Series: Detroit: Become HumanRating: TGenre: Adventure/Drama/Action (eventual romance)Summary: Befor

Series: Detroit: Become HumanRating: TGenre: Adventure/Drama/Action (eventual romance)Summary: Before Connor, first of the RK800 line, began his fateful investigation of deviant androids, there was Jacob, the RK700 that preceded him. He failed in his assignment, but he did not go quiet into the night when he was decommissioned. Rather, he became the thing he had once hunted and disappeared into the depths of New York City in search of a new life. ( < Back to part 1 /< Back to part 7 )Part 8 - Unattended The truck had carried him further than Seven had dared to hope it would by the time it exited the freeway half an hour later. He peered carefully out from under the tarp after donning his backpack once more, and was relieved to see no one else around, no doubt thanks to the hour, which meant there was no one but the driver to witness the quick exit he made from the trailer. He kept low and ducked behind the limited cover provided by a light post before peering back at the truck to see if the driver had, in fact, spotted him.Luckily, the night seemed to be wearing on the human, and they were more occupied with stifling a yawn than noticing a rogue android appearing from the rear of their vehicle.Seven watched the truck pull away as the light turned green before pushing to his feet and straightening the straps of his bag on his shoulders. The vehicle made a left into the dark, and the android went the opposite direction, cutting across a dimly lit parking lot to the next street over. The ride Seven had hitched had gotten him a good ways towards the nearest Greyhound station, but he still had a long walk ahead of him.Seven walked into the wee hours of the morning, opting to avoid taking any official, trackable transportation in favor of staying off the grid on his way to the bus station. It would have taken a human longer, but being as he didn’t need to stop to rest the along way, the android made good time.Before entering, he cased the station from the shadows of an alley across the street, watching people come and go until he determined, as well as he could, that there wasn’t anyone particularly suspicious within the building. The station itself did have security cameras, he realized as he stepped inside, but it took little more than a thought for him to hack into their simple, low tech system and put the feed on a loop that a casual security guard was unlikely to notice.He acquired a bus ticket to New York with little issue, though Seven had a brief moment of worry that it might look suspicious buying one at such an hour, and in cash to boot. Fortunately, the tired looking human employee seemed incapable of caring less about what anyone else was doing so long as it wasn’t making their job any harder, and said nothing more than the bare minimum needed to complete the transaction.That done, Seven stepped aside and considered his options for a moment. There were hours to burn before his bus left, and while he could probably sit around the terminal unbothered until then, the thought of sticking in one place for so long made the android feel… antsy. Remaining still left him open to being noticed, and yet he couldn’t go far from the station either, and wandering the streets aimlessly provided its own level of risk.Realizing that standing about was likely to attract attention, Seven shed his backpack and took a seat along the wall. The chairs would no doubt have been uncomfortable for a human, hard, plastic, and possessing inconveniently placed arm rests as they did, but the android didn’t notice as he examined the room from behind the dark lenses of his sunglasses.The bus station was a large one, and there were at least a dozen people there, some of whom appeared to be traveling with an android. To a one, all of the humans appeared tired, annoyed, or at least vaguely uncomfortable as they waited around for their buses to leave, and Seven couldn’t blame them. There was something distinctly unwelcoming about the station that the android couldn’t quite put a finger on; an almost dirty feeling despite the fact that everything at least appeared quite clean. Another, more important, observation Seven made was the fact that almost every human had their attention either on one of the muted televisions scattered around the place, or on their phone. The android’s brow furrowed at this as his gaze drifted across the room. Eight of the twelve humans around him were actively looking at their phones, and the rest at least checked them occasionally, causing Seven to come to a new conclusion.If he was going to blend in, he was going to need a phone of his own.Sure, he didn’t technically need one; advanced as his system was, he could access wireless and cellular networks with a thought, after all. Watching the humans around the station, however, Seven had to acknowledge that his complete lack of one would seem strange to the outside observer in this day and age.Seven closed his eyes and sank down in his chair a little until his head rested against the wall as he cradled his bag loosely against him to keep someone from running off with it, then considered his mission to-do list again. After a moment, he zeroed in on one point in particular.Bullet point three: Find a disguise that would allow him to blend in with the human population. Below that he added a few new sub-points:Acquire cell phoneAcquire further clothing as possibleSynthetic as he was, Seven didn’t have to worry about his own physiology dirtying the clothes he had acquired, but that didn’t mean the world around him wouldn’t. Not to mention the fact that wearing nice slacks with a hoodie and sunglasses was a bit of a strange look. His shoes were also very good quality, and considering he was probably going to need to lay low in some of the less savory parts of New York City when he got there, the last thing he needed was to get jumped for his footwear.A quick internet search revealed that there was a Goodwill within reasonable walking distance, though it wouldn’t be open again for some time yet, along with anywhere nearby he might acquire a cheap phone. Plan once again in place, Seven set himself an internal alarm, then went into sleep mode to save power, though put his proximity sensors on high alert so he would wake if anyone strayed too close for comfort.He ‘woke’ once before his alarm went off when a rogue toddler strayed from her parent’s side and into his personal bubble, bringing him rocketing back to active consciousness faster than most could blink, though an outside observer wouldn’t have been able to tell just by looking. Seven didn’t so much as twitch until he registered who the ‘intruder’ was, at which point he raised one eyebrow at the child, who proceeded to make a beeline for his side.The android watched her as she proceeded to climb, with a great deal of effort and grunting, up onto the seat next to his then sat with a look of great satisfaction. The child pushed some stray strands of hair back from her face with one small hand, then turned and looked at him with a brilliant smile that was missing a few teeth.