SEQUENTIAL ━ Connor // RK800 ✔️

five ━ not alive, not dead

What the clock failed to understand was that there were too many thoughts behind Mia's barely blinking eyes for her to think of time or the building exhaustion in her bones. She's been staring at him, but her mind was far away, trying to piece together a story without knowing nearly enough of what had happened. Who did this to Connor? Where was he found? How did he get there? Who called for him to be taken to that junkyard?

Sitting in her chair, elbows on her knees and back hunched with all the weight of questions she couldn't answer even if she tried, the pain in her shoulders finally made Mia release some tension and drop her head.

That's when she noticed she was covered in it.

That darn blue stain corrupted the fabric of her shirt, of her jeans, it stuck to her skin and dried on it. There was just so much of it on her hands that she dared not move a single finger anymore, not even a joint, far more content with growing numb than closing her hands into fists and having to feel the Thirium dried on her. His blood, on her hands.

Everything that could have gone wrong did that night. If the clock thought she didn't want the sunrise to be there already, the clock obviously didn't know much about her at all.

There was a thought at the back of her mind about how she couldn't stay this filthy, about how she should wash at least her hands, but the strongest part of her mind was the one affirming that she'd rather die than leave Connor's side for something as trivial as cleaning his blood from her hands.

At exactly 5AM, her tablet registered a request for a voice call. With the thing vibrating right on the desk near Mia, she spared a glance and read it was Elijah calling her. Whatever part of her consciousness was left to drive her actions forward decided just then that she could use hearing a familiar voice. Mia answered the call and left it in speaker.

"Mia," Elijah sighed out relieved. "I saw the invoice you issued for a new model. What happened? Is everything alright? How's RK800?"

"I don't know," Mia answered with honesty, all her energy could muster then while keeping her tone quiet and even; the last thing she wanted was to start crying while on the phone with Elijah — they might have been friendly, but at the end of the day, he was still her boss.

A thought occured to her then: she couldn't even recall when she issued the request for a new model to be brought for the memory transfer, but since Elijah was mentioning it, she supposed she followed the protocol to the letter by instinct.

"You sound... shaken up."

What could she possibly answer to that statement? Nothing crossed her mind but silence, so that was her response.

"Are you alright?"

"I will be," Mia nodded, starting to doubt that talking is what she needed. "When I know for sure how much we've lost from his memory." Anything from total memory loss to none was possible and once again, to be reminded of these odds disturbed her — to even consider looking Connor in the eyes again and not being recognized was torturous.

She almost expected Elijah to correct her again about how she chose to address the android, but fortunately for her, he didn't. In fact, much to her surprise, he seemed to understand it wasn't a good time to talk about business or the project progress. He let her be and closed the call sooner than she had expected, leaving her with a realization that a headache was brewing in the back of her head.