SEQUENTIAL ━ Connor // RK800 ✔️

twenty-four ━ to understand

If her incoherent mumbling was anything to go by, Connor would say that Mia had faded in and out of consciousness at least seven times before they've made it out of the nightclub and back in the car. It was there, when he sat her down in her seat and strapped her seatbelt on that some of consciousness seemed to take root and actually stick around, because he finally caught a glimpse of her eyes, bloodshot, confused and teery, looking more green than ever, even under the faint light inside the car, joined only by a streetlight several feet from them.

"I remember your face," Mia smiled to him and he couldn't quite understand what she meant by that and why she'd sound so proud of something so bizarrely common, but he smiled right back at her anyway.

"Keep your hand pressing," he held his own over hers, guiding her to press a little stronger on the wound, to show some resistance agains the bleeding that fortunately was not too severe. His scanners, brought much closer to her now, also reassured him that there was no severe damage done to her clavicle either, so he could lean back with less guilt weighing him down.

The jolt of stinging pain that erupted from her actually pressing on the wound stringed Mia out of her dream-like state temporarily, enough so to realize that she had somehow gone from sitting on the dirty floor of the nightclub to being back in the passenger seat. Instinct was what had her look to her left once she heard the door shut and she was pretty sure this was heaven: being back in that car, with Connor driving, like nothing has ever happened to them.

"Mia?" Connor inquired, registering her body temperature dropping just as he started the car up again. He couldn't bring himself to appreciate being in a familiar environment, not when she was next to him, consciousness fading again. Is she paler?

With his worry building up to a system overload that stuck his LED working between flashes of yellow and red, Connor was certain he had broken several road rules to get them to their destination faster. Law after law, he had dismissed ever single warning his programming was forced to show on his interface, and he would have dismissed a thousand more had he not managed to park the car where it needed to be before that.

The closest location his processing unit identified as having all he needed to extract the bullet and stop the bleeding effectively was a currently closed veterinary clinic doubling as a pet shop and animal shelter. It was currently closed and he had security confirmation on site that there was no one human within as a security measure.

Having parked in the back of the small building in order to not draw the attention of anyone who might be out and about on the main road at this late hour, once Connor picked Mia up — her state compelled him to choose that over helping her walk on her own —, he had to walk with her through a less than pleasant area of humid trashcan, well overdue for an unloading.

He disambled the security system of the location and forced his way past the back entry door mechanically, with no regard to anything other than keeping track of her breaths, all that much closer to him now. Though he would have liked to cling to calmness, Connor knew better now than to fool himself on such things: his worry was turning into fear. After all, hadn't he already let her down? Delayed by a dream for five days? Getting there too late to stop his clone from pulling the trigger on her?

Had he some time to spare, he knew his processing unit would label his tasks so far as failures.

As soon as he brought them inside the dark building, the barking of several dogs and the rattle of metal cages greeted them to a noise sufficiently loud to have startled Mia awake and groaning. Connor looked down and caught a glimpse of his own hand holding onto her arm, now stained in her blood. His gaze lifted instantly, resuming his task at hand, because much as it disturbed him the prospect of being covered in the physical proof that she was suffering, he couldn't just stand around and contemplate things — he had to do something.