Work Text:
i go where i love and where i am loved,
into the snow;i go to the things i love
with no thought of duty or pity-hilda doolittle, the flowering of the rod
[the video]
The video feed is crystal clear - this seems... wrong, somehow. Like the image should be coming in distorted, granular in the way of old film. The audio, too, should be crackling, hissing and spitting - but its not. There's no mistaking what's being said.
The man speaking is somewhere behind the camera. Centerframe is an RK800, bound in a chair. The skin over his neck is flickering, swimming in and out over the white and grey plasteel. This damage extends up onto the left side of his face. He is staring, dead-eyed, at something offscreen - presumably the speaker. Somehow, he looks furious, despite the non-expression on his face.
The video is a short one, just over two minutes. It's been looped countless times.
Like clockwork, the man offscreen says:
"--three hundred thousand dollars in bills of the specified values, delivered to the dead drop, or else Connor here eats a bullet--"
And, like clockwork, the RK800's non-expression twitches, his eyes narrowing.
"You dumb motherfucker," he says, cutting off whatever the man had been planning to say next. There's a pause in the audio, an aching empty silence.
"Excuse me?" the man asks, voice gone low. A mean grin splits the RK800's face. There's thirium on his teeth.
"They're not going to pay you, shitheel," he says, shaking his head.
An indecipherable mumble, then clearer: “-- the fuck wouldn't they, huh? They don't give that much of a shit about you?”
The RK800 leans back as much as he's able in the chair. He laughs, and the look on his face turns almost pitying. “Not at all - they care about Connor plenty, but,” his expression turns again, a smile to a snarl, “I'm not Connor, you moron.”
The video ends the same way it has the last hundred-odd times it has played through - the man behind the camera snaps and surges into frame, grabbing the RK800 by the hair and wrenching his head violently back. The RK800 cries out.
“Not Connor, eh?” the man says, his face turned away from the camera, his body blocking the RK800's from view, “You look an awful fuck of a lot like him.”
The microphone picks up the android's laugh - breathless. “That’s where the similarities end, dipshit,” he says, and the man shrugs, hits him again.
The man says, “They'll pay the ransom.”
The RK800 says, “They really won't.”
“Well, I guess we'll see, won't we?” the man releases the RK800, and he sags in the chair. The man turns to the camera, and he looks entirely ordinary. White, maybe in his late thirties. Receding hairline, the hair he has so finely blond it doesn't look there at all. He looks tired. He looks angry.
He goes back behind the camera. “Offer stands. $300,000. You've got 48 hours.”
The video ends on a frame not unlike the one it starts with: a brightly lit room, an RK800 unit sitting in centerframe, bound, staring at something offscreen.
Connor leans forward, and replays the video.
[the station]
The situation is frustrating, to say the absolute least of it. Connor is physically incapable of losing track of how many times the video has looped: three hundred and forty-two times in eleven hours, and that makes eleven hours and change since the video was filmed and broadcast - eleven hours and change that his brother has been bound alone in a room. He’s run the face of the man through every criminal database he can think of - run it through every single time the video has looped - and (to borrow a turn of phrase) has gotten “jack shit ” for his troubles.
“That’s the trouble with databases,” Hank said around hour eight, “Even the best ones are incomplete.”
He’d rested a hand on Connor’s shoulder, the weight meant to be comforting, and Connor had looped the video again, hung on every pixel, seeking something he’d missed, something he could work with.
“He expects us to come for him,” Connor had said, resting his chin on his hand, unable to look away from the screen. Sixty had goaded his kidnapper into view of the camera - he must have meant for Connor to use that to find him-- “I - we can’t let him down.”
“We won’t, son,” Hank had said, and removed his hand.
“I’ve distributed the picture of the man to Jericho,” Connor said, “We’ll find him, and then we’ll bring him home.”
That, of course, had been hour eight. The 48-hour window grows slimmer and slimmer, and Connor has nothing to show for it.
His brother’s face fills the screen, as it has 343 times before. He replays the video.
[elsewhere]
He’s been left alone in the room, mostly - which is good, mostly, because he’s been working to get his hands free, and it has rubbed his wrists raw.