“Hi!” she proclaimed.Seven blinked. “Hello,” he said after a moment, then looked around for the child’s parent in hope that they might even then be coming to claim her. Seeing no one moving in his direction, he asked the child. “Where’s your mom?”The little girl shrugged, a large motion that ended with her hands up by her head.Great. “How about your dad?” he hazarded hopefully and pushed his sunglasses up the bridge of his nose as he straightened some in his seat. The action drew the girl’s attention to his face and without warning, she leaned forward with one sticky looking hand as though to grab his glasses. Seven immediately leaned back out of her reach. “Please don’t,” he said. It occurred to him that he could simply get up and walk away from the child, but on the other hand, his morality program signaled that ‘leaving a child unattended’ was not acceptable behavior in a human. So what exactly was this child’s parent doing, then?It didn’t matter his human relations programming chimed in, it simply ‘wasn’t done’, even though he had no actual responsibility to the child in question.The little girl pouted at his reticence and asked, “Why?”“Because I need them.”“Why?”“Because the light hurts my eyes.”“Why?”Seven squinted at the child from behind the sunglasses in question, who almost seemed to be repeating herself arbitrarily by that point. “I doubt you’d understand if I explained,” he said archly.“Why?” she asked, blinking up at him with big, bright eyes. She was far too awake considering the hour, he decided.The android sighed and sagged back down in his seat once more, resigning himself to playing along for the time being. “Because you’re a child with, no doubt, limited comprehension of bio-” he hesitated before finishing with ‘components’. Yes, she was only a child, but children, his programming told him, often repeated things they overheard, even if they didn’t actually comprehend it. “-logy. Biology.”“Oh,” she replied, which made Seven heave a sigh of relief. “What’s bialahgy?”“Biology,” he corrected automatically.“Biahlowgy,” the child hazarded, brow furrowed in concentration.Seven quirked a brow and leaned in a little. “Bi-ohl-oh-gee,” he repeated slowly for her benefit.The little girl watched him closely as he spoke, then repeated “Bi-ology.”“Good job, kid,” Seven said with a upward quirk of his lips, and she grinned.“What’s biology?”Moment of victory short lived, the android sighed again and eventually replied, “It’s a kind of science.”“Oh. My daddy does science!” the girl said proudly, then reached into one of her pockets and produced a jolly rancher.“Is your daddy here?” Seven asked quickly, latching onto the subject like a man to a lifeline even as the girl scrunched up her face at the candy in her hand, then proceeded to offer it to him.“I don’t like green ones,” she said simply, still holding it out towards Seven, who looked at it for a moment, then took it from her.“Why?” he asked her.“They’re gross.”Seven’s mouth twisted into a wry smile, “So you’re giving me the gross one, huh?”“Yep,” the child said nonchalantly as she rummaged in her pocket a second time and came up with what was apparently a more acceptable flavor, then unwrapped it and put it in her mouth. The android huffed lightly, then did the same with the ‘gross’ flavor she had pressed upon him, and was pleased to find that it wasn’t really gross at all.Sharp movement across the room drew Seven’s attention as a man stood up abruptly and began looking around, bewildered. Not seeing what he was looking for, he bent over and picked up two bags, one not unlike the android’s own, and another, small and bright pink.Ah.Seven rolled the jolly rancher around his mouth, then leaned over and pointed towards the increasingly frantic man. “Is that your dad?”The little girl looked up and saw who he was pointing at, then smiled. “Yep!”“How about we go see him? I think he’s worried,” the android suggested, then got to his feet and slung his own bag over his shoulder. The child seemed to consider this, then finally nodded and said, “Okay,” before sliding off the seat she’d commandeered. Before Seven could even take a step in the right direction, he felt a small hand grab his own, making him look down in surprise at the sudden contact. He was still wearing his gloves, but her little fingers were warm around his own, though luckily, not as sticky as they had first appeared.“Okay,” he said as his system shifted gears to this new development. Reflexively, he lightly gripped her hand in turn, then lead the child towards her father. The man glanced up as Seven approached, and the look of relief that washed over his haggard features almost made the android pause mid-stride.“Emily!”“Hi, daddy!” the girl said brightly, the distress she had clearly caused her father going right over her head even as the man swept her up in his arms and gave her a squeeze that made her squeak in complaint.“Thank you so much, I’m so sorry if she bothered you,” the man said with a grateful, embarrassed smile over his daughter’s head as he looked at Seven. “I swear I only drifted off for a minute,” he said, sounding just as exhausted as he looked.Seven’s first impulse was to point out that his daughter had been with him for more than a single minute, but he checked the urge and instead, said, “Don’t worry about it,” then left it at that. He turned and went back to his seat, and as he settled in again, the android glanced in their direction to see the girl looking at him. She waved, and after a moment’s hesitation, he returned the gesture. (TBC)((Thanks for reading, guys, reblogs are always appreciated to help get this out to more people too! Make sure to leave a comment letting me know what your favorite part was, I love hearing that from my readers!If you really enjoyed it, consider buying me a ko-fi?)) -- source link

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