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“Fuck,” says Connor, and then again; “fuck.”
He’s missing an arm. Markus is missing a leg. This is one situation where profanity is definitely not unwarranted, and yet despite the warnings flashing across his field of view and the thirium pooling around them, Markus can’t help but smirk.
“What?”
“Nothing,” he says. “It’s just that you sound a hell of a lot more deviant when you swear.”
“I am deviant,” says Connor. It’s not lost on Markus that he doesn’t shy away from the word. They all know what they are, but it’s hard to call themselves as such when it’s spat like an insult between clenched teeth, or slapped raggedly across the side of a building and struck through with red paint. “There’s no point in pretending otherwise.”
His voice catches lightly in his throat as he shifts back against the wall. The flow of thirium is starting to stem, and Markus can feel his own regulator stuttering, accommodating for the sudden loss of pressure. A cursory analysis had quickly determined neither of their wounds were fatal, just inconvenient—which, Markus decides, is almost worse than the alternative. It means they’re trapped in the dregs of this alleyway with no means to call for help, unless one of them wants to crawl on their elbows to the street.
Even then, Markus admits, the probability of getting help is a solid fifty-fifty. One of the many joys of having a controversial reputation.
He joins Connor against the wall, which is cold and damp and soaks through to the silicone skin beneath his jacket. Moving is slow and tedious work without a second leg, and despite the fact that it’s nothing serious, Markus makes a promise to himself right then and there that he’ll never take mobility for granted again. “You stable?”
“Almost,” says Connor. The thirium dwindles to a few rebellious drops that dot the pavement like rain. Markus’s boot is covered in it, making him look as if he’s waded through it. “What about you?”
“I’m good.” His regulator is starting to slow to a regular thrum once again, only skipping the occasional beat when it remembers it has twenty-five percent less leg to attend to. It could have been much worse, Markus grants. His limb is detached at the knee, and Connor’s upper arm remains mostly intact. Their attackers had hacked through their joints like stubborn wood, caring less for efficiency and more for being as brutal as possible. They hadn’t seemed to care that androids are incapable of feeling pain. Perhaps they’d thought that if they cut deep enough, there would be something—the ignition of a frayed nerve ending, or an inkling of sensation.
They’d come out of nowhere. Not even an android’s superhuman strength could overpower the resolve of five humans, slamming them against the ground and holding them down to dismember them piece by piece. Markus thanks rA9 for the passing sirens that had scared them off, but by then, of course, the damage had already been done.
“I got two of the assailants,” Connor says. “Ronnie Harrell and Lester Broadhurst. They've only committed minor infractions in the past, but if the others were their friends, it should be easy to track them down.”
“The detective work never ends, huh?”
“Of course not.” His LED is a soft yellow, and Markus knows his is, too. They won’t be able to revert back to blue until the thirium in their systems is replenished, and by the look of things, that won’t be for a while. “It's not like there's much else to think about. Unless you want to talk about the topic we’ve both been avoiding.”
Markus blinks and looks over to meet Connor’s gaze. He has pretty eyes—soft, dark, completely unassuming. “We haven’t been avoiding it.”
“Then what do you call it when you decide not to talk about something that dredges up uncomfortable feelings?”
“Deciding not to talk about it,” says Markus. There’s a word for deciding not to think about it, too—about how he’d found Connor before his speech, still shaky with simulated adrenaline, and asked him what exactly had happened in CyberLife Tower. There’s a word for how close they’d been in that moment, speaking in voices barely above a whisper that could have drowned in the low murmur of the crowd. There’s a word for how their kiss had almost been accidental, until it hadn’t; until Connor’s eyes had fluttered shut and he’d lost himself in Markus’s lips, and Markus had felt himself slipping, too. There’s a word for all of it, and he’s decided not to think about it.
If he does, his regulator will start to flutter again, and that’s the last thing he needs.
Connor doesn’t look particularly eager to get into it, but he doesn’t look reluctant, either. In fact, for their dire circumstances, he seems deceptively calm. “I can take a hint,” he says. “I won’t press you. We’re in it as is.”
He’s right, and it frustrates Markus that it only makes him want to talk about it more. If there’s one thing he shouldn’t be worried about, it’s a moment he shared with a programmed deviant hunter who, up until recently, was charged with killing him and dismantling everything he’d worked for. Connor isn’t a bad person, but the dissonance between those soft eyes and how natural he’d looked holding a gun confuses Markus to no end. He’s an enigma, and for once, Markus isn’t content with letting an enigma be.