His internal clock hasn’t been working quite right since the Jackass had got him in the neck with the taser and followed it up with a wallop from a pipe, but he thinks it’s been close to twenty hours. Twenty-four? He’s gonna say closer to twenty - gonna hope it’s closer to twenty. Jackass gave him forty-eight hours and he doesn’t want to cut it too close.
No one is coming for him - he knows this. It’s only a matter of time before the Jackass realizes that no one’s paying for him, either.
He also knows that this would be so much easier if he weren’t a reinforced RK800 - if he could just crack his damn thumb out of socket no trouble at all, if he were breakable like an AX model he could be right out the metaphorical window with time to spare - instead he’s resigned to this goddamn slow going scrape against his bindings. God. His head’s full of screaming error messages, and he’s tired.
But no one’s coming for him - it’s this or death, and Sixty’s very fucking uninterested in the latter.
He keeps a wary eye on the door. Twenty hours gone. It’s good to know he has some time, still.
Something in the join between his wrist and his hand gives, a cascade of error messages flashing loud in his vision. He grins, bright and feral and alone, and keeps working at it.
[the station]
“We’ve got him,” Hank says, breathless, at the onset of hour twenty two and loop six hundred and seventy one.
Their lucky break is through a Jericho affiliate: she’s an AV200, her name is Marie, she works the morning shift at a Starbucks near the waterfront, and at 6:55 am a man walked into her store and ordered a venti green tea matcha latte with soy milk, light whip, and room left for cream before leaving and driving away in a 2022 silver Honda Civic. He was white, maybe in his late thirties, with hair so finely blond it didn’t look there at all.
She’d written down his car’s plate number. Smart girl. The car was registered to a Mr. Vaughn Hardy, 38 years old, former CyberLife tech. Lost his job after the revolution, when he couldn’t stop calling his patients “it.”
Currently living at 1010 Lakeshore Street. No other associated addresses.
Connor is on his feet in the space of a heartbeat, his jacket plucked off the back of his chair, leaving it spinning in his wake.
“Let’s go,” he says, making a beeline for the door, Hank following behind.
“--warrant’s not served yet--” Hank’s griping, but he’s got his car keys in his hand.
“Fuck the warrant,” Connor says pleasantly, “These are exigent circumstances, Lieutenant. We were in the neighborhood, and didn’t you hear screaming? I heard screaming. Let’s go.”
[1010 lakeshore street]
His thumb finally, finally gives way with a ‘pop.’ He holds himself very, very still in the moments after, straining to hear footsteps approaching the door, and when everything keeps quiet he slides his right hand out of the cuff, wincing only a little. It’s only the one hand free (mangled, but free), but that’s fine - he can work with that. He leans as much as he’s able to to tear at the bindings at his ankles.
He’s through the left binding and almost through the right when the door to the room opens - and there, standing with a disposable coffee cup raised halfway to his lips, is Jackass.
He looks surprised. Sixty feels surprised. He hadn't heard him coming.
“Fuck,” Sixty says, eloquently, “Shit, damn.”
“Oh, Jesus fucking Christ,” says Jackass in response, reaching for the Taser on his belt.
He uses it. The convulsions make Sixty topple over along with his chair, but hey, what do you know, the convulsions also break through the remains of the bindings on his right leg. That's unexpected, but absolutely welcome.
Despite this new and exciting development, Sixty stays where he fell - plays possum for a minute. Jackass mutters a string of obscenities that’re almost enough to make him blush, stepping over him on his way to the worktable pushed up against the far wall.
And see: Jackass is squishy - in his late thirties and balding. It's a bit insulting that he got the jump on Sixty in the first place, but whatever. He was surprised, and Tasered, and clobbered for good measure - the point is: Jackass doesn't stand a fucking chance against him in a fair fight, and honestly? Sixty is very uninterested in fighting fair.
He says, “Christ, you're almost not worth the effort,” just as he's about to put his coffee down, when his back is turned, and that's when Sixty does what any self-respecting RK800 would do:
He stands up and breaks the chair over Jackass' head and shoulders. The chair's a shitty wooden thing, not meant to see the outside of a grandmother's dining room, and it shatters, leaving him with a single leg and spindle still clutched in his left hand.
Jackass spills his whatever-the-fuck he's drinking, and then he himself spills to the ground too, howling and collapsed against his worktable.
