SEQUENTIAL ━ Connor // RK800 ✔️

nine ━ about mistakes

"Officer," Connor called after him from a little further in the basement. When Brady turned around, he spotted the android standing in the middle of the place, looking downwards. "Over here," he gestured for some light to be brought onto the floor and, while joining beside him, he shone the flashlight's beam over what initially looked to him as graffiti.

"rA9," Officer Brady read the inscription out loud.

"Written 2709 times," Connor completed.

"A weird place for a graffiti, I admit."

"It's not graffiti, officer," he disagreed calmly. "All iterations of the word have been hand written, recently. It's compulsive writing. Shows signs of obsession. Every iteration of the word is identical, signifying android involvement. The last additions are no older than a couple of hours." Looking to the side, he moved with his foot a black marker left behind. "The android wrote the word until it ran out of ink."

"So what does it mean then, smartass? The word."

"I don't know," Connor did not shy away from admitting that. The abdunace of evidence on site simply compelled him to move on to the next clue, further to the right. "We can worry about the meaning of that later. Right now, we have bigger problems," he waited for Brady to join him to the side and finally sighed thoughtfully at the sight of three more android uniforms, one of which had been damaged purposefully in all the places were identifying markers might exist.

"There's four of them?" Officer Brady did the maths out loud. "But how can that be? Shouldn't your numbers on the amount of plastics Joel got have been exact?"

"They are exact," Connor moved away. He had promised Mia discretion on the matter of deviants, so though that meant he had to keep his partner in the dark about some key aspects of their case, he was planning on keeping true to his word to her. It was for that reason that he preferred leading the way towards the creaking stairs heading up towards the house rather than lingering for long enough down there that Brady started asking the pertinent questions on what exactly four instead of three androids really meant — deviancy was spreading.

As soon as Connor opened the door though, a single glimpse inside the house had him lock eyes with a fellow android who stopped dead in its tracks at the end of the hallway, right next to a window it seemed to be enforcing the barricade of wood on. Connor's LED may have flashed yellow, but at the sight of the officer right behind him, the LED of the deviant turned red.

Within the second, the deviant ran off, further into the house and, without hesitation, Connor ran after it. "Pursuing suspect!" He announced, right before Officer Brady could shout another confused complaint after him.

"Holy shit!" The shock of the man was heard now faintly, somewhere far behind Connor while he chased up the stairs, jumping over the balustrades twice, just to cut from the advantage the deviant had on him.

Going down the hallway upstairs, the deviant knocked over anything it could find in its way, but with the edge of precision, Connor didn't let added obstacles stand in his way for long.

It was a short chase to the very end of the house — last room, on the top floor. There was another room linked to it, but with Connor already in there with it, the deviant seemed to understand running away was a foolish endeavour.

Connor got it right where he wanted it.

He knew from Mia that deviants could not be reasoned with, but the software instability the red of its LED told him all about was undesirable too. If the deviants truly thought themselves alive, then he decided he should be able to employ the same tactics on it as he would on a human fugitive. Therefore, having stopped in the doorframe, Connor dropped his shoulders, raised his hands and stepped forward slowly with a changed demeanor.