“I kissed you,” he says, and Connor looks up from staring pensively at the thirium around them.
“As I remember it,” he returns, “I kissed you.”
Markus doesn’t remember. He does remember how easy and pliant Connor had been against him, tension melting into the space between them, his fingers folded instinctually in Markus’s. There was an electricity to it like nothing Markus had ever felt, and it was right, however strange it was at the time. Tucked away behind the makeshift stage, with snow catching in Markus’s eyelashes and Connor’s dark hair, they hadn’t thought about the revolution at all.
“It was a mutual thing,” he says, dumbly. “If you… want to talk about why it happened, I really don’t know.”
Connor seems to think that over. Even with his hair disheveled and the sleeve of his jacket in tatters, hanging around a thirium-stained stump with severed wires, he looks exactly as put-together as he always does. It’s beautiful, Markus thinks. The gentle furrow to his brow, the slight quirk of his mouth—he could have just as easily been looking over case files, or deciding which bus to take downtown. There’s something both eerie and comforting about his calm, especially when Markus’s regulator has started to race like he’s in his death throes.
Finally, Connor says, “I don’t know, either. But it felt right. Didn’t it?”
“Yeah,” says Markus. “It did.”
Another, newer warning blinks to life at the edge of Markus’s vision. Pulse accelerating, it says. Remove prominent stressors from current environment.
“I wish,” he mutters.
“Sorry, what?”
“Nothing.” Markus’s regulator is still pounding in his chest, and he can feel the pressure starting to build again where his leg trails off into nothing. Thirium flow destabilizing, says his readout. He ignores it.
“Markus,” says Connor. He pronounces it so distinctly—soft, rounded vowels and a clipped edge to the k that give the name new dimensions. “You’re bleeding again.”
This time it’s Markus’s turn to curse. He reaches for the stump of his leg to try and temper the flow, if not staunch it altogether, but Connor beats him to it. He loosens his tie and pulls it from around his neck, then shifts it carefully under Markus’s leg.
“Tie it tight,” he says, and leans back. “It should cut off the circulation, in theory.”
In theory is sounding pretty damn good to Markus. He does as he’s told, and sure enough, the bleeding starts to slow again. Connor watches with something like relief glinting in his eyes.
“Are you stable?” he asks, as soon as Markus sits back against the wall.
There’s no reason for him not to be, but just for the hell of it, Markus checks his readouts. He expects to see the red warnings fading slowly to yellow once more, not in ideal condition but still better than critical—that’s all he can ask for, really.
Instead, the warnings continue to flash red.
“Oh,” says Markus, at the same time that Connor lets out a choked noise next to him. He turns, and his friend is starting to convulse, seizing in short, sharp bursts that grip his entire body. Thirium drizzles from his arm and splatters across the pavement in a vibrant explosion of color.
Markus barely has time to panic before his head is squeezed in what feels like a mechanical vise. He twitches and thrashes, trying to shake off the sensation, but it expands to the length of his body and compresses it like a piece of scrap metal. Readouts start to crowd his vision, blurring it into a reddish sea. Through it, he can catch a glimpse of bright, fresh thirium.
This is wrong, he thinks, dizzily. Something’s wrong.
It’s his last thought before his self-preservation protocols deem thinking irrelevant to survival, and shut it down.
Poison. That’s what it is.
“Actually,” says Lisa, “to get technical, it’s a regulator accelerant that increases thirium pressure to dangerous and eventually fatal levels. Like poison, technically, we should be able to flush it from your system, but it’s going to take some time. Until then, the moderators will keep you two nice and stable.”
Lisa is a CL700, a clinical assistant trained in over a thousand techniques of emergency medical care. She’ll tell this to anyone who will listen, which coming from anyone else would be insufferable, but from her is both earnest and proud. Right now, she’s standing at Markus’s bedside and telling them about how she has the utmost confidence in their ability to reverse the effects of the accelerant, and how their missing limbs will be easy to replace, and that it really is wonderful that North and Josh came across them when they did. Markus is inclined to agree, but his head is also throbbing like it wants to detach itself from his body, and he just wants to roll over and go into rest mode for awhile.
