SEQUENTIAL ━ Connor // RK800 ✔️

nine ━ about mistakes

"It's alright," he attempted to reassure it, noticing how it eyed the secondary exit while actively backing itself into an empty corner. "My name is Connor. What's your name?"

The deviant's eyes settled on looking at him, which was good progress as far as Connor was concerned. He managed to take another step forward before the quiet voice of the deviant begun answering, "I don't have one. A name." After a short once over, the deviant's LED turned yellow and it asked, eyes narrowed, "Why are you working with the police?"

Connor knew better than to answer the questions of a suspect — he was the one to ask the questions there, and that's how he was planning on getting a confession out of it without breaking his promise to Mia that he will not use mind probing as a way of solving the case, though by all means, it would have saved him a lot of time.

"He was going to sell you, so you could be disassembled for your blood," Connor retorted to stating a fact and thus taking another step forward. To his surprise, right before his eyes, the deviant broke out in tears following an awfully authentic whimper. Mia had been correct then, their imitation of human emotions had an increased fidelity, one that seemingly fooled the deviant itself too.

"Yes," the deviant barely mumbled the confirmation, but it was enough for Connor to work with.

"You found out and you were scared," he continued listing the events with an own impression of empathy which he did not harbour whatsoever. But the imitation of empathy was doing the trick — the deviant was nodding along, stabilising while Connor approached it steadily. "That's why you killed him."

"No!" The deviant looked up with his eyes wide, LED back to a deep red. "No, I didn't kill him. I..."

Connor remained unphased, after all, his calmly stated accusation was only meant to provoke such an emotional outburst from it. "You know who did," he nodded at it.

"I...," it looked away from him, but not towards either of the doors to seek escape. The deviant looked towards the ground, ashamed.

"You can talk to me," Connor reassured it, voice nearing a whisper now that he was a little closer. "I can help you. If you tell me who killed Joel Reed, I can make sure you don't get into any trouble with the police. All you have to do is trust me." It was a lie, but a believable lie, and unsurprisingly, the deviant bought into the soft cadance of his tone immediately, no better than the average human in over their heads from complicity to a crime they didn't want to be committed.

"He...," the deviant gulped, its hands clenching into fists, "he disabled our locomotion systems before transporting us to the house. We saw it happen to so many before we heard him talk on the phone." Connor made a mental note to have Brady tip the DPD about finding a second phone for Owens. "He alwayd talked about which models would be next for the sacrifice. We were on the list and I... was scared. I didn't want to die." The deviant looked up with teary eyes, "I told him we should run before Joel could send us away, but he wouldn't listen. He was so angry. Ever since that android we helped, he was always angry."

"What android?" Connor suddenly furrowed his eyebrows, finding a piece of the story that did not allign to his initial computation of what had happened. The presence of another android at the ranch could have meant that the fourth android on the run was not a victim of the virus' spread but the one who brought the deviancy at Joel's farm to begin with.

"He was lost," the deviant couldn't keep the eye contact anymore. "We let him hide in the chicken's den. But he... he made the others uneasy. When I saw my friend carry Joel out of the house, dead and bleeding everywhere, I..."