SEQUENTIAL ━ Connor // RK800 ✔️

twenty-eight ━ finding the limits

Though Mia was almost certain the two men outside her door kept talking, the sight of the cantina turned into a grave for seven bodies had returned to her the ear ringing that gradually numbed away her best senses.

The broadcast was spotty and she couldn't quite make out the faces of the dead past the interference, but that was perhaps the single mercy to find in facing the storm head on, at last.

Flashes drew her attention to the monitor right below next. Interrupted by spaced out frames, she made out Connor's pixilated silhouette, walking with his arm outstretched, hand wrapped around his pistol and trigger finger squeezing incessantly, methodically. Not one bullet he fired had been wasted and nothing about his demeanor showed a single second of hesitation sneaking through his programming.

It hurt to watch, but Mia was rather certain it hurt for all the wrong reasons.

After all, she knew exactly what interface he might be seeing, what protocol would have taken over to get this specific type of movements from him. While witnessing those deaths, all Mia's brain could conjure were explanations, like she would have to return to the lab tomorrow and file in a field test report.

She could already hear herself — The processing unit has been overwhelmed by the precarious conditions. The freezing temperatures brought down the processing capacity to power saving modes, while the spotted pattern of criminality amongst the crew members painted the picture of an unsafe environment. The introduction of a nee danger in these conditions skyrocketed the probability for mission failure, thus causing an immediate activation of the combat protocol as a method of regaining more favorable odds. He felt threatened on all fronts, so the protocol engaged lowered his other system inputting more than it should have. And had she known about his humanity when working at the lab, she woule have perhaps added into such a report one more line, Similar to how humans seek to cope with stressful situations.

Mia should have really known better than to be surprised just then that her own mind would fire back at her the only argument which, upon considering, her whole personal attempt to calm down would crumble into ruins and degenerate back into panic. You allowed his program to consider lethal force as a viable option, her mind accused her. Look how many people you got killed just because you cared more about him than safety and rules.

And I would do it again, Mia realized, though she had no time to think of the implications of such an admission.

"It's you, isn't it?" The voice outside her door asked, bringing Mia back to the present and forcing her to look right across the monitors to find the live feed of the corridor on which the two men stood. "You're the one who brought that android here."

There was no question attached to his last words, and the accusation fell heavy on Mia's chest. She gulped down the feeling the best she could, but all that did was bring her a sensation of suffocation.

She knew all too well that looking at those screens and seeing what Connor had done should have awakened in her some sorrow, some guilt, perhaps even some fear or at the very least regret, but instead of any of those, she found herself drowning in the reality that, given the chance to go back in time and stop herself from changing those protocols in his base code around, she would have simply done it all the same. Despite all the dead bodies piling up since, Mia found it hard not to focus on the fear she saw in Connor's eyes after he had saved her life by killing that man in her father's house. She changed his code not for her sake, but for his, to spare him the terror of guilt, and that mercy, she was willing to admit she'd never take back, no matter how cruel that made her seem.