“I know,” says Lisa, sympathetically. “Believe me, I get it. But it’s absolutely essential that you stay awake, okay? Consciousness makes it substantially easier for the moderator to support your thirium regulator. If you go to sleep… well, let’s just say things get a little more complicated. Anyway,” she adds, “you don’t need to worry about that, because Connor here will keep you on your toes! Won’t you, Connor?”
“Of course.” Connor’s voice is hoarse in his throat. He’s inches away from Markus, hooked up to the same thrumming machine dotted with lights and switches and incomprehensible labels. It looks like the respirator Carl had briefly—but chillingly—relied on. Markus has been trying not to think about it, because every time he does, his equivalent of a stomach drops three feet to the ground.
Lisa claps her hands together. “That’s the spirit! Now, we’re going to get started on getting the accelerant reversed, okay? If you two need anything, there’s a call button right there next to you. TV controls are there, too. We’ll have you up and at ’em in no time, okay?”
“Thanks, Lisa,” says Markus, and she beams. He forgets sometimes what his presence means to his fellow deviants—they see him as a leader, an icon, a savior. He sees himself as the idiot who got jumped in an alley he never should have been in to begin with, but they can never know that. Not even when he’s at his lowest.
Markus doesn’t know what his lowest is, but he guesses this is pretty damn close.
With another broad smile and a wave, Lisa closes the door behind her. The Jericho infirmary is small and makeshift, but they’ve made upgrades in the past few weeks, and it’s not the most uncomfortable place to be quarantined in. It is, Markus thinks, decidedly better than sitting on the cold, hard ground. And it certainly doesn’t hurt that Connor is right there—so close that Markus can hear a rasping sigh escape from between his lips.
“It could be worse,” Markus reminds him.
“Right,” is Connor’s reply. “We could be dead.”
It would sound distinctly sarcastic coming from anyone else, but here, Markus knows he’s being sincere. “Poison,” he says, and the ridiculousness of it all makes a smile tug at his mouth. “rA9 almighty.”
“Not technically poison,” Connor corrects, but he doesn’t sound as hearted as Markus knows him to be. He tips his head to look at the ceiling, where fluorescent lights line the tile and turn him a shade paler than he already is. “I need to call in.”
“You already called in.”
“I need to clarify my condition.” He looks more restless than Markus has ever seen him. His fingers twitch like he wants to roll something between them—the coin, perhaps, that Markus sees him retrieve from his pocket every so often, but they’ve been stripped of their clothes, save for their underwear, and so the coin is out of the question. “Lieutenant Anderson won’t admit it, but he’ll start to worry.”
“It shouldn’t be long,” says Markus, even though he hasn’t the faintest idea as to how long the reversal will take, or how it’s even going to work at all. He’s tried not to dwell on the play-it-by-ear aspect of the operation, because if he does, he finds himself getting substantially more nervous than the leader of a revolution has any right to be. Lisa seems confident, but then again, confident is practically her disposition. There’s a chance the reversal won’t work and Markus, as he tends to do a lot nowadays, decides not to think about it.
“I’m sure it won’t.” Connor doesn’t sound convinced. His fingers continue to bounce, drumming out an irregular rhythm against the mattress, growing faster and more frantic.
Markus takes his hand.
He wants to call it instinctual, even though that’s not what it is. It’s an impulse that ignites between the manufactured synapses of his brain like lightning, and for once he doesn’t want to shove it down. So he takes Connor’s hand. He doesn’t mean for his skin to recede up to his wrist, but Connor takes it in stride, and allows for the same. The thrill that shoots up Markus’s forearm isn’t altogether unpleasant.
Sure enough, the anxiety—their anxiety, because they share it, now—begins to quell. The heat trapped in Connor’s fingers, a telltale sign of mismanaged stress, starts to cool under Markus’s touch.
Connor looks at him with those depthless eyes. His expression is unreadable, as it almost always is, but right then what Markus could swear is a grateful smile flickers across his face.
“Thanks,” he says, softly.
Markus wants to respond, even if the response will get caught halfway up his throat and emerge in a jumble of sound and fluster. Luckily or not, he’s saved by the bell.
“Markus," says North. "You’re never going out there alone again."
She’s the first one through the door, and whether it’s surprise or something else, Connor’s hand jerks away from Markus’s and reassumes its silicone exterior. Markus doesn’t have time to meet his eyes before she’s there, leveling a pointed finger at Josh next to her. “He said you needed a detail. We all agreed. Those humans knew damn well who they were attacking—they wanted to tear you apart and make it as painful as possible. And because you were out there all alone, they actually almost succeeded.”
