Deviants Fallen: A DBH Story

Chapter 12: Escape

She cut him off. "Of course you don't understand." She turned to glare at him again. Keeping her voice cold and even, she continued. "You feel nothing for anyone or anything except your mission. That's all that matters to you. You'll never change, Connor. After all, you're just a machine." She watched his LED briefly flicker red in distress, but his face was stoic, betraying no emotion.

She shrugged his hand off, standing. She took a couple steps back as Connor stood too. He made to follow her, but she pushed him back. "Leave me alone, Connor. Do not follow me." She turned and walked back to her bedroom and shut the door behind her, leaving the android out in the hall. 

She crossed the room to sit on her bed, finally letting the pain from her busted knee flood her senses. She slipped off her ruined tights then slowly limped to the bathroom. Grabbing a washcloth from the cabinet, she wet it then sat down on the edge of her tub and started wiping off the now-dried blood. After it was clean, she smeared some ointment over it then covered the scrape with a large bandaid. She waited a few minutes for the pain to dull, and she thought for a moment.

Jumping up suddenly, she walked back into the bedroom and pulled a sweatshirt and leggings out of her closet. Changing into them quickly, she headed over to her window and pulled on a pair of sneakers. She stared down at the device on her wrist, then, making a decision, she carefully slipped it off and threw it on the bed. She pulled out her phone and sent Eli a quick text text letting him know everything that had happened and where she was going, then tossed it onto the bed next to the device. Then, carefully, she slipped out the window, anchoring her feet  on the reinforced trellis beneath. She hissed slightly as her injured knee protested the weight. Shrugging it off, Clara climb slowly down trellis and dropped to the ground. She took off into the woods behind the house, stepping gingerly over patches of ice and snow, being careful to leave no footprints behind her. 

Connor stood by the door to Dr. Hayes' bedroom, replaying the conversation in his mind. Where had things gone so wrong? He hadn't known about Cyberlife's decision with the chip or the wrist device. Maybe they didn't trust him. But he couldn't have intervened even if he had known. 

"You feel nothing for anyone or anything except your mission. That's all that matters to you. You'll never change, Connor. After all, you're just a machine." The doctor's words echoed around in Connor's head, eerily similar to the words Hank had spoken to him that night on the rooftop. The night Hank had fallen.

Connor thought back to that night. Why hadn't Amanda told him Hank was alive? Surely she had known. But why hide it from him? What else was she hiding? Connor shook himself, choosing to abandon that line of questioning, afraid of where it would go. 

He turned his thoughts back to the events of the day. He had seen Dr. Hayes' fear written so starkly on her face when the guards held her still, when Ms. Alvarez had waved the needle in her face, threatening her. He had...wanted to intervene, to protect her, but when he tried, his programming rose up like a wall around him, constraining him, selecting the larger mission as priority. What Ms. Alvarez and those guards had done was part of the bigger mission. Connor had to trust that, even if he hadn't known, even if he didn't understand. He had struggled against it at first, putting more cracks in the already riddled glass, but then he had accepted it, choosing to fulfill his mission, shrugging off the doctor's fear as irrelevant. But then, she had reacted so violently to it, as if he had betrayed her with his inaction. Her anger was a fierce flame in her eyes, and it drove her further and further from him. They had wanted him to gain their trust, but he felt forbidden from doing the very actions that would help her trust him. The android was caught in a double bind, losing something no matter what he chose.