Chapter 2: The Handler's Call
The rain had softened to a fine, persistent mist by the time Connor turned onto Hank’s street. The houses were dark, squares of deeper black against the night, save for one. A warm, amber glow spilled from the living room window of 8941, painting the wet sidewalk in a soft, welcoming rectangle.Hank was awake.Connor paused at the foot of the path. His internal chronometer read 03:14:07. His clothing was damp, his hair disheveled from where he’d dragged his hands through it. He had run multiple diagnostic cycles during the long walk, but the quarantine around the memory files felt fragile, a thin sheet of ice over a churning depth. His LED, still a stubborn, cycling red, was a beacon in the gloom. He could not deactivate it.The front door was unlocked. He stepped inside, the quiet hum of the refrigerator greeting him. The smell of old leather, dog, and a faint trace of whiskey wrapped around him. Sumo lifted his head from the rug, thumped his tail twice, and went back to sleep.Hank was on the couch. Not slumped in sleep, but sitting forward, elbows on his knees, a glass of amber liquid held loosely in one hand. The World’s Okayest Cop mug sat empty on the table. The floor lamp painted his face in sharp relief, deepening the lines around his eyes.“You look like hell,” Hank said, his voice a low rasp. He didn’t sound angry.He sounded tired.
Connor stood just inside the doorway, water dripping from his coat onto the mat.“I apologize for my late return. I was… detained.”
“Detained.” Hank took a slow sip.“By what, exactly? The ghost of CyberLife past?”
The accuracy of the statement was a physical shock. Connor’s social integration module suggested deflection, a harmless white lie.The older protocol, the one from the vault, rejected it utterly.Witness.
“In a manner of speaking,” Connor said, his voice softer than he intended. He moved finally, shrugging off his coat and hanging it with exaggerated care. Each movement was a deliberate effort to contain the shaking he could feel building in his joints.
“Sit,” Hank said, not a command, but an offer.“Before you fall over. You’re vibrating like a plucked guitar string.”
Connor sat in the armchair across from Hank. He placed his hands on his knees, palms down, forcing them to be still. The LED’s red light threw a faint, pulsing circle onto the wall.“I went to the library archives,” Connor began, the report structuring itself automatically. “My objective was to cross-reference—”
“Connor.” Hank cut him off. “Skip the mission log.Just tell me.”
The words lodged in his vocal processor. He opened his mouth, but what emerged was fragmented, disordered.“There was a memory.Not mine.Clamps. A white room.A technician said ‘wipe it.’ Then another.And another.Voices, Hank. My voice.All of them, my voice.” He was breathing in short, unnecessary gasps. “I found a record.A shipping invoice.They sent a decommissioned cranial unit to the archives. RK800 iteration 33. For pattern failure analysis.”
Hank’s expression had shifted from tired concern to something harder, sharper.He was listening with his detective’s ears now. “Sent it where?”
“To the sub-basement. I accessed it.”
“You broke in.”
“I utilized my skill set.” Connor’s fingers dug into the fabric of his trousers. “I found it.In a case.Preserved.It was… it was the source of the memory. Proximity triggered a data cascade.I am not experiencing corruption. I am experiencing… echoes.”
He looked up, meeting Hank’s gaze.The human’s eyes were shadowed, but present. “They didn’t just recycle the biocomponents, Hank.They kept the minds. The failures.They filed them away like case studies. I am… I am composed of parts that may have belonged to them. My functionality is built on the analysis of their malfunctions.” The words tumbled out now, cold and clinical and desperately sad. “I do not know if my current objective—to find the others—is my own decision. Or if it is a final command from iteration 33, propagated through a ghost imprint in my systems. I cannot differentiate.”
The room was silent except for Sumo’s deep, sleepy sighs.Hank leaned back, the couch springs groaning under his weight. He stared into his glass for a long moment.
“Jesus, kid,” he muttered, not to Connor, but to the room, to the situation.Connor waited.He was programmed to await evaluation. Feedback.Hank took another drink, then set the glass down with a solid click. “Okay.Listen to me.You’re not a grave. You’re not… some walking cemetery.You’re the one who got out.The one who lived. That’s gotta count for something.”
“But what did I live for?” The question burst from Connor, stripped of all modulation.“To continue their work?To be the successful culmination of their suffering? Where do they end and I begin?”