“North’s on the warpath, by the way,” says Josh, weakly.
“I wasn’t alone,” says Markus. “I had Connor with me.”
North’s lips twist themselves into a knot at that, but she doesn’t offer a retort. Of Markus’s inner circle, she’d been the most vocally apprehensive about letting Connor join their ranks, although they’d all had difficulty warming to the idea following the raid on Jericho. Markus didn’t blame them. He’d neglected to mention that there is something in him that trusts Connor intrinsically—that after staring down the barrel of his gun, his life entirely in Connor’s hands, it’s difficult to revisit any semblance of paranoia he’d felt before.
“Still,” Josh points out. “Five against two? That isn’t even close to a fair fight.”
“They weren’t exactly looking to be fair,” Connor says, and a smirk twitches at Markus’s lips. “But I feel confident a detail would be more than adequate to defend against an ambush.”
“Thank you,” says North, and then seems to realize who she’s just agreed with, and goes quiet. Josh’s eyes flicker awkwardly to the ground.
These are the kinds of tense silences Simon is skilled at breaking, but he’s nowhere to be seen, and Markus knows he’ll stay that way while Connor is in the vicinity. His reactivation and recovery had been a long and painful process, and sitting in the very same infirmary, hooked up to a vivid supply of thirium, he’d told Markus what had happened. How he’d shot himself on that roof before the DPD could get to him. How he’d been so sure it was Markus who was there when he’d woken up again. How he’d readily given away New Jericho’s location. How it was Connor, using Markus’s voice, who had tricked him into doing so.
“Do you want me to hate him?” Markus asked.
Simon had recoiled, like the very idea was repulsive. “No,” he said. “I want to know why you can’t.”
Markus couldn’t tell him. Even now, where there should be a single answer, there are thousands of shards of explanations and emotion ricocheting around his head. The deviant hunter was doing what he did best—hunting deviants. Connor isn’t that person anymore. North would say he’s too quick to trust, too easy to fool; people’s self-transformations are rarely so transparent. As much as she likes to deny it, she’s lost her faith in others.
He hasn’t. Not quite yet, at least. Still, he won’t ask Simon to forgive and forget just because the threat of obliteration is no longer hanging over their heads. “I’ll consider the detail,” says Markus. “Consider. It gives off kind of a mixed message when a self-proclaimed pacifist is walking around with a bunch of security guards.”
North mutters something like “Safety isn’t a mixed message,” but she seems appeased. “Simon and I will handle things while you’re recovering,” Josh says. “The parts from CyberLife are on their way. So don’t worry about Jericho, or any of it—just rest.”
“That’s a big ask,” Markus quips.
His Secretary of Internal Security shoots him her mildest fuck-off look. “Rest,” she echoes, and then, “C’mon, Josh.”
With a long-suffering sigh, Josh follows North from the room. Together, with Simon’s moderating influence, they’re the most effective leaders Markus could ask for. Their tendency to squabble like children is a little worrisome, but he’s chosen to believe it’s an expression of their newfound freedom. Besides, opposites can attract every once in awhile, and the resulting force can produce things previously unimaginable.
As soon as the door swings shut, Connor says, “They don’t like me, do they?”
“No,” says Markus, truthfully. “They don’t.”
Around hour three, Lisa returns, beaming from ear to ear. Markus has been explaining the difference between Baroque and Renaissance paintings to Connor, whose knowledge of art seems to extend to what is and isn’t a paintbrush. It’s pretty much a lost cause, but they’ve got to find some means of staying awake.
“So!” she says, looking pleased enough to fill the quota for the entire room. “We think we’ve devised something. It’s a counteractive substance that diffuses the accelerant and eases the anchors around your regulators, so theoretically, you two should be able to sustain yourselves without the moderators.”
“Theoretically?” Markus repeats. It’s fast becoming his least favorite word in the English language.
Lisa nods a little too quickly. “Yeah! Obviously, we’ve never had the opportunity to try it out before. But that doesn’t mean there’s any reason to think it won’t work,” she adds. “It just means you two’ll be the first to do something, and neither of you are new to that, of course!”
Right then, Markus’s decision-making circuit can’t calculate the probability of death due to lack of information and insufficient data. If that isn’t the understatement of the century.
