SEQUENTIAL ━ Connor // RK800 ✔️

five ━ not alive, not dead

Oh, she hadn't just gotten attached. She started to see it then, in the echoes of her heartbreak, she's gotten willingly fooled by the make belief: she saw him as human.

It hurt because death is final for humans. And it ached because his lack of finality shattered her little fairytale illusion.

"Careful," she broke herself out of her crisis when the two androids reached out to collect the previous model's remains. "Let me check the memory upload first," Mia walked over to her computer and only once she confirmed everything in terms of memory had been taken from the old body, she unplugged him from the terminal herself.

Before allowing them to continue their instructed jobs, Mia interjected once again, "May I help?"

She needed to be there when they moved the old model, devoid of anything that had made her consider him alive. The coin fell out of his pocket when they moved him. She wanted to be the one helping with placing him in the emptied container, to be able to brush the hair off of his forehead one last time. She had to be the one to wipe the table clean of Thirium, the one to hold the head of the new model while he was being eased down.

Connor was unchanged. He looked identical.

But she felt strange pairing the memories of the night that had just passed with what was laid before her eyes now. All the horror on her hands, the proof of it soaked into her clothes... It wasn't until the CyberLife transport left and she was alone again that she build the courage to walk to the table and look down upon the replacement model, trying to force herself to spot any differences when engineering ensured there would be none.

Shy, or perhaps more so scared, she reached her hand out to his face, ran her thumb across his cheek, over the freckles and the moles, then down to his adorable imitation of a stubble cut permanently short and clean.

She closed her eyes and kept her hand there.

It was all the same. He was the same.

How she wished then she could just delete her memories of last night. Pluck them out of her mind, bury them with the damaged model.

One last tear threaded down her cheek before her reason kicked in gear - You're being ridiculous. What makes him himself is on the hard drive. What you want him to be doesn't change what he is. Androids do not die. Connor didn't die. He's right here.

Opening her eyes made one thing certain though: she needed to hear him again in order to go to sleep knowing she hadn't lost him at all. After a good sleep, she'd feel better about this too, maybe she'd even find a bright side to her now obviously inappropriate attachment to him.

Mia removed her hand from him and fell into a bit of a instinctive routine. She plugged him into the terminal as she always would, gentle and careful, then she started the process of the memory upload. Knowing it would take at least another hour before the upload is complete and she can wake him up again, she went for that shower supposed to wash away the night. It didn't work, but it helped ease the pain in her bones and muscles. Changing her clothes didn't help either, not immediately, but not seeing the blue blood, even as it was just about to evaporate, she guessed would prove beneficial soon. After all, she wanted so badly to forget everything, to pretend too that nothing ever happened.

Cleaner now, she returned to Connor's side and picked up his coin from the ground, placing it on her desk.

A true statement to the rare downsides of curiosity came up as, sitting back at her desk, Mia couldn't resist opening the optical processor data recorded by Connor last night. The files were all there, promising the unbiased truth, all a mere click away. She couldn't resist it.