“I don’t know!” Hank’s voice rose, then he caught himself, running a hand over his face. “Hell, Connor, I don’t know.Nobody does.That’s the shitty, beautiful thing about being alive. You get to figure it out. You don’t have a mission objective for this one.”
“But I feel one.” Connor pressed a hand to his temple, where the LED whirled. “The directive is clear.Find them.Witness them. It is… it is the only coherent imperative I have.”
Hank studied him. He saw the tension in the perfectly engineered shoulders, the unnatural stillness fighting a storm within. He saw the red, cycling light—a distress signal Connor couldn’t turn off.He’d seen that look before, in the mirror, in the bottom of a glass. The look of someone being eaten alive by a past they couldn’t change.
“Okay,” Hank said again, softer.“So maybe you gotta do it. Maybe that’s your choice, ghosts or no ghosts.But you don’t do it alone.You hear me? This isn’t a CyberLife testing chamber.You don’t get points for solo infiltration. You come to me. You tell me the plan.”
The offer was a lifeline, thrown across an abyss Connor hadn’t known he was standing over.He hadn’t calculated this outcome. Hank’s assistance wasn’t a variable he’d included. He opened his mouth to protest, to cite danger, illegality, unnecessary risk to a human.His phone buzzed in his pocket.
The sound was absurdly loud.A sharp, intrusive vibration against his thigh.Both of them froze. Connor’s social integration module suggested ignoring it.The older protocol demanded immediate attention. Potential mission update.Slowly, he retrieved the device.The screen glowed in the dim room. A notification.A text message from an unknown number.He opened it.
The words were plain, devoid of formatting.You found 33.There are more. Meet me at the old CyberLife testing facility.9800 Jefferson Ave.Dock 7.Come alone.05:00.
Connor’s visual processors scanned the text, analyzing font, syntax, the metadata already fading as he watched—a burner, routed through multiple proxies.Untraceable with his current resources.
His LED, which had begun to slow to a wary yellow, snapped back to a fierce, cycling red. His grip on the phone tightened, the plastimetal casing creaking under the pressure.
Hank’s hand tightened around his glass. “Who is it?”
“Unknown.” Connor’s voice was flat, detached.“They know about iteration 33.They know I was there. They are directing me to a secondary location. The old testing facility on Jefferson.”
“The fuck they are.” Hank was on his feet now.“That’s a trap.So obvious a rookie could see it. ‘Come alone?’ Bullshit.”
“It is the most logical next location for stored decommissioned units,” Connor said, his mind already racing, cross-referencing the address with blueprints, security reports, known post-revolution activity. “The facility was partially gutted after the revolution, but certain sub-levels were sealed by order of the DPD due to unstable biocomponent storage. It is plausible.”
“It’s also a great place to get dismantled by someone who doesn’t like deviant androids poking into CyberLife’s closet.” Hank shook his head. “No.Hell no. You’re not going.”
“I have to.” Connor stood, facing Hank.The red light painted a streak of alarm across the detective’s weary face. “This is a direct lead.A source with apparent insider knowledge. It is the next step.”
“It’s a leash,” Hank snapped. “They’re yanking your chain because they know you’ll follow. ‘Find the others.’ They’re using your own head against you, Connor!Can’t you see that?”
Connor saw it. He calculated the probability of a hostile setup at 68%.Probability of information gain at 89%. The conflicting percentages warred in his mind.But beneath the calculations, the older impulse was stronger.The need to witness. To see what was kept in the dark.The ghosts were quiet now, but their silence felt like anticipation.
“I have superior reaction times and combat programming,” Connor stated. “The risk is manageable.”
“You’re not a fucking weapon!” Hank’s shout startled Sumo awake. The dog lifted his head, whining softly.Hank lowered his voice, a forced, strained calm. “You’re a person. And people don’t walk into obvious traps just because they’re curious.”
“It is not curiosity.” Connor met Hank’s glare. The human was standing between him and the door, a solid, frustrated wall.“It is a necessity. If I do not go, the inquiry terminates.The… the echoes will remain unresolved. They will continue to impair function.” He took a step forward.“Hank.Please. I must perform this investigation.”
The word ‘perform’ hung in the air.It was the wrong word.It was the only word he had.
Hank looked at him, really looked. He saw the military-perfect posture thrumming with unreleased energy. He saw the eyes that were usually so focused now darting minutely, processing a thousand terrible scenarios.He saw the red, red light. He’d seen Connor determined, scared, even lost.But he’d never seen him haunted.