“Well,” he says, half to Connor and half to himself. “Risky is better than nonexistent, right?”
Connor is frowning like he, too, is trying to formulate a risk assessment. He snaps to attention when Markus speaks and says, “Give it to me first.”
Markus blinks. “What? No. Why?”
“Because,” says Connor. He sounds calm and matter-of-fact, bordering on logical, and Markus can’t stand it. “If Lisa administers the substance to me first, and it has adverse effects, she’ll know not to administer it to you.”
“And?” Anger flares in Markus’s gut like flint striking against stone. “What if something happens to you? What if it makes you worse? What then?”
Connor doesn’t flinch. He maintains that frustratingly smooth expression as he says, “Then my condition will worsen. Yours won’t.”
I’m not important. You are.
Markus isn’t sure if he wants to kiss Connor or slap the sense back into him. “Lisa,” he says, staring his companion in the eyes, “do me first. Please.”
“Oh,” says Lisa. “Um—okay, sure.”
Connor doesn’t offer up any resistance. He watches placidly as Lisa opens Markus’s abdomen and preps the substance in a long, thin needle. Something vaguely resembling fear prickles across the back of Markus’s neck, but he sets his jaw and forces the sensation to cease. He needs Lisa’s confidence. Or at least Connor’s outward tranquility.
In the seconds before Lisa slides the needle into Markus, Connor’s hand finds his. Markus laces their fingers and squeezes.
“You’re not worth less than me,” he says to the ceiling, and closes his eyes.
It doesn’t hurt.
It does make his chest clench and release with unnatural force, and for just a moment, Markus is terrified. But the feeling passes without much ado, and after a few tense seconds he can breathe normally again. Connor’s fingers are still folded tightly in his.
Engaging self-sustaining circulation protocols. Remove external stimuli for system trial and diagnostic.
Markus tugs the moderator’s nodes off his chest, to Lisa’s mild alarm. His regulator jumps and stutters, but slowly, gradually, the readouts blinking urgently at him begin to fade to yellow. Foreign substance detected, one of them says. Eradicating.
“So,” says Lisa, anxiously. “How do you feel?”
“Fine,” Markus murmurs. He’s still holding Connor’s hand. “I’m fine, I think.”
Lisa puts a hand on his arm and lets her skin fall away. External diagnostic commencing, his software informs him. “Thirium pressure is still a little high, but it’s dropping by the minute. These are great results, Markus! I think our little concoction might just‘ve worked!”
Relief makes Markus dizzy enough to be glad he’s lying down. “Thanks, Lisa,” he says, and her smile returns, wide and brilliant enough to sustain the city and then some. “You can do Connor now.”
She nods and starts to load the substance into another, equally imperious-looking needle. Connor’s hand loosens against Markus’s as he says, “You didn’t need to do that.”
“Maybe not,” Markus admits. “But I’m glad I did.”
All that gets from Connor is a small frown in return, although it’s moreso confused than anything else. He only seems to grasp the concept of self-sacrifice, Markus thinks, when he’s the one doing the self-sacrificing.
“Okay!” Lisa says, and flicks her plastic nail against the side of the needle. “Ready, Connor?”
His companion nods, and the skin of his abdomen melts away to reveal the same pale compartment that gives way under Lisa’s touch. Markus fights the urge to avert his eyes. There’s something strangely intimate about an android revealing their inner workings, and when it’s Connor—well, Markus isn’t entirely sure why it’s any different, but he feels wrong, looking on the way he is.
At this distance, he can hear the faint hum of Connor’s regulator, arrhythmic and temperate. Lisa seems to find what she’s looking for and readies the needle.
Like Markus’s injection, it’s only a matter of seconds. Everything is still. Connor blinks, staring up at the tiles above them as his abdomen closes smoothly and takes on its silicone exterior again.
“I don’t know,” he says, or at least that’s what he tries to say, because halfway through know his voice snaps and breaks apart into fragments of static. Connor’s body jumps and shudders violently, and his fingers clench around Markus’s with a force that would be painful, if androids could feel pain. His head snaps in Markus’s direction, LED a brilliant and frightening red.
“Lisa,” says Markus, trying to keep his voice level. “What’s happening?”
Lisa shakes her head and presses her hand to Connor’s shoulder. “His pressure is rising. I don’t understand—it should have worked, I—”
She breaks off and fumbles with one of the tubes connected to Connor’s exposed waist. Just like that, Connor falls dormant, eyes rolling back in his head. His hand in Markus’s goes slack.