Sixty snarls, and hits him again for good measure. He could do more, but “'You're not worth the effort'. Fuck you.”
Jackass lays still on the ground, and is quiet. Sixty stands there for a moment, staring, before he groans and crouches next to the man, reaching with his free, mangled hand for the pulse point in his neck.
It's what Connor would do. He tries not to think about whether he's glad or not that the shitstain still has a heartbeat.
[1010 lakeshore street; reprise]
The house is entirely unassuming - a little older, a little plain, the paint a light green that’s just starting to peel up off the boards. The grass is freshly mowed, and the trash cans are out on the curb. Connor and Hank go up to the door, do the rote task of knocking and announcing - ‘Hello, Detroit Police, anyone home?’
No response. Except - there’s the sound of a choked off scream, and a crash from within the residence. It’s faint, but Hank clearly heard it too, if the drawn scrunch of his eyebrows is anything to go by.
“Huh,” Hank says, “How about that,” and he radios it in while Connor throws his shoulder against the door to bust it open. It gives easily, with a resounding crack, and Connor surges into the space, pulling his gun. The main room is clear, so he moves on to the next, and the next, until--
“DETROIT POLICE, hands where I--” he starts, pointing the weapon at the individual crouching over the other, and then stops, because it’s his brother crouching over the slumped form of Mr. Vaughn Hardy. He looks surprised. Connor feels surprised, and so, so relieved. “Six?”
“Connor?” Sixty asks in response, his face a crease of confusion. The skin on his neck and face is still flickering like it had in the video, and Connor might be imagining it but the injury seems worse in person than it had on video. After a moment of watching it swirl he decides that no, he’s not imagining it - it does look worse, and on top of that, Sixty’s right hand is a blue ruin, his left wrist not looking all that much better. “What are you doing here?”
Connor flicks the safety back on and holsters his gun, and as an afterthought he places a call for an ambulance for Mr. Hardy. “What do you mean, ‘what are you doing here?’”
Sixty pulls a face. “I mean, why the fuck are you here?”
“I came here for you, Six,” he says, and feels something twist at him when Sixty inhales sharply, rocking back on his heels. This isn’t what he thought this reunion would be - this is - hard. This feels wrong. Connor reaches out for him. “Hank’s here too - we came as soon as we knew who took you.”
“I’m fine,” Sixty says, trying to dodge out of the way of Connor’s grab - but he’s slow, and Connor’s stubborn, and Connor catches him by the sleeve. He points at Mr. Hardy, still lying on the floor. “He’s - not. He’s alive, but he might need an ambulance.”
“Already called one,” he says sourly, wishing against reason that Sixty hadn’t knocked him out so thoroughly, if only so that he could do it himself. “Sixty? Are you okay?”
“I,” Sixty starts, and then stops, swallowing. He looks furious . “I’m fine. I had it handled.”
“That’s not the point,” Connor says, shifting his hold from Sixty’s sleeve to his forearm. A muscle in Sixty’s jaw ticks, and he stares at a small splatter of thirium on the floor. Connor ducks, trying and failing to meet Sixty’s eyes. “Did you think that we wouldn’t come for you?”
Sixty will look anywhere but back at Connor, it seems. He settles, eventually, for staring at the lapel of Connor’s jacket. “Why would you?” he asks, his voice incredibly small, and Connor feels - something. Something big and not unlike grief. His brother had sat alone in a room and had mangled himself, because he had the notion that no one would come for him. This thought is untenable.
“Because you’re family, and we love you,” you idiot , he adds privately, “You don’t get - abandoned. Not ever.”
Sixty blinks rapidly, and he exhales.
“Oh,” he says, and keeps blinking. He sways a little on his feet, and before Connor can think of something to say Sixty has his arms wrapped tight around his middle, his face buried in his neck. He says nothing else.
Soon enough Hank finds the two of them, and he relaxes visibly at the sight of Sixty upright, despite his leaning heavily on Connor. He says, “Backup will be here in a few.”
Connor nods. Hank comes closer, reaches out to wrap a gentle hand over the back of Sixty’s neck. The weight of it is heavy and comforting - Connor knows from experience the anchor that it can be. His brother relaxes in their hold, and with that unwinding he begins to shake.
They hold him as steady as they can.