SEQUENTIAL ━ Connor // RK800 ✔️

twenty-five ━ point of no return

After a good couple of seconds of silence had passed over his words and Mia was only holding onto his hand a little tighter, Connor had come to the strange conclusion that something other than this passing guilt was troubling her. "What's wrong?" He inquired, tilting his head.

"What if...?" Mia rummaged on her thoughts a little longer, making him conclude that whatever hypothetical she was about to present him with required a lot of care when choosing the right wording to describe it.

It must be something she considers important, he thought, watching tirelessly curious how her jaw tensed and relaxed, how the muscles on her neck flinched with her gulp and her chest raiser and fall across several deep breaths before she even considered herself ready to proceed.

"What if we were to not come back?"

Connor's stun before the question lasted seemingly less than she had expected, because coming only a second later, his reply made her look at him immediately. "Our current chances of success are well above the fifty percent mark," he informed her of something he thought they have established upon agreeing on their plan. Nonetheless, he hardly minded going through the facts again, as they acted rather well as a reminder for himself as well. "We are going to make it back, Mia. Once we have everything we need from Rory, we'll request transportation back and slowly, things will get back to normal."

Much to his shock, she seemed unconvinced when she nodded along, "I'll... let you do what you need to do."

Had it not been for the certainty they'll have more time to talk once on the freighter, in a setting of privacy where he could convince her to relax through methods much more likely to end up successful, Connor wouldn't have let the topic go there and then. It was only with the future in mind that he returned his attention to the EMP jammer and the now emptier compartment yet to be closed.

10:12 PM

RK800 opened the compartment in a fluid movement quickly jerked into a futile attempt to close the thing up again. An feeling lacking description overwhelmed his systems, static corrupting his field of vision and his scanning interface, prompting his processing unit with spammed audio command prompts that within the second brought his biocomponent temperature up and past the advisable limits.

A fugitive glimpse is all he caught of the device stuck to the inside of the compartment, connected by a wire to its door that he pulled open, unbeknownst of what he was going to set off. EMP, he identified, unable to tell why his lips had parted, nor what sound had been released while he turned with heavy and slowed movements to the door by his side hands flapping mostly unresponsive agains the handle.

Come on, he begged his hands to cooperate, hardly able to care anymore about explaining to himself why he'd fight this hard against the stasis inducing condition his systems were being forced into.

He could have sworn there was fog on the windshield when the door creaked open, and steam briefly coming off of him when he fell out, dropping on the puddle formed of the pavement by the still pouring rain. Each and every drop slamming on his back made itself felt and though the noise muffled the effects of the EMP jammer, the damage done wasn't being undone fast enough for him to will his hands to grip the ground beneath and crawl further from the active range of the car.

Before he knew it and well before he was ready to give up himself, his systems gave up on him, entering a soft, full reboot.

10:12 PM, Western Docks, Detroit