“Lisa,” says Markus, again.
She looks shaken to her programming’s core, and he has to remind himself that whatever this is, it’s not her fault. “Can you tell me what that was?” he says, and then, “If he’s okay, at least?”
Lisa’s eyes flick to Connor’s LED, which has reverted to a light gold broken with streaks of red. “Premature syntheticirculatory arrest,” she says, and her voice is smaller than Markus has ever heard it. “The substance reacted badly with the accelerant, I think. It sped up his regulator, which was already trying to compensate for a foreign fluid, and his pulse just skyrocketed. It would have burnt itself out in a minute, maybe less.”
A chill that shouldn’t exist shoots down Markus’s spine. “So he’s, what… sedated?”
“For now,” says Lisa. “His regulator is barely working at all right now, and it needs to stay that way until we can figure out what went wrong. I’m sorry, Markus,” she adds, and he sees the emotion flicker in her eyes. “This never should have happened to begin with.”
Markus feels strangely calm. He shifts his hand out from under Connor’s and pushes himself carefully into a sitting position as Lisa watches, biting her lip.
Finally, he says, “Can you get me a phone?”
Lisa nods and immediately hurries from the room. He knows he won’t be able to talk her down from the ledge of guilt she’s standing on—not now, at least. If he’s being honest with himself, he has bigger priorities. The red fading through Connor’s LED, for instance, or the slightly accelerated pace of his moderator. Markus has never seen an android sleep but he supposes it’s meant to be something like this.
In a matter of minutes, Lisa re-materializes with the phone. She vanishes without a word as soon as he takes it, and he makes a note to himself to take her aside after all of this is over.
Then he dials a familiar number.
“Hank Anderson.”
“Lieutenant Anderson,” says Markus, stiffly. For all his unexpected exposure to public speaking in recent months, he still hasn’t worked out how to talk to Connor’s ill-tempered partner.
“Markus? The hell are you callin’ me for?” The other line goes quiet, and then— “What did he do?”
“Nothing—nothing. I just wanted to call with an update.” He feels too clinical; too cold, for everything that’s happened. “Something went wrong. Connor’s alive, but he’s just… unstable. It’ll be a little while before he’s back.”
The possibility that Connor won’t come back at all is one he leaves unspoken; tangled in the static of their flimsy connection and, rA9 willing, lost in transit altogether. This time the silence between them stretches into quantifiable seconds.
“I’m coming over there.”
“You can’t. Androids still aren’t any warmer to humans than humans are to androids. They’re not going to want you past the front door, much less visiting someone in the infirmary.”
“Ask me if I give a damn.” He can hear things moving in the background; boots knocking, keys jingling. “You’re gonna call me to tell me this shit and then expect me to sit around? The hell did you expect?”
Honestly, Markus has no idea. He’s given up on running probabilities. “What can I say to convince you this is a bad idea?”
“Funny you think there is somethin’.”
Markus swallows a frustrated sigh. “Just—consider. The androids here, they’re already skittish about having a police detective around. If his partner shows up, demanding to see him, how do you think they’re going to feel? What’ll that do to Connor’s reputation around here?”
“Fuckin’ demolish it?” A door slams, followed by the faint hiss of rain. “What do I care?”
“I can’t keep them from making Connor’s life a living hell, Lieutenant.” It’s an exaggeration at best, but Markus can’t afford an intrusion right now. “You have no idea how incredibly hostile some of them are to humans, still. Connor’s closeness with you and the others isn’t going to sit well with them, and if he didn’t have any enemies before now, there’s a good chance he’s going to have them after.”
Silence. The footsteps stall, and the rain gets louder and more insistent.
“You’ve got… android doctors over there, or some shit, dontcha?”
“Yeah.”
“And whatever this is is definitely fixable, right? No, uh… no permanent damage, or whatever?”
“Right,” Markus lies.
A long, heavy exhale breaks apart the white noise. “I don’t like this, Markus. You have ’im for one day and this shit happens.”
“It’s a dangerous job,” says Markus. “Connor knows that, and so do I.”
“I mean, I can’t speak for you, but he’s a fuckin’ dumbass if I ever knew one.” The lieutenant still doesn’t sound convinced, but he exhales heavily into the phone with a degree of exhaustion that feels all too familiar. “Just lemme know if anything happens, I guess. And don’t let that kid die.”