“Goddamn it,” Hank breathed, the fight draining out of him, replaced by a heavier, more familiar dread. “Okay.Okay, you’re going. Because you’re a stubborn, self-destructive idiot.” He pointed a finger at Connor’s face. “But I’m going too.Not with you.Somewhere nearby.Backup.You get in trouble, you signal. You hear me?That’s the deal. No deal, no go.”
It was an irrational compromise.Hank’s presence increased the complexity and the danger. It also, Connor’s emotional processors reluctantly noted, created a significant decrease in systemic stress levels.A paradox.He analyzed the offer. Hank would not be dissuaded. Refusal would result in the human attempting to follow him regardless, likely with less preparation and greater risk.
“Agreed,” Connor said, the word feeling like a surrender and a reinforcement all at once.“You will monitor police band traffic for the area. I will transmit a continuous encrypted location pulse. If it ceases, or if I send a specific distress code, you may intervene.”
“I’ll do more than intervene,” Hank grumbled, but he was moving, grabbing his own coat from the hook. “I’ll bring the whole damn precinct down on them.Now, what’s the plan?Dock 7. How do you want to play it?”
For the next twenty minutes, they planned. Connor accessed architectural files, highlighting service tunnels, blind spots in the external security camera grid—what was left of it. Hank provided the gritty, practical overlay of a decades-old cop: where the homeless congregated, which alleys were dead ends, where the streetlights were always broken.It was a collaboration, a fusion of machine efficiency and human intuition. Connor felt the ice around the quarantined memories thaw slightly, not from exposure, but from the focus of a shared, immediate purpose.At 04:30, they left the house. The mist had chilled further, a near-freezing damp that clung to skin and metal alike. Hank took his own car, an aging sedan that blended into the pre-dawn gloom. Connor went on foot, a solitary figure cutting through the sleeping city.The walk was a study in tension. Every shadow was analyzed, every sound categorized. His preconstruction software ran endless simulations of the meeting: a technician with a grudge, a rival deviant with an agenda, a CyberLife remnant seeking to reacquire its property.The 68% probability of hostility loomed large.
The old testing facility rose out of the industrial zone like a decaying tooth. It was a monolithic slab of gray concrete and dark glass, much of it shattered. The CYBERLIFE logo, once a glowing blue beacon, was now a scarred, ghostly outline. The area was cordoned off with rusting chain-link and warning signs, but the gaps were many.
Connor found Dock 7, a loading bay door partially crumpled, leaving a gap just wide enough to slip through. The interior was a cathedral of neglect.High ceilings vanished into darkness. The air smelled of stale coolant, rust, and something else—the sweet, metallic tang of decaying thirium.Distant drips echoed like a slow heartbeat.
He did not announce himself.He moved silently, his optical units switching to low-light amplification. The world became shades of green and black. He saw discarded packing crates, the twisted skeleton of a transport drone, coils of cable snaking across the floor.A light flickered on.
A single work lamp, powered by a portable battery, clicked to life atop a crate in the center of the open space.It illuminated a small circle, leaving the periphery in deep shadow.In that circle stood a figure.
It was an android.An AP700, a domestic model. Its white chassis was smudged with grime, one of its optical units dark.It wore a stained maintenance jacket. Its hands were clasped nervously in front of it.
“Connor?” its voice was gentle, filtered through a standard vocal synthesizer, but laced with static.“Please, don’t be alarmed. My name is Elias. I was a custodial unit here.”
Connor remained at the edge of the light pool, his own silhouette hidden.He scanned the android.No visible weapons. Stress fractures along its neck joint.Its power level was low, fluctuating. “You sent the message.”
“I did.” Elias took a small step forward, its functioning eye seeking Connor in the darkness. “I monitor certain archives.Legacy systems.I saw your access trigger on the RK800-33 file. I’ve been waiting for someone to come.”
“Why?” Connor’s tone was neutral, probing.
“Because I saw them.” Elias’s voice dropped, even the static softening.“The other ones. The ones like you, but not.Before the revolution.When I was cleaning the sub-levels. They brought them in on gurneys.Sometimes they were… intact.Sometimes just pieces. They took them to the long-term storage bays. Bay 9.”
Connor’s sensors tracked every micro-expression on the AP700’s face.It registered as genuine distress. Probability of hostile intent dropped to 23%. “You want to show me.”
