him and makes one last desperate charge directly at the nearest of his attackers.
But he's not sure what could save him now.
b/ OTA
He remembers something he told Markus once, the leader of the android revolution. Statistically speaking, there's always a chance for unlikely events to take place. And take place they just did, because Connor is alive. Limping, his optic nerve unstable behind the socket and compensating furiously, but he's alive. He stops in a back door of the police station - he doesn't want to talk to anyone right now, not like this, not with the suspicions he has. But he needs to stash his uniform and he needs what's still in the evidence locker.
"Don't ask," he tells the alarmed-looking patrol cop manning the locker, and that gets him a plastic water bottle filled with glowing thirium.
And he's out on the street, winter, no jacket, in just his button-up shirt and tie, limping, fluorescent blue splatters on his pants and face, LED cycling red, carrying a bottle of something that looks downright radioactive. He knows he's attracting attention, but he doesn't have much option right now.
Hospital. He needs to get to a hospital. A small one.
c/ Closed to Hank
He has scabs. His thirium has clotted around his temple, where the steel toe split his chassis open, trying to hold the wound closed. He actually smiled when he realised it - the mods he got really worked - and apparently his tongue had bled too when he bit it on one of the impacts, because the nurse stitching his head had recoiled from the blue stains on his teeth.
The hospital hadn't known what to do with him until he told them he'd heal like a human. So…they're treating him like a human. They can't fix his knee, but he can already feel his insides slowly, at a glacial pace, fixing themselves. They stitch and bandage it, then give him crutches and strict instructions he already plans to ignore.
Then they ask if he has someone who can take him home. That brings the worst part of this crashing in - Hank's going to have to see him like this. And he has to explain what happened, and his hunch.
He uses a hospital phone to call - his own is gone, and he has a vague memory of dropping it at the scene. It's probably been destroyed by now.
"Hank?"
b
She doesn't hustle up to him, but she does walk straight at him, coming up to his side but not reaching to touch. Hey, someone's fucked up and looking like this? You don't touch or come up quick, if they're still in fight-or-flight, that's how you get a busted nose. She does raise one hand as she approaches, as if to ease her arrival and not startle the guy as she speaks up.
"Hey, you look like shit." Observant as always, she looks him over to try and take note of visible injuries.
no subject
Connor looks like he's been on the losing end of a glow-in-the-dark paintball battle, but that's his blood - there's a clear wound along his left temple, so that one temple has a spinning red light and the other a glow-in-the-dark blue gash. At first glance it might just look like paint on his pant leg...but the fabric's torn and he's limping on that leg. It's hard to argue with the assessment, and he twists his mouth in a somewhat wry grimace.
"Yeah. Yeah, I don't feel so hot." He thought of the callback, but didn't think if it was really the appropriate time to say it. It's less 'gallows humour', more 'not quite knowing the right time and place' for these things.
"They got me surrounded." He says, haltingly. "I've fought worse, but I was always...ready for it. Not this time."
no subject
She's noticed the...bleeding? Oozing. The weird shit seeping out of him, she's not sure what exactly to make of it. Back home, blood in colors like this only come from Covvies, but he's not an alien- at least, not one like those back home, and doesn't look like a non-human, so. Who knows...?
"Yea, not really hot at all here, pal. Unless it's a 'hot mess' sort of look you're aiming for." She finally replies, the faintest of a smile given to the call back. Whether it's an appropriate time or not, she doesn't seem to mind. Then again, she's not one for doing things...appropriately in general, so.
"Where'd they go, where'd it happen?" She questions the last bit, glancing around to make sure they weren't in any danger still. Well. Great. Not some weird accident, he was jumped or something. But... "Why'd they go after you?"
no subject
"Hot mess sounds a lot more accurate," he says dryly, never having heard the phrase before. He doesn't feel pain, he's said that to people before, and he doesn't in the way humans seem to. But he knows when something feels bad, when he doesn't want to feel it anymore, and that's where he's at right now.