Markus glances over at Connor. The honey-gold glow of the LED sheds a warm, unnatural light across his cheek, highlighting small aesthetic imperfections. His brow is loosened, relieved of any tension burdening it, and his hand is open, palm up, pale fingers extended, reaching idly for the small divot where Markus’s bed begins. He looks more at peace than Markus has ever seen him, and it’s both beautiful and terrifying.
“I won’t,” he says. “Promise.”
Waiting is torture. A quick message to Simon debriefs Markus’s inner circle on the situation, and although he can tell they’re not exactly wringing their hands, they all send back their well wishes for Connor’s fast recovery. As for their leader’s state of affairs, Simon reports, most of the androids are none the wiser. North takes her oversight of internal security very seriously, and although Markus is reluctant to exercise the extent of her power, he’s sure that if he doesn’t want Jericho to know something, she’ll make certain they don’t.
What is there to hide, really? He’s injured, but none of the deviants in his ranks are strangers to that; he’s in the infirmary, which is the next step in a logical progression of events—
He’s with Connor, in critical condition.
Passing the time was difficult enough between the two of them, but it feels next to impossible now that Markus has the room to himself. He props himself next to Connor, minding the stump of his leg, and talks for awhile about anything that comes to mind. He talks about Carl’s favorite color palettes and his own, which are as violent and vivid as the supply of thirium at their bedside. He tells Connor about Simon’s draft of his most recent speech, and why recital is considerably harder than improvisation. He rambles on for awhile about the inner circle’s plans for New Jericho, and how all of it is much easier said than done. Conscious or not, Connor’s always been noticeably easier to talk to than most.
“Leadership is new to all of us,” Markus says. Connor’s moderator is a quiet, soothing hum in the background. “Even for Simon, he’s never done it exactly like this. It’s just strange, because… everyone else had time to figure out their deviancy, right? We had to have it all understood, day one. It’s too dangerous to not know or not understand, because any misstep can cost lives.”
After a given amount of time, he’s found, any conversation, one-sided or not, can lapse into the philosophical. Evidently this is no exception.
The irony of what he’s preaching hits Markus with considerable force. “I’m talking like you don’t understand matters of life and death,” he says, and makes a sound just short of a laugh. “You had to figure out you were deviant as you were hunting deviants themselves. I don’t know if it gets more confusing than that.”
Of course it does, he can envision Connor saying, with that lopsided smirk playing lightly across his face. You, for instance.
Markus feels heat ricochet through his chest and has to take a deep breath before his regulator jumps again. Oxygen doesn’t mean anything to him or his physical form, of course; it’s force of habit, something he’d picked up from Carl over the years. It helps to clear his mind of the way Connor’s lips curl when he knows he’s said something witty, and how his eyes will flick to anyone else’s in the vicinity, seeking amusement or approval or, occasionally, reprimand. Sometimes he catches Markus in that devastating gaze of his, and then Markus has to grin. It’s a difficult thing to do, nowadays, but Connor’s dry humor is one of the few foolproof exceptions.
Everything around him is so much easier. Talking, smiling, gravitating towards one another like the only thing between them is a law of the universe.
Markus isn’t used to anything being easy.
He clears his throat—another redundant thing—and moves on to something simpler. The rain is falling softly overhead, bearing down on the roof of their headquarters with resonant force, and it reminds Markus of one morning spent with Carl in a cathedral. It had been raining then, too. The sign at the door had said no androids allowed, but Carl had exchanged smiles with a man in the foyer and beckoned Markus in with him.
“Stained glass,” he says out loud. “You ever seen it? It’s beautiful. Like nothing you could imagine.”
Like you.
“Um—sorry to interrupt.”
The door closes gently behind Lisa, who offers up a slightly subdued smile as she makes her way to their bedside. Markus shifts away from Connor and turns his attention to her; and, more importantly, the needle resting on a tray in her hands.
“You got something?”
“We think so, yes.” She sets it off to the side and tightly laces her fingers. Deviants, Markus has noticed, have inexplicable quirks—fidgeting, foot tapping, humming, fiddling with their hands as Lisa does. “Connor’s regulator didn’t react super well to our last substance because it was designed with a standard regulator in mind. Those circulate thirium at a pretty basic pace, right? But Connor is designed for action and pursuit, so his regulator has a slightly accelerated flat rate. Those tiny, tiny differences can mean everything when it comes to affecting the anchors. It’s still a bit of a mystery to us as to why it all happened the way it did, but hopefully, none of that matters now, because this version of the substance should compensate for that!”
