SEQUENTIAL ━ Connor // RK800 ✔️

thirteen ━ memory lane

Connor opened the door to the garage and stepped inside the dark, but crowded place, a cemetery of half dead appliances waiting their turn to be repaired on the three benches long workdesk of Mia's father. Behind him, Mia stopped again in the doorframe, this time to reach to the side and flick the lightswitch on. Her short and subdued laugh followed, "This place hasn't changed much either." She dragged her steps inside until Connor could feel her shoulder and elbow brush against his arm. "His hoarding habit finally becomes useful. My boxes are still here too. Right where I left them." He followed the direction in which she was looking, spotting the whole corner filled to the ceiling with boxes. Mia uncrossed her arms from her chest and placed her hands instead atop her hips, "It's going to take some sorting, but I should have stuff in there that I can use to set up a system to keep you stable while I operate."

"I'll check the perimeter," Connor offered, "make sure we are alone in the house. Keep a lookout for your father. Do let me know if you need help with the boxes though."

"Got it," Mia nodded, but waved at him without turning around from her task. He watched her retrieve the first box from the pile and appreciated she could handle not toppling the whole structure over on her own.

Before actually leaving the mess of the garage entirelt to her though, Connor spotted near the door a hung frame that had compelled him to pause. "Your father has an engineering degree," he declared out loud, his eyebrows furrowing upwards. He knew Mia's father worked as a local mechanic, but he never could have imagined he was a graduate of MIT settling for such a job.

"Yeah," Mia murmured along, seemingly disappointed with that detail being reminded to her. "His thesis was spectacular too. I think I referenced it once or twice in my own work. He could have been so much more, but he just... He always said he didn't like where the industry was heading. He just preferred the company of old pieces waiting to be turned into junk."

Finally, Connor understood why the rift between Mia and her father happened in the first place - she was a mind of the future, while he was a mind stuck in the past. Really, their distinction was written across that whole garage when comparing it with the systematic approach Mia had to setting up her own lab. All those appliances well past their range of operation laying around, had they been under her care instead, they would have met their most merciful ending of retirement instead of being reanimated to working corpses doomed to be constantly out of their league.

Innovation was knocking on her father's door for years now, but he kept it locked and it costed him his daughter.

Connor didn't bring voice to his new analysis data, instead storing it away amongst the other details gathered for his profiling on Mia. Attending to his self-assigned security tasks took priority as soon as he moved his eyes away from the framed degree.

He'd be a spineless liar if he didn't admit, at least to himself, that he was experiencing a form of excitement when faced with the reality that he was standing in the house in which Mia grew up. It wasn't just the personal nature of the fact, but rather also the opportunity that has teased itself into his mind during the short time in which they had lived in the same house — there was so much more about humans, and consequently about her, that he could learn.

Before giving his curious mind the freedom to take in every single detail that he could find, Connor forced himself to focus on completing his part of the job, giving the house a thorough search from top to bottom. It turned out, just as suspected, thay they were alone there and by the looks of the still quiet street outside, though it would be hard to tell with precision when her father would return, he was certain they'd at least hear his car approach before being faced with the inevitable.