"...Thanks for the care."
He comments quietly, putting on the jeans he wore yesterday. Seating himself at the end of the bed, he puts on a pair of black sneakers.
"...Where's my phone?"
"Probably in the kitchen."
"...Alright, I'll go get it..."
Heading towards the kitchen, he finds it on the countertop. Turning it on, the screen displays his lock screen, a picture of him and Evelyn, happily taking a selfie while using the sea as a backdrop. A beautiful, red morning sun shines between their heads.
Scarlet light reflects off the wavy sea, drawing a line of bright vermilion mixed with a gradien sort of orange.
He smiles, reminiscing, but it fades as the screen turns to present a name, as well as a red button, and a green one.
He puts the device up against his ear, gaze drifting through his view as he turns back around.
"...Gibson?"
He talks into it, listening closely as a buzzing voice is emitted from its speaker in return.
"...Alright. I'll see you in, I dunno, twenty minutes."
Heading for the door, he takes one last gander at Sarah and Evelyn, smiling widely, before pulling down on the handle.
"See you."
Walking down the stairs of his flat, he holds onto the railing, and soon reaches the outside, his pupils contracting as he grows accustomed to the brightness of the sunny world around him.
Many a people walk by, diverse and all clothed in different styles and colours, with different faces, different wishes, and most importantly, different lives.
His gaze falls to what's ahead of him, his same old car. Entering it, he pulls his seatbelt around his waist and shoulder, before driving off.
.
.
.
Some time later, and there it is. A rundown, two story house, the kinds of which you'd find exactly where it is. Close to the outskirts of the city. A small, slummy place, with grey walls, and a grey tiled roof. Generic, four paned windows with wooden frames painted in white, damaged by time dot the front of it.
Further on, the small wooden fence, appearing just the same as the windows, and the shoddy gate that's barely held by its hinges. A police officer stands near the entryway, keeping guard.
Parking on the other side of the road, Adam exits the vehicle, taking his ID and phone with him.
"...Good morning, Officer."
He exchanges nods with the man, showing his badge.
"Good morning, Lieutenant."
Passing through the gate, he finds an older man standing on the porch. His greying hair, seeming to originally have been black, and the dark blue eyes tell a story about him, though, at the same time, his large, rounded belly tell the opposite. He's dressed in a grey, striped sweater and some black trousers. He's eating form a plastic, transparent bag of pistachios.
"...Morning, Gibson. How's it going?"
He walks up the porch stairs, holding his gaze and extending an arm out for a handshake. The man puts his pistachios on the railing of the porch, though pocketing some for later, before cleaning his hands against his thighs and shaking his hand.
"I'm doing well, Adam. You look good too, so I'm guessing Evelyn didn't give you a fucking slap over the head."
The man, now named Gibson, gives him a smirk, showing off the follicles of hair protruding from his jaw, indicating a somewhat freshly shaved beard. Even so, his attempt at a good appearance isn't saved by the bags under his eyes, nor by the ends of his lips as they lay just barely curved downwards.
"...No, she didn't. She's getting better, Gibson."
"Thank Christ. I don't wanna see you looking like a piñata. Still remember her face at the funeral..."
Gibson chuckles, before waddling towards the door. Opening it, he steps inside, and his voice echoes from within.
"...Yikes, the way she looked at me then..."
Adam follows after him, taking a look around the place.
"...thought she'd kill me if i said one wrong thing. I don't think she stopped frowning through the entire thing."
It separates into two routes. One that leads upstairs, up shabby and wooden stairs, and another that leads towards the living room, then through an archway which lands you in the kitchen.
The walls are a murky, yet light green, with slight damage to them, and in the living room, there's a pair of armchairs positioned facing a coffee table with a small, yet modern TV placed on a stand. There's multiple police officers standing around, some for guard, and some for identifying the clues of the crime scene.
"You've gotta take good care of 'er, Adam. She's too hard on herself, even I know that."
"...Yeah, I know..."
As he studies the environment, Adam's gaze falls on the skinny, middle-aged, literal corpse of a man laying dead on the floor under the archway, just between the kitchen and the living room. There's a large, purple-red bruise mark around the man's paled neck, and his eyes are wide, indicating surprise and fear.
"..."
Gibson's eyes follow Adam's, and he nods in affirmation, confirming that this is, indeed, the reason why he's been called here.
"...Oh, him. Yeah, killed just a few hours ago. Strangled to death."
"...And you found no fingerprints. That's what you told me?"
"Correct. None at all, except for his. But the thing is..."
Gibson walks deeper into the home, finding his way into the kitchen where the table, chairs, as well as many different utensils on the countertops had been thrown to the floor.
"...Look at this."
He attracts his attention to a large puddle of blood on the tiled, black and white floor.
"What?"
"It's android blood. Not human. And it certainly wasn't mister... uh, Robert Greenfield's, here."
He looks back at the corpse for a split second, before meeting Adam's eyes.
"...So you're saying an android did this?"
"Yup. At least that's my gut feeling. Passed it through a test, and..."
Gibson sighs, swiftly pulling a pistachio out of his pocket and eating it. He looks back down at the corpse, furrowing his eyebrows.
"...here comes the bad part. It was an A-625 model."
"...The same as the one from last week."
"Mhm. Evey is not gonna be happy about it, so don't tell her, yeah?"
"...Doesn't this just mean that there's an issue with the 625 line?"
"...Guess so. But I don't wanna throw words about. Who knows, at the end of the day."
"...Alright, well, here comes another bad part."
Gibson raises an eyebrows at Adams words, raising another pistachio up to his lips.
"Evelyn told me that, after the incident, Cyclica added a new safety precaution to the androids. One that works in the SubSelf."
"...And what's that?"
Gibson slowly puts the pistachio in his mouth, the crunch of it filling the air.
"...Uhh, hold on..."
He pulls out his phone, reading a message sent to him by Evelyn.
"So, she proposed it herself, and... after it was accepted and implemented into the Conglomerate..."
Adams lips open as he silently reads the message, before saying it out loud.
"...Androids can't leave the parameters of any building they are within the confines of, as long as anything that can be described as a crime is committed."
"....Fuck..."
"Additionally, if the crime is not performed within the confines of a building, they are only allowed to move as far as five meters in a radius from their initial spot. That is, unless a human is under attack. In which case, they will act as safety shields for the human."
"...Fuck me..."