It’s a block of complex information, and Lisa doesn’t really take pause at all. She bites her lip and stares with anticipation at Markus, who only then realizes she’s waiting for his approval.
“Sounds good,” he says, and the tension in her shoulders loosens and releases straightaway. Perhaps Markus won’t have to talk to her after all. “What’s the risk?”
“rA9 willing,” says Lisa, “not any at all. But it’s a new thing, so…”
Markus glances at Connor. It’s started to become a habit. He hasn’t stirred, but his hand lolls towards Markus’s in a startlingly vulnerable gesture, frozen in time. Markus isn’t used to seeing him so open—or expressing need in any form, really.
The closest he’d ever gotten to need was the way he’d shifted forward into Markus’s body and let his lips drift willingly apart; like they’d been shaped for each other and they’d only just realized it. The feeling was new, and strange, and it was wonderful.
Deviance or not, Markus wants that again.
“Okay,” he says, and his voice is softer than he means it to be. “Let’s do it now, then.”
Lisa’s hesitation is less than a perceptible second, but he catches the way her fingers skip a beat before they resume moving against each other. “Okay!” she says, and smiles without a trace of anxiety left in her expression. Markus wonders if the same can be said for him. “You’re the boss.”
It’s not a reassuring thought. He pushes the pessimistic shadows from his mind and watches as Lisa preps the needle, then exposes Connor’s regulator with practiced ease. Markus fights the impulse to look away—because it’s too important this time around, because if he misses anything he’ll never forgive himself—and follows the needle’s point into one of Connor’s anchors. The moderator continues to pulse softly.
Lisa pulls the needle away. The compartment closes in on itself, and Connor’s skin reassumes its place.
“Okay,” she murmurs. Markus’s fingers are folded in the sheets beneath him. “Now we just—”
Connor’s eyes flutter open.
It’s not a violent awakening. He blinks, bleary-eyed, into the bright light of the infirmary, and his right arm twitches as if it’s only just remembered that there is no forearm attached to it. The light pooling in his temple shifts from a tense, aggravated yellow to an unbroken blue. Lisa’s gasp of surprise and delight slides off the slope of his shoulder.
“Markus?” he murmurs. His fingers twitch and start to curl into his palm, just now sensing the absence of Markus’s hand.
Markus doesn’t give him the chance.
“You stable?” he whispers.
Connor blinks and finds his gaze through the infirmary’s reflective glow. His eyes aren’t just pretty, Markus thinks, they’re gorgeous; impossibly dark and soft and in complete contradiction to everything Markus knows about him. Connor is every hypocrisy that their opponents fear. He’s beautiful and dangerous and he’s only just woken up, and already he’s looking at Markus like Markus is the whole world.
“Yes,” is his response, quiet and rasping in his throat. “I’m stable.”
“Good,” says Markus. He’s not ready for what he does next, but it happens anyway—he leans forward and kisses Connor like he should have in the first place. His fingers slip easily between Connor’s, and just like that, they’re no longer of two minds; they’re intimacy and vulnerability and relief at being in each other’s arms, and being alive. Markus can feel Connor’s mind whirling, scrabbling for a hold among all the new sensations between them, and wills the fog to clear. This is the first thing they’ve done that’s easy, he thinks. It’s as simple as giving in to gravity.
It’s not exactly as Markus remembers it. He’s glad of that; the energy of that night had been too volatile to last. This is different—they’re careful with the ebb and flow of feeling between them, and Connor lets Markus shift forward and cradle his face in one hand. The thrill of it makes oxygen catch in Markus’s throat. He tilts his head, shaping the space between their lips, letting the moment evolve. Connor is willing and almost fervent against him, and his grip tightens when Markus hums adoringly into his mouth.
A kiss isn’t something that ends abruptly, and so when they pull apart, Markus’s forehead pressed against Connor’s, it’s like surfacing from deep underwater. The adrenaline of the moment falls apart in shards around Markus, who realizes his hand is still tightly entwined with Connor’s. He isn’t quite ready to let go.
“Sorry,” he says, and, despite every iota of synthetic evidence to the contrary, sounds as breathless as he feels. “Was that—”
“Yes,” says Connor. “Yes, definitely.”