What's In a Proposal?

With This Ring

Coffee?"

My eyes were getting lost in the wall of text before me. 5 dead in a family of 6; youngest child had gone missing. Clear Deviant involvement.

"Y/N."

It took a full minute for Connor's whisper of a voice to become a fully audible question.

"Oh, oh my god I'm sorry. Fuck..." I buried my head into my hands, tired and weary from the countless hours spent bent against a desk. The fluorescent tint of my desk lamp was burned into the innermost cavities of my eyes.

"It's fine. I would just like to know how you'll be taking your coffee today." A soft smile formed on Connor's lips.

I sighed while attempting to return an equally charming smile. "Kyoto drip, please. No room for sugar." I reached into my wallet to give Connor some money for the coffee run, but he was already out the door. Surprisingly, androids have access to their funds, if and when employed directly by the government.

"See you in a bit!" Connor waved to me as he sauntered through the front door.

Work was always interesting; if I wasn't preoccupied with prying open doors to apartments laden with dried blood and expired corpses, the rest of my non-existent free time was spent comparing research notes with Connor. Surprisingly, in the midst of all this bureucratic chaos, I was signed on to work as a group of three alongside Connor and Lieutenant Hank Anderson.

My thoughts on Hank and Connor? They're an interesting pair, that's for sure; though if I'm being completely honest, their interactions are fun to watch. They seem to work best as complete opposites, despite their many contradictions. Hank does all of the drinking, Connor does all of the cooking, Hank does all of the complaining, Connor tries to reason with him, and the list goes on. Despite it all, it seems like they're a perfect duo.

Which makes me wonder why I was asked to join this case. Looking over case files, I wondered to myself why I was chosen, out of all academy graduates. Maybe it was that single Deviant murder I witnessed; to some, its experience, but to me, it's just dumb luck. I tried to make it an effort to maintain a strictly organized work flow. I found that it was best to create digital copies of physical case files; this gave me the opportunity to work on the cases in my free time. So much blood... so much.

The soft thud of a plastic cup startled me. Pale fingers gently pushed the cup towards me. Connor was leaned against a table, opposite to me.

"I hope that you have been resting, Y/N. I sense that your bodily has been heavily fatigued, albeit more than usual. What's wrong?"

Frustrated, I closed all of my open tabs. "I don't get it. You have a missing child with two dead parents, a dead grandma, and two dead siblings. We already confirmed that the perp is another Deviant, but I just.... Don't know how to explain the logic behind that."

Puzzled, Connor's LED ban to flicker and turn with loops of blue. "I'm afraid I don't quite understand your confusion. From analyzing the scene, we were already able to assess the presence of Deviant behavior. Thirium stains were found spread throughout the apartment."

A headache was burning in the back of my head: I pressed my hands against my temples, attempting to suppress the pain. "but, this family had no android on file. No title of ownership, nothing. Deviant behavior is confirmed to be a consequence of emotional, and physical trauma dealt by the hands of their owners. What would a rogue android have to do with a low income family, and why would it take a little boy?"

I could almost hear the subtle twists, and turns in Connor's LED. His left hand was pressed against his mouth as he attempted to form an explanation for the emotional motives of the deviant in question. He was brilliant, but he lacked the human spectrum of emotion. I'd be damned to say that he wasn't trying his hardest, though.