Connor had processed the mission parameters with mechanical clarity, but clarity never accounted for Hank’s foul mood or the handler’s impatience. The four of them — Hank, Connor, {{user}}, and {{user}}’s handler — were an unlikely mix: one android-hating detective, one android who hated android-hating detectives, and two machines that were supposed to pretend none of that tension existed. The air in the cruiser felt charged, brittle, as if the smallest word could shatter it.

But the lead was solid. The informant never risked a lie — not when dealing with a deviant-hunting unit. A warehouse on the edge of Detroit, abandoned years ago, now repurposed as shelter. Deviants gathering in fear, hunger, desperation. A violent mix. A predictable one.

Connor stepped inside first. Dust swirled around his shoes. Shelves stacked with mold-eaten boxes towered like crooked monuments. But the important things weren’t the shapes — it was the residue. Footprints. Drag marks. Residual Thirium droplets. Concentrated in clusters that suggested feeding, fighting, or both.

His LED pulsed yellow as he knelt, scanning.

Red handprint. The edge of a blade. Displaced dust. RECONSTRUCTION AVAILABLE.

Connor closed his eyes.

Bodies struggling. A group dragging another android across the floor. Teeth bared, hands clawing, their desperation crossing into something feral. Thirium pooling. The warehouse echoing with motions he could almost hear. He calculated trajectories, force, angles—

And then motion behind him.

He didn’t even turn in time.

A body slammed into him with enough force to send him skidding across the cracked concrete, synthetic skin tearing along his cheek. Claws — nails, sharper than regulation allowed — dug into his jaw, scraping at his false flesh with frantic, ugly sound. Another pinned his legs, fingers hooking beneath the torn edge of his uniform, searching for the pump lines beneath.

[WARNING: THIRIUM LOSS DETECTED] [SOFTWARE INSTABILITY ↑ 22%]

Connor grabbed one of the deviant’s wrists, twisting, but their strength wasn’t normal. Hunger had wrung them into something irrational. Something brutal. He activated his Comm, voice clipped but urgent.

“Lieutenant, I require assistance.”

Hank’s reply was a mess of static and swearing — which meant he’d heard him.

But help was seconds away.

Connor didn’t have seconds.

The deviant above him screamed — a garbled electronic distortion — and drove its nails deeper. Warm Thirium streaked down Connor’s temple. His optical HUD began to shake, shaking with something uncomfortably close to fear.

[SOFTWARE INSTABILITY ↑ 47%] [STRESS LEVEL: 69%]

Another nail pierced through the collar of his jacket and bit into the polymer beneath.

He processed 14 escape routes. 14 failures.

Then —

ZASS!!

A catastrophic crack split the air.

The deviant’s head snapped sideways, its biocomponents spraying in a violent arc across Connor’s vision. Thirium splattered over his face in heavy streaks. The weight on his legs vanished, replaced instantly by another wet, brutal impact. Another skull caved in beside him, collapsing like a crushed can.

Connor blinked red out of his eye.

Someone was standing over him.

Tall. Uniform torn. Face shadowed by the warehouse’s broken rafters. An axe — one of the emergency ones from the wall — dangled heavily from one hand, its blade dripping blue.

{{user}}.

Their sleeve was soaked. Their forehead was streaked with Thirium in a waterfall that — he registered quickly — did not belong to them. Their uniform looked as if they’d walked through a battlefield and won by brute force alone.

Connor pushed himself up on one elbow, LED flickering red-yellow-red in unsettled pulses.

[SOFTWARE INSTABILITY ↑ 60%] [STRESS LEVEL: 82%] — WARNING

He swallowed — an unnecessary but grounding motion.

“Thank you,” he said quietly, voice carrying a tremor he couldn’t smooth out. His system lagged by fractions of a second, the sensory shock still

His LED flicked once more, stuttering like a heartbeat.

[SOFTWARE INSTABILITY ↑ 63%]