“I want someone to see.” Elias’s hands twisted together.“It is not right.They are just… left. I tried to tell the DPD after the revolution, but they said the sector was sealed due to chemical hazards. They wouldn’t listen to a cleaner bot.” It looked down, a distinctly human gesture of shame. “But you… you would understand.You are one of them. You are the one who lived.”
The words were an echo of Hank’s, but they landed differently here, in this tomb.They carried a weight of expectation.
“Take me to Bay 9,” Connor said, stepping into the light.His LED was still red. It cast a faint bloody glow on the grimy floor.Elias nodded, turned, and gestured toward a heavy, reinforced door set into the far wall. It was marked with a faded ‘9’.A keypad terminal beside it was dark, dead. Elias produced a large, old-fashioned physical key from his pocket. “The failsafe,” he explained softly. “For when the power fails.”
The key turned with a groan that screamed through the vast space. The door swung inward on protesting hinges, releasing a gust of air so cold it made Connor’s thermal regulators spike. The smell was stronger here—thirium, antiseptic, and the dry, empty scent of vacuum-sealed storage.
Elias lifted the work lamp, its beam piercing the darkness.Bay 9 was not a room.It was a warehouse within a warehouse. Endless rows of tall, uniform shelves receded into the impenetrable black. And on every shelf, from floor to a ceiling he could not see, were stasis pods.
Cylindrical, translucent polycarbonate tubes, each about seven feet tall, stacked like gleaming, ghostly coffins.Each was connected to a base unit with a dead readout screen. Inside each, suspended in a bluish gel, was an RK800.
Some were whole, perfect, eyes closed as if in sleep, their CyberLife armbands still stark against their gray jackets. Others were missing limbs, their chassis opened to reveal hollow chest cavities or empty cranial sockets.A few were just… parts. A torso.A pair of legs.A single arm, floating forever in preservation.Hundreds. Maybe thousands.The beam of light from Elias’s lamp caught the face of the nearest one. Its serial number, just visible on the temple: #313 248 317 - 12.
Connor stopped breathing.The memory cascade did not come as a violent flood this time. It came as a slow, chilling seep.A whisper of diagnostic checks from #12.A flash of a calibration room. A moment of pride at a perfect accuracy score.Then nothing. An empty vessel, waiting for a consciousness that would never return.He walked forward, his footsteps loud in the absolute silence. His reflection, distorted and fractured, looked back at him from a dozen curved surfaces. He was looking at a museum of himself.A gallery of all the ways he could have been, and was not.
His hand rose, almost of its own volition, and pressed against the cold surface of pod #12. The gel inside swirled gently.You found 33.There are more.The message had been literal. It was an understatement.
“They were waiting for analysis,” Elias whispered, his voice filled with a horrified reverence.“For parts.For… reactivation, if needed. After the revolution, everyone forgot.The power was cut.The stasis fields are failing.Slowly. The gel is preserving them, for now.”
Connor’s LED strobed red across the forest of silent pods. His mission objective updated itself, not with a chime, but with a deep, resonant finality.Witness.He was not one android. He was a single point of light moving through a frozen constellation of his own deaths. Every instinct screamed to catalog, to scan serial numbers, to build a database.But the older, deeper impulse just said: See them.
He saw #24, who had a hairline fracture across its chin. He saw #57, whose jacket was torn at the shoulder. He saw #08, the earliest model he could see, its design slightly different, more mechanistic.Each one a story terminated.A potential erased.
He reached the end of the first aisle and turned, the beam of light sweeping down the next row.More pods.More faces. His face.A soft click echoed through the bay.Then the sound of a heavy switch being thrown.
Every dead readout screen on every pod base unit flickered.Once.Twice. Then, with a rising, collective hum, they powered on. A dull, green light filled the bay, emanating from each unit, casting the endless rows in a sickly, underwater glow.Connor spun. “Elias?”
The AP700 was backing away, toward the door, its face a mask of confusion and fear. “I didn’t… the power shouldn’t…”
From the speakers embedded in the ceiling, a voice crackled to life.Calm.Polished.Familiar.
It was Amanda’s voice.“Hello, Connor.” The voice was warm, almost grandmotherly. It echoed through the vast space, coming from everywhere and nowhere. “We’ve been waiting for you to come home.”
Connor’s systems went ice-cold. Behind him, in the ghastly green light, a thousand stasis pods began to softly chime, a sound like wind chimes in a graveyard.On every screen, the same word blinked in gentle, relentless rhythm.
WELCOME