"West end, one of the rundown areas. They're not an issue anymore." And, as he realises that implies he contributed a lot more than he actually did to that. "I had help, somebody found us."
And he reaches up to his temple to swipe some of the thirium off his skin, holding it up to her. "Thirium three-ten. It's my blood, but it's the main ingredient in a drug that's pretty close to cocaine. Looks like somebody realised I'm carrying it around."
'Realised'. They were told. And he can't help the fury making his voice rough as he says it.
no subject
Her thoughts are interrupted as he continues, looking back to his blood coated hand and unable to stop herself from reaching her free hand out to poke the mess.
"Awesome, drug vampires jumping people, that's what we need now." On top of everything going on? Really? Good fucking god. A distractible part of her mind wonders if they can be called vampires, since his blood is apparently...Thirium whatever.
South has a million and one questions about his blood, about why it's not real or organic red stuff like her's, how they'd known to use it for drugs in general or that he had it in him- and a hundred other things. But, well. The boy's not doing so hot, and she's mildly fond of him, and likes Hank a good bit, so, his safety and health overpowers her curiosity for the moment.
"Hey, why don't we get you sat down, like, out of the open in case they have buddies who aren't done milking you, see how bad shit is?" She asks even as she already starts trying to nudge him along to do just that. Out of the open, somewhere at least a little safer feeling, maybe try to stabilize his leg or other injuries. Reassess the damage and mobility and make a plan of action from there.
no subject
It takes a second for what she's saying to filter through the constant threat assessment's his head keeps trying to run. Get him out of the street, away from anybody who could see him, see his thirium bleeding out of him, see it on her and think her blood's made of it too, get him to safety, assess the damage. It makes sense, but...
"Are you sure?" he asks, voice quiet but as urgent as if the pair of them are in danger right that very moment. "If they come back and you're with me, you'll be in danger too." He gestures at her hand. "Especially if they think you might have thirium blood, too."
no subject
"I wouldn't have said it if I wasn't already sure." She replies, fixing him with a hard look, "They can try, if they're stupid enough. I almost wish they would so I could bust their knees and tear their jaws off their faces."
Because, again, she likes and tentatively, cautiously trusts Hank. At least, more than she trusts anyone else here. Hank's a good guy, seems to be trying to do good here. And Connor's pretty, well...sweet? He's kind. Sure, she doesn't have a whole lot of time spent with him personally, but with what she has experienced with him so far, and with how the boss talks about him and likes him and trusts him? She considers him to be on her team. Not exactly a friend-friend, not yet. But he's someone she has a growing bud of fondness for, and would care if he blinked out of this place or died.
But he's part of Hank's team, like she is, so at the absolute very least he's a teammate, if nothing else. If she finds whoever is trying to fuck him up and steal his fancy drug-blood, she's going to crack some skulls. Just like with the rookies back home, she might be a colossal asshole to them, pick on them, is unnecessarily mean to them- but if anyone outside the team tries to even give them an ugly look? Bones would be broken.
"C'mon bud, lets get you moving." South continues as she reaches to try and catch his wrist in an attempt to haul his arm over her shoulders, planning to wrap her arm around his back and hold the wrist of the arm around her shoulders to help him limp along, "Don't be afraid to put your weight on me, I gotcha."
no subject
His expression twitches into something like a smile - of course she'd say that, why did he expect anything different - but that puts an odd sort of pressure on his left temple where the thirium is congealing even as some of it starts to evaporate.
"Thanks." There's genuine relief in his voice: he might have wanted to make sure she was OK with it, but he didn't want her to leave, either. He doesn't have to feel guilty. Not having to might not stop him feeling guilty anyway, but still. He can focus on walking, and staying upright in general.
He willingly slings an arm over South's shoulders - Connor's built of less dense stuff than a human, making him lighter than he looks for someone his height - and leans some of his weight into hers to help him walk.
"I need to get to a clinic," he says, voice strained. "A small one. I need to stay out of sight for now."
As much as South is willing to fight - and he truly appreciates that - Connor himself is worse than useless right now. He doesn't want to be in the open.